Dealing with prospects + feedback on the CRM

Ask a question
21

Hi @Brian - I am doing an AC pilot with a client (almost purely focused on the CRM functionality with intention to start leveraging the marketing side later) and I feel there are a few minor shortcomings that would make a huge difference…otherwise I love the product and the client is initially very happy with the usability and UX. But I’ve already discovered some serious limitations that I hope you can help address…

  1. I need to be able to set automations based on CRM activities. For example, I need a trigger like ‘email (deals/sales email via IMAP Gmail, not a marketing campaign) last sent’ or ‘date of last note added’ aren’t available triggers for automations. My use case in this particular instance is to create an automation to move a deal from “Closing” to “Rotting” stage when it hasn’t been ‘touched’ by its owner in over two weeks. No way to do this currently, unless I’m missing something.

  2. There isn’t a way to associate a custom field like ‘closed lost reason’ to a deal…instead that custom dropdown field must be associated to a contact. This is problematic because a single contact is very likely to have multiple deals…how would I be able to structure this data easily for reporting later? The answer is that currently, we can’t…and this is a problem because being able to report on why we are losing deals is critical.

  3. The automation triggers that are based on CRM functions aren’t mapped to a specific Deal, but rather to the ‘last updated deal’ or ‘newest deal’…this is a problem because it’s entirely likely that we’ll have multiple deals going for a single Organization and a single Contact…making it difficult to create deal-activity-triggered automations. It’s risky (at best) with the options currently available to assume that the automation would be triggered for the intended deal if someone is updating another deal under that contact and/or organization within a similar timeframe.

  4. Would like to be able to assign tasks to other team members beyond just the Deal owner. We have a collaborative, SDR-driven team so there are multiple salespeople touching each deal.

Happy to jump on the phone to chat if you like…again, very happy but could be ecstatic if these issues were resolved quickly…I think these are the types of things that could keep the Deals functionality from being a real CRM solution, unfortunately.

3 Likes
22

Hi Brian, We have been using the AC CRM for almost 1 year now. I am used to multiple CRM solutions and now I am worried that you are not really up to create a proper CRM in AC.

I have to implement BASE CRM, so my question are, will the Zapier sync work? Add/Edit contacts, tasks etc etc

23

Your CRM should allow you to add a contact record without having to add an email address. – most CRM’s allow you to do this. There are times when all you have is a name and yet you want to add it in your CRM. Over time you (might) add their phone number, other pertinent information, and even an email address. I realize your company’s genesis is email marketing automation but if you want to play in the CRM space you need to turn off the email field requirement.

3 Likes