PipeDrive is a great tool for managing outbound sales efforts.
There are lots of tools for managing inbound domain sales leads, such as Uniregistry Market and Efty. But there aren’t any that make it easy to handle outbound sales efforts, and most CRM systems are overkill for something like this.
One CRM-like system I’ve used a lot for sales efforts that will work well for domains is PipeDrive. PipeDrive is an easy-to-use sales tracking system with CRM functionalities.
The general workflow of the system is that you move deals through a sales pipeline. You can make the steps in the pipeline whatever you’d like. So here’s a simple pipeline I set up for domain sales with four steps: Lead Identified > Contact Made > Response Received > Negotiations.
You enter each of your leads in the first column and then move them along as you progress. You can also assign deal values to each deal, add a contact, and pull in emails you send to each lead. At any time you can move the deal to “Won” or “Lost”. You can see your pipeline’s dollar size throughout the process. This sample from PipeDrive shows what it’s like with lots of deals in the pipeline:
A best practice is to create follow up tasks for each lead so you don’t let any of them rot. For example, if someone responds and says they’re interested but then doesn’t reply to your next email, you can set up an alert to remind you to reach out again in two weeks.
Some people demand the robust tools that CRMs like Salesforce offer, but I find it to be overkill for many applications. These tools can also be expensive. PipeDrive is not; after a free trial, the Silver plan (which will be good enough for most people) is $12 per month.
page Howe says
thanks for the tip, does this just manage the existing leads, or does it do the outbound emailing also?
Andrew Allemann says
You can sync it with your email or bcc emails to have them pull into PipeDrive:
https://www.pipedrive.com/features/email-integration
It’s not going to bulk email for you, though, if that’s what you’re asking.
John Harrison says
A Mixergy favourite!
Eric Lyon says
This is interesting and useful. I suppose, my only concern in moving outbound data from a secure/localized area on my PC to an online storage and tracking system controlled by someone else, would be; How do they handle their data security and will they be scanning outbound sales leads submitted by users to use later themselves?
Andrew Allemann says
It’s definitely worth looking at their data policies. That said, they aren’t in the domain business and probably wouldn’t have use for any of your leads.
Edward Zeiden says
It’s worth noting that while PipeDrive’s features fall short of Salesforce, they have a robust API and their platform allows for copious 3rd party integrations. For instance, those with larger portfolios might be interested in visualizing and analyzing their PipeDrive data with Domo. Here’s a list of add-ons they support: https://www.pipedrive.com/en/features/integrations?category=all
ShaneT says
I find that free Bitrix24 is a lot more better at lead capture and sales automation. Pipedrive is too simple. Bitrix24 is somewhere in between Pipedrive and Salesforce. And again, free is free.
Dale Hubbard says
For a completely automated outbound campaign system, you could take a look at DomainOutbound.com.
Jack says
interesting article – I wonder how they will deal with GDPR on this moving forward?