Do you ever wish you could hire a personal assistant? Someone who could follow you around, keep track of all your appointments on Google Calendar, and schedule meetings with your business associates? They would contact potential clients, remind you about upcoming networking opportunities, and manage all your social media accounts and other personal affairs.
It could cost you $15 per hour or more to hire someone to do your shallow work. That's going to be around $150 a week or more. And while, yes, a person who is physically there could run errands or keep you company, they could end up being more of a distraction than a help.
Is it worth hiring a personal assistant? What if there was a way to get the same benefits for less money? That's where personal CRM software comes in handy. But, wait, isn't CRM for business teams?
Yes, but it's also for the freelancer who needs to track their client's contact data, manage relationships and their marketing. It's for the salesperson who needs all their sales, professional relationships, marketing, and productivity tools in one place.
Today, we're going to talk about how you can benefit from personal CRM tools and compare our top picks. Keep scrolling to find out what CRM can be the best personal relationship manager, what contact management features it should include, and how to choose the best CRM for your needs.
[BANNER type="lead_banner_1" title="Is your CRM ready? Check the guide" content-title="Is your CRM ready? Check the guide" description="Enter your email to download a guide that will help you get started with any CRM system." picture-src="/images/content_en/articles/2-lead.png" file-path="/upload/files/CRM-implementation-Essential-checklist.pdf"]
There are numerous ways a personal CRM software can improve your professional and personal life. Managing relationships is only one of the purposes, so we have compiled a list of what a CRM solution can do for you.
In an ideal world, you would make every decision for your business client-oriented. Your clients are those who bring the money, right? But that's difficult to do if you don't have all the correct data about them. So, to help you in all your errands, you might think about investing in customer relationship management (CRM).
Keeping track of all personal and professional relationships, what stage your client is at in their journey with you, whether you've sent them a portfolio or you've just a proposal, is difficult. If you don't have structure, you could forget where you left off and lose meaningful relationships.
Having all the information in one place helps you identify client trends. Are you attracting the right clients? At what point are they showing interest, and at what point are they ghosting you?
This is where personal contact management software comes in handy. It helps with:
maintaining nurturing relationships;
easy contact management;
creating business relationships;
constant manual contact inputs;
keeping track of your business contacts;
contact categorization in personal and professional relationships.
Do you feel like you waste time doing small yet important things every day? It may not seem like a waste of time, but when you can automate things like email responses, social media updates, client scheduling, and daily scheduling, they become time-wasters.
If you have a personal CRM software program doing those things for you, then you have more time for establishing deep, personal customer relationship management. This is deep work - the time you spend on your product or your content.
If you're a freelance writer, your client is expecting work by a certain deadline. Meet or even preempt your deadlines by freeing up more time to work deeply with a personal CRM software.
Small tasks aren't the only thing you can automate in personal CRM software. Your email marketing would be no small task if you had to type out every email and compile lists manually. With CRM email automation tools and connected accounts, you can cut your email marketing time burden in half or even more.
Are you entirely certain your clients are satisfied? They might have said, “great work” in an email, but that was one client out of how many? What if some are just being polite to get their product and move on?
With a personal CRM system, you can craft a survey and send it to all your clients both past and present. You can use this data to improve your own services.
Personal contact management software stores all of this data in one place, right alongside all your other communication and productivity tools, which will save you time. You can quickly analyze your client data, find trends, and then immediately implement them within the same platform.
With personal CRMs systems, there is no need to switch from one software program to another. You won't waste time exporting data, reformatting it, and importing it into the next application.
Now ask yourself, “how effective is my marketing?” How many clicks versus how many client commitments? What parts of your marketing funnel are effective and what parts aren't?
Personal CRM tools could help you find the chinks in your marketing armor. With the right data analytics tools in one place, you can distill the data and save time working with it.
Tools like client filtering allow you to find out what kinds of clients you're working with. You can filter your clients by industry, geography, lifetime value, date of last contact, etc.
Most CRM software suites allow you to create lead forms for your marketing funnels. You can integrate these forms with your website or your PPC campaigns to increase the number of clients who fall into your funnel with seamless contact data collection.
You can glean data from your marketing campaigns and find out what tactics are generating the most revenue. This alone could save you tons of time and money in the future by just investing into personal relationship manager software.
Freelancing or working from home is fantastic. You get to start work whenever you like. Take breaks whenever you like. It's life...until you realize that every minute you waste is money lost.
Suddenly, you're trying to maximize every moment you're “on.” So, you look up all the productivity tools you can and pile on the digital sauce.
After a while, you realize how much time you're wasting opening your productivity tools, setting them up, and navigating between them. It's a mess on your quadruple screens.
What if you could streamline it all? All of your productivity tools, all of your automated reminders, and emails, and schedules in one place?
In a personal CRM tool, all of your applications work together. Data effortlessly ports from one tool to another. Repeatable tasks allow you to schedule your weeks out indefinitely. And you'll never lose track of client information and requests thus freeing up time you normally spend looking for the right contact in the right location.
Being efficient, keeping track of your clients and your relationship with them, automating emails and marketing, all of these things will keep clients coming back. Clients want accurate information on deadlines and want prompt communication. Personal CRM software can help you keep clients happy.
Happy clients keep hiring you. And when clients keep hiring you, your profits increase.
So, you need a personal CRM. But there are so many choices! You only want the best. Below are our pics for the best personal CRM systems.
Having all your tools in the same place is only useful when you actually own tools. If you're working on your car and the ¼ inch socket is missing, you might not be able to change that part out. Same goes for a personal CRM tool.
