The Best Consulting CRM: 10 CRMs Compared (2024)

A good CRM is essential to winning potential customers, but the best consulting CRM can organize your sales process and enhance your project delivery.

CRM software helps optimize sales activities, client information and communication, and sales team performance. But what happens later? After you win your deal, you’ll need software to help you deliver results within budget and time and ensure client satisfaction.

This list will help you find the best CRM tools for consulting services, from specialized software and all-in-one platforms to affordable alternatives.

According to research on CRM systems by Capterra, a consulting firm and other businesses that don’t have a formalized method for customer relationship management experience the following challenges:

The best software for consultants can create a bridge between the sales cycle and consulting project management to simplify collaboration and deliver richer, more reliable data.

CRMs for consultants should offer the following core features:

Productive is an all-in-one software created to cater to the workflows of professional services agencies, including the consulting industry.

The biggest benefit of using Productive is that the CRM feature is integrated with other functionalities that helps a consultant run a successful project. This includes project and task management, budgeting, resourcing, and reporting.

Read how consulting firms use Productive to get a complete overview of operations.

Let’s explore Productive’s top consultancy CRM features in more detail:

With Productive, you can organize and monitor your deals within a custom sales pipeline to ensure consultants are always on top of opportunities.

You can create your custom sales pipeline by customizing your stages with different names, colors, and icons. You can also set the probability of winning a deal for each stage; stages that are set to Won or Lost will naturally have a probability of 100% and 0%, respectively. Probability can be used to help you forecast your sales revenue.

To move your deals between the different pipeline stages, simply drag and drop them. You can also move multiple deals in bulk.

You can have multiple Sales Pipelines with different stages for specific workflows and change your layouts between a board and table view, according to team preference.

While your deals contain all essential information on a potential client (deal name, company, deal owner, etc.), they also function like project tasks. You can add to-dos and deadlines and assign specific team members for better client management.

There’s also a comment section for managing your discussions in one place instead of scattering information across emails and Slack (or not writing it down at all).

Productive helps you manage your deal data and get better collaboration between team members. Your emails can be forwarded or bcc’d to Productive and accessed from an in-platform inbox. You can then assign emails to specific deals for an overview of your communications; if the email is part of an ongoing conversation, it will be auto-filed.

With Productive, you can easily create quotes/proposals and send them to clients. First, you’ll need to set up your agency rate cards by adding information such as the services you’re offering, price, and billing.

Then, you can use this data to generate a deal proposal. Proposals can be customized for language, custom notes or footers, and more. When you’re done, you can download it in PDF format and send it to the client.

Another one of Productive’s features includes sales team scheduling, also known as scheduling on deals.

You can use the Resource Planning feature to get more control over how your sales teams are allocated and utilized across deals. Since scheduling is also linked to time off management, you can get a better overview of actual team availability by viewing holidays and time off in a single overview.

The biggest benefit of Resource Planning is that you can check your team utilization to make sure that workloads are balanced. This means that team members are not underutilized or assigned to too many tasks to complete on time.

Productive supports your sales processes with real-time insights into various key metrics. By setting probability percentages, you can forecast your sales revenue. You can also get an overview of all your deal stages and monitor performance, such as won deals by the owner or time period or lost deals by reason (to enable this metric, set different reasons and assign them to lost deals).

You can also manage your sales team utilization or forecast it for improved strategic decision-making; for example, if all of your seniors are overutilized in a certain month, you can consider hiring another or upskilling your mid-level employees.

Reports can be created by using templates or by creating your own from scratch. You can also use custom fields to add agency-specific parameters. To share your reports, you can create custom dashboards or automate your sharing (to Slack or email) with Productive’s Pulse.

After you’ve won a deal, you can convert it into a project with the budget you’ve already assigned to it and continue managing it through Productive.

Productive provides three essential project management tools to help you execute your projects with success: time tracking, project and task management, and budgeting.

Productive offers a wide variety of integrations with HR, accounting, and collaboration tools.

This includes HubSpot for syncing contacts, companies, and deals; Slack, Google Calendar, and Outlook for scheduling and updates; Xero and QuickBooks for accounting; BambooHR and Breathe for HRM; Jira and Memtime for time tracking, and more.

You can also try a 14-day free trial before committing to a paid plan.

Salesforce is a leading CRM platform that offers solutions for the manufacturing, communications, retail, tech, and media industries. It provides products for marketing, sales, customer services, and more.

Key features:

Salesforce is a robust CRM platform that comes with a set of benefits and downsides. The benefits are that it can be customized to your needs and provides comprehensive analytics, but it’s also costly and complex. Therefore, it’s not the best option for smaller agencies.

Keep in mind that you’ll need dedicated employees to implement and maintain Salesforce, so be ready to invest your time and resources to get the most out of it.

Source: Reddit

HubSpot is a popular CRM tool for consulting businesses and other firms, and it includes marketing, sales, customer service, content management, and operations software.

Key features:

Compared to Salesforce, HubSpot is usually recommended to smaller teams, as it can’t do everything SF can. However, it’s still a robust tool with a good user experience and capabilities for managing email campaigns and automating workflows.

Source: Reddit

Additionally, HubSpot’s pricing is very flexible, as you can purchase either one of their Hubs individually or create your custom toolkit.

Productive has a native HubSpot integration, so you can sync your deals, contacts, companies, and stages between the two tools.

