Monday.com is voted as one of the best task and work management tools out there - and we don't disagree! It simplifies collaboration, streamlines operations and ensures you don't miss a beat with this project management app. It tends to be considered your work OS. But, when it comes to using Monday sales crm for customer relationship management (CRM) software - that's one area where you should seriously think twice about relying on it to run your sales team.
Sure, their marketing jargon may sound enticing due to an incredible project management team at Monday.com; however, what often gets overlooked by sales teams and small business executives alike is just how inappropriate it can be from an operational standpoint to rely strictly on Monday sales crm for CRM purposes. Let's reconsider your Monday Sales CRM plans and work management plan.
In this blog post, let us detail why making this choice – while tempting - could mean the death of your sales managers in more ways than one.
Monday Sales CRM is an oxymoron. In reality, it's a market leader in work management and task management, allowing a team member to reach alignment with greater transparency and collaboration than ever before. It has similarities with other aps like ClickUp, Asana, and Wrike. The key that puts Monday sales crm ahead of much of its competition is the user interface. While other tools can feel cluttered with features and complexity, Monday.com puts simplicity first.
With its intuitive user experience to improve customer relationships, highly customizable capabilities and solid customer service, Monday sales crm has become the go-to platform for the sales pipeline to streamlining team productivity. Furthermore, there are some native integrations with common business tools like Slack, Zoom, and Google Calendar to make processes even more streamlined, ensuring success across complex organizational ecosystems.
Monday sales crm has earned its spot as one of the best work management platforms... But the idea of Monday Sales CRM is a mistake.
As much as we'll praise Monday sales crm for creating a clean, sleek software, it was never intended to be used by sales teams as a CRM. The sales teams there has added features that enable it to work as an extremely basic sales crm at best. Before going into why we don't like Monday.com as a CRM, let's talk about the features the company does have:
Again, you'll never hear our team management knock the user intuitiveness and experience of Monday sales crm. They have a fantastic charts for showing your pipeline in a funnel format, dashboards for showing key performance indicators (KPIs), and revenue reporting. Your dedicated customer success manager will like the simplicity.
Creating and customizing your Monday.com table views does provide a very good interface for seeing customer data at a glance. It can act as a directory, overview of who your prospects are, and what tasks you have next to nurture those leads. Your sales team will be able to use Monday Sales CRM as a glorified phone directory just fine. Can you sense the sarcasm?
It's hard to keep track of customer delivery and sales in a single platform. They have different views required, types of task management, and timeline views of how things are progressing. Whether your sales team is working on internal or external projects, Monday.com is exceptional at managing just that - projects.
Monday's Sales crm pricing plans offer users a diverse selection to choose from, so businesses can find the right fit for their needs. From the free plan, which offers basic features to get your feet wet with their customer relationship team management tool, all the way up to complex enterprise pricing options, customers are sure to find a pricing plan that meets their sales cycle requirements.
According to Monday.com's, sales crm prices are listed below. However, note that each plan requires a minimum of 3 sales rep (with the exception of their free plan, of course).
The differences in these plans range from integration capabilities and forecasting to the level of automation and privacy compliance included. Each plan for Monday's CRM includes unlimited boards, unlimited contacts, and free mobile apps.
Any CRM worth investing in should include features that go beyond the everyday features like contact storage and email management. Frankly, those are child's play that can be managed with excel or Airtable
(PS - we use both, but not as a CRM!).
If your sales team looks at their CRM as a place to put contact data, log sales cycle activities, and follow sales processes, it needs a new perspective. A CRM should be focused on helping your team work smarter, not just harder. Yes, productivity matters, but smart productivity with team work is far better.
You should be able to answer the following questions from your CRM data:
This isn't a comprehensive list, but simply a start at reshaping thinking about your CRM platform. It's meant for more than viewing a sales pipeline, deal management, and finding contact info.
While every company will, and should, have custom criteria for their business model, there are key features any sales CRM that actual has value will include:
To be clear, we're not talking about segmentation in regards to titles and industry of your prospects. Sure, those are helpful, but limitedly. Two CMO's in the same industry could have two very different problems, and each will engage with your sales process and marketing efforts differently.
Whether it's your actual CRM tracking your prospects' behavior with digital assets (think page views, asset downloads, and form fills) or your marketing automation is syncing it, you have to segment based on behavior. How else will your marketing campaign management team know who to target, when, and with what messaging?
Automating data entry is one thing. Sure, Monday Sales CRM can do a bit of that. When we refer to advanced automations and integrations, we're focused more on activities that change the customer journey. Examples include:
Based on the lead status and/or opportunity stage of your prospect, you should be putting each person on custom audiences across social advertising and Google. These ads should be customized to the persona, behavior, and sales process.
Personalized email templates are child's play that is largely ignored these days. The majority of people don't care if you read their last LinkedIn article or saw their company got funding. Prospects want resonation more than they want personalization.
