Zoho CRM Review 2023: Real Review for SMBs

Deal management is another major cornerstone of any customer relationship management solution.

Before adding in our deals, we wanted to ensure our pipeline was customized to our specific needs at Small Business Bonfire.

Luckily, Zoho CRM made it easy to do just that!

We navigated to our settings and clicked "create pipeline" (shown below).

We named our new pipeline "Affiliate Partnerships" and were able to easily customize our layout and the stages of the pipeline.

From there, we created a new deal with just one click and filled a few fields out.

Here's how it looked from our view (to give you a better idea).

With our affiliate partnerships put in, we liked how we were able to view our deal pipelines in the following different views:

• Tile
• Table
• List
• Kanban

With all of these options, it was tough to pick a favorite! But ultimately, we used the Kanban view the most during our three-month testing.

Here's how it looked from our perspective.

Ultimately, deal management with Zoho is top-notch! From the streamlined user interface to the personalized customization options, it's a clear standout in its field.

Allow me to introduce you to Zoho CRM's not-so-secret weapon—omnichannel support.

This feature is like a Swiss Army Knife for your customer engagement needs, offering many handy tools that can take your lead nurturing to the next level!

Zoho offers the following channels:

• Email
• Telephony
• Business Messaging
• Notification SMS
• Social
• Chat
• Signals
• Portals

At Small Business Bonfire, we swear by using email to communicate with most of our clients. So, naturally we set up our email right away.

Zoho offers the following seamless email integrations:

• Zoho Mail
• Gmail
• Yahoo Mail
• Office 365
• Outlook

We configured our Gmail account with just a few clicks and then sent emails out like nobody's business!

Here's how the integration process looked.

While we mostly used email to contact our clients throughout our testing, we also loved the live chat offering of Zoho.

So, if you want to stay ahead of the game and provide top-notch customer service, you better hop on the omnichannel support train. Zoho CRM has got you covered, my friend.

Automation is the name of the game when it comes to managing your business.

And guess what? Zoho has got you covered with its automation tools! Let's explore the different types of automation you can expect from this CRM powerhouse.

Sales force automation:

• Create automated workflows to assign leads to your sales team based on criteria such as location and product interest.
• Set up automatic follow-up emails or reminders for your team members to ensure no lead falls through the cracks.
• Take advantage of the pre-built reports to understand your sales trends better and identify bottlenecks in your sales pipeline.
• Use the AI-powered lead scoring feature to prioritize leads based on their behavior and engagement with your brand.

Marketing automation:

• Create personalized emails and newsletters with the drag-and-drop email editor to nurture your leads and customers.
• Use email tracking to monitor your messages' open and click-through rates and tweak them accordingly.
• Set up automated drip campaigns to deliver targeted content to your prospects based on their interests and behaviors.
• Leverage social media integrations to automate your social presence and engage with your followers.

Workflow automation:

• Use Blueprint, Zoho's visual process builder, to create custom workflows for various departments and teams.
• Automate repetitive tasks such as data entry, lead assignment, and follow-up reminders.
• Integrate with your favorite apps and tools to streamline your workflows further.
• Enable autoresponders to send out personalized messages to specific triggers and events.

Here's an example of basic workflow automation we created to notify our team whenever a new deal was created.

The whole thing took about 5 minutes from start to finish and was one of the easiest processes we've experienced.

There you have it, folks. Zoho's automation tools can help supercharge your sales and marketing teams, plus the workflow processes for your SMB. Embrace the automation, and watch your business flourish!

Ah, lead management. The bread and butter of any successful sales team. And if you're using Zoho CRM, you can rest assured that your lead management game is strong.

How do I know this, you ask? Because the Small Business Bonfire team and I put it to the test for a solid three months.

