PIPEDRIVE VS SALESFORCE

Is Pipedrive or Salesforce the right CRM for your firm?

Choosing the right CRM for your firm

Capital markets teams and professional and financial services teams rely on customer relationship management platforms for more than just contact management; they need software tools that focus on complex, long-term deals. A contact database alone isn’t sufficient. Teams require functionality that exceeds what an Excel spreadsheet can offer, both to eliminate siloed data and to map out relationships. This is especially critical with firms whose business rests on the strength of those relationships. Features in relationship-driven CRM software—including being able to easily customize workflows, automate data entry, and provide relationship intelligence—can mean the difference between winning a deal and losing one.

The available CRM options are nearly endless—from HubSpot CRM to ZohoCRM to Copper and countless others—and with so many choices, it can be challenging to gather all the necessary information and decide which solution is best for your team.

In this article, you’ll learn about key features in three CRMs that your firm might want to consider: Pipedrive, Salesforce CRM, and Affinity. Hopefully, by the end, you’ll be able to better decide which is the best CRM for your team’s business needs.

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Pipedrive vs. Salesforce

Single source of truth for your data

Relationship intelligence

Completely automated data capture

Fast deployment and onboarding

Leverage your CRM immediately, instead of waiting months for custom development. Don’t spend time with hours of training before you can use your CRM.

Adjust deal pipelines for easy tracking

Customize your sales pipeline views so you can quickly assess whether someone is in your deal flow process.

Automate contact data collection

Decrease manual data entry and save hundreds of hours with a CRM that automatically captures all inbox and calendar data to instantly create and update contacts and company profiles as you work.

Leverage relationship intelligence

Move beyond a who-knows-whom approach using quantified relationship insights. Empower your dealmakers to find, manage, and close more deals.

Build custom business intelligence dashboards

Craft custom reports using built-in Looker technology. In-depth, consistent analysis of trustworthy data can ensure your team has real-time insights into your most important metrics.

Experience a simple user interface

Focus on building relationships in your network, not learning how to navigate complex, unintuitive content. Count on ease of use.

Surface all interactions easily

Ensure that no interactions get lost with a platform that captures your entire connection history with a contact.

Connect to other tools in your tech stack

Integrate your firm’s CRM to other vital tools, from email marketing tools such as Mailchimp, to communication tools such as Slack and social media tools like LinkedIn.

Lean on effective and efficient customer support for help when you need it

Trust that you can access tech support when you need it, in a timely manner, and without added cost.

Work from anywhere

Access your data—contacts, interactions and more—on the go using Android or iOS mobile apps.

Frequently Asked Questions

Salesforce (SFDC) is easily the best-known CRM solution in the world. This CRM is the industry-standard solution for sales teams whose sales processes focus on short-term, funnel-driven sales—in other words, transactional sales teams. The company has more than 20 years of experience delivering cloud-based customer relationship management solutions to companies across the globe. And with so many years on the market, they’ve built a wide customer base.

Today, Salesforce customers span a variety of industries and include government organizations, wealth and investment management firms, real estate companies, media companies, and more. These companies rely on Salesforce products for a range of business processes, from contact management and retention to email marketing campaigns and lead management.

Subsequently, users can access integrations for nearly any tool from their tech stack and sync them to Salesforce CRM. AppExchange offers integrations for email products such as Gmail, accounting software such as Quickbooks, and web forms such as Typeform.

Companies with the resources to do so can also make use of Salesforce’s open API to develop their own integrations. Third-party software, such as Zapier, can also allow teams to extend their integration options. Reliance on a tool like Zapier, however, means that the connector could fail at the most inopportune moments.

Today, dealmakers want—and need—access to their networks on the go. Salesforce’s mobile apps allow users to easily access information about their contacts and where they fall in a sales process, ensuring that your team can stay up to date from anywhere.

Salesforce offers an endless amount of customization—however, this can also be to its detriment. Salesforce is robust and complex, and a startup, small business, or boutique firm may want a more accessible, out-of-the-box solution. Additionally, pricing for Salesforce, while similar to many other CRM solutions, does have one of the highest monthly prices on the market.

If your team wants a more tailored solution that can support collaborative, long-term dealmaking and relationship building, a customer relationship management platform that analyzes the relationships between individuals across your team could be a better solution.

Finally, user reviews suggest that Salesforce customer support is less than ideal. Salesforce does offer online chat, phone support, an extensive knowledge base, and the ability to create and manage support cases online through Salesforce Help. Access to support, however, is tied to the pricing selection your team chooses, and some tiers are limited.

To further explore the differences between Salesforce vs. Pipedrive, visit Salesforce’s website.

If your team wants freedom from the drudgery of manual data entry, insights that can accelerate dealmaking, and confidence to collaborate, Affinity could be the right CRM for your business needs.

Watch the demo below to learn more about how Affinity can help your team today.

Relationship-driven deal teams understand that in order to win deals, they have to spend significant time nurturing relationships. Often these collaborative relationships are built over the course of many years. Firms that truly focus on building long-term business relationships know that they can’t rely on their memories, or static Excel spreadsheets, to track all of the details of every interaction.

Without the ability to track everything seamlessly—and across the team—it’s not uncommon for relationships to flounder as they fall through the cracks. Sophisticated dealmakers need a solution that can help them manage a non-linear deal pipeline and sales cycles that can last months or years without losing critical relationship details. The best solution will allow your team to break down silos of information so that everyone has access to the same insight, and you can quickly identify which team member is best point of contact to take point on a new opportunity.

Now, more than ever, your company’s tech stack matters—and the foundation of that tech stack is your CRM. The best CRM solution will help you focus on creating long-term relationships and nurturing them over time. When you compare Pipedrive and Salesforce, it’s clear that they are both great solutions for teams who focus on short-term transactional interactions—but long-term deal cycles may suffer. You can use these simple, manual CRMs to track pipelines, see contacts, and integrate with your current tech stack, but you may need to look elsewhere for purpose-built solutions.

If your team counts on long-term relationships, consider Affinity. Affinity’s relationship intelligence CRM is designed specifically so your business team and partners can leverage their collective network to find, manage, and close deals faster.

Additionally, your team doesn’t have to wait months to fully utilize their new CRM—Affinity can be up and running quickly, and its intuitive, user-oriented design ensures your team members won’t require massive amounts of training (or develop equally massive resistance) to use your CRM.

Finally, you can free up hundreds of hours per team member per year with Affinity’s automated data capture and contact enrichment. Spend that time where it matters most—building and sustaining relationships with your networks.

Speak with an Affinity sales team member today to find out how the Affinity relationship intelligence CRM could help accelerate your dealmaking—and give your firm a competitive edge.

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Why our customers love Affinity

“We're using Affinity, and we have a way better view of our network and of who we know; and what, when, why do we know people; and when do we know that from, because previously, we didn't really. Now, we have a way better and way more effective method of engaging with the people we know, and getting productivity out of that.”

Leo Walde

Partner, Armira

Affinity Elevates Private Capital Productivity with AI and Automation

Is Pipedrive or Salesforce the right CRM for your firm?

Choosing the right CRM for your firm

Pipedrive vs. Salesforce

Frequently Asked Questions

Why our customers love Affinity

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