Contact Management Software

Boost sales productivity with contact management software

As a salesperson, Sarah relies on a chaotic combination of spreadsheets, sticky notes, and email inboxes to contact leads. Important appointments slip through the cracks, promising leads get buried, and she spends hours each week just trying to locate the right phone number or email ID.

Mark's small business is growing rapidly, and so is his customer base. He's struggling to keep track of his contact list and follow up on leads. He knows he's missing out on opportunities because of his disorganized contact management system.

If either Sarah or Mark sounds like you, contact management software could transform how you do business.

What is contact management software?

Contact management software is a digital tool that helps businesses centralize and organize their contact information. Not only does it store names, addresses, and phone numbers, but it also becomes a powerful relationship management tool. 

You can record notes from your conversations and set reminders for follow-ups. It can also sync with your email or calendar to ensure you get all the information in a single window.

Ideally, contact management is a capability of your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution. If contact management is part of your CRM system, you can track deals throughout the sales process, track interactions, manage sales pipelines, automate tasks, and gain insights into customer relationships.

Benefits of contact management software

Centralized hub: 

All customer information is in one place, accessible by individuals or across teams. This ensures the data is not fragmented and also gives you an in-depth view of the customer. With a better understanding of your customers, you can tailor campaigns to ensure better conversions.

Increased productivity: 

Automate routine tasks like data entry and appointment reminders. This frees up your time to focus on building relationships and closing deals. Track leads through the sales funnel, set follow-up reminders, and gain insights to optimize your sales strategies.

Streamline communication: 

No need to switch between applications. With a contact management module in your CRM, you can make calls and send emails to contacts directly from within the CRM, saving time and boosting efficiency.

Better team collaboration: 

Share your team's contact information, notes, and activity history. This ensures seamless handoffs, consistent messaging, and a unified customer experience.

Data-driven decision-making: 

Get detailed reports and analytics on your contacts, sales pipeline, and customer interactions. These insights help you identify areas for improvement and make data-backed decisions to drive business growth.

Top 10 contact management software solutions

1. Freshsales

Freshsales is not just a contact database. It’s an AI-powered CRM and sales management app that simplifies contact management, giving you back the time you need to build relationships and close deals. Its intuitive interface centralizes all your contact data, providing a 360-degree view of each customer interaction. This includes basic contact details and a chronological timeline of emails, calls, meetings, and other interactions.

Intuitively designed list, table, and Kanban views let you visualize data the way that works best for you. With one-click actions like sending emails, creating tasks, or initiating calls, Freshsales empowers you to engage with customers proactively and nurture relationships throughout their lifecycle.

2. Zendesk Sell

Zendesk Sell is a CRM software designed specifically for sales teams. It has a suite of features aimed at improving sales productivity and the rate at which deals are closed. These features include email integration, task management, call tracking, and sales automation. Zendesk Sell also provides a centralized hub for managing all customer data, giving sales teams a complete picture of each customer before each interaction.

3. Contact Boss

Contact Boss is a lightweight, user-friendly contact management tool perfect for small businesses. It allows for easy capture and management of contacts, including the ability to add notes, track visitor and call logs, and integrate directly with popular email platforms.

Contact Boss also highlights features like quick contact creation, robust search functionality, legacy data transfer capabilities, and event management functionality for those needing to organize client or lead-generating events.

4. Streak

Streak positions itself as a contact management solution deeply integrated within Gmail. It allows easy addition, editing, and collaboration on contact information directly within your inbox.

Streak emphasizes automatic data capture from emails and shared notes/call logs for team collaboration. Its mobile integration lets you access your contact and pipeline data on the go, making it a convenient solution for those heavily reliant on Gmail for their workflows.

5. Pipedrive

Pipedrive offers a CRM tool with features like contact and deal management, sales forecasting, and email integration. Collect customer data from imports, email, social media platforms, web forms and SMS to gain a wider view of your contacts in one contact management tool.

Key features include customizable pipelines, deal tracking, email integration, sales forecasting, and reporting tools to provide insights into team performance.

6. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign's sales CRM emphasizes a strong focus on automation and streamlining the sales process. It offers features like lead scoring, automatic deal creation from emails, and customizable sales pipelines to guide reps through the deal stages.

Integration with email marketing tools allows for targeted communication and nurturing throughout the customer journey. ActiveCampaign offers tools for contact management, email campaigns, website tracking, SMS marketing, customer support, etc.

7. Nimble

Nimble brands itself as a relationship-focused CRM, designed to help professionals nurture connections.

Nimble targets businesses and individuals who value building strong customer relationships. Features like contact tagging, customizable fields, and its unified inbox help centralize customer communication. Workflows and task management tools streamline follow-ups and help businesses stay on top of nurturing leads and contacts.

8. Nextiva

Nextiva focuses on enabling seamless customer communication across multiple channels. Their platform combines business phone features, video conferencing, and SMS. This provides a unified communication experience for handling customer interactions across various touchpoints.

Their features include sharing call and text history, creating contact profiles, and staying connected on the go with their mobile app. It appears to be a good option for businesses seeking a centralized platform to manage internal and external communications.

