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.
List of the Best Consulting CRM
- Productive – the top consulting platform for CRM and project management
- Salesforce – a robust sales CRM platform
- HubSpot – another well-known CRM option
- ClickUp – a solid project management option
- Pipedrive – a streamlined alternative to HubSpot
- Zixflow – a lesser-known but highly-praised solution
- HoneyBook – workflow management for a small firm
- Freshsales – a good option for mid-sized agencies
- Zoho – a Salesforce alternative for smaller teams
- Microsoft Dynamics 365 – a CRM option within the Microsoft ecosystem.
Why Your Consulting Business Needs a CRM
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:
- Errors in contact management and data consistency (41%)
- Fragmented and inefficient workflows (32%)
- Increased risk of missed opportunities due to lack of data (11%)
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.
Key Features of CRM Software
CRMs for consultants should offer the following core features:
- Flexible pipeline management to monitor how deals progress through stages
- Creating and sending quotes/proposals for reliable pricing management
- Collaboration and contact management for easier follow-up
- Sales team scheduling to ensure that workloads are balanced
- Sales performance and reporting to drive sales process improvements
- Project planning and execution capabilities, including budgeting and team collaboration
1. Productive – The Best All-in-One Option for Consultancies
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.
The good thing about Productive is that having everything integrated in the same platform gives us a 360 view of how the company is performing regarding resources, efficiency, and profitability.
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:
Customizing Your Sales Pipeline
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.
Managing Customers & Consultants
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.
Creating Quotes
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.
Sales Team Scheduling
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.
Sales Reporting
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.
Winning a Deal
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.
- Time Tracking: Track billable vs non billable hours (using timer or manual entry), approve time entries for timesheets, and use this data for invoicing.
- Project Management: Get a high-level view of your progress with seven project layouts, including Gantt, Workload, Kanban, List, and more. Collaborate with your consulting team on tasks, invite clients to projects for free with the Client Portal, and streamline workflows with Automations.
- Budgeting: Control your budget burn in real-time as the project progresses. You can also forecast your revenue and profitability to handle project risks and ensure your agency’s financial health.
Integrations
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.
Pricing
- Plans start with the Essential plan at $9 per user per month, which includes essential features such as budgeting, project & task management, docs, time tracking, expense management, reporting, and time off management.
- The Professional plan includes custom fields, recurring budgets, advanced reports, billable time approvals, and many more for $24 per user per month.
- The Ultimate plan has everything that the Essential plan and Professional plan offer, along with the HubSpot integration, advanced forecasting, advanced custom fields, overhead calculations, and more for $32 per user per month.
You can also try a 14-day free trial before committing to a paid plan.
Productive Is Your All-in-One Consulting Business CRM
Manage your sales cycle with a comprehensive agency management tool and align your business processes.
2. Salesforce
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:
- Customer data management
- Sales & marketing AI and automation
- Sales engagement intelligence
- Sales forecasting & analytics
- Website and app personalization
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.
Salesforce is phenomenal software that drives every aspect of my business that I haven’t automated via Slack. However, what makes it so beautiful is dependent on its implementation and integration with other software. Poor implementation = poor experience.
Source: Reddit
3. HubSpot
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:
- Email marketing
- AI-powered lead automation
- Prospecting & deal management
- Sales and marketing automation
- Marketing campaign management
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.
I have used Hubspot for B2B sales and marketing for years. It’s pretty great what you can get for free. We’re moving to Salesforce (got acquired by a big fish) but Hubspot was solid.
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.
4. ClickUp
ClickUp is a work management tool suitable for project management, IT, HR management, sales, and product development.
Key features:
- Multiple project views
- Custom dashboards
- Agile management
- Time tracking
- Basic resource planning
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.
5. Pipedrive
Pipedrive is a sales CRM software suitable for a variety of industries, including media, marketing, healthcare, manufacturing, and more.
Key features:
- Email templates
- Marketing automation
- Lead management
- Contact management
- Marketing & sales analytics
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:
Hubspot does all this, and unlike Pipedrive, all major prospecting tools (Zoom info, Apollo, etc.) integrate with Hubspot.
Source: reddit
Additionally, keep in mind that there’s no native Xero integration; out of popular accounting software, only QuickBooks is available.
6. Zixflow
Zixflow, previously known as Sales Simplify, is a CRM system with automation and AI-driven capabilities.
Key features:
- Lead management
- Automated engagement system
- Multi-channel marketing
- Email finder
- Workflow automation
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:
I love the automation capabilities. We have about 40 – 50 workflows that send emails, move stages, create records and tasks, and a bunch of other things that we used to do manually.
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.
7. HoneyBook
HoneyBook is a clientflow management platform that helps business owners provide a good customer experience.
Key features:
- Online proposal management
- Meetings scheduling
- Contract management
- Invoicing and payments
- Automations
User reviews state that HoneyBook has some useful features, and it can be an especially good pick for smaller businesses or independent consultants:
One thing that HoneyBook does is help you with creating structure for your small business or freelancing gigs.
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.
Check out our list of the top HoneyBook alternatives to learn more.
8. Freshsales
Freshsales is an AI-powered sales CRM for improved client communication and efficient sales sequences.
Key features:
- Contact details management
- Sales pipeline
- Multi-channel support
- Sales AI and forecasting
- User permissions and access
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.
9. Zoho
Zoho is project management software with CRM with comprehensive features for a wide range of industries, company sizes, and roles.
Key features:
- Sales AI and automation
- Omnichannel contact management
- No-code customization
- Sales process management
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.
I would say a common challenge with Zoho is sales enablement, it’s not easy to run prospecting cadences through it. If you’re looking for “Salesforce but cheaper and for small businesses”, Zoho’s the play. If you’re looking for a full stack customer facing platform that’s decent in every area, even outside of sales, HubSpot’s the play.
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.
10. Microsoft Dynamics 365
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales is an AI-powered CRM solution in the Microsoft ecosystem.
Key features:
- Pipeline management
- AI lead scoring
- Embedded dashboards
- Performance analysis and forecasting
- Sales action sequences
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:
Zoho CRM is better at the tasks I require. Easier to learn on the job. Zoho is quite simple to use, especially when compared to Microsoft Dynamics.
Source: Capterra
Overall, if you’re planning to invest in multiple Microsoft tools, Dynamics 365 is a valid option.
We also covered Microsoft Dynamics in our list of the top ERP for consulting firms.
How to Choose Your CRM Platform
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.
Conclusion: Best Consulting Firm CRMs
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.
FAQ
How can a consulting CRM improve client management and project delivery?
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.
How do you best set up your pipeline in a consulting CRM?
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.
What are the common challenges in implementing a consulting CRM?
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.
What are the benefits of setting up a consulting CRM?
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.
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