So I was manually testing emails forever and finaly found a better way. basically you find one verified email from the company (LinkedIn, press release, whatver) and then you can see their email pattern. like if you find [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]), you know everyone else is firstname.lastname@

the annoying part is verifying each email after. i was using hunter for this but started getting too many bounces on thier "valid" emails. tried a few others too - Apollo shows you the company email format which is nice but the data quality has been hit or miss for me. someone on my team mentioned Prospeo does somthing similar, might check that out next

plus my manager keeps asking why our outbound bounce rate is so high and im like bro the email verification tools are lying to us lol

anyone else have tricks for this? especially for companies that use weird formats like first initial + last name or that dreaded firstname.lastname.countrycode@ format

Hey all, I do Dynamics 365 CRM development and could use a few extra projects. If your team's backlog is piling up or you need a second pair of hands for a sprint or two, I can help.

What I work with:

• C# plugin development (custom business logic, validations)
• Power Automate flows + Power Apps
• Dataverse config/customization
• Microsoft Graph API integrations with D365
• SLA/KPI troubleshooting and fixes

Happy to jump into an existing codebase, take on a defined ticket batch, or handle a scoped integration piece. Flexible on hours — treat this as overflow capacity, not a full-time ask.

DM me or comment if you want to chat scope/rate.

I’m trying to clean up what happens between finishing a discovery call and updating the CRM. Right now I usually end up with half a page of shorthand, then spend another 15---20 mins turning it into something the rest of the team can follow.

workflow I’m trying to get to is:

1. Record and transcribe the call.

2. Pull out pain points, budget, timeline, decision makers, objections and next steps.

3. Check anything related to pricing, dates or customer commitments.

4. Put the cleaned up version into the CRM and use it for the follow-up email.

The third step is where I’m stuck. AI note taking can turn “maybe in Q4 if security approves it” into “planning a Q4 rollout,” which looks harmless in a summary but changes the meaning once someone sees it in the pipeline.

Any advice on making this less manual without letting bad notes into the CRM would be appreciated. Thanks.

Looking out for a CRMs that supports native integrations with Lead Sources like Angi, Thumbtack etc.also focused on all the home services lead sources

Speed to lead engine where AI talks to the leads as soon as the lead comes, qualifies it and if no response nurture until qualification etc.

Any platforms does this and could you share the website links if yes

Made a CRM that doesn't cost a fortune per seat lol

So I've built a CRM and honestly the pricing in this space is kind of wild — most tools charge tens of thousands just to get a few seats going, and it scales up fast the second your team grows.

Mine's done and up and running — ₹5k a seat, that's it. No weird tiers, no "contact sales" nonsense, no paying for 15 features you'll never touch.

Nothing fancy marketing-wise here, just figured there are probably other founders/small teams out there stuck in the same boat — priced out of the big CRMs but still need something that actually works (leads, dashboards, basic reporting, role access, etc).

If that sounds like you, hit me up in the comments or DM, happy to walk you through it and show you around.

In the world of AI, would you buy or build a CRM if you had the option to do so.

Imagine you have your startup, 6 figures ARR, 200 clients, currently need basic datapoints.

Need to keep track of the following:
- accounts
- deals
- contacts
- email
- activities
- revenue

And most likely integrate other tech stack like slack, meeting notes, etc.

Many sales teams treat call review as a compliance exercise. A manager checks whether the script was followed, whether the price was stated correctly, and whether the required questions were asked. That is useful, but it does not explain why some conversations become sales while others quietly disappear.

The real value of call review is finding the patterns that affect the customer journey.

Start by defining the decision you want the review to support. Are you trying to understand where leads lose interest, which objections repeat, why follow ups fail, or which questions help move a deal forward? A clear question is more useful than a long scorecard.

Select calls by outcome instead of listening to random recordings. A small weekly sample can include a won deal, a lost deal, a lead that stopped replying, a repeated customer, and a conversation that ended with a clear next step. Comparing these groups usually reveals more than reviewing the same type of call over and over.

The review also becomes much more useful when it is connected to the CRM record. The note should capture the main objection, the customer goal, the promised next step, and the reason the opportunity changed stage. If the recording lives in one system and the learning stays in a private spreadsheet, the team loses the connection between conversation and result.

