Like every Saturday, you decided to play golf with your friend Bryan. Like you, Bryan is a sales manager for a large mid-sized company with about 700 employees. But as you approach the 4th hole, Bryan asks for your opinion on Salesforce, the CRM software he wants to roll out in his company. What if you tell him the truth?
Bryan: You get it, we’re a pretty solid mid-sized company, and we don’t even have a CRM worthy of the name...
- You: You don’t have a CRM? With your team of 40 sales reps?
- 50, actually! And 10 sales managers to oversee them. But we’re still in the Dark Ages, organizing prospecting and tracking sales activity by juggling our ERP and Excel files in every possible direction. It just can’t go on like this!
- I was in exactly the same situation as you three years ago, and I said enough. I told my CIO: "I want a tool that actually lets me put my sales strategies into practice and really manage my sales force." I was tired of setting priorities that no one else followed, and I wanted to regain control over all our sales activity. Hands down my best decision in the last five years!
- Did you go with Salesforce too?
- Oh no! No way! I had attended one of their webinars and was almost convinced. But the CIO opened my eyes: there are plenty of other solutions on the market that are at least as effective. And with Salesforce, all our data would have been hosted in the United States...
- So what? So what? Do you really think that’s a problem?
- Are you kidding me? Let me remind you that you work in the aeronautics industry. You think it’s reasonable to let all your business data end up in the U.S.? Between the Snowden affair and their Patriot Act, which gives them the right to search any data hosted on their territory, suspicions of industrial espionage have gone way up in recent years. It’s a reckless gamble. For once, I was totally on the same page as our CIO: keeping control of our business data is non-negotiable.
- Maybe you’re right... Still, their solution looks good to me. Salesforce is the Rolls-Royce of CRM software, isn’t it?
- Sure, a Rolls-Royce is nice, but I’ve never seen one outpace a Ferrari on a track. It’s true that the Salesforce interface is slick, and when they arrived, they really dated the other solutions. But things have changed since then: CRM has evolved tremendously in recent years and we need to look at where the innovation is now. With Salesforce, you’ve got your Rolls. With Microsoft Dynamics, you’ve got a Porsche, and with Odoo you’ve got the car of the future: a hyper-connected Tesla! Just take a look at the Salesforce reviews and Odoo reviews on Google once in a while.
- Maybe the budget’s not the same either?
- Yes, but not in the way you think. Salesforce is the world leader in image... and in cost! Honestly, for large SMEs like us, that makes the licences about 1.5 to 2 times more expensive. And with Salesforce, if you start taking all their modules that intersect every which way, it quickly turns into a massive, overcomplicated machine. Those are the downsides of Salesforce.
- You can always switch CRMs if it doesn’t work out for you...
- On paper, sure. As long as you actually control your data. But when your data is scattered all over the United States, still under that damn Patriot Act, and you try to get it back... man, you’d better have a lot of time on your hands.
- All right, I get it. You don’t like Salesforce...
- No, that’s not it at all. I have nothing against Salesforce. Honestly, it’s a very good solution for an SME. But like with anything else, before making such a major commitment, it’s worth taking a closer look. And the market has become very innovative and competitive. Start by typing “Salesforce alternative” into Google - it’ll really open your eyes! It’s like golf: if you don’t want to end up in the bunker, you need to take the time to think through your decisions!
