5 Best CRM for Franchises
So you want answers, and you want em’ fast. Here they are:
Quick links for the Best CRM Software
1) Best Overall 🏆
Monday.com
Customize your workflows to track all aspects of the sales cycle, from lead gen to post-sale support.
2) Good Plugins🥈
Hubspot
Hubspot is the undisputed king of full-stack marketing software. With solid CRM features.
3) Most Features 🥉
PipeDrive
A sales-focused CRM that uses AI to automate repetitive tasks and manage leads and sales.
So, you are in the market for a CRM that suits franchises.
Ideal, because in this article we have our compilation list for our top picks, and we compare the features and pricing for you.
If you just want the best choice, we’ve added that right at the top of the article as this was what is most requested by our customers. So, that’ll be the “can’t go wrong” option.
Otherwise, feel free to explore all the options we’ve reviewed on the market to find something that might fit you a little better.
Enjoy the list!
What CRM would you recommend?
In short, It’s Monday.com CRM
It’s very well rounded, well priced, feature-rich with a large community of support and a very top-notch set of tutorials for every use case. You can’t go wrong with Monday.com. It’s the software we use with our clients at our ad agency.
“🚀Try Monday.com CRM For Free, It’s my favorite webinar software to use and recommend.” -Scott Max
Monday.com is a user-friendly CRM platform that provides advanced solutions with its robust marketing tools. It allows larger companies with complex workflows to perform efficiently and produce nifty results. Monday.com has you covered for your: Service, Sales, CMS, Operations, and Marketing needs.
For more details, read our Monday.com Review.
The Best CRM specifically for Franchises
Sales flow is unique in every industry. Franchising requires a different data model than enterprising. A CRM that allows you to customize the sales cycle, process leads easily and handle your accounting needs will be the perfect match for this category. Have a look at the products below to choose the best CRM for Franchises:
1. FreshSales
FreshSales currently has more than 10,000 satisfied customers with its refreshing interface, which offers – at a glance – everything needed on the customer flow. You will be able to have information about conversations with customers, agreements, tasks and scheduled appointments with them, as well as find out how they have interacted with the website and the product, among many other functions. In addition, it allows you to control potential customers to know when it is the key moment to impact them.
Freshsales Features
Freshsales provides a modern-day sale engagement solution to users that want to expand their business and maximize their marketing efforts. Managing leads takes up a lot of effort and hours of scouring through various sources, but Freshsales eases that with a smooth transition of Incoming leads onto the next phase.
Here are some dedicated features of Freshsales:
- Marketing Automation: Freshsales lets you set conditions to see desired customer leads and automate the marketing tasks for prompt communication. Moreover, you can create alerts for the sales team whenever there is progress in negotiations or; the clients respond positively to marketing activity. You can set up chatbots to deal with incoming inquiries and reach out to the client via Whatsapp, Gmail or other network sources with Marketing automation.
- Deals Management: Freshsales lets you manage and visualize the sales process to convert potential leads into permanent clients. You can prioritize leads that are most likely to come to fruition and analyze the conversion rate to forecast sales for similar deals in the future.
- Workflow automation: Sales process involves many repetitive tasks that are essential to the working of the company. Workflow automation handles routine operations to reduce manual dependency and boosts sales efficiency by breaking complex processes into simple ones.
- Cloud Telephony: Calling is a vital part of the sales process: to update clients about the latest advancements and offers regarding new products. With Freshsales, users can get over 90 virtual phone numbers for employees: to connect with the customers over the computer. You can create notes and record a conversation to provide full context and reassign a task without any problem.
- Freddy AI: Freshsales identifies leads and organizes them to make sales tasks easier. You can set up instructions, and Freddy AI will cohere to them while processing client information. It provides you insight into the likelihood of closing the lead; so you know what the next step should be and approach the opportunity effortlessly.
- Product CPQ: You can maintain an updated product catalog on Freshscales to give clients and the sales team a reference about intrinsic features along with pricing details. Moreover, you can track individual unit sales and see which products are in demand and what audience you should target.
Freshsales Pricing
Freshsales has 4 pricing options available for businesses looking to expand their sales through CRM. The “Free” version provides basic management services free of cost. The “Growth” plan is a CRM tool with automation that can boost your sales and prevent respective tasks; It is priced at ₹999/user if billed annually. The “Pro” subscription will help you customize the tools to your liking and increase sales revenue; It costs ₹2799/user if billed annually. The “Enterprise” plan gives you the AI forecasting to know the shortcomings and modify the strategy accordingly; It is priced at ₹4999/user if billed annually.