Keep the next step mandatory. After every meaningful call, the CRM should show what happens next, who owns it, and when it is due. This simple habit often improves follow through more than adding another complex rating category.

AI can help with the first pass by transcribing conversations, locating topics, and flagging unusual moments. It is good at reducing the amount of audio a manager needs to review. It should not replace human coaching, because the same phrase can mean something different depending on the customer, the industry, and the stage of the deal.

It also helps to separate quality control from training. If every review feels like punishment, representatives learn to protect themselves instead of improving the conversation. If the team studies both strong and weak examples, call review becomes a shared learning process.

A simple weekly routine can be enough:

1. Choose three call outcomes to review.

2. Use five clear quality criteria.

3. Record the next step in the CRM.

4. Discuss a few examples with the team.

5. Track the most common reasons for lost opportunities.

The goal is not to discover who made a mistake. The goal is to understand which part of the process makes it harder for a customer to move forward.

How does your team handle call review today? Do you listen manually, use automated analysis, or connect recordings to deal outcomes in the CRM?

I’m a business owner running an A4 copier paper distribution business, and I’m not a professional software developer.

I couldn’t find a simple software that really matched the way we operate, so I started building my own system.

I used AI-assisted development, mainly Claude, to turn the problems I was facing in the business into an actual working application.

It has gradually evolved into a system for:

* Field sales and route-wise customer visits

* Customer follow-ups

* Orders by paper brand, GSM and reams

* Deliveries and pending deliveries

* Partial payments and outstanding dues

* Sales executive tracking

* Repeat orders and customer history

* Inventory and stock movement

* GST billing and delivery challans

* Sales, collection and product reports

The interesting part is that I didn’t start with the intention of building a CRM product. I was simply trying to solve problems in my own distribution business.

Now I’m wondering whether these problems are specific to my business or whether other distributors face the same thing.

For people working in distribution/wholesale in a4 paper distribution business,

And if there was a simple system designed specifically around distribution workflows, would you actually find it useful?

I’m not trying to sell anything here. I’m genuinely looking for feedback from people who run or work in distribution.

I’d especially appreciate honest criticism including why you wouldn’t use something like this.

If anyone is interested in seeing what I’ve built, I’ll share it in the comments.

For a long time, we had one lead score. It mixed engagement with fit, which sounded reasonable until we actually looked at the leads it was ranking.

Someone from a company that would never buy could score highly because they were reading everything we published. At the same time, someone from an ideal account could visit once, book a call, and end up with a surprisingly low score.

The problem wasn't the formula. We were trying to make one number answer two different questions.

So we split it.

One score tracks engagement in HubSpot. The other looks at fit: firmographics, plus whether the company is actively hiring for the function we sell to. We use Coresignal for that part, mainly because the hiring data needs to be fresh enough to use as a signal.

A low-engagement, high-fit lead now goes into a different workflow from a high-engagement, low-fit one. Before, both could land in the same middle of the score range.

The annoying part was getting everyone to accept two scores. Sales wanted one number they could sort by. Fair enough, but the second score explained why some of the leads at the top weren't actually worth pursuing.

How are others handling this? One combined score, or separate scores for fit and engagement?

I help startups, small SaaS companies, agencies etc streamline their operations, automate support pipelines and build clean Hubspot workflows.

HubSpot admin at a small shop. Leadership wants a separate branded scheduling page for every rep × brand × pipeline stage combo. For us that math works out to ~70 links per person. Per. Person.

The stated justification is “measuring each link and how often they’re used” which, correct me if I’m wrong, is just… meeting outcomes and deal stage reporting? Things that already exist?

I proposed ~5 purpose-based links per rep (intro, review, follow-up, reschedule) with brand handled by a token. Apparently this is not how it was done at [prestigious former employer], where the 70-link matrix was allegedly “standard.”

So I’m taking it to the people. Has ANYONE here ever seen a real org maintain 50-70+ scheduling pages per user? What reporting does it unlock that outcomes/stages/properties don’t? And who was the poor soul maintaining it
?
Genuinely open to being wrong, but before I build the links and create the extra thousand workflow branches… help

I’ve been trying to find recs to try and convince my bosses to get us to switch CRMS because we use Method and it sucks soooo bad. It’s so clunky and really annoying to navigate for no reason, but as I’ve tried to find recs I’ve just found people also complaining about hating theirs lmao.

