My latest project is a CRM for freelancers and small teams.
Instead of focusing on aesthetics, I tried to make it practical:
• Lead tracking • Revenue forecasting • Connected contacts and companies • Follow-up visibility
I'd genuinely appreciate feedback from people who use CRMs in their business.
What would you add or remove?
“Put everything in the CRM” works until delivery starts.
Sales owns the deal, project management owns the work, finance owns the invoice, and support owns the customer issue. Copying every field into every system creates duplicates, but leaving them separate makes the customer relationship hard to understand.
It feels like the real challenge is deciding which system owns each fact while still connecting the full history.
How do you draw that boundary without forcing everyone to work from the same tool?
I think most CRMs seem to be built around email, calls, forms, and meetings.
But many customer relationships now start and continue through platforms like Reddit, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, or X.
Is anyone here using a CRM specifically designed to manage those relationships across social platforms?
I mean something that helps you keep track of:
I’m currently working on something in this space and would love honest feedback from people who already manage customer or prospect relationships through social media.
How are you handling this today, and what features would you expect from a platform like that?
For companies that use Reddit for customer support, community management, or customer acquisition, how do you keep track of conversations across posts, comments, and DMs?
Someone might report a bug, mention your brand, compare you with a competitor, ask for advice related to your industry, or show interest in your product but need a follow-up later.
Are you adding these conversations to your existing CRM, using a social-listening tool, working from spreadsheets, or simply managing everything through Reddit?
I’m currently working on something in this space and would genuinely appreciate honest feedback from people who already use Reddit as a customer support, community, or customer acquisition channel.
What is the most frustrating part of your current process, and what features would you want to see in a platform built for managing these conversations?
Hey everyone,
I published my Notion Pro CRM on the Notion marketplace. It’s designed specifically for freelancers and small businesses who want a clean, minimal, and dark-themed workspace to manage their clients and deals.
Here is a quick breakdown of how it works:
Active View: Your main working dashboard to keep track of everything happening right now.
Inbox View: A quick-add section to dump new leads on the go without cluttering your active work.
Health Check Formula: Automatically shows if a deal is on track, closing soon, late, or done based on expected dates.
Weighted Value Formula: Calculates your expected revenue automatically based on which stage the deal is in.
Seamless Connections: Companies, Contacts, and Deals are all connected, so updating a status moves everything automatically.
If you're looking for an aesthetic and automated way to clear the client chaos, the link to the template is in the comments
I’d genuinely love to hear your thoughts or any feedback on this setup.
Pricing.
Most agencies I've spoken with end up using one of these approaches:
That seems to work for simple jobs, but it gets complicated quickly.
Things like:
are difficult to manage inside a traditional CRM.
I've been building a pricing engine that sits between customer intake and CRM like GHL. The idea is that forms, AI agents, APIs, or webhooks send the request to the pricing engine, it applies the company's pricing rules, generates a proposal, and then syncs everything back into CRM.
I'm not launching or selling anything yet.
I'm trying to understand how agencies are solving this today and whether I'm solving the right problem.
A few questions:
If anyone is interested, I'm also looking for 5–10 agencies willing to test what we've built and give honest feedback before we officially launch.
I'd really appreciate any thoughts.
I searched the subreddit first and found a few HubSpot vs. Dynamics discussions, but not many detailed first-hand accounts from companies that have actually completed this specific migration.
We are an international B2B services company with roughly 100–150 people. Our commercial model combines consultative sales, account management, inbound and outbound lead generation, partners, referrals and events.
HubSpot is currently much more than a contact database for us. We use it for CRM and multiple sales pipelines, email and activity tracking, marketing automation, forms, landing pages, campaign attribution, reporting, sequences, shared inboxes and parts of our corporate website. We also have a substantial historical database with thousands of deals and well over 100k contact records.
Most of the company already works in the Microsoft ecosystem, especially Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive and Excel. We also have access to several Dynamics 365 products and sandbox environments, so we are evaluating whether Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement could improve integration, reduce platform duplication and provide a better long-term operating model. HubSpot is also a meaningful part of our annual software spend, although cost reduction is not the only objective.
The main concern is replacing an accessible CRM with something that becomes overly complex, heavily customized or permanently dependent on external consultants.
I would especially appreciate first-hand experiences from companies that migrated from HubSpot to Dynamics 365 CE:
Genuine customer-side experiences would be extremely helpful. I’m not looking for vendor pitches, affiliate links or implementation offers. I’m particularly interested in lessons from people who have lived with both systems after the migration.
One thing I learned after trying different B2B sales tools...
