10 Best CRMs for Consultants in 2023: Streamline Your Workflow and Boost Your Productivity

In today's digitized world, it is increasingly vital that consultants of all stripes utilize the power of CRM software to improve their productivity and streamline workflows. CRM tools have the power to give you the competitive edge and keep clients retained for longer. Everything from sales pipelines to project management, time tracking and much more can be optimized with a high quality CRM tool. Today, there are a plethora of good options and choosing the right CRM is no mean feat. Here at Toksta, we researched and tested 10 of the best CRMs equipped to handle everything a consultant needs. We look at pros, cons, pricing and more. Let's get into it!

The consulting industry is booming, expanding by 4.1% in 2022 alone, yet it has largely failed to adapt to an increasingly digital world. Key day-to-day processes like data collection, analysis, reporting and admin tasks can all be automated with the right CRM.

But any old CRM won't do the trick, to effectively automate and scale processes, you'll need something feature packed and specifically designed to handle the tasks that are part of every consultant's working day. Whether you work in management, strategy, operations, financial consulting or anything else, there is no doubt many of the mundane tasks can be automated with one of the tools outlined in this article.

Here are some of the ways you might use a CRM to improve productivity as a consultant:

1. Strategy consultants: Automate the data collection and analysis process. For example, you could use a survey tool to gather feedback from customers, employees, or stakeholders and sync the data with their chosen CRM. This data could be used to create a shareable report within that colleagues can review findings and recommendations based on the data.
2. Management consultants: Automate the project management and collaboration process. For example, you could use a project management tool to create and update project plans, milestones, deliverables, and budgets and sync them with the CRM. You can then share updates, feedback, and files with clients and colleagues and have everything logged in one place. a CRM gives you the ability to monitor the development of a given project and hold the appropriate parties responsible.
3. Financial Advisory Consultants: Automate the client onboarding and service delivery process. For example, you could use built-in document management tools to collect and store client documents such as financial statements, tax returns, or investment portfolios and link them with the CRM. Then, you could use a financial analysis tool to generate and share financial reports, plans, or recommendations based on the client data from the CRM.
4. Operations consultants: Automate the process mapping and improvement process. For example, you could use a process mapping tool to create and visualize the current and future state of their client’s business processes and integrate them with the CRM. Then, they could use a process improvement tool to identify and eliminate bottlenecks, waste, or errors in the processes and track the results in the CRM.

We analyzed the following CRM software for the quality of the features most consultants require to improve productivity:

• Project Management: these features allow you to plan and execute your projects with your clients and team members. Assign roles and responsibilities, build and update project plans, milestones, deliverables, and budgets, as well as communicate and work with your stakeholders. Project management tools can also be used to monitor the progress and success of your projects, handle any changes/problems and assess the performance of individual team members.
• Contact Management: store and arrange all data on your contacts and clients in one place, including names, email addresses, phone numbers, mailing addresses, business or industry types, etc. Each contact record can additionally have notes, tags, attachments, or custom fields to store specific data added. These features allow you to divide your contacts into groups or lists according to factors like geography, interest, behavior, etc. Using filters or keywords, you can find contacts and their project/communication history with ease.
• Proposal Management: These tools allow you to create and send professional proposals to your leads and prospects. You can use templates or design your own proposals using drag-and-drop elements. You can also add interactive features such as videos or calculators to enhance your proposals. You can use this feature to track the delivery and engagement of your proposals such as opens, clicks, signature status, proposal expiry dates and more.
• Sales Pipeline Management: These features help you to manage and monitor your sales process from lead generation to deal closure. Establish and modify several pipeline phases, assign tasks and activities to each level, and monitor the development and effectiveness of your agreements. This function may also be used to forecast your revenue, spot possibilities and risks, and improve your overall sales/onboarding strategy.

