Closely vs. Sugar Sell (SugarCRM) vs. Surfe

Closing rates increase up to 25% when using Closely’s automated outreach platform. Closely gives you the ability to reach out to the exact people who are interested in your offer. You can set up the entire campaign, and then Closely will take over everything else. You can choose your message and deliver it using email or text. Sometimes the interface can be a little slow. I would suggest doing some testing before committing to this tool. Closely saves time, which is important to me. I have been using it for about a month now, and I have noticed that my close rate has increased by 25%. I am able to focus on building my list instead of doing the tedious task of emailing people.

Incentivized

Sugar CRM is a good tool, but it's complex to customize. It often requires expensive 3rd partners to implement more complex scenarios that SugarCRM struggles to support; coming back with explanations was usually time-consuming and unsupported. The back end is overly complex in terms of what it needs to be, with many redundant database tables and columns.

Incentivized

Surfe is really a great help/support for our marketing and data team. It saves plenty of time and manual work. We are totally happy with the product and also setup was done in 5 Min.

• I have not had any issues with LinkedIn filters.
• The inbox feature is like a mini-CRM.
• Closely now has a chrome extension adding more functionality.

Incentivized

• Great way to keep myself organized. I do not miss appointments with clients since within the system I can input my appointment time and also send out a reminder to my clients.
• It has a nice layout [that] does not seem to be cluttered. I find it to be very user friendly.
• It has customizable dashboards which I find beneficial

Incentivized

• Easy to set up in both directions
• Getting account data out of LinkedIn
• Searching for Contact options, i.e. E-Mail and phone
• Getting Company Data out of LinkedIn

• Automated Birthday messages
• Automated congratulations of milestones

Incentivized

• The back-end programming (logical hooks) for advanced customizations could benefit from a more user-friendly interface
• General layout could be improved by the addition of modern templates to customize the standard look and feel
• Support communities could be further improved with the addition of videos on how to do specific configuration, modules.

Incentivized

• After installing the Chrome Plugin, LinkedIn is a bit slower than before
• Pricing is okay, but import from Sales Navigator should be included in the Basic Package

Our organization will continue to use Sugar as long as it remains cost effective and it addresses the majority of our needs. I will, however, recommend looking into other options once our needs increase and there is additional budget for some bigger named and more robust platform options. I feel if the application was friendlier to end users we would get better productivity as well.

There's a learning curve associated with Sugar. Right away, it's not as easy as an out-of-the-box CRM. Once you learn how to use Sugar, the system fits what your needs are. With any other CRM, you'd be trying to figure out how your company can best fit the CRM. You don't want to change your business cycle for your CRM, the CRM should fit your business cycle.

SugarCRM has never been down for us.

No response time issues ever. Very productive due to its ease of use.

The support overall at least for us has been phenomenal. Anytime that the system has any Issues at all IT gets in contact from someone from support to get the system back up and running. Have never gone more than 30 minutes with the system not working. So overall I will be definetely recommending this system in any other company that I may work for in the future.

Incentivized

We feel clasroom training is essential to ensure user adoption and buy-in. Video and on-line training courses gave their place but being in a classroom setting enables the Team to make any potential CRM issues visble right up front.

Only part of an implemementation as noted previously.

Study, study, and study. Be prepared to train everyday until all processes are flowing nicely. The CRM is the elephant and figuring out where to take the first bite can be a challenge. But there is only one way to eat this elephant, one bite at a time. Systematic planning is very important.

Incentivized

SugarCRM is a lot better in many ways then LogicsCRM which I started using when I started as a sales rep at Community Tax. Yet there is still room for a lot of improvements to accommodate a steady workflow. They integration of old CRM files seems to have worked great from Logics to Sugar.

Incentivized

Works from 2-300 Users in our experience.

• 25% increase on close rate
• Additional social channel to nurture leads
• Countless hours saved

Incentivized

• Overall seems to be more expensive than other subscription based CRMs.
• Has positively impact our sales team to make more efficient and accountability among sales teams. Also allows for high level aggregated reporting
• Has been impactful for all teams, not only sales to track individual activity on a daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly basis

Incentivized

• Saves time in research
• Getting data and helping to build a database out of a paid platform