ClearSlide vs. Close CRM

Clearslide makes it easy to share files with anyone via a single link. It simplifies the process of document sharing in the new "work from home" age we have now and allows multiple parties to view the same document, either simultaneously or separately. It is less appropriate for sensitive information, as the link can easily be shared between parties or forwarded on, so there is no gatekeeping.

Incentivized

Excellent software to increase sales and follow up with existing and new customers. Email and SMS handling are really easy for the sales team, managing leads is really great, and Close merges duplicate leads to help our Data Leads avoid repetitive and unnecessary calls. As mentioned in some comments before, must improve in reports, Close is not appropriate to handle or track agents' hours making it necessary to implement additional software to cover this area.

Incentivized

• Analytics: for sales, especially when selling virtually, it can be difficult to know if your customers are engaged with the presentation. Clearslide will give you reports that indicate how long customers were viewing what you were presenting, if/when you lost them, and at what place in your presentation you lost them. It can also show you how long potential customers spent reviewing follow-up materials you've sent them.
• Screenshare: the screenshare functionality, when using Google Chrome, is very seamless, and the customer can take over the screenshare without needing any downloads or plug-ins.
• Presenting: It's quite easy to present material with Clearslide, and to move between materials that you are presenting.

Incentivized

• Email sequences. Create and send a sequence of emails until the sequence finishes or the contact replies to your email. You can also pause the sequence manually.
• Email sync. Syncs in real time with your email account, which is huge.
• Zapier integration. We've automated a lot of our pipeline management through the Zapier integration. This saves us soooo much time.

Incentivized

• Call quality with CS has always been an issue in my two (2) years of experience with the platform. CS upgraded their phone provider in winter 2018, but the call quality has only been marginally improved from my perspective. Also, with the switch to a new phone provider, users are required to use a new conference line, access number, and a leader pin. The leader pin is new and adds an extra step to setting up a conference line, which seems unnecessary.
• Content curation is probably my biggest issue with CS. With previous experience in a sales enablement company, I've seen how content can be curated to map to the seller's specific stage in a deal cycle, which is what most companies want. CS does not have this functionality from my perspective, and if it does, then overall curation capabilities are weak. Rather than curating content to match a seller's current point in a sales process, CS relies on surfacing content that is most popular or recently added. There is a search feature, which works well if you know what the collateral is called, but it is not scanning the content of documents to find what is most relevant. I equate the content feature of CS to a search that you would do in your computer's "Download" folder or even in Dropbox. If your company is smaller and only needs to surface a few pieces of collateral, then CS will work fine. If your organization is larger with large amounts of specific collateral, then I would look elsewhere.
• The CS plugins for Outlook, Gmail, or your web browser are great ideas but executed poorly. The integrations have caused a lot of headaches for colleagues and me since their release. They have caused our email to close unexpectedly, content to not be linked properly, or emails to not be tracked. The idea for these integrations was to reduce the amount of time a seller has to jump between windows, which is awesome, but the integrations are full of glitches. One of the biggest glitches I've seen is how CS, Grammarly, and Outlook all work together. CS is always the component of those three that causes everything to freeze or crash. In short, the integrations are a great idea but executed poorly at this time.

Incentivized

• Make it so one can set the time at which the emails go out.
• Make it easier to set up my workflow.

Incentivized

ClearSlide is embedded in our culture and in our organization. The sales and marketing teams use ClearSlide on a daily basis to share information and presentations as well as communicate "what is working." Our leadership uses the analytics to provide improved feedback and coaching regarding bottlenecks our representatives are experiencing.

Incentivized

Its easy to use from a presenter's perspective. Its web based so anyone who can navigate Facebook can open a live pitch or shared file. This makes it easy to give live demos, share files, and share screens with out downloading any software or installing java patches

Incentivized

It's my favorite CRM to recommend to sales organizations. Robust Telephony options including a Power Dialer, SMS, and Voice Drop, are completely integrated into the CRM. The kicker is you can have "Unlimited" contacts where many platforms charge based on the number of users. This can make a huge difference in monthly billing.

Incentivized

It wasn't 100% but it was better than our experience with GoToMeeting.

I was mostly involved in the implementation process and syncing ClearSlide with Salesforce, and I would say the support was mostly average. It took a few times to get everything scheduled, and a lot of the process was left up to me. I was reading through the documents that they supplied. It wasn't complicated, but more direct support would have been appreciated.

Incentivized

I haven't really had the need to use their support, but the only time I had an issue with the platform, the Close team was very attentive and responded in a short span of time. Also they take minimal time to solve issues. The only con here is there is no way to reach out to them apart from email.

Incentivized

They do a good job

Web based so easy for them to configure account

ClearSlide stacks up to be as good as any of the aforementioned tools. We selected Clearslide because of its ease of use and implementation. It did not take our team too long to get acclimated with how ClearSlide works and how they would be using it, allowing them to generate more meetings and more revenue.

Incentivized

Pipedrive was great for us for a long time. We used it for over 4 years. Our product and process was simple. When things got more complex, we needed something that could handle our growing needs and Pipedrive kept falling short. We built our own custom solution in Airtable and though it worked, we spend a lot of time managing it. Close was able to solve all our issues and save us hours per week in admin work.

Incentivized

This product ROCKS!!!! ClearSlide shortened my sales cycle by over 50% by enabling to jump right into a LIVE demo on an initial client call so I don't have to waste time scheduling a demo at later date. People are busy and finding a time to schedule a call can take days or weeks

• Has helped us close more deals because of the easy "on the fly" screen share
• Also, you get a notification when people view your information so having that, I have followed up shortly after and closed the deal
• Helps my team with all external presentations

Incentivized

• Positive - It's much easier now with Close.io to make sure that no deal falls through the cracks. Therefore helping us recover lost revenue.

Incentivized