Can’t decide between.. clickup vs monday vs asana vs jira vs linear. I like simplicity but scalability is a factor too, along with superior ai and such. Built out clickup once a few years back but never moved on with it. What do you use?

Bold statement but, as a sales leader, I don't look at the CRM to get the information I need from my team. Yes, reporting, general forecasting, trends, billing, etc. But when I need to know something about an account, the state of a renewal, update on a pursuit, the CRM is not where I go.

I'm curious.

For people who work with clients and leads:

What was the moment you realized spreadsheets weren't enough anymore?

Was it:

Missing follow-ups?

Losing track of deals?

Too many active clients?

Reporting?

Something else?

I'd love to hear your experience.

Somebody asked a slightly tangential question about 'talking to a CRM' a couple of days ago.

I knew it was possible only by layering something atop MCPs.

So I started exploring Pipedrive’s MCP capabilities. I explored it myself with a use case I had been putting off out of sheer laziness.

I’ve referred quite a few leads to my referral partners over time, and I keep all of them in a dedicated 'referral' pipeline in Pipedrive.

Here’s what I did:

1. Fed Claude context about my pipeline and what I was trying to achieve (re-engaging lost deals with a fresh angle).
2. Asked it to pull the lost leads.
3. Had it review the notes on each deal.
4. Asked it to draft personalized follow-up emails with a different proposition.

Result?

I ended up sending 4 personalized emails to lost leads in one sitting.

The outputs were genuinely good — way better than I expected from a quick session.

I’m still learning the constraints (you have to be very specific about which fields to look at and how to interpret the values), but the potential is clear.

Tomorrow I’m planning to tackle the leads that never even responded to the initial outreach.

Has anyone else been using AI (Claude, ChatGPT, etc.) directly with their CRM for lead revival, email drafting, or pipeline cleanup?

Would love to hear what you have tried — use cases, tools, prompts, wins, or gotchas.

Cheers!

What's the one thing that slows you down the most when using your CRM?

Hey everyone,

I’ve been talking to a few solo consultants lately and the consensus seems to be: Salesforce/HubSpot is too much, and Spreadsheets are too little.

I’m a dev building Relix - a lean tool specifically for people who just need to see their unread lead emails, drag a card on a Kanban board, and send a follow-up without leaving the tab.

The "Where I'm At" part:

The core engine is built, but I haven't finished the 6-week Google API verification yet. It’s essentially a "raw" MVP.

I’m looking for 5-10 solo consultants who:

1. Are currently drowning in inbox chaos & forgotten follow-ups.

2. Want a "dumbed down" CRM that just works.

3. Would be willing to look at a 2-minute demo video and tell me if I’m solving a real problem or just wasting my time.

If this sounds like your current headache, let me know in the comments. I’d love to have you in the early birds list.

I’m a CRM/automation builder looking to work with a few small businesses that want a CRM built around their actual workflow.

Instead of selling you a generic CRM with features you’ll never use, I can build something tailored to how you currently manage your leads, customers, sales, and follow-ups.

Some things I can build:

• Lead & customer management
• Sales pipelines
• Follow-up systems
• Task management
• Automated notifications
• Dashboards & reporting
• Custom workflows
• Integrations with the tools you already use

I’m currently looking to take on a few projects at a reasonable introductory rate while I continue building my portfolio.

If you're currently using spreadsheets, Notion, Airtable, or a bunch of different tools to manage your business, feel free to DM me.

I am new to this and I need to know what CRM to use for sales

Did anyone have any luck with building their own custom CRM using the AI tools?

Hi,

I know how important SMS is for most businesses especially in the service industry. 80% of messages are automatically read moments after receipt, and roughly 75% of businesses in the west uses sms messaging to communicate to customers.

So what I did is that I integrated an SMS platform to a CRM that will handle your messaging, booking, answering of inquiries, and marketing campaigns for your business.

Unlike other CRM, there will be no need to register to SMS SaaS platforms, instead, you just download the app to your business phone and connect to the CRM via API. There will also be no need to pay a fee per message, cause what this will do is it will use your business number's sSMS bundle.

For 29.99 a month, you can use the following feature:

- Shared inbox for you and your team
- Calendar to keep track of your appointments and schedules
- SMS Marketing Campaigns
- Receive and send messages inside the CRM
- No need to juggle to multiple platforms.

Im putting the link down on the comments for the project.

Please note that this only connects with android phones for now.

Because I'm building for the people who hate hubspot or any bigger player who is calling themselves as CRM

I'm thinking I can't farm any of my ICP if I use the word CRM for Seo.

