CRM selection
Which CRM fits a B2B company with a field sales team?
Most CRM comparisons are written for startups and web shops. If you sell through quotes, with field sales and an ERP, you look at different things.
Short answer
Don't count features. Look at six things: where quotes and orders live, whether the mobile app works on the road, how many sales processes you run, whether marketing needs to be in it, who will manage it and what it costs over three years. For most B2B companies with 20 to 150 employees HubSpot is the best fit. Pipedrive suits pure sales on a tight budget, Salesforce complex organisations, and Dynamics 365 companies already deep in Microsoft.
Why B2B with field sales needs its own choice
Most CRM comparisons are written for startups and web shops. There it's about speed, email campaigns and large numbers of leads. A technical wholesaler, a machine builder or an installer sells differently. Fewer customers, but each one is worth more. Deals run through quotes, sometimes for months, with several people involved on the customer's side. And part of the team spends the day in the car.
That asks something different of a CRM. What matters most isn't how many features a system has, but whether it fits the way you sell.
Six questions that decide the choice
- Where do quotes and orders live? If they're in an ERP such as AFAS, Exact, Business Central or SAP, the CRM has to talk to it well. Otherwise the pipeline value never adds up, and salespeople enter everything twice.
- Does the app work on the road? A field salesperson needs to log a visit report between two appointments and see what's going on at the next customer. Test it on a phone, not on a laptop in the meeting room.
- How many sales processes are there? Projects, repeat orders, sales through dealers: each has its own stages. Can the system handle multiple pipelines without getting messy?
- Does marketing need to be in it, now or later? If you want leads from the website, trade shows and newsletters followed up in the same system, that changes the choice compared with sales-only use.
- Who will manage it? Some systems can be kept up by a handy colleague. Others need a specialist. That's a cost almost nobody includes.
- What does it cost over three years? Add up licences, implementation, integrations and management. The cheapest system per user is far from always the cheapest overall.
The systems you'll meet most often
HubSpot is our specialty, and for most B2B companies this size it's the best choice. Not for all of them. Here's an honest overview of the systems that most often make the shortlist at companies with 20 to 150 employees.
HubSpot
Sales, marketing and service in one system, and easy for salespeople to use. Strong if you want marketing leads and sales follow-up in one place, and if you want the team to actually use it. There's a large marketplace of ready-made integrations, including for AFAS and Exact. Watch out: a serious sales team quickly needs Sales Hub Professional, and then licence costs add up. HubSpot offers hosting in a European data centre.
Pipedrive
A clear pipeline, quick to set up and affordable. Good for teams that mainly want to track deals and do little marketing. In more complex situations, such as several teams, extensive reporting or a lot of automation, you hit limits sooner. If Pipedrive already works for you and fits, we'd rather recommend improving it than replacing it.
Salesforce Sales Cloud
Extremely flexible, and almost anything can be configured. That's both the strength and the trap. Salesforce needs someone who knows the system well, and implementations cost more and take longer. It makes sense for complex organisations, multiple countries or strict process requirements. For a company with fifteen salespeople it's often more system than needed.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales
A strong choice if you're already deep in Microsoft, especially with Business Central as ERP. The Outlook and Teams integration is good. As with Salesforce, you depend heavily on a specialist for setup and management, and salespeople often find the experience less intuitive.
Teamleader, Odoo, SuperOffice and Zoho
Teamleader combines CRM with quotes, invoices and projects, and is popular with smaller companies in the Netherlands and Belgium. Odoo makes sense if you already run Odoo as ERP. SuperOffice is a European system used by many B2B companies on Outlook. Zoho is broad and cheap, with more limited local support. All four can work well. They come out on top less often at companies with a growing sales team and an ERP integration.
In one table
| Good fit when | Watch out for | |
|---|---|---|
| HubSpot | Sales and marketing together, team must really use it | Licence cost rises at Professional |
| Pipedrive | Pure sales, simple, tight budget | Less suited as things get complex |
| Salesforce | Complex organisation, lots of custom work | Needs a specialist, costlier implementation |
| Dynamics 365 | Already in Microsoft, Business Central as ERP | Dependent on a specialist |
| Teamleader / Odoo | Smaller team, CRM and invoicing together | Weaker with a large sales team |
How to choose without the sales pitch
Choosing the wrong CRM costs more than choosing late. So take time for a short, structured selection:
- Write down how you sell. Deal stages, processes, who does what. See also From Excel to a CRM.
- Write down the requirements. Must-haves, nice-to-haves, and what you don't need. Keep it to a few pages.
- Shortlist two or three systems. Nobody can tell more than three demos apart.
- Make vendors follow your demo script. Give them your own situations: a quote to follow up, a salesperson on the road, a forecast for management. Then they answer your questions instead of giving their standard pitch.
- Work out the total cost. Licences, implementation, integrations and management, over three years.
- Call a reference. Ideally a company of the same size in the same sector.
With good preparation this takes two to three weeks. What you get: a choice you can justify, and a realistic cost estimate for the implementation. For what that costs with HubSpot, read What does a HubSpot implementation cost?