9. Keap

Keap's emphasis is on providing an all-in-one solution for small businesses to manage customer relationships and automate key aspects of their sales and marketing.

Features like lead capture, email marketing campaigns, and appointment scheduling point toward helping small businesses nurture leads and drive sales.

10. Hubspot

Hubspot CRM emphasizes creating a centralized and organized customer database. It doesn’t just store business contacts, but also interaction history across email, calls, and meetings. HubSpot automatically updates contact information, reducing manual data entry and ensuring data accuracy.

HubSpot's approach to contact management seems geared towards scalability and ease of use. It has features like task creation, deal association, and communication logging directly within contact records to ensure sales reps have all the context needed to engage with customers and leads effectively.

What to look for in contact management software

In addition to just contact management features or project management capabilities, here’s what you need to look for:

Multichannel communication: A good contact management software should allow you to communicate with your contacts through various channels–email, phone calls, SMS, and maybe even social media integrations. This streamlines your outreach and lets you connect with customers on their preferred platforms.

360 view of contacts: The software should provide a comprehensive view of each contact, including their interaction history, notes, associated deals, and other relevant information. This gives you the context you need to offer personalized experiences.

Automation: Robust automation features are essential to boost sales productivity. Look for tools that can automate tasks like lead scoring, follow-up reminders, email sequences, and data entry, saving time and ensuring a streamlined workflow.

Ease of use: An intuitive interface makes all the difference for salespeople using the software. It should be easy to learn and navigate, encouraging adoption across your team.

Integrations: Seamless integration with your existing tools (email, calendars, marketing automation platforms, etc.) is crucial for a seamless workflow.

Reporting and analytics: Look for built-in reporting tools that provide insights into your contact data, sales pipeline, and team performance. This enables better decision-making.

Scalability: Ensure the Contact Management Software can grow with your business, offering flexible plans to accommodate your changing needs.

Security: Your customer data needs to be safe. Choose a solution with robust security protocols, encryption, and regular backups to protect sensitive information.

Mobile app: In today's mobile-first world, a mobile app is a huge advantage. It lets you access and edit contact information on the go, ensuring you're always connected to your business.

Best practices for contact management software

Clean and maintain data: Regularly review and update data and ensure information is accurate and consistent.

• Utilize custom fields: Create custom fields to track data points relevant to your specific business needs.

• Shared access: Grant appropriate access levels to team members to facilitate seamless collaboration.

• Integrate communication tools: Connect your CRM with email, calendars, and team messaging platforms to centralize communication, avoid data fragmentation, and get the required context.

• Notes and activity logging: Encourage teams to log all interactions, notes, and updates within the software for shared visibility.

• Segmentation: Group contacts based on demographics, behavior, or interests to deliver targeted communication.

• Choose a reputable provider: Select a contact management software with robust security measures, encryption, and regular backups to safeguard sensitive customer data. Ensure compliance with data privacy regulations like GDPR.

Why Freshsales is the best contact management software

Freshsales is an AI-powered, multichannel, cloud-based CRM that doesn’t stop at just contact management. Here’s what you can get from Freshsales.

• Engage with context: Get a comprehensive understanding of every contact with Freshsales' Customer 360° view. Visualize data in table, list, or Kanban formats, and access quick actions for sending emails, creating sales activities, or making calls. Gain actionable insights with a chronological view of interactions, associated highlights, and the last contact information.

• Interact with prospects across channels: Freshsales streamlines customer communication with built-in email, phone, and chat capabilities. Communicate with prospects and provide real-time support across channels like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and more. The integrated phone system lets you quickly connect with leads, automatically log and record calls, and analyze call data to uncover performance trends. Additionally, Freshsales has email templates and lets you customize emails for effective large-scale outreach, ensuring your messages resonate with your audience.

• Lead generation simplified: Capture and nurture high-quality leads with Freshsales' webforms. Create new code-free forms or integrate existing forms into Freshsales. Every lead flows directly into your CRM solution for seamless lead management and sales follow-up.

• Go after the hottest prospects: Freddy AI, Freshsales' native AI, is your always-on copilot that helps you prioritize leads and focus on the most promising opportunities. Freddy analyzes contact behavior and engagement, assigning scores and recommending the best next actions.

• Assign leads instantly: Eliminate time-consuming manual lead assignments with auto-assignment rules. Leads are automatically routed to the right sales reps based on your custom criteria, improving responsiveness and streamlining your sales process.

• Understand prospects: Instantly enhance contact profiles with Freshsales' auto-profile enrichment. Save time on research by automatically populating social and public information.

• Boost productivity: Optimize your workflow with powerful automation. Forward sales emails directly to your CRM platform for automatic contact creation. Create custom workflows to trigger tasks, send emails and SMS messages, set reminders, update fields, and more.

• CRM on the go: The Freshsales mobile app (iOS and Android) keeps your contact data at your fingertips. Quickly access and update contact information, view interaction histories, and schedule follow-ups–all from your smartphone. Real-time push notifications keep you updated on crucial contact-related events like new leads, tasks, and upcoming appointments.