Quick Comparison of CRM software for Consultants:

The Top 10 Best CRM Software For Consultants Are:

1. HubSpot
2. Zoho CRM
3. Scoro
4. Less Annoying CRM
5. Freshworks
6. ClickUp
7. Pipedrive
8. Agile CRM
9. Insightly
10. Teamwave

1. HubSpot

Founded: 2006
HQ: Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States

HubSpot's platform is a comprehensive solution for managing customer relationship management needs. It provides a wide range of features and tools that can help you accelerate the growth of your business.

One of its most powerful tools is the sales automation pipeline. It automatically captures, qualifies, and prioritizes leads, saving you valuable time and effort. Also, you can set up workflows to automate routine tasks, such as creating deals and sending bulk messages, allowing you to focus on strategic sales activities.
It helps build strong client relationships by sending personalized messages unique to each of your contacts. It automatically retrieves relevant information, such as client interactions and personal details, from the CRM to compose messages.

However, HubSpot's capabilities go beyond sales automation. It offers several project templates that streamline project management. It facilitates collaboration and organization. Admins can easily create and assign tasks to team members, set deadlines, and track progress in real-time. Team members can share files, leave comments, and track time spent on each task. It also integrates smoothly with popular project management tools like Trello and Asana.

In addition, the meeting scheduler feature eliminates the need for back-and-forth communication. Clients can view your calendar and choose a suitable time that works for both of you. Moreover, HubSpot's free live chat software enables you to send context-aware messages automatically. All conversations are stored in a central inbox, providing a clear overview of all client engagements.

Finally, HubSpot's built-in quote software makes creating quotes a breeze by auto-populating information from the CRM. Quotes are interactive and can collect payments and e-signatures, making it easier for you and your clients to close deals faster.

With all these features and more, it's easy to see why HubSpot is the go-to platform for businesses looking to streamline their customer relationship management and boost their growth.

2. Zoho CRM

Founded: 2005
HQ: Austin, Texas, United States; Chennai India

Zoho CRM’s contact management software helps you communicate with your clients across multiple channels. You can respond to Twitter mentions, live chat, call, and even send emails from within the CRM. It also helps you deliver world-class customer service through integrations with help desk software like Zendesk and the in-house Zoho Desk.

Furthermore, the built-in analytics help you optimize email communication with clients. These tools help you discover the best periods to send out emails and marketing campaigns. They also show you which templates and designs generate the most engagement.

Zoho CRM offers a built-in project management module that allows consultants to create and manage projects. This module allows them to assign tasks to team members, set deadlines, and track progress in real-time. You can also bring your clients into the project, allowing them to view project details, offer feedback, upload documents, and even create tasks themselves. The document library allows everyone involved with the project to share files, communicate and receive real-time updates on the project’s status.

The project management features allow consultants to create customized proposals, track proposal versions and set up workflows for proposal approvals. Moreover, the built-in reporting and analytics tools help consultants track proposal performance and identify areas for improvement. They can monitor metrics like the number of proposals sent, the number of accepted proposals, and win rates.

This CRM gives you the tools to focus on deals that have the best chances of closure, learn vital information about them, and create customized sales pipelines for your business. The deal dashboard helps you visualize all deals and numbers associated with them at a single glance. It also offers advanced filters which you can use to find deals quickly.

Once a deal is closed, this software instantly generates an invoice based on the terms of the agreement. With this, your sales team can finalize the sales process before the customer backs out of the deal. The invoice creation software allows you to add accessories to your invoice and market additional items. It takes full advantage of the inventory integration to ensure that your clients are only offered fully-stocked items.

3. Scoro

Founded: 2010
HQ: New York, United States

Scoro offers several tools that make managing complex tasks very easy. You can use it to plan your work and assign tasks with a Kanban task board or a drag-and-drop planner. It also offers shared calendars, timesheets, and a time tracker to help you manage your time more effectively. What's more, it automatically logs your hours so you can accurately report the time spent on client tasks.

This project management software displays all tasks, events, dependencies, and general progress in a real-time Gantt chart. It reduces the need for manual updates and double bookings. Also, it enhances team collaboration with the drag-and-drop interface that allows you to zoom in on the details of a member's tasks at any scale.

