How to Choose an Agency CRM
First off, a CRM isn’t a solution. You’re not going to have a better or more efficient agency once you implement one. A CRM is going to magnify what already exists.
Nurturing prospects, organizing contacts, and monitoring sales progress through a complex web of linked spreadsheets? You’ll do it all more quickly with a CRM.
Not sure what’s in your pipeline and haphazardly reaching out to lukewarm prospects? Now you can be disorganized in a CRM instead.
This past month, four people have reached out with a variation of the same question - “what’s the best CRM for agencies?”
Agencies fall into three categories:
Hungry for more work.
Overwhelmed with their current clients.
Happy with their current business.
All three might be looking for a CRM, but knowing which category you fall into makes your decision-making process easier.
Group 1 needs to evaluate a CRM based on its ability to better track deals and improve your chosen marketing strategies.
Group 2 needs to evaluate a CRM based on the organizational components it offers and ability to smooth out the growth-minded tasks your team views as ancillary.
And Group 3, of course, is where you want to be. You always make better decisions for the future when you feel in control and aren’t being pushed around by a short-term need.
I’ll share some options at the bottom of this post, but the (slightly annoying) answer is, the best CRM is the one you will use. Typically, that decision comes down to two factors.
Account Management
A CRM is a place to store information, and the most important information you can gather is about the people who are actively giving you money. They’re the people who are most likely to give you money in the future too. When evaluating which CRM is right for you, you need to understand the mechanisms for logging, storing, and accessing current and past client information. If your firm has a dedicated account management function, the needs there may be different. If you’re asking practitioners or leadership-level people to access and log information, your needs are different still.
Key questions:
What level of fidelity of information is important in our sales and upsell process?
What are the realistic capabilities of my team to log information in this system?
Sales & Marketing Approach
CRMs are expanding from customer databases to marketing and sales tools. But your firm may not benefit from all those tools if your strategy doesn’t call for them, they might just end up being a distraction from what you’re really good at. If in-person networking and speaking at events generates new business for your agency, the cold email sequences touted by a CRM won’t be valuable to you. But if you plan to send customized thought leadership to certain segments of your contact list, maybe those features become more important.
Similarly, understanding how you need to manage your sales cycle plays a big role in your CRM decision. As a rule of thumb, the longer the sales cycle, the more important it becomes to track activities in a methodical way.
Key questions:
How long is your buying cycle and is it important to track multiple stages?
Do you need marketing capabilities that are tied to contacts and deal stages?
Do you need content management capabilities that are tied to contacts and deal stages?
Do you need to segment prospects for outbound tactics like cold email?
Possible CRMs
There are many more out there (and more being created) but these are good places to start your search.
HubSpot – All-in-one option with strong marketing automation, pipeline tracking, and integrations. Best for agencies that want both lightweight account management and marketing features but don’t need deep customization.
Pipedrive – A simple, visual CRM focused on sales pipeline management. Great for agencies that prioritize tracking deals and follow-ups but don’t need extensive marketing automation.
Salesforce – A powerhouse CRM with deep customization and enterprise-grade account management tools. Best suited for larger agencies with complex sales cycles or dedicated account management teams.
Copper – A CRM built for teams that rely heavily on Google Workspace (Gmail, Drive). Ideal for agencies that want a lightweight, easy-to-adopt system that integrates with their existing tools.
Notion (or Airtable as a DIY CRM) – For agencies that don’t need a traditional CRM but want a customizable, lightweight system for tracking client relationships and projects. Best for teams that resist rigid processes but need a central place for client data.