2. Salesforce
Another tool to highlight is Salesforce, quite similar in the mechanics of employment to Pipedrive, is one of the most popular CRM programs, despite having a paid subscription, recommended for large companies but not so much for entrepreneurs or SMEs. It is a program that adapts perfectly to the size of your company, with a great usability adaptable to any device and with the possibility of using it anywhere you have a network.
Salesforce Features
Salesforce is a sales, marketing, and collaboration powerhouse that lets users accomplish business tasks and share ideas smartly. It was launched: in 1999 with the idea of helping organizations build long-lasting relationships with clients and providing a seamless transition to CRM software. Salesforce has since established itself as one of the most sought-after CRM tools due to its constant strive for innovation and philanthropic values.
Here are some features offered by Salesforce that can affect your business experience positively:
- Industry-focused services: Salesforce provides tailor-made CRM services for every business, irrespective of its niche or size. It is a multi-feature platform that allows every industry to benefit from its wide range of tools. Users can select their line of business to get recommendations on services or customize their own CRM plan.
- Salesforce Sustainability Cloud: Salesforce enables the inflow of your entire business data on a single platform, making it easier to accurately analyze your carbon footprint. In today’s age, when environmental awareness is more significant than ever, Salesforce Sustainability cloud lets you conceive a detailed plan to limit carbon emissions and provide a detailed report to the energy regulatory authorities.
- Slack Collaboration: Salesforce recently acquired Slack, and users can now integrate both platforms for secured communication and collaboration purposes. Slack has a unique interface that allows users to create distinct workflows for each task and automated responses to keep clients engaged till you assign a customer representative. Moreover, it brings different subsections of a business together and facilitates sharing of ideas.
- Workplace Command Centre: Salesforce tracks employee health and ensures their well-being during the pandemic; by carefully managing work hours. It builds a strong community where your company’s employees can connect with each other and resolve issues while you can dispatch resources faster.
- Lightning Platform: Salesforce provides an app development platform with the latest technologies like blockchain and AI. Users can handle every aspect of the process and customize a mobile application that empowers the company’s ecosystem. It’s an unequaled innovative experience that streamlines IT-related tasks and lets anyone contribute towards app development.
- AppExchange: Salesforce has an inbuilt marketplace where users can integrate the additional application to get a more customized experience. It amplifies your sales experience and browsing through several applications while using external tools within a unified platform for business purposes.
Salesforce Pricing
Salesforce has a multifunctional ecosystem where you can add services based on your requirements.
Sales Cloud’s “Essentials” plan is priced: at $25/month/user, “Professional” plan is priced at $75/month/user, “Enterprise” plan costs $150/month/user and “Unlimited” plan is worth $300/month/user.
Small businesses can get a generalized subscription to enjoy Salesforce and choose from the following packages:
The “Essentials” plan is priced: at $25/month/user and can be used; by up to 10 users.
The “Sales Professional” subscription is priced: at $75/month/user.
The “Service Professional” plan is priced: at $75/month/user.
The “Pardot Growth” plan is priced at $1250/month/user and offers automation capabilities for every business.
3. Microsoft Dynamics
Microsoft Dynamics is perfect software for connecting clients, products, people and operations, all from a single tool that can be implemented through an infinite number of options. However, it is a payment tool that will require training time for you to be able to use it to its full potential. For this tool, programming knowledge is necessary. However, once you know how to use it, you will easily be able to simplify and connect business processes, improving customer interactions and facilitating growth.
Get Started with Microsoft Dynamics🔥
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Features
Microsoft Dynamics 365 provides ERP and CRM services on a single platform. It offers a clear view of how sales and marketing efforts are going with automated and intelligent data analysis. You can use tools powered by AI and machine learning to get better insights into your business.
Here are some unique features offered by Dynamics 365:
- Unified Communications: Dynamics 365 allows you to connect with clients through “Microsoft Teams” and simplify the sales process. You can call meetings, have a conversation and send any valued offer or detail in a minute.
- Advanced AI tools: You can predict sales based on the latest marketing strategy and conversion rate with Dynamics 365’s AI-powered tools. It allows you to generate revenue, set automated tasks, analyze data in a 360⁰ manner and much more according to your requirements.
- Finance and Operations management: Dynamics 365 has a financial analysis tool that can help you manage commercial operations and record every transaction. You can store credit card details, annotate tasks and accelerate training for new employees in the organization. Moreover, Dynamics 365 allows a smooth transition of complex workflows and management operations on the CRM.
- Asset Management: You can list your business assets on the supply chain within Dynamics 365 and efficiently manage all the related information, maintenance activities while reducing redundant costs.
- Power supply chain agility: Dynamics 365 can help your business’s profitability through quick lead conversion and high-quality analysis. You can engage better with clients, set priorities, create automated bots, so your sales team has a better chance of securing the opportunity.