If you're looking to speed up routine tasks, you should try Scoro’s automation tools. They allow you to convert quotes into assigned projects and tasks. You can further save time by basing your work on project templates and task bundles. Finally, Scoro offers automatic notifications and deadline alerts.

The sales pipeline shows an overview of the entire sales funnel and your team member's sales progress. It allows you to filter leads by user, status, date, and any other criteria. You can also add new quotes and activities to the pipeline, allowing you to create follow-up tasks and events. Moreover, changing the status of a quote is as easy as dragging it into the desired column.

The CRM portion of this software provides a 360-degree view of each customer, showing a detailed history of communication, projects, quotes, and even files. It tracks all active deals and helps you optimize your closing rate. Additionally, it simplifies the quoting and billing process, using standard services, multi-currency cards, and customizable quotes and invoices.

4. Less Annoying CRM

Founded: 2009
HQ: St. Louis, Missouri, United States

Less Annoying CRM stores all your contact information in a central location. Using the visual dashboard, you can see all tasks, events, files, and other relevant information about a contact. You can also attach personal notes and edit the information with ease. Moreover, the simple but powerful search quickly finds contacts.

This web-based CRM is highly secure and can be accessed through any device with an internet connection. You can import and export contact information at the click of a button. Additionally, it sends daily reminders for all pending tasks and events, so you can attend to your tasks without logging in.

Less Annoying CRM allows you to build custom customer profiles with unique fields and information. You can create separate records for leads, customers, and companies with the same contact database. Interestingly, this customization also extends to sales pipelines, as you can have different pipeline structures for different types of leads.

The sales pipeline tracks every lead and provides updated reports on their status, priority, contact information, and last meeting notes. You can use it to assign specific leads to team members and track their progress and performance.

Still on team collaboration, the central calendar shows all events and tasks assigned to every team member. It is built directly into the CRM and syncs with Google Calendar. Less Annoying CRM allows you to control sharing and visibility, deciding which member has access to what data.

This software offers proposal management features through integrations with third-party apps like Nusii and GoProposal. As such, you can automatically send proposals to clients and track them from within the CRM. Just indicate to the proposal software which pipeline stage should trigger the proposal-sending event and which status updates to apply to the relevant clients.

5. Freshworks

Founded: 2010
HQ: Sam Mateo, California, United States

Freshworks offers a 360-degree view of all customer information, empowering your team to form deeper client relationships. You can visualize customer data as a spreadsheet table, list, or the more modern Kanban board. Each view has its advantages and you can switch between them at any time. They also show a linear timeline of each customer’s engagement with your business.

Omnichannel messaging ensures that you can reach your customers across any communication media. Connect your inbox and send emails from within the app. Alternatively, use chatbots and the live chat service for a more responsive conversation. Moreover, you can use SMS and third-party messaging services like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and LINE.

Freshsales also allows you to have voice calls with the cloud telephony feature and video calls with the Zoom integration. All things considered, you’re covered on all bases and can communicate with clients on their preferred medium.

If you’re looking to automate tasks, Freshworks allows you to use advanced workflows to create complex sequences with conditions and event-based triggers. On the other hand, you can use the simpler sales sequences to chain actions together and execute them on a large group of contacts.

The Freshservice module provides several project management tools, including an easy-to-use "Projects” dashboard. This visual editor shows all active, completed, and archived projects. It also displays vital information on each project, including the owner, title, due date, percentage completion, and pending tasks.

Projects are extremely easy to create and team collaboration is a breeze. For example, each team member can add new members, create tasks, assign tasks, add dependencies, and create subtasks. Each task has a comment section that facilitates easy communication among members. It can also be used to provide feedback and take notes about the project.

Freshsales is feature-rich, with hundreds of tools and subsystems. It’s also one of the cheapest CRMs on this list with a $15 starting price. Customers have praised its ease of use and customer support.

6. ClickUp

Founded: 2016
Headquarters: San Diego, California, United States

ClickUp is a productivity-boosting project management tool and CRM that helps teams to plan and collaborate on projects, tasks, documents, and whiteboards. As its name suggests, this software can be set up and customized in just a few clicks.