I used to think adding more features would automatically make a sales teams more productive.
It doesn't.
I've seen with expensive CRM software still using WhatsApp to share customer updates, Excel to track leads, and phone calls to ask, "Did anyone follow up with this client?"
The issue isn't software.
It's updating a customer visit takes five minutes, most reps will do it later.
And "later" usually means never.
The tools I've seen work best have one thing in common.
sales reps don't feel like they're updating the CRM.
They just finish a visit, add a quick note, schedule the next follow-up, and move on.
Everything else happens in the background.
Managers get live visibility.
Reports stay accurate.
The pipelines reflects reality.
Simple beats powerful almost every time.
I'm interested to hear from from others working in B2B sales.
What's one feature in a CRM field sales app that genuinely made team's job easier-not just something that looked good in a demo
I work at a B2B SaaS. And right now I’m managing over 30 referral agencies. Tracking all these relationships has been a headache. And our pipelines don’t fit well into a sales CRM, as each partner relationship is completely different when it comes to revenue structure, contract dates, health signals, payout history, etc. Our current CRM just doesn’t give us much customization for relationships that don’t fit nicely in the current structure.
So I’ve been tracking everything in a spreadsheet with conditional formatting and I’m over it. I need something automated. The more flexible the better. Any recommendations for a CRM that can handle stuff like this? I really don’t want to build out something (that’s not my strong suit), but airtable has been recommended to me for this. There’s gotta be something else that’s easy to customize and track?
Hi everyone!
I'm a GoHighLevel CRM & Automation Specialist with over 2 years of hands-on experience managing 100+ GoHighLevel accounts for agencies and service-based businesses.
I enjoy working behind the scenes building systems, solving technical issues, and keeping CRMs running smoothly so agency owners can focus on growing their business.
Here's what I can help with:
CRM Setup & Management
• Sub-account setup
• Pipelines & opportunity management
• Calendars, tags & custom fields
• Contact organization
Workflows & Automations
• Lead nurturing & follow-up sequences
• Appointment reminders
• Workflow optimization
• Zapier & Make integrations
Funnels & Websites
• Landing pages & funnels
• Websites
• Forms & surveys
• Custom HTML, CSS & JavaScript
Snapshot Development & Deployment
• Build and customize agency snapshots
• Deploy snapshots to new client accounts
• Standardize onboarding across multiple sub-accounts
• Import and configure workflows, funnels, pipelines, calendars, forms, and settings for faster client launches
Technical Support
• A2P 10DLC
• Domain & DNS setup
• Payment gateway integrations
• Third-party integrations
• Advanced troubleshooting
• Ongoing CRM maintenance
Whether you need someone to build your CRM from scratch, deploy and customize snapshots for new clients, or manage the day-to-day backend of your GoHighLevel accounts, I'm happy to help.
📍 Available for: Full-time | Part-time | Project-based
🕒 Time Zone: Comfortable working across all US time zones (EST–PST)
If you're looking for someone reliable, detail-oriented, and able to work independently without constant supervision, feel free to send me a DM. I'd love to see how I can help your team. 😊
We still do ride alongs but they take a lot of time and only cover a few reps. I’m looking at AI sales coaching as a way to review more real conversations without spending half the week on the road. Has anyone made the switch or used both together and did the feedback stay useful and did reps actually stick with it?
I'm looking at CRMs for Professional Services Orgs and most options seem configurable but not fully customizable. Also some seem to support retainers, some support block hours and other projects, not many seem to allow all 3 types.
I'm considering building this in Microsoft Dataverse or Frappe Framework.
Is this a good area to explore? What do we think?
I've notice that many businesses invest in a CRM but still struggle with inconsistent sales results.
After talking with different sales teams, the problem usually isn't the CRM itself. It's how it's being used.
some common issues I see:
Sales reps update records only at the end of the week.
Lead statuses are inconsistent.
Follow up reminders aren't used.
Customer notes are incomplete.
Management relies on outdates pipeline data.
A CRM shouldn't just be a place store contacts.
IT should answer questions like:
which deals are most likely to close this month ?
which leads have gone cold?
who needs a follow up today?
where are deals getting stuck in the pipeline?
when a CRM becomes part of the daily sales workflow instead of an admin task, the entire team perform better.
I'm curious what's the biggest mistake you've seen companies make when implementing or using a CRM?
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I am selling an infrastructure dev tool and I am losing my mind with our pipeline right now.
On paper everything looks great. Our tools are flagging warm signals everywhere. But the second I actually start doing outreach, nobody cares, nobody answers, and nobody even remembers interacting with our brand. It is completely dead.
