You’ve been searching review sites and soliciting colleague feedback for weeks. You know your business needs a CRM, but you’re not sure which CRM is best for you. As a small business, you need to have all of the features in place to scale quickly as you grow, and overcome any potential pitfalls, yet you don’t need a price tag that puts into question the ROI for your company.
Well, you’re in luck. Though we might be biased (surprise, surprise), we’re biased because we know that Zoho works for small businesses just like yours. We wouldn’t be so passionate about this business if that wasn’t true.
While Salesforce is the number one CRM on the market, at least by market share and revenue, Zoho is truly made for growing companies. Salesforce caters to large, enterprise clients – such as Coca-Cola, ADP and Delta. Zoho, on the other hand, was created for customers who own or are part of small businesses in technology, consulting media, real estate verticals and more. Although the features and benefits are similar, functionality is different when considering Zoho vs Salesforce.
With that said, here’s why small businesses don’t need Salesforce.
Because as a small business, you need a CRM that will scale with you.
As a small business, you do not need hundreds of thousands of contacts in your CRM – yet. That’s like a single bachelor living in a 10,000 square foot mansion. Necessary? No. Nice to have? Perhaps. Yet, the annoyances far outweigh the benefits – more rooms to clean, higher cost of rent, more space for stuff.
Similarly, a CRM that offers too much comes with room to house bad data (after all, if you never reach your ceiling, why would you perform housekeeping tasks on a weekly or monthly basis?), the price tag is outside of what you can actually afford, and the feature-set isn’t what a business like yours needs.
Instead, work with a CRM that can scale with your business – so you can add on those extra rooms as your company expands. 
Because cost is a factor.
Cost is a factor for any business, but even more-so for a small businesses.
Why pay for an enterprise CRM when your needs aren’t that?
Zoho starts at a price that is affordable for even the smallest of independent contractors or businesses. Salesforce, on the other hand, starts at 100% more per user than Zoho’s standard user price. Simply put, when it comes to cost, small businesses don’t need Salesforce, or a similar enterprise-focused CRM.
Features are plentiful within Zoho.
Zoho can record phone numbers, emails, meeting notes, to-do lists, documents, and much more without leaving the system. Similarly, the Zoho Import Wizard, Web Forms, or the Zoho CRM API to easily import contacts from other third-party business applications. The features are plentiful and the opportunities are endless.
The Zoho platform also centralizes all forms of sales info and communications, such as email, phone, SMS, social media, and in-person, into contacts, activity and records. These features are provided natively in some cases, and in others they exist as Zoho integrations.
Reporting matters.
Zoho provides a comprehensive view of all sales activities, including deal size, lead source, competitor information, and any other metrics you select. In addition, you can collect data and provide reports around sales forecasting, invoice data, and contract management (through digital signatures). Reporting in Zoho is everything, especially as a business grows and scales.
On-the-go is a necessity for small businesses.
Both Salesforce and Zoho offer native mobile apps for Android and iOS devices, which makes on-the-go data and insights so easy to consume. For example, you can update a record or contact through mobile, and view past notes on your iPhone as you’re walking to a meeting with a potential new client. Forget the clunky laptop as you’re in transit.
If you’re an enterprise client or massive business, like the aforementioned Coca-Cola, ADP and Delta, you should consider the features and benefits of both Zoho and Salesforce; yet, if you are a small business that is ready to scale and centralize your communication through a feature-focused CRM, Zoho is for you. This platform will provide everything you need – features, reports and more – with a cost that makes sense for your business. And that’s exactly why small businesses don’t need Salesforce.
Questions about Zoho? Click here to connect with an expert from our ZBrains team.