I recently transitioned my own business from HubSpot to GoHighLevel, largely because HubSpot gets expensive very quickly once you need the marketing features. The cost is also difficult to justify for many of the small-business clients I work with.

Financially, GHL makes much more sense, and I know it has a ton of capabilities. But compared with HubSpot, I’m finding it less polished, less intuitive, and not nearly as pleasant to work in.

So, help a girl out! For those who have made the switch:

• How long did it take you to get comfortable with GHL?
• What did you customize to make it feel cleaner and more organized?
• Are there any templates, snapshots, integrations, or setup tips that made the transition easier?
• What HubSpot features do you still miss or haven’t found a good replacement for?

I know aesthetics aren’t the most important CRM feature, but usability matters when you’re working inside it every day. What helped make GHL feel less clunky and more intuitive?

Can someone tell me why a company would choose to use HubSpot over GHL (HighLevel)? I've used both and cannot figure out why anyone would use HubSpot. It's not at all intuitive, and I haven't identified any feature that's better than GHL. I hate HubSpot, and when I have a client who has it, I dread working with whatever jerry-rigged system they've set up. Don't even get me started on websites built in HubSpot.

What am I missing?

For smaller events, we can usually get by with a laptop and printed attendee list. But once the numbers start climbing, the bottlenecks become pretty obvious, especially when badges have to be printed on site.

Last year, scanning wasn’t really the issue for us. The bigger problem was the manual badge process, which created a second queue at check in.

Curious to hear from others, at what point did you feel dedicated check in software became necessary? And did having on site badge printing actually make much of a difference?

I've built up an AI centric 100% free CRM and I am looking for feedback from users.

I built it after experiencing the difficulty of promoting B2B software without a large sales team. Lists are easy to obtain; understanding why a specific person should care is not. Presage connects recipient context, company signals, campaign intent and the sender’s value proposition to create relevant, human-approved outreach.

You can create your account and start using it without any credit card.

This is a weekly post for you to let out about something which happened this week for you in CRM that mattered: features, client requests that were either great or awful this week, and just generally chat CRM / CRM consulting chatter.

No self promo, just a place to share tales from the front-line of CRM!

We are currently scaling our B2B team and hitting a massive wall with our current setup. Up until now, we have relied on an all in one CRM platform to handle our CRM, email campaigns, landing pages and basic form tracking. On paper, having everything in one place sounded like the dream. In reality as our marketing campaigns have gotten more complex, the native marketing features inside our CRM feel clunky and limited. The landing page builder is frustratingly rigid, attribution reporting is a black box and advanced email workflows require awkward workarounds. We are considering moving toward a modern marketing stack by decoupling our marketing execution tools (using dedicated best of breed software for email, landing pages, and analytics) and feeding all that enriched data back into a core CRM. For those who switched from an all-in-one CRM to a modular modern marketing stack, was the extra flexibility worth the technical overhead?

The biggest mistake in the “SaaSpocalypse” thesis is treating all SaaS companies as if they have the same exposure to AI.

Salesforce’s latest earnings make me think that argument might be too simple.

Agentforce ARR is already above $1.5B and growing 240% YoY, while Salesforce itself is still growing revenue around 11%. So AI doesn’t seem to be replacing the platform. It’s becoming another thing the platform can charge for.

The part I find most interesting is the pricing shift.

Traditional SaaS basically charges for how many people use the software. But if AI agents are doing more of the work, companies can start charging based on usage or work completed instead.

So maybe the real divide isn’t AI vs SaaS. It’s platforms with deep customer data, workflows and integrations vs smaller tools that mostly sell a narrow feature.

The second group seems much easier for AI to commoditize.

A field with few recent values may still feed an old report, integration, routing rule, permission check, or quarterly workflow. Deleting it too quickly can create a silent failure; keeping every field forever makes the schema harder to understand and maintain. What evidence do you require before retiring one? A workable process seems to need an owner, usage checks across automations and exports, a deprecation period, a replacement mapping when definitions changed, and a recoverable archive of old values. How do you handle fields that are technically populated but no longer trusted?