I'm probably like a lot of you who have tried lots of crms and inevitably fall back to old patterns, or get so behind on logging notes and activity that I dread going back in. I think I finally solved this forever for me.

I have Claude review my emails and proposals three days per week, then follow some instructions about making recommendations for updates to companies, people, and deals. Then in the morning when the notification comes in I just look through the list, confirm or ask for adjustments, and then let Claude do the updating.

Honestly, I haven't spent much time in the CRM interface in a while! And I'm so happy about it. Because my records and data are spotless, and the grunt-ish work of updating is all handled by Claude. For now that data is becoming more useful because I use it as context for Claude to do more research and other things.

I can't see myself ever going back to manually using a CRM with the exception of some special occasions, like setting up different kinds of lists or workflows for special pushes or new product releases or things like that.

We use Attio and it seems well made for this use case but I think all CRMs will go in this direction very soon if they aren't already there.

With salesforce CPQ reaching end of sale we have been thinking of switching to another solution. This is bc we are not sure how much salesforce will continue inventing in it even though we still have the option to renew our license.

The biggest thing holding is back is how we have already built into our current setup. we have 3 yrs of pricing logic, custom rules, approval workflows, product configs and integrations that our sales team relies on every day.

Moving to another system sounds simple but rebuilding all that could be a much bigger project than we expect. that is why we are trying to understand costs beyond the software license. we want to understand things like migrating data, recreating pricing rules, connecting the systems, training the team and hiring consulatnts.

For those who have gone through salesforce CPQ migration what were the biggest hidden costs and was it worth it?

My sales team pretty much lives inside Salesforce and we found that our old calling setup was becoming a pain in the ass.
Reps would make calls in one app, then just make one of those “mental notes” to enter the outcome into Salesforce later. You can guess how that worked out for us… notes were late, vague, or missing altogether. Not just because people were being careless - it's just that we're all human and when you're working through a long call list, manual admin is one of the first things that are going to slip.

But the problem we wanted to solve was actually pretty simple. We just needed calling to fit into the CRM worklow so useful call information would end up on the right contact, account or opportunity without someone having to remember to copy everything over manually later on.

That made it easier for us to compare providers, given that pretty much every platform these days says, "We have full Salesforce integration, trust me bro." The devil's in the detail. We wanted to know what's being logged, where it goes, and how much work's left. We looked at RingCentral, Dialpad, and Aircall.

RingCentral can create call logs automatically. It also has Activity Sync that can associate calls from RingCentral devices with contacts. You can configure the automatic call logging settings too, which could come in handy if your admins want more control over what's written back.

Dialpad also caught our eye, as it can log calls and messages as Salesforce activities, and then associate them with leads, contacts or accounts. I really liked that you can choose between recording calls as Salesforce tasks, Dialpad call log records, or both. Pretty useful.

We also liked Aircall because it felt close to how our reps already work. It has click-to-dial, can give reps helpful contact context, and it can sync call activity back to the right record. That solved the issue I mentioned before about someone having to remember to update the activity history after every call.

We took a look at the Power Dialer and Voicemail Drop features on the professional plan for our outbound team too. You have to check the plan structure carefully - the full Salesforce integration isn't available on every Aircall plan.

Of course, I wouldn't choose any of these based on a product page or on watching a demo and don't expect you to either. You've got to ask each vendor to connect a test environment and run some of the calls your team actually makes - the whole shebang from completed calls, missed calls, transfers, recordings, and follow-up notes.

That's going to show you pretty quickly what lands in the CRM and what still needs to be handled manually.

Interested to hear what other Salesforce heavy teams are using, and has anyone else found a setup where reps don't have to update records by hand?