5 Free and Affordable Productivity and Lead Generation Apps
There are many options for performance and lead generation apps — which do you use? It all depends on your budget and the extent of your contact management needs. Small businesses might be able to get away with a completely free basic management and lead generation platform. Larger companies need a system that offers comprehensive contact and sales support. But everyone needs something to keep themselves organized, and their leads productive.
As you compare benefits and restrictions in the various customer and contact management applications, consider the following:
Covve offers a comprehensive solution for keeping a complete address book, organizing business and personal contacts in a hierarchy, and staying in touch with clients and leads. It features proprietary technology that works for you by filling in missing address book details, such as location, industry and seniority. It searches the web for your contacts’ social profiles, company, and even avatar. Approved updates are applied instantly to your contacts without the need for updating any other platform or contact list.
You can also use Covve to tag contacts, favorite your warm leads and archive contacts you don’t need often – like the local coffee shop you hit up on business trips. Automatically get reminders from Covve when it’s time to reach out to customers, clients or leads. But perhaps most useful is the app’s ability to identify contacts who can make productive introductions with people and organizations in their own contacts list. While keeping private information protected, this can quickly become an invaluable tool in itself for finding new leads and business partners.
Salesforce is an immensely-popular web-based CRM (customer relationship manager) app that lets you track leads and project revenues. It offers sales, customer service, and marketing tools, allowing you to connect with partners, customers, and employees. Salesforce subscription for basic services starts at $25 per month. With its wide-spread adoption by many sales teams, it can also benefit from numerous integrations with other performance apps and sales tools.
HubSpot is an easy-to-use CRM that allows you to automate much of the contact management and lead generation work you currently do manually. Hubspot is also free and well-suited for medium-sized businesses. It keeps contacts organized in a central, customizable database and the app automatically logs your interactions. Free analytics allow you to refine your practices and improve your closure rate.
You can help your executives and employees keep track of business prospects, customers and partners – including suppliers and vendors – with Insightly. Insightly organizes contacts and interactions from point-of-sale to product delivery. It has a free version that supports up to 2 users, but an enhanced subscription begins at $12 per month, per user. Insightly offers easy workflow automation and cloud and web-based access, as well as webinars and live online training.
Entrepreneurs and small sales teams use Pipedrive to tackle their sales goals. This tool lets professionals visualize a sales pipeline and keep track of important customer interactions along that pipeline. There are systems for ensuring critical conversations and will ensure activities aren’t lost in cyberspace- and the entire interface is easy to use. Pipedrive is for the on-the-go salesperson. It incorporates lead management, sales forecasting details and other apps’ functionalities including Google Apps, Zapier and MailChimp. This CRM is $12 per month.
In business, you need to be on the ball all the time networking with the people who can help you meet other professionals in your industry and open the door to increased sales. With the right contact management application – preferably one that works to keep you in the loop on your phone, tablet or desktop – you stay connected to those who are or will be valuable partners, as well as those individuals and companies who can benefit from your products and services.
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