ClickUp is a work management tool suitable for project management, IT, HR management, sales, and product development.

Key features:

ClickUp’s CRM features are light when it comes to managing the sales cycle. You can organize your pipeline, manage emails, organize accounts, and collaborate with clients. ClickUp is more suitable for supporting the project delivery process, but keep in mind that there are no integrated budgeting or invoicing capabilities, which also means that you can’t generate deal proposals.

Some users also mention issues with bugs and platform performance; find out more in our detailed comparison of ClickUp vs Monday vs Asana.

Pipedrive is a sales CRM software suitable for a variety of industries, including media, marketing, healthcare, manufacturing, and more.

Key features:

Users praise Pipedrive for providing good value for money and being fairly easy to use and set up. However, others prefer more robust options for their sales and marketing projects, such as HubSpot:

Source: reddit

Additionally, keep in mind that there’s no native Xero integration; out of popular accounting software, only QuickBooks is available.

Zixflow, previously known as Sales Simplify, is a CRM system with automation and AI-driven capabilities.

Key features:

Zixflow is a lesser-known option in comparison to tools such as Salesforce or HubSpot, but it’s a highly praised software solution overall. Users state that:

Source: Capterra

The most notable downside is similar to Pipedrive, and it’s that Zixflow doesn’t integrate with a lot of third-party apps. Additionally, a G2 review states that the email finder and validation feature doesn’t always work perfectly.

Honeybook is a clientflow management platform that helps business owners provide a good customer experience.

Key features:

User reviews state that Honeybook has some useful features, and it can be an especially good pick for smaller businesses or independent consultants:

Source: Reddit

However, some users find that Honeybook can be a bit too structured for their needs. Keep this in mind if your agency has specific workflows or you like to adjust them from client to client.

Freshsales is an AI-powered sales CRM for improved client communication and efficient sales sequences.

Key features:

Users often pick Freshsales over its competition due to its pricing. It’s a good middle-of-the-road option for a consulting business that’s too big not to have a CRM but not big enough to spend resources on a complex option like HubSpot or Salesforce.

However, many reviews mention issues with customer support, including the fact that it can be difficult to get in touch and that getting a response can take a while.

Zoho CRM is a solution with comprehensive features for a wide range of industries, company sizes, and roles.

Key features:

Like Freshsales, Zoho is a great solution for businesses that need a sales CRM but aren’t looking to invest long-term into a tool such as Salesforce.

Source: Reddit

You can consider either Zoho, Pipedrive, or Freshsales as a scaled-down option, depending on your preferences for the user interface. Productive is another great choice for integrated sales and agency management.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales is an AI-powered CRM solution in the Microsoft ecosystem.

Key features:

The biggest benefit of using Dynamics 365 for sales is the seamless integration with tools from the Microsoft ecosystem, such as Outlook, Teams, and their reporting tool, Power BI. However, as an individual tool, some users find that the user interface is somewhat outdated and clunky.

For example, in comparison to Zoho CRM:

Source: Capterra

Overall, if you’re planning to invest in multiple Microsoft tools, Dynamics 365 is a valid option.

While key features and pricing are important considerations, there are three other factors you should consider: usability, customer support, and scalability.

Usability ensures that the software is easy to navigate and enjoyable to use. Even if your chosen platform is complex and more difficult to fully learn, responsive customer support, tutorials, and other learning materials should be available to encourage adoption and maximize return on investment.

Scalability is crucial as well, meaning the software is regularly updated with new features and improvements. This ensures your CRM can grow with your business, removing the need to switch platforms as your business expands.

To assess these factors, take advantage of demos with sales teams or potential free trials. For insights into scalability and customer support, you can review feedback on comparison sites (such as Capterra or G2) and explore the vendor’s website for the latest updates or a product roadmap.

We’ve reviewed some of the top options for CRMs for consultants. To summarize, you can choose between complex options, such as HubSpot or Salesforce. Then, there are some alternatives that are more affordable and scaled down, such as Freshsales, Zoho, or Pipedrive.

Or, you can choose Productive to bridge the gap between your sales processes and agency management.

Productive’s CRM offers pipeline management, proposal/quote generation, team collaboration, and sales team scheduling, and later supports your projects with budgeting, tasks, and time tracking.

Book a demo with Productive today to find out how it can support your consulting business.

For more information, check out our guide to CRM software for agencies.

A consultant CRM streamlines the entire project workflow, from initial context to deliverables and invoicing. It helps sales teams track interactions, manage client relationships, and collaborate. Some useful features of CRM for consultants include automated reminders, task tracking, and real-time reporting.

To set up your pipeline effectively, customize stages to reflect your consulting firm’s sales and project workflow. For example, you can set it up in six stages to reflect where they stand in your sales funnel, including lead, conversation, proposal, win, loss, and nurture. However you set it up, it’s important to clearly define each stage and set criteria for moving deals forward.

Common challenges include resistance to change, data migration issues, and lack of user adoption. Overcoming these requires a clear implementation plan and buy-in from all levels of your business. A user-friendly CRM with responsive customer support can also help mitigate these challenges.

Implementing a consulting CRM leads to improved client relationship management, enhanced project tracking, and streamlined workflows. It boosts efficiency by automating repetitive tasks, ensures better collaboration, and provides valuable insights through reporting. Ultimately, a CRM helps consultants increase client satisfaction, close more deals, and grow their business through data-driven decision-making.