Whether you’re an accountant, lawyer, or involved in other business services, closing a deal for professional services often requires a consultative and tailored sales approach. This unique trait of professional services demands sales CRM software that is flexible for customization yet structured enough to ensure team standardization.
So, what CRM software tick those requirements and more?
With so many options in the market, choosing the best professional services CRM can be overwhelming. To lighten your load, we’ve gathered five top professional services CRMs. We’ll look at their key features, pros and cons, reviews, and prices to help you make informed decisions.
Why Professional Services Needs CRM Software
With an annual growth rate of 6.33% (for the 2023-2028 period), professional services is one of the fastest growing industries in today’s business landscape. On the one hand, this presents a promising opportunity for your business services to expand. On the other hand, the growth also makes the competition becomes tougher—making one-on-one engagement an essential part of your sales strategies.
To meet the challenges, you need a tool to manage your growing client base and navigate complex sales cycles without sacrificing personalized interactions. This is where the adoption of robust, customized CRM software becomes crucial.
In fact, here are some things that a professional services CRM can bring to your business:
- Centralized client information: store and team-share client data, communication history, and preferences for faster decision-making.
- Lead and opportunity management: monitor and prioritize leads to ensure successful conversions.
- Sales process automation: automate data entry and mundane tasks to free up time connecting with clients.
- Analytics and reporting: get insights into your sales performance, client behavior, and market trends for on-target business strategies.
- Seamless integrations: connect your favorite business apps (email providers, campaign tools, invoice generator, etc.) to the CRM software for a more efficient workflow.
Learn more about the roles of CRM for professional services in this blog.
Now that you know why you need custom CRM software and what it can do for your business services, let’s look at the below 5 CRM comparisons designed for professional services.
1. Pipeline CRM: Best Professional Services CRM for Sales-focused Businesses
Whether you are a financial advisor striving to retain clients or a marketing firm wishing to simplify team collaboration, Pipeline’s professional services CRM is your best shot at eliminating operational chaos and building long-term relationships with clients.
Designed with professional services in mind, Pipeline CRM offers a wide range of powerful sales tools that help you from lead generation to client management and retention.
For instance, Pipeline CRM enables you to identify and capture prospects’ details quickly and accurately. The customizable contact and lead management allows you to add custom fields while, at the same time, the conditional formatting feature keeps the dynamic data free from errors.
Pipeline also offers email automation and AI email assistance to reduce time crafting personalized emails. You can set specific entry and exit rules for email sequence campaigns (e.g., after registering for a webinar) and improve their performance with A/B testing.
Top Features
- Short learning curve and quick setup (Pipeline CRM is ready in 48 hours)
- Customization on deal stages, data input, reporting, and dashboard view
- Advanced automation (e.g., automate recurring deals and task assignments)
- Real-time status updates for synchronized teamwork
- Set permissions for specific documents and users
- Create multiple sales pipelines
Pros
- Highly customizable to suit your business services’ unique needs
- Simple dashboard to monitor lead statuses, tasks, and sales performance
- Easy sales forecasting based on past trends to ensure you hit the sales goals
- Smooth integration with Mailchimp, Outlook, Zapier, Google apps, and other third-party apps to make day-to-day business hassle-free
- Exceptional customer support (phone calls) is available for every plan
Reviews
- 4.4/5 star rating on G2 (922 reviews)
- 4.3/5 star rating on Capterra (619 reviews)
- 10/10 score on TrustRadius (15 reviews and ratings)
- 4.2 star rating on Gartner (40 reviews)
Pricing
- Start plan: $25 per user per month
- Develop plan: $33 per user per month
- Grow plan: $49 per user per month
You can view all of Pipeline CRM’s features here.
2. Bonsai: Best CRM for Small-Scale Professional Services
Next up on our list is the CRM for professional services Bonsai. This simple and intuitive platform is ideal for solo consultants or small-team business services.
From contract generation to invoicing, Bonsai organizes everything in a single and segmented dashboard. You can track and bill your working hours, as well as share files and other updates with clients through the Client Portal feature.
And if you are tired of unorganized expenses, Bonsai can solve this problem. Bonsai automates all your spending records and tracks income, making accounting and tax reporting easier.
Features
- Custom contract builder with legally vetted templates
- Send invoices directly to clients and get notified of payments
- Track time spent on projects
- Track business expenses for better financial management
- Generate tax estimation to help manage tax obligations
- Client Portal to organize all to-dos, files, and documents
Pros
- Shareable task reports, time sheets, and messages keep your team and clients in sync
- Customizable templates for contracts, proposals, and invoices
- Intuitive and user-friendly interface
Cons
- Changing email address is quite a hassle
- The customer service is sometimes unresponsive
Reviews
- 4.4 star rating on G2 (63 reviews)
- 4.7 star rating on Capterra (64 reviews)
Pricing
- Starter plan: $17 per month
- Professional plan: $32 per month
- Business plan: $52 per month
3. Salesflare: Best CRM for Small to Medium-Scale Professional Services
Salesflare is a simple sales CRM for professional services focused on lead acquisition and customer data organization.