Cuz I need anti-CRM people, at the same time my SaaS product is genuine it's simple and have alot of useful feature and I don't care if the idea fails too cuz I created it for myself

So tell me am I wrong to not use the word CRM, even though I'm close to one?

TBH I wanted to call it CCM ( client context management ) there is bigger reason behind it

And also in few hours my product is launching on PH, wish me luck with the above concept if you agree...

I’ve seen teams continue logging into their CRM every day while gradually stopping their actual work inside it.

Sales conversations happen through calls and private messages. Decisions happen in meetings. Notes get added later, mainly so management reports look complete.

The dashboards still appear healthy, but the CRM is no longer helping people decide what to do next.

What are the earliest signs that this is happening?

More importantly, how do you turn the CRM back into a tool the team depends on rather than a database they update for management?

Most CRM advice here is about which tool has the feature you need. We came at it from the other end. We run a two-person studio, we tried the usual tools, and every one of them died the same way - not for lack of a feature, but because keeping them current became a second job.

So when we built our own, the question each time was what to remove.

Kept out, or kept optional:

Pipeline stages. A two-person business doesn't have a pipeline, it has a list of people it owes an answer to. Stages are there but they are optional.

Reporting. Nobody with eight active clients needs a chart to know how it's going.

Team permissions and assignment. There is no team (yet - may change if users want it).

Automation sequences. If you send enough email to need sequences, you're a different business than this.

Mattered more than expected:

More than one date on the same record. Quote sent, follow-up, work starts, invoice due. Almost every tool gives you one date field, which is exactly why people go back to a spreadsheet.

Being able to write a plain sentence about a person that isn't a structured field.

Opening it on a phone in a van and it not being a worse version of the desktop (it's a PWA).

The honest downside: it's not ideal if you hire a fifth person or your sales cycle passes a few months. That isn't a roadmap item, it's the point.

I built it, so read accordingly.

Recruiters were spending weeks reviewing CVs, and great candidates were dropping off before getting a response.

We built an AI-powered workflow that screens, scores, shortlists candidates, syncs with the ATS, schedules interviews, and keeps applicants updated automatically.

Results:

- 1,500 CVs screened/month

- 70% faster time-to-shortlist

- 8 days faster average hire

How does your team handle high-volume hiring today? AI, ATS rules, or mostly manual?

Lately, I have seen quite a few posts along the lines of: I replaced my CRM SaaS with a vibecoded CRM, it works perfectly for my business... etc..

I’d genuinely love to see what these applications actually look like. Especially from a UX and usability perspective. Any screenshots?

Hey guys, I work mainly in construction but I'm taking a bit of a break and thinking of doing lawn care as a side hustle. I know there's tons of reasons to get a CRM that I'd be interested in like scheduling, routing, and invoicing. But looking at the costs I'm thinking if it'd be worth or not.

I've tried the free trial for Jobber, but there were just too many features that I don't think I'll need especially as a solo runner. I'm considering the alternatives like Tofu, Yardbook, and even saw there was a lite plan for Jobber. Right now, I'm thinking of trying out a week or two without a CRM and see if I can manage. But if I do consider getting one, would love some advice on what you guys would recommend. Thanks!

Do other people have similar issues? I'm not near my desk for a considerable amount of time, for e.g. I'm in the car or in meetings most of the day, and at the end of the work day there's an hour of typing up into the CRM what I already know. By the time I get to my laptop, some of the info is lost. So the record's basically useless to anyone but me. Has anyone found something that actually sticks? Can I not just talk to my CRM, like literally voice or text it

I've been thinking about this lately.

A lot of businesses invest time and money into generating leads, but what happens after someone fills out a contact form or requests a quote?

How do you make sure every lead gets a timely follow-up?

Do you use a CRM, spreadsheets, reminders, or some kind of automation?

The more I looked into it, the more I realised this is a common problem for many businesses.

I'd love to hear what works for you and what you've found to be the biggest challenge when it comes to following up with new leads.

You're getting leads.

You're getting deals.

But suddenly things start getting messy.

• You forget a deal because nobody reminded you.

• You check every active deal manually just to see what's due tomorrow.

• Your database gets crowded with old deals and completed projects.

• You know follow-ups matter, but keeping track of everything takes too much time.

• Calculating your real pipeline value manually becomes impossible.

And yes...

You could build your own CRM.

But most agency owners should be spending their time getting clients, not building systems.

That's why I built this.

✅ Automatic weighted pipeline value

✅ Deal health tracking

✅ Follow-up visibility

✅ One-click Won / Lost organization

Instead of manually cleaning databases and moving things around.

If you're running a small agency or service business, I'd love to hear what you currently use to track deals.