- Smart Maintenance: Dynamics 365 suggests approaches to grow your business and increase product longevity with safety through smart maintenance. You can keep a catalog and add relevant notes to help the sales team with the pitch.
- Visual editor: Dynamics 365 lets you create charts, graphs and organizational workflows to simplify performance metrics. You can set the parameters and get different points of view regarding business development.
- Learning Paths: Dynamics 365 provides educational content to help you get familiar with CRM services and implement their use throughout the organization. You can access several how-to guides, watch videos and participate in interactive sessions to get a grip on Dynamics 365.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Pricing
Dynamics 365 allows users to choose packages according to their business niche.
Customer Data Platform is available for $1452/month for a single user and $968/month as an add-on plan. You can get a customer voice function for an extra $194/user for a month.
The sales tools are available in 3 different plans. “Sales Professional” is priced at $63/month and $19/month as an add-on. “Sales Enterprise” is worth $92/month for an individual and $19/month as an add-on. “Sales Premium” is priced: at $131/month for a single user, and “Microsoft Relationship Sales” is available for $134/month.
“Finance” package is priced at $172.5/month/user and $29/user/month as an add-on. “Project Management” tools are worth $116.5/user/month and $29.14/user/month as an add-on subscription.
Dynamics 365 has particular subscription plans for small and medium businesses to fast-track their sales process. “Business Central Essentials” is priced at $68/user/month, “Business Central Premium” is available at $97.2/user/month, “Customer Service Professional” is worth $48.6/user/month and “Sales Professional” is priced: at $63.2/user/month.
4. Zoho CRM
Zoho CRM is a tool quite similar to Salesforce, integrated by different tools and functionalities that you can use according to the needs of your company. It has a number of free options and paid PRO versions, which you can evaluate according to your needs. One of its great advantages is that it can be integrated with a multitude of other tools that are not necessarily complementary to its use.
Zoho CRM Features
Zoho CRM is a robust software that fulfills all your business requirements, from closing the deal and managing company data to collaborating with your colleagues. It provides CRM solutions according to the niche and size of your organization for an ideal sales experience which makes it one of the most coveted CRM tools in the market. Zoho CRM thrives in solving unique business scenarios with a quick turnout time and produces compelling results.
Here’s a wide range of features offered by Zoho CRM:
- Canvas design studio: Every business has different requirements, so it’s weird why you should not be able to personalize your software experience. Zoho CRM allows users to makeover their homepage, tabs and menu bar with Canvas design studio. You can add aesthetic background to your CRM software and work efficiently by placing the frequently accessed; tabs on your homepage.
- Journey orchestration: Zoho CRM allows users; to create flowcharts that will determine the next step in the customer journey depending upon the response. Zoho Command Centre provides a unique interactive experience to potential clients and existing customers by analyzing the customer’s intentions.
- Omnichannel: Zoho CRM integrates all of your communications sources in one platform and smoothens proceedings with incoming leads. Moreover, you can hold web conferencing, set up service portals and live chat, collaborate with colleagues, and get real-time updates within the Omnichannel.
- Sales Enablement: Zoho CRM provides surfeit options for sales tools and lets you conduct every sales-related activity with comfort. It increases visibility into the client interactions and empowers your business portal by constantly adhering to the pre-entered commands. You can prioritize specific leads, get alerts regarding opportunities and build up a document library to assist the sales rep in negotiations.
- Performance management: Zoho CRM allows you to set targets for your employees to provide added motivation and track their performance with the SPM tool. You can also classify clients according to region, budget, and services required. Moreover, it lets you deal with multiple currencies and see exchange rates that can bolster your business.
- Developer platform: Zoho CRM’s developer platform helps you make custom solutions; for your business needs without much coding. You can integrate and unify your data from various applications, create automation, and run deluge codes to configure the CRM. It’s a perfect platform to help your developers get familiar with CRM services and build exciting products.
Zoho CRM Pricing
Zoho CRM offers subscription plans for every business, whether small, medium, or large.
The ” Standard” plan is priced: at ₹1300/month/user. It offers custom dashboards, multiple pipelines, and 1 canvas design creation.
The “Professional” plan is priced: at ₹2100/month/user. It offers SalesSignals, validation rules, and inventory management.
The “Enterprise” plan is priced: at ₹3000/month/user. It offers CommandCenter, a Multi-user portal, and advanced customization.
The “Ultimate” plan is priced: at ₹3200/month/user. It offers Enhanced feature limits, Zoho Analytics, and 25 customizable canvas designs.
Small businesses can opt for “Bigin” by Zoho, priced at ₹550/month/user.