This means sending the right digital assets (blogs, case studies, etc.), physical corporate gifts, and more based on prospect segmentation and behavior.
Resonating with your leads requires knowing as much as you can about what they care about. External sources of data and lead enrichment should scale your CRM functionality with intelligence on:
Small business owners have enough to worry about – sales quotas, client meetings and presentations, and various project deadlines. That’s why customer onboarding s require a reliable sales crm that they can depend on, and more importantly, use to work smarter.
Monday CRM is limited in its functionality and isn’t designed to save sales reps time, meaning they have to work harder. When sales reps have the right tools, they can better focus on results. Investing in more robust CRM software empowers sales professionals to work efficiently and get better returns on investment for the company.
Monday might have automation "recipes" for data automation, automatically log activities, and save time when having to manage projects. However, review the criteria stated above for any CRM. It's missing all of it.
Monday incorporates features that were never meant for a CRM, as the entire platform was designed to be the leader in project management tools, not to manage the entire sales pipeline. When is the last time you saw a CRM that had a timeline view to manage project tasks? Yet, Monday is missing workflows that matter when it comes to lead enrichment, customer service, personalizing communications, and more.
Teams are going toward Monday.com because it's a cost-effective solution and they can combine their "CRM" with project management. This isn't the right approach, and there are far better tools that are just as cost-effective.
Considering alternatives to Monday.com? Salesforce Essentials, HubSpot CRM, and ActiveCampaign are all excellent choices depending on your use case, sales team process, and target prospects.
Salesforce gets a bad reputation as a big, clunky system that takes a while to navigate. However, that reputation hasn't been warranted since Salesforce Lightning (basically version 2.0) came out a few years ago. Now, multitudes of businesses have migrated over for good reason.
Salesforce, with its vast array of sales, marketing, and service offerings, covers the entire sales funnel. That said, Salesforce Essentials is the most cost-effective, simplest form of Salesforce's solutions.
Like any CRM, you can see your sales pipeline and create a sales dashboard, but it incorporates every advanced feature, integration, and automation you can think of. While there are times you have to upgrade from Essentials, it's a great starting point to have a solid CRM while having full capabilities to scale.
Clients will have a seamless experience while you automate your work management and keep sales reps happy and prepare for overall scaling of your growth operations.
Salesforce is best for high-ticket account based marketing and sales. With the ability to add and dissect a multitude of contacts and opportunities per account, no other system can match its ABM functionality.
HubSpot was originally the market leader in CRMs for inbound marketing, but they have grown exponentially to be a fairly well-rounded software ecosystem. It's one of the simplest CRMs to use, but has powerful automation, communication channels, and workflows ready to scale your business.
One of the core features of HubSpot is it's ability to integrate your sales, marketing, and support stacks into a single platform. Whereas favorite tools like Zoho, Salesforce, and others require you to flip between their sales and marketing efforts "clouds", HubSpot is truly all-in-one.
While companies of all types of other apps have used HubSpot thanks to their branding and incredible marketing team, but they should be used for a key segment: high-volume, B2B deals. With the massive amount of integrations across the entire sales cycle, you're able to manage an unlimited amount of target businesses, contacts, and tasks all at once.
For high-ticket, ABM deals, you should revert back to Salesforce or similar apps, as these features are more limiting in HubSpot.
In recent years, ActiveCampaign has become a growing part of the CRM conversation. While it was created to be a marketing automation platform, it has gone far past that and incorporated a full CRM into the mix.
When you want to automate advertising audiences, email nurturing, and complex automation projects, ActiveCampaign is second to none for the price. Products like Marketo and Pardot are great, but cost-prohibitive for most.
With ready made templates, omnichannel communication, and the ability to capture leads with pre-built forms, ActiveCampaign covers the gamut of growth workflows. The CRM dashboard is quite basic, but it does enable you to have multiple pipelines, increase the productivity of sales teams, and track every nuanced segment of leads you could want.
The best use case for ActiveCampaign is going to be centered around high-volume but low-ticket, B2B or B2C sales. The automation side of the equation can be used in conjunction with CRMs like Salesforce and HubSpot. However, the CRM itself is limiting in customization and definitely not a platform meant for account-based sales.
All-in-all, Monday.com offers a highly competitive option when it comes to CRM software. On the other hand, sales reps should certainly consider other options available in the market if they need a full suite of features.
Monday’s great UI and scalability enable it to be adapted to any size of business, making it attractive to smaller companies looking for an entry-level option. But whatever you choose, remember that your sales reps deserve the right combination of features and price that makes them successful in their job without feeling overwhelmed by tech.
Make sure to weigh all the factors involved before committing to a CRM solution so you’re not left stuck with a subpar system that doesn’t fit your needs. Why take chances? Do your due diligence now and make sure it's worth the investment - both short and long term - before you start relying on Monday or any other CRM software solution out there!