This custom CRM software connects your calendar and mobile phone to log client meetings and calls. It also excels in customer data organization, tracking emails, and analyzing customer engagement metrics.
Additionally, Salesflare can suggest missing data in your contact with information they gather from publicly available sources and email signatures. This allows you to have a richer dataset to support you in doing outreach and creating business service proposals.
Features
- Automated customer data entry (emails, phone numbers, social profiles, etc.)
- Task and follow-up management to ensure timely responses to leads and clients
- Custom fields and bulk-edit feature on lead and contact management
- Clean dashboard to increase focus
- Email integration and performance analytics
Pros
- Calendar sync helps keep track of upcoming and past meetings
- Simplified lead generation and enriched data collection with email finder
- Zapier integration for seamless connection with other productivity apps
- Permission access management to contacts, deals, and specific documents
- Easily see tasks overview and prioritization on the dashboard
Cons
- Limited option on the bulk edit feature
- Address book can get confusing when contacts have more than one business
Reviews
- 4.8/5 star rating on G2 (240 reviews)
- 4.7/5 star rating on Capterra (136 reviews)
- 7.3/10 score on TrustRadius (22 reviews)
- 4.3/5 star rating on Gartner (12 ratings)
Pricing
- Growth: $29 per month
- Pro: $48 per month
- Enterprise: $99 per month
4. Insightly: Best CRM for Business Services Analytics
The next CRM software on our list is Insightly. Insightly is one of the best professional services CRM focusing on analytics and reporting.
Some of the offered analytical features include tracking unique KPIs, UTM, prospect ID, and email performance. You can pull the reports directly from your dashboard, illustrate them with different chart types, and share them with the team.
Moreover, Insightly offers a landing page builder solution. This allows you to build, clone, and add embedded forms to the pages for easy contact information sharing.
Features
- UTM tracking, multi-touch attribution, and prospect ID tracking
- Pre-built and customizable email templates
- A/B and multivariate email testing
- Mobile accessibility to support salespeople on the go
- Vast Integration options with popular productivity tools
Pros
- Smart reporting tools and customizable dashboards
- Email integration to manage client communications directly within the CRM
- Real-time email performance reports
- Support project tracking and management
- Easily accessible customer support portal
Cons
- Automatic logout system if no activity is detected
- New updates often change the CRM workflow, such as the automation feature
Reviews
- 4.2/5 star rating on G2 (877 reviews)
- 4/5 star rating on Capterra (631 reviews)
- 8.2/10 score on TrustRadius (788 reviews and ratings)
- 4.2 star rating on Gartner (708 reviews)
Pricing
- Plus plan: $29 per month
- Professional plan: $49 per month
- Enterprise plan: $99 per month
5. Wealthbox: Best CRM for Financial Business Services
If you are a financial advisor looking for an intuitive, financial service CRM, Wealthbox is one of the best CRM options available.
With Wealthbox, you can share real-time client updates with your team and create and assign tasks according to your team’s expertise. The platform also generates dynamic sales reports to highlight areas of improvement, so you will always know which leads are priorities and which team members need extra support.
Features
- Wealthbox Mail for two-way email synchronization
- Ability to link tasks to contacts for effective task management
- Secured document management to store and organize client-related information
- Drag-and-drop interface
- Track client’s social media activity
- Built-in financial compliance and regulatory feature
Pros
- Easy to use and adapts to individual business needs
- Extensive workflow customization
Cons
- The platform is sometimes unstable (glitches)
- No live customer support and help articles are limited
- Poor synchronization with Outlook calendar
Reviews
- 4.6/5 star rating in G2 (92 reviews)
- 4.7/5 star rating in Capterra (142 reviews)
- 9.1/10 score in TrustRadius (5 reviews and ratings)
Pricing
- Basic plan: $45 per month
- Pro plan: $59 per month
- Premium plan: $79 per month.
Create a Personalized Approach With a CRM for Professional Services
The consultative sales approach makes one-on-one engagement a necessity for professional services. To do so, you’ll need robust, custom CRM software to support you in many sales areas. Pipeline CRM stands out among the various options available for professional services CRMs.
Pipeline CRM is designed specifically for professional services and offers a high level of customization. You can add unique properties to contacts, change deal step names, create multiple sales pipelines, and automate admin tasks, among others. This level of tailoring will ensure you have all the tools to give VIP treatment to prospects, moving them closer to signing off the deal.
See how Wire Stone, our long-time digital marketing agency client, uses the captured data in the CRM as leverage in conversing with prospects. They turn nuggets of information into golden opportunities.
Sign up now to try Pipeline CRM for 14 days for free!
