13 Best CRMs for Consultants & Consulting Firms Providing Professional Services in 2024

Are you a consultant and love to be your own boss?

Are you passionate about keeping challenges and solving them right away?

Are your consultancy strategies potentially driving growth in your client's businesses?

Umm, I guess, probably your answer could be a big YES. But be honest about one most crucial point.

Do your consultants end up spending more time in other people’s offices than your own? Are you lagging behind in terms of management?

Yup! Then you need to start thinking about why. Let me tell you, most probably you forget to reach your audience at the right time or you may overlook the importance of each client and realize later on. And, the reason why you go through multiple in-person meetings and spend much on that.

However, to keep your problems sorted, a CRM for professional consultancy services can help you out. Be it smoothly building relationships with your clients, nurturing them, automating sales engagement, or following up with them from your bedroom or desk, a CRM seamlessly manages every touchpoint. For greater benefits, you can always use CRM best practices in your sales and marketing strategy.

Why should you consider a CRM for your consulting business?

Let’s suppose, you’re an expert consultant for one of the top global healthcare business provider brands namely UnitedHealth Group Inc., and you’re probably dealing with a significant number of clients at a time. As a healthcare advisor, you may need to talk to hospital board members, doctors, pharmaceutical entities, and medicine providers.

And your tasks become so hectic when you’re in a rush and under pressure, that you probably do not figure out when and why you connected with those people or who have informed you to have an immediate meeting.

Now, the question is if you have failed to stand on your own expectations how could you figure out work on your client’s expectations and address their concern?

“There are only two ways to solve a problem: stop dwelling, and start doing.” ― Emily Uraih.

Yes, this is the answer to your problem and the only way to turn over a new leaf.

You may surely agree that the key factor in building strong relationships with your clients is to be able to communicate proactively. By doing that, you will always be on track to build a lasting relationship with them. Using a CRM system will ease the process by:

✅ Providing your team with the data of past interactions and your customer backgrounds to improve customer support.

✅ Automating repetitive tasks in sales processes and assigning leads to the specific sales reps in your team.

✅ Creating personalized email templates and saving them for future use to save time while sending them in bulk.

✅ Forecasting your sales deals each month and getting a high-level view of your sales pipeline so that you can work on customer engagement strategies to increase sales.

✅ Providing advanced metrics, analytics, and reporting to see which of your lead generation strategies work best.

✅ Defining what stage you are in the sales pipeline or which clients are close to closing the deal, the management tools will give you a comprehensive look all over the process.

13 best CRMs for your consulting firm to choose from while experiencing revenue growth & ease in management

Being a consultant means dealing with hundreds, or even thousands of clients. It concerns any type of business: travel, insurance, lawyer services, and so on. Well, to ease your process swiftly, this list is curated with top CRMs in the consulting industry, just have a look 👇

Zixflow

Zixflow is a name of AI based CRM for consultants that actually makes you a pro while automating each and every task at a single swipe. With this tool, your dream to stand out from the crowd and give a tough fight in the consulting sales arena comes true. Well, there are multiple reasons why you need to go with Zixflow over other CRMs which you should look at at least once, and here are they 👇

Streamline your consulting tasks with Zixflow’s workflow automation

Do you know that 57% of organizations utilize automation to speed up workflow and enhance productivity?

You can do the same with Zixflow’s workflow automation and scale your consulting teams’ performance to a newer height. 

With Zixflow, you can apply the filter and sort feature while customizing a list with multiple variables such as title, date and time, deal statuses, deal value, assignee, connecting medium, and so on. This tool enables you to set the IFTT (If This Then That) trigger to meet certain criteria. Also, if you want to see the workflow table with different views, you can do that while utilizing the Kanban-style, to-do list, and more. 

Now, how will it be helpful in your consulting business? With automation first and foremost, you will be able to eliminate manual as well as repetitive tasks, which cause you no error. Also, if you have multiple consulting projects, you can process all those hands by hand.

Smooth your consulting meetings with Meeting scheduler

Do you forget to attend valuable meetings? Do you face problems reaching your clients with updated notes? Or Do you need to use another app to set reminders?

Well, if you face all these problems till now, it’s your time to get over the hectic schedule with Zixflow’s meeting scheduler. As you know your customers expect a lot from your direct engagement and you should not only prioritize them but also show respect and provide value. 

With Zixflow’s meeting scheduling process, you can share your available time, and quickly share updated times with a sweet note while eliminating the need for WhatsApp or email messages. Also, Zixflow enables you to share meeting links through omnichannel messages while collaborating with your clients for consultation.

Seamlessly manage consulting contacts to nurture relationships

Whether you’re a consultant for a particular business, or you're a startup or entrepreneur trying to figure out different consultancy purposes, Zxflow helps you with managing a wide range of contacts in one place. With Zixflow, you can easily walk through your client’s history and update clients’ info at your fingertips.

This is very helpful especially when you’re in a rush to immediately reach out to respective clients and try to be not messy within multiple contacts. It actually boosts your collaboration purposes and satisfies your audience because you definitely reach the right people with the right content while targeting to impress your sales prospects.

Utilize lead capturing form to qualify them

With Zixflow, you can utilize lead-capturing forms either in your website as an embedded one, or you can use those forms as a landing page to showcase relevant questions. Next, you can automate the process so that your target audience can easily pass your lead qualification checklist.

Zixflow’s form builder helps you to customize the form as you want and utilize a custom-built lead list to organize your consulting qualifying leads smoothly. Then you can add images, write descriptions, or attach important links to engage your leads just like a cakewalk.

Follow-up consulting clients with Zixflow’s email feature

What do you think? Providing consulting tips to skyrocket sales like a pro sales influencer is enough? Don’t you need to keep engaged after this?

