(What is a CRM I hear you ask.)

I’ve used lots of different CRMS - Customer Relationship Management Systems - over the years. Back in the day I used Zoho and followed a pretty ‘religious’ lead development programme that my old friend and colleague Terry Mullins specialises in.

But since then my business has evolved and, though I still need to manage contacts and leads, it’s a different kind of process and I use other tools to do it (more about those later).

However some of my clients really do need to manage quite large databases of contacts, prospects, leads, deals and organisations plus carry out email marketing and even create one-off landing pages from time to time.

I did my research, naturally, and found that the best free CRM around is Hubspot*.

Actually it was more than that, I chose Hubspot because I had been following their marketing content for years and found it to be so useful that I developed a genuine fondness for the company. I believed in what they were doing and saying and so developed a high level of trust for them.

So when my bigger clients asked for help with managing their databases I didn’t really spend very long at all in researching the best options, Hubspot was pretty much my first thought.

Now I have three clients using it on a daily basis and it works really very well (in fact I can’t believe sometimes what they give away for free and I’ve told them so!).

Here’s some use cases that might help you if you are thinking about how, and why, you might want to start using a CRM.

Managing Leads

This is probably the most basic functionality of any CRM. Organising all of your contacts depending on where they are at in the leads cycle:

• New lead - you just contacted them or they contacted you, no deals proposed or discussed.

• Marketing qualified lead - in my case this is where I check the lead to see if they are a good fit for my client (legit business that can benefit from my client’s services) and if they are they get qualified.

• Sales qualified lead - this would be my client confirming they are able to sell to the lead, then they become a prospect.

There’s other stages in the Hubspot cycle too but these are the main ones relevant to me and my clients.

Tracking conversions

This has got to be my favourite freebie from Hubspot.

They have a nifty little bit of code that I can add to my clients’ websites that enables me to track where the lead originated from and even what they did prior to becoming a lead (so long as they arrived via the website at some point).

I can see what ad they clicked on, which pages they looked at and what form they submitted that delivered them to us.

This is a massive bonus for me as I can easily point out to my clients the value of the marketing activity I am doing and the effectiveness of the lead generation on the website.

Instant landing pages

I could actually give use cases for so many of the Hubspot features but this is one of the more unusual ones that has proved invaluable for one of my clients.

In this scenario I did not have direct access to the client’s website and let’s just say the dev that did was not very co-operative or speedy with their work.

The client needed to do some recruitment and so I set up a landing page and application form all within Hubspot and all for free.

Now, as a Squarespace designer, I don’t love the Hubspot CMS but it was a quick and no-cost option that delivered exactly what was needed. We’ve since used it for competitions and other things.

And here’s a screenshot of a typical CRM dashboard* from Hubspot.

And there you have it, my thoughts on customer relationship management and why I think Hubspot is the best. If you want to try it out, click any of the Hubspot links on this page. I earn a small kick-back if you decide to upgrade at some later stage but I only ever promote brands and companies that I use myself and genuinely recommend to clients. So, if you do click, cheers!

Please note, this banner contains an affiliate link which means I will receive commission if you click it and make a purchase.

Hold up, I did promise to talk about the tools I use myself didn’t I. Here goes:

• My contacts are managed in my Apple contacts book but also in Hubspot and my accounting service, Xero.

• My leads are managed in a Trello board, which is also where I manage my projects and my ‘long-list’ of tasks plus my business development ideas.

• I build on Squarespace so if I create a landing page for myself, that’s where it’ll be.

• I don’t advertise myself so don’t track leads.

• I occasionally send emails using Hubspot but usually try and do them personally when I have time.