Bitrix24 is your complete instrument chest. It gives you every single tool you need and some you might not have thought about using yet. Some of the key features include:
creating various campaigns for social media platforms;
storing all your contact data;
contact management tools;
available for mobile devices;
segmenting private business acquaintances and personal contacts
email templates;
analytics tools;
AI Assistant;
campaign management.
This is one of the best personal CRM apps on the market. And if you're afraid the number of tools will be overwhelming, don't fret. You can take advantage of the Bitrix24 free tutorials and videos. You'll quickly learn which tools fit what task and within minutes understand how basic CRM features work.
Individuals will appreciate Bitrix24's customizable workflow processes. One-size-fits all is detrimental to workflow relationship management. Why? Because each one of us has developed different strategies and habits to tackle their workload. Why would we each want to use the same configurations as the next guy?
And if you're looking for the traditional CRM set of customer relations and lead management tools most CRM solutions offer, they're right inside Bitrix24's tool chest. But on top of these basic tools, you'll find advanced features such as lead management, sales pipeline management, and online payments processing tools.
You can easily productize your services and build an email marketing funnel all from the same place.
Bitrix24 is a personal CRM system with a free plan available. Unless you have a team of 12 or more, it's absolutely free. If you don't need 100GB of storage or the ability to conduct large meetings, you really don't need to pay for Bitrix24, and a free version will be more than enough for personal use.
Bitrix24 is a free personal CRM. Unless you have a team of 12 or more, it's absolutely free. If you don't need 100GB of storage or the ability to conduct large meetings, you really don't need to pay for Bitrix24, and a free version will be more than enough for personal use.
Zoho doesn't just offer customer relationship management tools. This popular platform boasts some unique tools you won't find elsewhere even if their other pickings are slim. If you're looking for gamification tools to increase your productivity, lead management tools, or comprehensive reporting, then Zoho is the best CRM choice.
It features a slick UI with an intuitive interface that's easy to use. Their communication and social media tools are well-designed. And you can easily implement their integrations to nurture relationships for both personal and professional networks.
The biggest downside to Zoho is a lack of workflow management. Especially for personal CRM this is an important tool Zoho has neglected to add.
While Zoho has a free plan for up to ten users, their free tier is missing some useful tools for personal use. If you want social CRM tools, AdWords integrations, email integration, and workflow automation, you'll have to pay $12 per user per month for the Standard edition.
Most people don't know Hubspot for their CRM offerings. They're better known for their dedicated marketing software. However, all the features of their customer relationship management suit are top-of-the-line.
Because Hubspot is primarily a marketing company, their CRM strong suit is in its ability to help you control your marketing performance. You control your content, channels and you get a full view of what matters to your marketing strategy straight from their dashboard.
And, if you already use Hubspot's marketing platform, it's already integrated with Hubspot's CRM. Easily capture leads, collect data on them, and use it to improve your marketing efforts and customer relationships.
Hubspot isn't big on customization. While they do allow some customization, most tools are one-size-fits-all. And unless you are going to or have signed up for their marketing suite, their CRM is fairly barebones.
Hubspot is what we call freemium. It has a free version, but many of the key features are add-ons you can pay for. There is an Enterprise package, but this won't be useful as a personal relationship management software.
Pipedrive is less a comprehensive CRM and more of a sales pipeline manager. If you already have all the productivity tools you want and need a basic sales manager, then Pipedrive is your relationship management software suite.
It includes integrations with Mailchimp for email marketing. It's super user-friendly. And what they do with sales, they do it well. You can easily keep track of what sales activities you have scheduled that day and where your leads are in the funnel.
The interface is Kanban-style just like Trello. So, if you're a visual person, Pipedrive might appeal to you.
There are three tiers for Pipedrive users. The first is the Essential tier which costs $12.50 per user per month. It includes 2GB of storage, and everything you would need as an individual including integrations through Zapier.
Freshsales CRM is well...fresh. It makes lead tracking easy and helps you manage them well. You can quickly assign importance to your leads or send them to your salespeople if you have any.
Their best tool is their email scheduling tool. It's easy to learn and reliable. Their email templates are top notch and fully customizable. And if you're working with a small team, then their collaborative notes feature will keep everyone connected and on track.
Even if you have a team, Freshsales' free CRM tier is fairly useful. It allows an unlimited number of users. It's integrated with email. And you have access to the mobile app.
But if you want the visual Kanban-style sales funnel view, you're going to pay $12 per user per month for their Blossom plan.
DEX is a personal CRM tool that collects all contact info from your social media. It is mostly implemented as a browser extension that helps easily create personal connections.
The data collection is easy and seamless, and it has various social media integrations. This CRM tool has a friendly interface and does not require extensive software knowledge. However, unlike traditional CRM, it has no marketing or sales features and is intended only for personal use.
This personal CRM tool has a free plan for 7 days. The unlimited plans start from $12 per month when billed annually.
Monica is an open-source personal CRM that helps you navigate private relationships and communications with your family or friends. Unfortunately this tool is not suitable for professional network circles.
If you are looking to create a better balance and divide your contacts, Monica is a choice for you. However, it does not have a mobile version and requires manual data input.
This CRM software has a completely free plan. However, you can get unlimited features starting from $9 per month.
[BANNER type="lead_banner_1" title="Is your CRM ready? Check the guide" content-title="Is your CRM ready? Check the guide" description="Enter your email to download a guide that will help you get started with any CRM system." picture-src="/images/content_en/articles/2-lead.png" file-path="/upload/files/CRM-implementation-Essential-checklist.pdf"]
You might not have the money to hire a personal assistant. But why not get the next best thing? A personal CRM software suite to assist with personal relationship management.
Our top pick is Bitrix24. You can not only use a free version for personal use, but manage business and personal relationships effectively. Its extensive toolset won't leave you disappointed. Sign up for your free Bitrix24 account now.