I am honestly tired of these generic platform intent scores that just tell you Company X is interested based on some random page view.
I need actual data that tells me which technical teams are really looking into our space or testing related technology right now, so I know who is actually worth contacting this week.
Ideally I want something that works well with our CRM and helps us prioritize accounts based on real activity instead of filling the system with more weak signals.
Is there anything out there that genuinely helps with real GTM intelligence and pipeline generation? Would appreciate hearing what has actually worked for people here.
Most of the CRM software is web-based. There are some free open source ones like EspoCRM. Some companies shy away from them because they require IT skills, monitoring, maintenance, backups, which are hassle or expensive for small companies.
If you're a solo CRM user or a small company with a few users, would you use a free desktop CRM software if it were as easy to install as any desktop app? If you're the only user, the app and the database will be on your computer. If you were a company, each user will have it installed on their work computer. The database can be hosted anywhere. A computer in the company with no hosting fees, or hosted in the cloud (Azure or AWS) or hosted at a hosting company with as little as $5 for shared hosting with backups. This option will be Windows only, so no Mac or Linux.
There will also be a web based version with the same features.
But I am inquiring right now about if there's interest in the desktop version if it means it's hassle-free to install, host and use. It's free as well.
The business model is making money from advanced customizations.
Duplicate contacts are usually treated as a cleanup problem, but the durable fix starts upstream. If several WordPress forms, booking tools, imports, and integrations feed the same CRM, merging records once will not stop them returning.
1. Normalize before matching
Lowercase and trim email addresses, standardize phone numbers to a consistent international format, remove formatting noise, and preserve the raw submitted values separately when they matter for audit or support.
2. Define identity rules
Email is often the safest primary match for ordinary B2B leads, but shared inboxes and changed addresses create exceptions. Phone can be a secondary signal. Names alone should rarely trigger an automatic merge. Decide which combinations create a match, a possible match, or a new record.
3. Protect source history
A returning contact is not a new person, but the new submission is still a new event. Keep first-touch source, latest-touch source, form name, campaign/UTM values, submission time, and requested offer as event or attribution data instead of overwriting everything on the contact.
4. Choose field precedence
For each field, decide whether the newest valid value wins, the oldest verified value wins, an empty field may be filled, or a human must review conflicts. This is especially important for lifecycle stage, owner, consent, company, and access-related fields.
5. Test automation re-entry
Merging or updating a contact can retrigger nurture, lead assignment, internal alerts, opportunity creation, and membership access. Test with controlled records before bulk cleanup, and keep an export or rollback path.
A useful QA set includes: same email/different phone, same phone/different email, Gmail alias, shared company inbox, changed surname, returning customer, unsubscribed contact, existing opportunity, and an active course/member record.
The key distinction is person versus event: one person may submit many times, and the CRM should retain those events without creating a new identity every time.
What matching rule has caused the most trouble in your CRM: email, phone, imports, or form integrations?
A few weeks ago I started looking into this more seriously as we expand our European pipeline. Our legal team is breathing down my neck about b2b data compliance gdpr for our cold outreach campaigns.
The main issue is making sure the b2b data we're using has proper consent mechanisms and audit trails. Our current provider basically shrugged when I asked for their GDPR documentation. not exactly confidence inspiring when you're sending 5000 emails a week to EU prospects.
I've been evaluating alternatives and narrowing it down. About to pull the trigger on Prospeo because they have detailed GDPR compliance docs and their data comes with audit trails for legitimate interest. Also looking at Apollo but their compliance page seems more generic, like it was written by marketing and not legal.
For those doing heavy European outreach - how are you navigating this? are you just crossing your fingers or have you found data providers that actually take gdpr cold email compliance seriously? Would really love to hear what's working before we make the switch.
I’m trying to sanity-check the market price for a substantial custom build.
The client is a small European online higher-education provider with tens of thousands of historical contacts and hundreds of new leads per month.
Their current setup is spread across HubSpot, Mailchimp, Zapier, Tawk, Typeform, Google Sheets, WordPress, scheduling, telephony, and several lead providers.
The founder and I agreed on two connected products:
1. Fully custom CRM
2. Fully self-hosted AI system
The work also includes the backend, database, EU hosting, data migration, staged rollout, staff training, and launch.
I know an exact estimate would require proper discovery. I’m only looking for a realistic market ballpark:
Please mention whether you’re answering as a solo consultant or agency, and keep external Meta, email, and telephony usage fees separate.
I’m deliberately leaving out my own estimate so I don’t anchor the answers. Thanks!
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