Let me tell you, Zoho's lead management capabilities are nothing to sneeze at. Here are just a few highlights:

• Organize leads with tags and scoring: With Zoho, you can tag and score your leads based on criteria like their industry, budget, or level of engagement. This makes it easy to prioritize and track your most promising leads.
• Automated workflows: Say goodbye to manual data entry and hello to streamlined workflows. Zoho can automatically assign leads, send follow-up emails, and schedule meetings based on your preset rules.
• Customizable fields: The real beauty of Zoho's lead management is how easily customizable it is. With a simple drag-and-drop interface, we created custom fields to track the specific information we needed. No more messy spreadsheets needed!
• Lead assignment rules: Worried about leads slipping through the cracks? Zoho allows you to set up automatic lead assignment rules based on geography, industry, or other criteria that suits your business.

Here's a screenshot of the customizable fields to give you a better idea. It's seriously awesome.

Honestly, we were blown away by how well Zoho's lead management tools worked for us. And let me tell you, we've used our fair share of lead management software.

But with Zoho, it was like a breath of fresh air. The customization options alone made it a real winner in our book.

One of the standout features of Zoho CRM is its Meetings tool. Users can easily schedule and customize meetings with just a few clicks to fit their unique needs.

Adding a new meeting (shown below) is very straightforward.

Users can choose the date and time that works best for them and even set up a recurring meeting if needed. But the real magic happens when customizing the finer details of the meeting.

First up is the option to choose between an online or in-person meeting. This is especially useful in today's world, where remote work has become the norm.

With Zoho, you can seamlessly schedule virtual meetings with clients and team members, saving time and hassle.

Next, users can specify the host of the meeting. This can be the user initiating the meeting or someone else on the team. Not only does this add flexibility to the scheduling process, but it also ensures that the right people are leading important discussions.

Zoho CRM also enables users to invite attendees, assign roles, and even specify what topics will be discussed.

With this level of customization, users can ensure that meetings are productive, engaging, and tailored to their specific needs.

Here's how our Meetings dashboard looked with everything put in. As you can see, the layout is clean and easy to read.

All in all, having all your meetings in one place with Zoho CRM was awesome. While it's not the platform's most impressive feature, it made life at Small Business Bonfire a lot easier!

The task management feature of Zoho allows you to easily create, assign, and track tasks associated with customer interactions.

You can also set reminders and deadlines to ensure nothing is missed or forgotten. With the ability to create repeating tasks, you can automate your workflow and save valuable time.

Zoho CRM's task management feature uses a collaborative approach, allowing you to delegate tasks to other team members and track their progress in real-time.

This ensures that everyone on your team is on the same page and working towards the same goal.

Moreover, Zoho's task management system allows you to prioritize your tasks, so you can focus on the most urgent tasks and stay organized throughout the day!

With Zoho Projects, managing all your projects in one place is easy.

Zoho CRM's project management feature allows you to do the following with ease:

• Set deadlines
• Add notes
• Attach documents
• Monitor the overall performance of your projects

This makes it easy to keep everyone in sync and stay on the same page with all your projects.

We created a portal with Zoho Projects (shown below) to get started with Zoho Projects.

From there, we were prompted to customize the fields for our projects.

The level of customization offered with the CRM software was second to none.

This made it easy to fit our projects specifically to our business (and not vice versa).

We found this feature to be especially great for niche businesses that required a little more wiggle room for customization.

Once we had everything set up, we added in Small Business Bonfire projects related to the following with ease:

• New user onboarding
• Article publishing
• Affiliate marketing outreach
• New website design

Here's one of our projects, titled "New User Onboarding."

As you can see, there's a drag-and-drop interface that makes it incredibly convenient to manage all the tasks related to your project.

At the end of the day, Zoho Projects is a fantastic tool for SMBs that helped our business immensely!

When it comes to tracking your business performance, the importance of analytics cannot be overstated. Fortunately, Zoho offers a robust reporting and analytics feature that will impress even the most data-obsessed business owner.

At Small Business Bonfire, we were blown away by the level of insight provided by Zoho analytics. From lead sources and sales pipelines to deal insights and revenue trends, the platform offers a wealth of data that can be analyzed at a glance.

Take a look for yourself at our deal insights view, and you'll see just how easy it is to monitor your team's progress and track your performance over time.

In short, Zoho's reporting and analytics feature is a game-changer for SMBs who want to stay on top of their performance and make data-driven decisions.