Pipedrive Vs. Salesmate 2023: What’s Best for Business?

Pipedrive offers some of the best sales pipeline management in the game for a few reasons. 

They are the following:

• Ease of use:  Their drag-and-drop interface makes managing your pipeline quick and intuitive.
• Customizable pipelines: You can customize this platform to fit any sales process, making it a perfect fit for nearly any business.
• Visuals: Pipedrive’s visual representation of your pipeline with color-coding for deals allows you to see the status of every deal at a glance. 

To really test this feature out, we added in some of our affiliate marketing deals at Small Business Bonfire. 

Here’s how it looked to add a new deal to our pipeline. 

Within each card, we had access to a ton of information, including the following:

• Contact person
• Organization
• Title
• Value
• Pipeline
• Stage
• Probability
• Expected close date

Once our deals were put in, here’s how our visual pipeline looked. 

We especially liked the drag-and-drop interface, which allowed us to easily move our deals from each stage (without a second thought). 

Overall, if you want to step your pipeline management up a notch, Pipedrive is a fantastic choice.

For an extra $8/month, Pipedrive provides powerful project management tools to help your project managers succeed. 

Some of the most helpful tools include:

• Project calendars: Easily track deadlines and milestones with this visual tool.
• Task management: Assign tasks to team members, set due dates, and track progress, all within Pipedrive.
• File sharing: Keep your files organized and accessible to everyone on your project team. 
• Project templates: Save time setting up projects with pre-made templates for common project types.

We added and managed tons of projects during our sixth-month testing period.

We especially loved the ability to create project templates and easily duplicate them. 

This saved us a ton of time in setting up new projects.

Here’s how the project template creation process looked on our end.

Overall, we were impressed with Pipedrive’s project management features, especially for the affordable price point.

Pipedrive also stands out with its workflow management feature, which enables you to automate repetitive tasks and maintain a smooth sales process. 

Here’s how this feature works:

• Custom workflows: Pipedrive lets you customize your workflows to suit your business needs. You can create specific stages and gateways that align with your sales process, making sure no detail gets overlooked.
• Notifications: With Pipedrive’s workflow management, you’ll receive timely notifications to remind you of any pending tasks or next steps. This helps you stay on top of things and never miss out on any opportunities.
• Progress bar: Pipedrive also offers a visual progress bar that gives you a quick overview of where you are in your sales process. It helps you track your progress and spot any bottlenecks in your sales pipeline.

Our take: Pipedrive’s workflow automation capabilities ensure that your sales team stays efficient, organized, and, most importantly—focused on closing deals.

Great email campaigns can make all the difference in turning leads into customers. 

Luckily, for an extra $16/month, Pipedrive offers a robust email campaign management system. 

They offer the following powerful features:

• Intuitive interface: Pipedrive’s email campaign management is intuitive and easy to navigate, even for beginners.
• Customizable templates: You can create professional-looking email campaigns with Pipedrive’s customizable templates.
• Advanced analytics: With built-in analytics tools, you can track the performance of your email campaigns and make data-driven decisions to improve results.

We created all sorts of email campaigns using Pipedrive. Some of these included:

• Newsletter rollout
• Follow up with affiliate contacts
• Cold email promotions
• Webinar announcements

Let’s walk you through our process of creating a campaign to showcase our Small Business Bonfire newsletter. 

First, we selected from one of Pipedrive’s gorgeous email templates (shown below).

Next, we were taken to the intuitive drag-and-drop email editor, where we could fully customize our first email. 

Here’s how it looked (during our testing period).

We were able to easily add the following to each email:

• Images
• Buttons
• Video
• Custom code
• Social links
• Text

Once our email was customized to our liking, we could easily schedule and send them to our clients (directly from Pipedrive CRM). 

The CRM offered custom reports on our campaign metrics, giving us insight into the success of each email. 

In a nutshell, Pipedrive’s marketing automation capabilities are advanced and immensely helpful for small businesses looking to take their email marketing game up a notch.

The efficiency of a CRM platform is largely dependent on its customer data management capabilities. 

In fact, superior contact management can revolutionize how a business interacts with its customers, fostering stronger relationships and driving business growth. 

Here’s how it looked to add one of our B2B affiliate marketing contacts to Pipedrive.

Here are some things we loved about Pipedrive’s contact management: 

• Easy import and export: Pipedrive makes it super easy to import and export contact data. You can effortlessly update and manage your database without any hassle.
• Contact segmentation: We loved how Pipedrive lets you categorize and segment your contacts based on various criteria. It really helps in targeting our communication more effectively.
• Custom dashboards & fields: One of the most important aspects of Pipedrive is the ability to create custom dashboards and fields for our contacts. It’s perfect for capturing specific information relevant to our unique business needs.
• Interaction tracking: Pipedrive makes it a breeze to keep track of every interaction with a contact. From calls and emails to meetings and notes, everything is neatly organized.
• Integration with Google Contacts: The seamless syncing with Google Contacts ensures that our database is always up-to-date and accessible from any device.
• Activity reminders: Thanks to Pipedrive, we never miss any follow-ups. The timely reminders keep us on track and ensure nothing falls through the cracks.

The breakdown: Pipedrive’s Contact Management is a powerhouse offering a suite of advanced features that make handling contacts a smooth and efficient process.

As you scale your business, your schedule will get busier, making it harder to keep track of all your sales activities. 

Pipedrive CRM offers the ability to manage your day-to-day like a boss with its activity tracking capabilities. 

Don’t just take our word for it, though; let’s get into it. 

With each activity card (shown below), you get access to a ton of information.

Here’s everything you can access and edit with just a click: 

• Activity type
• Date & time
• Location
• Guests
• Notes
• Owner
• Associated deals & contacts 

We especially liked the ability to see our calendar view within each activity card. 

This made sure we didn’t double-book our activities and were able to prioritize our tasks effectively.

The bottom line: Pipedrive’s activity tracking capabilities are some of the best on the market. 

It’s no wonder Pipedrive is one of our favorite sales CRMs to recommend for SMBs. 

Pipedrive really stands out with its comprehensive LeadBooster feature. 

This powerful tool provides several lead generation and management capabilities to propel your business toward success. 

Here’s how you can access the following functions under the LeadBooster feature:

• Live chat: Deploy live chat on your website to interact with your visitors in real time. By having direct contact with potential customers, you can answer queries promptly, improving customer satisfaction and increasing conversion rates.
• Prospector: A highly potent tool, Prospector scours multiple databases, identifying and drawing in valuable leads for your business.
• Chatbots: Utilize chatbots to engage visitors when your team isn’t available. By providing automated responses to basic inquiries, they keep your leads engaged, ensuring you don’t lose potential customers due to delayed responses.
• Web forms: Use web forms to gather information about your visitors. This can help you understand their needs better, allowing you to personalize your interactions and improve your chances of conversion.

Being massive fans of automation and efficiency (I mean, who isn’t?), we absolutely loved Pipedrive’s LeadBooster. 

This feature truly packs a punch in lead generation and management. The only downside is that it’s available for an additional $39/month (though we believe it’s a worthy investment).