One of ClickUp’s primary features is project organization. It allows you to group teams and departments into spaces, projects into folders, and tasks into lists to have a clear overview of your organization’s structure. You can also break tasks into subtasks, nested subtasks, and checklists. In addition, you can use the “Everything” view to find anything you’re looking for within seconds.

The task management feature allows you to create highly customizable tasks for any project. Choose from over 35 ClickUp apps to add automation, custom data fields, reporting, and many more tasks. For example, you can add a time tracker to tasks so you can accurately assess your team’s productivity.

It goes without saying that team collaboration on this app is top of the line. For one, it offers two-way calendar sync to view all pending tasks and team events. Additionally, the whiteboard allows members with permission to share their ideas and other information. Members can comment and reply to each other’s tasks, and even send emails in-app.

ClickUp allows you to create and customize your dashboards. You can assign tasks, monitor team performance, or plan and track business goals from a customizable control center. Moreover, the dashboard builder gives you over 50 widgets that provide data for any information you want to display.

Despite its primary function as a project management software, ClickUp offers a sales pipeline project template that helps funnel your leads into clients. This template provides 30 built-in lead statutes, three automation, and seven ClickApps to help you get underway. These ClickApps include time tracking, lead prioritization, and custom fields.

7. Pipedrive

Founded: 2010
HQ: NewYork, United States

Pipedrive’s lead management software offers tools like the leads inbox, live chat, and chatbot that help you increase the number of closed deals and reduce the time spent closing them. Unlike other CRMs, its lead pipelines are activity-driven, meaning leads progress through the pipeline as you complete tasks. In addition, it lets you add colored cues to each deal so you can know which ones to prioritize.

The communication tools allow you to complete all transactions without ever leaving the app. For example, the lead inbox gathers all correspondence with each deal and displays them in a central location so you can view all emails, SMS, and live chats within the same dashboard. What’s more, you can use the 24/7 chatbot to attend to clients until a sales rep is available.

Pipedrive is renowned for its workflow automation features which have increased task completion rates by up to 16 percent. These features help you perform repetitive tasks, send emails automatically and schedule activities when a deal has reached a specific stage in the pipeline. If you want to save time setting up a workflow, the template library offers several templates that work out of the box!

The contact management system includes a time-saving feature that can instantly retrieve web data about your contacts at a single click. Smart contact data searches the internet for valuable information about your leads that can help you close deals faster. It pre-qualifies leads, telling you which ones are hot and likely to convert.

Pipedrive allows you to send personalized emails to your contacts from a single template. It automatically tailors email content to match each contact’s interests. You can automate this action with customized triggers and conditions.

This CRM integrates with PandaDoc, DocuSign, and other proposal management software. In addition, it provides sales proposal document templates and tips for writing a winning proposal.

8. Agile CRM

Founded: 2001
Headquarters: Atalanta, Georgia, United States

Agile CRM allows you to build custom contact profiles. You can add communication history, lead score, tasks, personal notes, and social media profiles to contacts. Every team member can access and update these profiles so that there is only one source of information. As a result, your team can maximize efficiency and focus on completing tasks rather than data entry.

You can sync up to three email accounts from any email service provider, enabling two-way communication with your team, clients, and prospects.
It also provides a visual timeline of all activities and correspondence with each contact. Additionally, the CMS offers tag-based segmentation and can group clients based on attributes like location, industry, and company size.

Agile CRM’s deal pipeline offers a drag-and-drop interface for managing deals and other sales processes. You can quickly edit details and change task assignments. You can update your pipeline with essential information and even create milestones on the fly. Each pipeline can have multiple tracks and you can freely move deals between them. Further, you can automate pipelines and trigger workflows based on dynamic conditions.

This CRM includes comprehensive project management tools to organize your company activities. It has a drag-and-drop interface to easily create, edit, delete, and move tasks between sections. The advanced sorting functionalities allow you to find and filter tasks based on priority, due date, status, or any custom filter.

