There’s always something to howl about.

Thirty-three touches from the cloud: Seriously seeking CRM

We need a CRM solution, and it’s making me crazy that we don’t have one. We wrestled with REST for a couple of years, but we never got it cranking on all cylinders, and it lacks features I don’t want to live without. Chris Johnson raves about Heap, but I’m not sure it’s everything we need.

I need help, it’s true enough.

What I want:

  • Cloud-based. I don’t want any proprietary apps running on dedicated hardware. I want to be able to do my CRM business from any web-enabled computer and any iPhone anywhere.
  • iPhone empowered, therefore, of course. Needs to integrate with Contacts, iCal, etc., and it needs to sync periodically through the cloud.
  • Email-based data entry. Heap can do at least some of this. What I would like is to be able to have a form on a web page produce an email that is mailed to my CRM, with that email initiating a sequence of events: Create client record and initiate a particular set of sequences of follow-up contacts. These should be selectable by the email received: Investors should be subscribed to different campaigns from sellers or first-time home buyers.
  • Jott-able. Heap does some of this, also.
  • As tightly-integrated with Google Apps as possible. For example, I want the calendar to be the Google Apps calendar.
  • Action scripts or event scripts or whatever, as automated as possible, ideally already scripted with the text already written. By now we’re talking about the “33 touches” idea from The Millionaire Real Estate Agent, but I want as much of this as possible to happen automatically and hands-free. As above, there will be different “8×8” scripts for new clients, and possibly also different “33 touches” scripts, but, once these are assigned, I want for them to proceed “untouched by human hands.” Agent 360 seems to be well-equipped in this regard.
  • Action scripts that require real live human action should create to-do lists for the affected team members.
  • We own our own data. That means we have the ability to move our data off in a usable format whenever we want, and our data is never shared with anyone else.
  • Simple to use, with no time-sinks. A CRM that require a full-time staffer to implement is a CRM that won’t be used. We already own some of those.
  • I’d like for it to be affordable.

So what products should I be looking at? Does anything like this even exist?

Further notice:

If you are signing up for Heap, I’d appreciate if you would use this link. I will get credit in Heap’s affiliate program. We’ll donate the affiliate fees to charity, but with each new sign-up, I will gain clout with the developer. As always, I’ll be sharing every new idea I come up with, but if we can demonstrate that wired real estate professionals are a significant portion of the user base, we stand a much better chance of getting needed product upgrades in a sprightly fashion.

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