Choosing light: what matters at 5-30 people

If you do need to change tools (lesson 1 may have shown you that you do not), the classic trap is choosing “the most complete one”. Do the opposite.

The four criteria that decide

1. A record gets created in thirty seconds, on a phone. Your salesperson steps out of a call. If they cannot create the contact, jot two lines and schedule the follow-up in thirty seconds from their phone, they will not do it, and they will be right.

2. Per-seat pricing must not punish hiring. A per-seat licence looks harmless at five people. At twenty, it is a tax on every hire. Do the maths over three years, not over the first month.

3. It does pipeline, follow-ups, notes, and that is all it is asked. Invoicing, signatures and production have their own tools. A CRM that claims to do everything ends up doing everything halfway, and nobody finds their way around it.

4. Your data leaves in one click. A complete, readable export, at any time. It is your guarantee that you can leave, and the best test of a vendor's seriousness.

How to test without fooling yourself

No sales demo: a trial with three real files. Take three deals in progress and live them in the tool for two weeks: creation, follow-up, quote, close. The team will tell you whether it helps or gets in the way.

This week: list what your current tool really costs per month, seats included, and what it gives back. If the “gives back” column is empty, the problem may be the structure: that is lesson 3.