Agile CRM provides over 50 other features that are useful to any consultancy. It offers appointment scheduling, insights and reporting, telephony, lead scoring, and many more. It’s also one of the cheapest CRMs on this list, so there’s little wonder why it’s highly rated.

9. Insightly

Founded: 2001
Headquarters: Atalanta, Georgia, United States

One of the first things you’d notice about Insightly is the sheer number of industries it serves. In fact, it has a dedicated page explaining how you can use it to give your consultancy an edge. It integrates with over 2000 apps, so you can use it with your HR, accounting, and quoting software.

Insightly helps you build a sales pipeline that converts leads into opportunities. It captures relevant information about each lead. Then, it scores them and automatically assigns them to a team member based on preset criteria. Additionally, it provides real-time information on all deals so you can monitor their progress and track team performance.

This CRM also offers workflow automation to automate repetitive tasks, reduce manual data entry, and eliminate human error. What’s more, it helps you scale your business faster by automating broadcast messages, onboarding, reminders, and many more. That way, your team can focus on more productive tasks.

Unlike most CRMs, Insightly includes validation rules when updating business-critical fields. This ensures compliance and accuracy during data entry. It also enforces advanced permissions so only the right roles and profiles can access sensitive data.

Other useful Insightly features include branded quotes, price books and invoices, project and task management, customer email management, and performance insights. Interestingly, this CRM offers other products like the Marketing and Service modules with several more features.

10. TeamWave CRM

Founded: 2016
HQ: Wilmington, Delaware, United States

TeamWave is an ideal CRM solution for consultants managing remote teams and clients. It brings the features of an HRM (human resource management) platform, a CRM platform, and a project management tool onto a single platform. TeamWave allows consultants to manage their clients, sales, projects, and marketing campaigns using a centralized solution.

Consulting requires precise gathering, storing, and analysis of data about multiple clients. TeamWave allows consultants to gather this information about each of their clients, obtain valuable insights from the same, and track the ongoing projects handled by teams working remotely.

TeamWave’s visual sales pipeline allows your sales reps to nurture leads while staying organized and in control of the complexity of your sales processes. The CRM solution also helps you customize your sales pipeline according to your business preferences, helping you manage your clients better.

Consulting often relies heavily on the confidentiality of data. Along with providing layered security to the users, TeamWave gives them the option of controlling what the client and team members can see. This makes collaboration with clients, partners, and team members seamless. Its contact management feature lets you manage all your contacts without switching to a different platform, helping you build healthy client relationships.

The project management features of TeamWave help you track your ongoing projects and view past projects. From delegating authority to breaking down the work into manageable deliverables, these features ensure that you execute all your consulting projects with finesse.

Consulting projects also rely heavily on reports. Extensive data analytics and comprehensive reports help you explain key business aspects, opportunities, and risks to your clients. TeamWave helps create customizable reports and interactive dashboards to gain instant visibility into records. This helps you and your team members make data-driven decisions, identify issues, and remediate them before the project derails.

While TeamWave provides an array of features, including access to a dedicated mobile application, you will have to spend at least $39/month to access its basic tools. Moreover, the CRM solution provided limited customization options, making it difficult to tailor the features according to needs down to a T.
However, if budgeting and quotation are not your priorities and you have a remote team to manage and need a solution that packs the punch of CRM, HRM, and project management, you should try TeamWave.

Our Pick - HubSpot

A combination of great pricing, extensive features, ease of use, and reliability combined with extensive integration capabilities makes HubSpot Toksta's top CRM software for Consultants in 2023.

Try HubSpot for Free

Meet the author

Sam Cassman is a seasoned growth marketer with over 10 years of experience as growth marketer for startups and small businesses. He is the founder of Toksta, a research technology company that helps businesses find and purchase the best software and SaaS. Sam has also run his own growth marketing consultancy Honest Growth, where he helped numerous clients to grow their businesses, including Eventcube, Baluu, Obby, and NBM Group.

Learn More About Sam