Salesmate CRM Review 2023: Good for SMBs?

Let's face it, no matter how efficient you are, if you can't manage your day-to-day activities, your business will suffer at some point.

Thankfully, Salesmate provides the ability to add and track the following with ease:

• Meetings
• Tasks
• Calls
• Demos

What's great about Salesmate's activity tracking is that they make it easy to connect everything related to your business in one place.

Let's look at some specific examples of this from our testing:

• We needed to add a note to a deal-related task, and we were able to easily do so with the "internal note" function
• We wanted to make sure we remembered to follow up with a client, so we linked our contact with just a click
• We marked our latest follow-up call as complete so the entire team could be on the same page

Here's an example of how easy it was to add the follow-up call we referenced (to give you an idea of the layout and how easy it was).

With our tasks added, we could easily view our activities in both list and calendar view.

Here's our list view, where we could easily see everything clearly.

We especially liked how easy it was to view our activities by the following categories:

• Overdue
• Today
• Tomorrow
• This week
• Custom

We've tested tons of CRM software (and I've just as many with my marketing agency), and the SBB team and I can confidently say Salesmate is top of their class.

They make it easy to manage everything in one place (with virtually no learning curve to speak of).

If we're going to talk customer relationship management, we'd be remiss to not mention deal pipelines. After all, they're the backbone of pretty much any CRM software.

At Small Business Bonfire, we recently put it to the test (over the course of three months), tracking our affiliate marketing partnerships with Salesmate's deal pipeline, and boy, did it deliver.

We were able to easily see where each partnership was in the pipeline, from initial outreach to closed deals.

Here's a snippet of some of our deals (in list view) throughout the testing.

Throughout our testing, we used both the list and card view but ultimately preferred the cards (in the board view) because of the customizable stages and drag-and-drop functionality that made it simple to tailor the pipeline to our specific needs.

What was especially cool about this feature was how each deal card allowed us to call, text, or email associated clients with just one click.

Here's how the board view looked.

This is fantastic for sales teams that want an easy way to stay in touch with hot leads and close deals more effectively.

It was like having our very own sales assistant (but without the salary). So, if you're an SMB looking to up your sales game, take it from us—deal pipeline management is a must-have feature in any CRM, especially when it's as user-friendly as Salesmate's.

Let me tell you, as a small business owner myself, being able to communicate with your entire team on projects all in one spot is a huge boon.

It's a feature that I think is easy to take for granted, but it's one of those things I always miss when it's not offered.

Here at Small Business Bonfire, we love us some Slack for our daily discussions, but there's nothing quite like the team inbox when it comes to group email management.

So, we're happy to confirm that Salesmate not only offers this feature, but they offer a nearly flawless version of it!

It's like having a personal assistant that keeps track of every email, so we don't have to go digging through our inboxes for that one elusive message.

Plus, with the added bonus of internal discussions and shared visibility of messages with clients, we can rest easy knowing that no leads will fall through the cracks.

Getting started with the team inbox was as simple as clicking "add new team inbox" and creating a team inbox address.

Then, we simply synced our Gmail account (shown below).

And that was it! From there, we were off and running, sending group emails within our team left and right.

So if you're a fellow SMB owner looking for an efficient and organized way to manage your email communication, Salesmate CRM's team inbox feature is definitely worth considering.

The built-in calling and SMS feature of Salesmate is a real game-changer!

We tested this feature by setting up our own Small Business Bonfire phone channel within the Salesmate platform and were impressed, to say the least.

Not only were we able to call and text our affiliate marketing clients without any integrations required, but the quality of the calls and texts was crystal clear.

This means that our sales team could communicate with leads seamlessly without juggling multiple apps or devices.

So, if you're tired of losing out on potential sales because of poor communication, then Salesmate's calling and SMS feature is your secret weapon!

With Salesmate, businesses can build custom reports using automation. Yes, you heard that right—no more wasting hours manually trudging through data just to create a report.

Salesmate takes care of all that. We put this feature to the test, and let us tell you, it passed with flying colors!

