Best CRM for Business Brokers
Staying organized is paramount for any professional but particularly important for industries with long and complex sales cycles. Any Business Broker will tell you that the process to sell a business is never straightforward and often relationships are cultivated over years of nurturing and engagement. Business Brokers don’t just need a CRM but one built specifically for the uniqueness of the M&A industry.
Article’s Goal: Evaluate and Determine The Best CRM for Business Brokers
Important Characteristics and Features in a Business Broker’s CRM
CRMs can do more than just organize your contacts and act as a rolodex. The right features can help you boost sales, find new opportunities, close deals quicker, and generally be more efficient. A CRM is a tool that helps you build lasting relationships.
The Best CRM for Business Brokers have these eight features:
- NDA automations: The best CRM for Business Brokers will automate the tedious tasks of sending NDAs and reminders to prospective buyers.
- Automatic cataloging of prospects: The best CRM for Business Brokers will automatically create a high-quality database of buyers by recording their contact details, interests, location, industries of interest, financial details, and NDAs signed and received. This database can then be used to target and nurture these prospects for future listings.
- Contact filtering: By effectively filtering contacts, Business Brokers can tailor their marketing efforts and present opportunities that align with the potential buyers' capabilities and preferences. This not only enhances the overall efficiency of the brokerage process but also ensures that opportunities are communicated meaningfully, increasing the likelihood of successful deals and satisfied clients.
- Single click (or automated) CIM, CBR, or teaser sending: Sending relevant and qualified buyers information promptly is essential to keeping prospects engaged. Augmenting (single click sending) teaser sending allows Business Brokers to quickly verify a prospect's relevancy and distribute deal teasers in a timely manner.
- Multiple pipeline management: Business brokerage requires a clear understanding of the progress of opportunities. The best CRMs for Business Brokers allows organizations to customize their pipelines to track leads, listings, and deals in a way that makes sense for their firm.
- Email marketing: The best CRM for Business Brokers enables query of contacts and marketing to them directly within the software. This eliminates the need to maintain email lists in multiple softwares or use additional email software, saving time and money.
- Data room: Business Brokers frequently require proprietary documents from sellers to share with prospective buyers and lenders. The best CRM for Business Brokers allows Business Brokers to securely request, store, share, and track documents within the CRM.
- Reminders: Reminders are vital for Business Brokers to effectively manage their lengthy sales cycles. The best CRM for Business Brokers is equipped with robust reminder capabilities, allowing them to schedule and receive timely notifications for future tasks and critical milestones.
Ease of use: Having a feature rich CRM is of no value if users do not understand how to use the software. The best CRM for Business Brokers needs to be intuitive and easy to use. Ease of use trumps any feature capability.
Generic CRMs are not for Business Brokers
Generic CRMs are designed for traditional sales professions, not business brokers. They are generally complex and confusing, even for tech-savvy sales professionals. They also lack the automations that business brokers need, such as sending NDAs and cataloging prospective buyers and inquiries. And while generic CRMs offer customization capabilities, it can be prohibitively expensive to manipulate a generic CRM to meet the needs of a business broker.
A CRM that is not designed for Business Brokers will not yield the optimal results.
CRM Options
Each CRM will be analyzed by three facets: (1) Features (2) Ease of Use and (3) Price.
Tupelo is a CRM designed and developed specifically for Business Brokers. The Tupelo CRM boasts the simplest user experience and first in class US based customer support. Hundreds of the nation’s top business brokers are using Tupelo to optimize their practices. Tupelo provides a 100% satisfaction guarantee.
Features: Tupelo’s CRM encompasses all eight necessary features in a simple out of the box solution designed for Business Brokers.
Ease of Use: Of all CRMs in the market, no other CRM is as easy to use. Additionally, Tupelo’s first in class customer support ensures all users are comfortable with all CRM features.
Price: Tupelo offers a variety of pricing options depending on the level of support you desire. Tupelo CRM costs $200 per month for two users, $100 for the third user, and $50 per month for each additional user beyond three. A significant pricing advantage to Tupelo, and unlike the rest of their CRM counterparts, is that they do not charge an implementation fee.
DealRelations was designed for Business Brokers and has a reputation within the community. The DealRelations CRM is feature rich, enabling users to do everything from email drip campaigns to building teasers. While positioning itself as a comprehensive solution, some users have expressed that DealRelations’s interface is dated compared to modern CRM solutions and may be perceived as more complex.
Features: DealRelations is a robust CRM solution offering more than 40 essential features. Specifically designed for Business Brokers, it serves as an all-in-one platform to manage listings, store important documents, and communicate with prospects via email.
Ease of Use: Regrettably, DealRelations is not an easy solution to master. While DealRelations has tutorials and hosts webinars on the platform's capabilities, it does take a significant amount of time and effort to master the system. This is impart due to the vast feature set.
Price: Deal Relations costs $99 per month per users for the first four users then is discounted for teams larger than four.
