Pipedrive Review

Pipedrive's reputation as a sales-driven customer relationship management (CRM) tool is well deserved. Its visual pipeline is excellent for keeping track of your deals, following through on promises, and maintaining contact with the people who matter. It is easy to set up and, unlike some CRM software, you don't need to be a technical expert to customize it to suit your needs. Read our in-depth Pipedrive review to learn more about the pros and cons of this software.

If you have a small to mid-sized company and are looking for a sales-focused CRM system, Pipedrive is an excellent option. It will suit businesses in various industries, and be particularly useful for companies that want to build relationships and need to track deals and actions.

Pipedrive has a wealth of features that make it one of the top CRM software solutions on the market.

Visual and accessible interface

Pipedrive boasts that it was "built by salespeople, for salespeople." That rings true when you use the product -- it feels intuitive and you'll have everything you need to build strong customer relationships at your fingertips.

The Kanban view of the deals pipeline gives you a great overview of every stage of your process, while the list view makes short work of bulk edits and updates. Track your conversations and activity with each contact or zoom out to view the company record and other relevant data.

The more expensive plans include an AI-powered sales assistant to accompany you through the work day. It can give you everything from activities with a strong chance of success to personal productivity tips.

Pipeline management

Given the product name, it isn't surprising that Pipedrive does pipelines extremely well. You can customize or tweak your pipeline, apply filters, and create multiple pipelines if needed. No matter what size your team, you'll be able to identify any bottlenecks and maximize sales with a consistent cycle.

You don't need to be a technical expert to set it up, either. Once you understand what stages a potential client goes through in your business, it takes a few clicks to get that journey into Pipedrive. When you view your pipeline, deals with timely activities will display at the top. You can also set the probability of winning the deal at different pipeline stages, which feeds into revenue projection and other features.

When you're focused on keeping the plates spinning, it's all too easy for nascent relationships to go stale. Pipeline's deal-rotting feature highlights any deals that need attention and haven't been touched for a while. There's also a contact timeline view that gives you an overview of activity along with action reminders.

Automations

Let's say you want to touch base with a contact when a new deal is set up or notify the team via Slack every time one specific thing happens. Pipedrive lets you automate these tasks. Not only does this free up your sales team to do other things, but it also reduces the risk of tasks slipping through the cracks.

Be aware that automations are only available on advanced and higher plans, and that only global admin users can set up automated processes. You can also set up more complex automations. For example, if there's been no contact for two days after a meeting, it might trigger a phone call or email.

Sales-driven reporting

Accessible reports are a key aspect of any good CRM system. In addition to effective communication with clients, you need to be able to keep track of individual actions and maintain a birds-eye view of what's going on. Reporting helps you to manage resources, check progress toward goals, and identify both opportunities and potential issues.

Pipedrive has several ways to measure and track your activity, including custom reports and revenue forecasting. Visual dashboards bring the numbers to life, and its reports are super visual and versatile. Useful reports include:

• Revenue projections
• Sales dashboards
• Goal metrics
• Conversion reports

CRM that doesn't end with the sale

One aspect of Pipedrive that particularly appealed to me is the smooth transition from leads to deals to projects. Pipedrive lets you have any number of leads, which you can import from different sources. You then convert promising leads to deals, which you can track to closure. If you successfully close a deal, you can convert it to a project with its own workflow.

There's no point in your sales team putting a lot of energy into getting a new client if you then stumble on the delivery. That makes the project tool invaluable. You'll keep all the client information and documents in one place and can manage each stage of delivery. The project management tool is included with higher level plans. If not, you can buy it as a per-person add-on.

The right level of customization

Customization can be tricky in CRM systems. Too much and you'll feel like you're re-inventing the wheel and spending precious time to get the backend of the system right. Too little and you're stuck with a generic system that doesn't fully reflect your needs. You can wind up with so many workarounds that people find it easier to not use the system at all.

It is straightforward to customize fields, processes, languages, and other aspects of Pipedrive. But if you're a small business with relatively simple CRM needs, a lot of the standard settings will work right off the bat. As your company grows or your requirements change, you can build in more functionality and customization.

Lead generation

Generating leads can be a time-consuming and frustrating process. The right tools can help you collect the right information, prioritize promising leads, and automate at least some of your relationship-building activities.

Pipedrive's paid LeadBooster add-on includes the following useful features:

• Chatbot: Install on your website to automatically engage with potential customers.
• Live Chat: Allow potential customers to connect with a real person on your team.
• Web Forms: Use forms to collect information from your website.
• Prospector: Spend credits to generate leads from prospector database of 400 million profiles.

Team management

A common challenge when you first start to use CRM is getting the right permission levels for your team. The trick is to ensure people can use the system productively, without having the power to accidentally delete swathes of data or access confidential billing information. Pipedrive makes it easy to set permissions, though the number of customized permissions depends on your tier.

There's a lot of space for collaboration, with the ability to delegate tasks and share data between colleagues. Higher tiers can set up teams and track progress and performance by specific groups of people. Plus, if someone moves on and you need to reallocate their workload, it's easy to manage. You can see what they're in charge of and use bulk edits to reassign tasks and responsibilities.

Integration and email synchronization

Most top CRM software will integrate with outside programs, and Pipedrive is no different. It says it has over 400 CRM integrations, including Google, Microsoft Outlook, and iCloud. You can also hook up accounting software like QuickBooks, project management tools, video conferencing, and more.

Advanced users can sync their email accounts to Pipedrive. This means you can view and send emails without leaving the software, and those messages will be automatically linked to the correct contact. You can email up to 100 people at once, using filters to select specific leads or deals. To send more emails, you'll need Pipedrive's campaign add-on which allows you to bulk email larger groups of people with targeted campaigns and templates.

If you aren't on the advanced plan, there's a workaround that essentially blind copies your Pipedrive inbox into your messages.