We created a custom report that showed all of the new deals that hadn't been touched, and it was done with ease!

By doing so, we could pinpoint which deals needed immediate attention and focus on them without wasting precious time.

One thing that really stood out about this feature compared to other CRMs we've used and tested is that we were able to fully customize a ton of aspects of each report.

For example, we were able to easily choose the following:

• Layout
• Alignment
• Total number of rows
• Stage displayed
• Chart type (with many different options available)

At Small Business Bonfire, we're firm believers in learning from our mistakes (and successes) using data and analytics.

So, Salesmate stands a good head and shoulders above the rest of the competition in our estimation.

Whether it was with my marketing agency, Small Business Bonfire, or any other business endeavors, I've always been a firm believer in working smarter, not harder.

With Salesmate's powerful workflow automation capabilities, they make it easy to do just that.

However, don't just take my word for it. I'll walk you through how we were able to create some automation to help out at SBB.

For starters, we navigated to the "automation journeys" tab, where we were greeted with a bright blue call to action (CTA) titled "activate automation."

From there, we were offered a guided tour that walked us through how to set up our automations (which, of course, we took advantage of).

At the end of the tour, we watched a short video that was just under 3 minutes.

Essentially, Salesmate makes it easy to get started with automation (even for beginners).

Once we were in, we were able drag-and-drop triggers, conditions, and actions to create customized automation.

Our first automation was a simple one. Essentially, we wanted to send a follow-up email to our clients whenever the tag "affiliate marketing" was added to a card. That way, we didn't have to spend time following up with each new affiliate partnership.

It was literally as easy as dragging and dropping a few boxes into our automation creator and customizing a few fields.

Here's our view of the email customization field.

Finally, we connected the boxes and hit save and publish! It was as easy as that.

Once we published our automation, like clockwork, the emails were sent whenever we added that specific tag to each contact or deal.

And there you have it—our process of creating workflow automation from scratch (from start to finish).

That was just the tip of the iceberg, though.

During our three months of using the platform, we were able to create tons of powerful workflow automation to manage the following:

• A/B testing
• Nurturing leads
• Email marketing campaigns
• Streamlining the sales process from start to finish
• Automating customer journeys

Our takeaway from Salesmate's automation is that it's as powerful as it is user-friendly (and that's really saying something).

Now let's talk about Salesmate's email campaign creation. The CRM platform is currently testing out this feature, which means it's still in beta mode and not fully released to the public. But let me tell you, it's looking pretty promising.

With Salesmate, you can create and send email campaigns using templates that are actually helpful (and not just generic).

We gave it a whirl by creating a follow-up email template to send to our affiliate marketing contacts. And let me just say it was a breeze to create.

Here's the basic template we came up with (and used in conjunction with our email automation).

But if you're not feeling as ambitious (or you're just starting out), Salesmate has got you covered with some gorgeous pre-made templates.

We tested one called "Newsletter" to showcase the Bonfire Field Guide—our helpful newsletter designed to help entrepreneurs scale their SMBs.

We were able to pick and choose what information to include and how it was displayed using the drag-and-drop functionality.

And, of course, we were able to customize it to fit our brand with ease. Here's what we created as an introduction to our guide in a matter of minutes.

Keep up the good work, Salesmate. We're eager to see this feature move from the beta stage to being fully finished.

In addition to the numerous sales and marketing features offered by the platform, Salesmate also offers the ability to create and customize live chat for your website!

Not only did this feature allow us to connect directly with our customers through a live chat window, but we also had the freedom to customize the chat window's color, messaging, and logo to fit our Small Business Bonfire brand!

With Salesmate Chats, we were able to greet our customers in a personalized way that was extremely convenient (and also on brand), creating a unique experience that stands out from a boring, generic chatbot.

The whole creation process took about 10 minutes from start to finish. Here's what we came up with (and used quite frequently throughout our three months of testing).

Overall, if you're looking to spice up your customer interactions, nurture leads faster, and close deals more effectively, you can't go wrong with Salesmate Chats.