There’s also a free edition of Zoho CRM which offers essential management tools.
5. SugarCRM
Another highlight is SugarCRM, with clients such as IBM, Audi or Zurich, which has a simple user interface and an intuitive personalisation platform, and has two types of CRM adapted to each user: a CRM for SMEs and a business CRM for large companies or multinationals.
SugarCRM Features
SugarCRM is a user-friendly platform built on open-source technologies like JavaScript and PHP to enable mobile computing solutions. It helps businesses build better professional relationships, work more efficiently and integrate with the complete customer lifecycle. SugarCRM has cloud portability, which allows you to switch data between public and private clouds depending on market conditions with minimal disruption.
Here are some unparalleled features offered by SugarCRM:
- Sugar Market: SugarCRM provides an all-in-one marketing automation tool that automatically prioritizes incoming leads based on client engagement. It also recognizes repetitive tasks and avoids them to ensure maximum work is done: in minimal time.
- Revenue Generation: SugarCRM generates revenue for each marketing campaign to let you know where your funds are being used and whether they are yielding desired results.
- Google Ads integration: Users can access Google Ads management tools within the Sugar Market and create shrewd campaigns to target a new clientele base while maintaining the stronghold over existing customers.
- Ease of Use: SugarCRM is exceedingly easy to customize because of multi-API accessibility. Users can switch from their existing CRM service to SugarCRM by connecting the API’s, which leads to a high adoption rate. It allows users to personalize the menu bar and homepage for quick response to the incoming queries.
- Asset Library: SugarCRM simplifies the process of uploading, managing and storing assets to leverage within the emails, business website and other marketing documentation with the asset library. It supports various file types like images, documents, audios, gifs and CSS. Users can integrate SugarCRM with other content management systems with pre-built templates to get a more robust library.
- Sales Automation: SugarCRM’s sales tool offers accurate predictions on the possibility of closing a deal with its AI-powered tools. You can change your marketing patterns and sales process accordingly to attract more clients. Moreover, SugarCRM also provides automated operations to follow-up on potential customers during off-hours till a sales rep is assigned; to the task. You can use SugarBPM to review price quotations by comparing your services to other businesses and getting a fair evaluation of your product.
- Customer support platform: SugarCRM enables businesses to emphasize customer complaints and rectify the situation quickly. It provides a knowledge-based platform: that can be customized to help clients solve minor problems themselves. SugarCRM’s service platform automatically assigns cases to the most qualified representative by analyzing past work.
SugarCRM Pricing
SugarCRM offers 4 pricing options depending upon the products you pick.
The “Sugar Market” marketing tool is priced at $1000/month and can be accessed; by unlimited users.
The “Sugar Sell” sales automation tool is priced at $80/month/user and offers 60 GB storage along with phone support.
The “Sugar Serve” customer service tool is priced at $80/month/user and helps you smoothly assist clients.
The “Sugar Enterprise” offers a generalized subscription plan and is priced; at $85/month/user. It offers SQL-based reporting and SugarBPM.
The “Sugar Professional” plan is priced at $52/month/user and offers a CRM solution for small businesses.
Why use a CRM at all?
Managing a business irrespective of its size or niche requires data management, thorough market analysis, effective marketing strategies and a reputable lead conversion rate. Your sales representatives need assistance to perform at their maximum potential and analyze client data to close more deals.
CRM provides you with a unified database to carry out all business activities and help your salesperson during negotiations by showing past contextual interactions. You can connect social media accounts to see the effect of your marketing campaigns and analyze which demographics are responding positively.
Why should Franchises use a CRM?
As a franchise, there’s different demand for each level of expansion depending upon your locations, industry and marketing operations. You should have a workflow and processes for each task, plus a system that enables those workflows and processes.
Having a CRM that provides document sharing, e-signing and complete analytics and reporting on franchisee operations when you grow and scale can be highly beneficial. As your business levels up, so will the demands you need from a system, simply because you have a lot more to manage.
You can’t just rely on any old system, if you want to grow a successful franchise. You need to think of your franchise’s future and opt for a CRM that supports your business requirements for at least the next 5-10 years.
In order to enable growth and expansion and get to the level of success you want for your franchise, you need a CRM that is advanced, powerful and reliable in the long run. It can help you monitor the franchisee sales operations and maintain efficiency across all departments.
CRM for Franchises, A Summary
CRM allows you to streamline sales efforts for your franchise and automate tasks to reduce the workload of your employees. It enables faster communication with clients, allowing you to understand their concerns and deliver quality services.
Freshsales provides a user-friendly interface and a 360⁰ customer view to solve problems swiftly and manage all business activities. It is our suggested pick for a CRM that suits franchises. Visit the website to get started.