PipeDrive / DealStudio is a unique solution in the sense that DealStudio was developed on top of PipeDrive, a generic CRM. DealStudio is owned by the makers of Business Brokerage Press, who have a long standing relationship with the IBBA.
Features: Pipedrive is a modern CRM solution that works well for many types of businesses. For Business Brokers, most of the necessary functionalities have been customized into DealStudio. But there are some drawbacks. The filtering and querying features aren't quite there. Brokers need robust tools to sift through contacts and pinpoint buyers, sellers, and other criteria, and right now, DealStudio makes this challenging. Additional features and integrations often come at an extra cost. Ultimately, DealStudio's limitations stem from the underlying Pipedrive technology, which is where any real advancements need to happen.
Ease of Use: PipeDrive is a modern CRM solution, boasting a multitude of features. However, for Business Brokers, many of these features may be beyond their specific needs. The abundance of functionalities can lead to confusion and present a significant adoption challenge. One of the stronger selling points with DealStudio is Business Brokerage press will build for the office and provide blog content that is pushed to the site directly.
Price: DealStudio pricing has a one-time onboarding fee, around $4,000, and starts at $200 per month per user and scales down with more users.
Salesforce is the world's leading CRM, with over 150,000 customers in over 190 countries. Salesforce is a highly scalable platform that can be used by businesses of all sizes. Salesforce is great for enterprise size businesses with large budgets and technical teams that can customize the CRM.
Features: Salesforce’s out-of-the-box solution will not contain any of the automations Business Brokers require to optimize their firm. Moreover, M&A specific features like a data room will cost extra and may require a level of customization.
Ease of Use: Due to the size and capability of Salesforce, it is not the most user friendly software and quality customer support comes at a cost.
Price: Salesforce is not cheap; moreover, customizations are expensive and plugin applications generally cost money.
HubSpot: HubSpot is a cloud-based platform that offers a wide range of features. HubSpot CRM helps businesses to track leads, manage contacts, and close deals. However, it is important to acknowledge that even though HubSpot’s CRM is feature-rich, it may not cater to the specialized needs of certain industries or niche requirements. While it may be an excellent choice for many businesses, those with more specific demands may find themselves seeking additional solutions or workarounds.
Features: From marketing automation, CRM integration, and lead generation tools to email marketing, analytics, and customer support, HubSpot provides an all-in-one solution to manage marketing, sales, and customer service. However, a data room and Business Broker automations are absent from HubSpot.
Ease of Use: The platform offers a wealth of features and functionalities, which can be overwhelming for new users or teams transitioning from other systems. Navigating through the various tools and understanding how to utilize them effectively may require a significant amount of time and training.
Price: While HubSpot offers a comprehensive suite of tools, its pricing can be relatively higher compared to some other CRM and marketing automation solutions in the market. As a result, businesses with tight financial constraints may find it challenging to afford the full range of features and functionalities offered by HubSpot.
Zoho: Much like HubSpot, Zoho is a feature rich generic CRM. Zoho is a popular CRM platform that offers a wide range of features and pricing options. However, it is crucial to recognize that this strength can be a double-edged sword. While Zoho offers the flexibility to tailor the CRM to suit various business needs, the level of customization may require technical know-how. This can potentially present a challenge for teams without the necessary technical skills or budget to fully leverage Zoho's capabilities.
Features: Zoho CRM offers a comprehensive set of features to streamline and optimize sales and customer relationship management processes. From lead generation and tracking to sales automation, email marketing, and analytics, Zoho CRM provides a powerful toolkit to manage and nurture customer interactions effectively. Additionally, Zoho CRM offers mobile access, allowing you to stay connected and manage your sales pipeline on the go. However, Zoho does not offer any Business Broker automations and a data room will have to be engineered and installed separately.
Ease of Use: Zoho CRM is known for its user-friendly interface and ease of use, making it accessible to users of all experience levels. Its intuitive design and straightforward navigation enable businesses to quickly adopt and implement the CRM without extensive training or technical expertise. As a result, businesses with highly unique or intricate processes may find that Zoho CRM's ease of use comes at the cost of some advanced functionalities that they may require.
Price: Zoho CRM typically offers a free plan for up to three users, providing basic CRM functionalities. For more advanced features and capabilities, they offer paid plans, such as the Standard plan, Professional plan, and Enterprise plan, which come with varying price points per user per month. The cost of these plans depends on the number of users and the level of features required.
The Best CRM for Business Brokers
In the realm of CRM choices for Business Brokers, our preference is clear: Tupelo stands out as the best choice. With its comprehensive set of features tailored specifically for Business Brokers, Tupelo ensures efficient organization, streamlined operations, and increased sales. Its user-friendly interface and exceptional customer service set it apart from other options. Tupelo's powerfully simple design makes it a top contender for Business Brokers looking to optimize their business with ease.
Find out why Tupelo is the best CRM for Business Brokers by scheduling a demo.