Surely, your answer could be a big yes. While you follow up with your important clients, you not only enhance your bond but also show gratitude towards them. Other than this, with follow-up emails, you can provide additional benefits at a low cost and that could be your super cool customer retention strategy.

Well, Zixflow’s built-in AI writer helps you with this all. You can use this AI writer to write, rewrite, rephrase, and summarize content in a personalized way while guiding the writer with the pre-mentioned criteria. Also, you can utilize custom email templates to catch your clients’ attention, split these emails based on different needs, and track all those in a way like you’re watching whether your customers open or click on the attachment.

Pricing of Zixflow

To support your concern about fixing the pay-as-you-use, Zixflow’s pricing structure allows you to leverage benefits with affordable plans along with a 7-day free trial.

HubSpot Sales Hub

Hubspot sales Hub is a versatile CRM that could be an ideal choice if you are looking to combine consulting, marketing, and sales automation. This combo makes Hubspot an effective lead qualifying, lead nurturing, and lead routing tool for your consultancy firm.

This consulting CRM helps you manage your contacts effectively so that no lead feels undermined, and grade leads to help you determine when and why they need your attention. You can swiftly do all this while enhancing your as well as your teams' efforts and engaging your clients to provide a homely environment.

Key features of HubSpot Sales Hub

• You can optimize your consultants' daily operations by consolidating task management and CRM functions into a unified platform.
  

• Hubspot allows you to effortlessly sync with Gmail or Outlook to go with hassle-free meetings with your prospects and leads.
  

• You can enhance your consultants with on-the-go productivity through Hubspot's intuitive mobile app, ensuring they stay effective and connected anytime, anywhere.
  

• With Hubspot, you can smoothly enhance customer support efficiency by utilizing snippets – concise, reusable blocks of text that simplify communication and issue resolution.
  

• Streamline the prospect data collection process with Hubspot's user-friendly drag-and-drop builder feature for custom forms, making it easy to gather valuable information.
  

• You can take control of lead management to efficiently track and nurture leads while enhancing the overall sales engagement process for your business.

Zoho CRM

If you are looking for a well-designed CRM that makes you refresh by eliminating consultant management pressure, Zoho CRM does this job for you. It is a smart AI-powered communication stack that helps you convert your marketing leads into sales leads and helps your business thrive.

With its effective contact management program you can smoothly build rapport in sales because you'll not be messy while sending the right deals to the right people. With Zoho CRM, you can constantly help your clients' whenever they seek for while enhancing customer relationships and speeding up earning your customer’s trust. If you’re confused between Freshsales vs Zoho CRM, then we suggest you check out our blog exploring the key differences between the two. We recommend checking top alternatives to Zoho for doing extensive research and investing in the best-suited CRM for your business.

Key features of Zoho

• With Zoho, you can track targets in various ways, while keeping a sharp eye on each consultancy move and benefiting from region-wise lead tracker, individual performance tracker, individual sales reps tracker, etc.

• Zoho allows you to access its platform without any lock-in period which means you can opt out whenever you want and without any hidden charges.

• With Zoho, you can personalize contact management with 500 custom fields per module.

• You can easily collect any details of your prospect while using 100 web-to-lead forms per module. Also, this CRM allows admins to test new tools, fields, or modules through the use of a sandbox.

• Zoho allows you to access different types of emails to boost sales engagement along with effortlessly tracking email responses. And, you can sync your sales and marketing specialized email communication while using unlimited email templates and customizing those as well.

Keap

Keap is an all-in-one CRM platform for your consultancy business that lets you optimize your workflow with a customizable pipeline, and make a report on deals. This is very helpful especially if you're working on multiple projects and helping your clients' with customizable tips.

Its highly customizable lead management ability along with its inbuilt email template for lead generation make this one of the perfect choices for your consultant endeavors. Keap is a great platform just as HubSpot is. If you’re struggling to choose between these two platforms, then we suggest you check out our blog on HubSpot vs Keap exploring the key differences between the two.

Key features of Keap

• With Keap, you can connect your CRM tool with well-known platforms such as Gmail, PayPal, QuickBooks, and others, ensuring seamless integration for enhanced efficiency.

• If you want to save valuable time on prospect communication, you can smoothly do this by leveraging email templates, triggers, and targeted email campaigns.

• To facilitate a comprehensive client management experience, Keap enables you to effortlessly handle tasks such as sending invoices, crafting proposals, and accepting payments for your consulting clients.

• With Keap, you can initiate contact with leads through various channels like email, social media, chat support, and more to smooth lead conversion. You can do this directly from the contact record while simplifying your outreach and communication strategies.

Salesforce Sales Cloud

Salesforce Sales Cloud offers a purpose-built CRM solution specific to the consulting needs that enables you to better understand your clients' intents whether they are happy with your consulting tips or they want more. It actually helps you to offer customized consultancy solutions for them. 

Salesforce Sales Cloud elevates your entire team's performance by optimizing the deal pipelines, analyzing performance KPIs, and giving actionable insight so that you can provide them with a more compact schedule to work on. Salesforce is a great option for large enterprises. However, the benefits of Salesforce for startups and small businesses are somewhat limited. Therefore, for making an informed choice, we suggest you compare its features with our compiled list of Salesforce CRM alternatives. Furthermore, if you’re confused about which one to choose between Salesforce vs Zoho vs Hubspot, then check out our comprehensive differentiation between these platforms.

Key features of Salesforce Sales Cloud

• You can cultivate seamless collaboration with fellow clients or third-party partners using Salesforce Chatter, ensuring a dynamic and interconnected work environment.

• Salesforce enables you to identify upsell opportunities while addressing customers’ concern through Salesforce's unique case management system, and enhancing client satisfaction.

• You can be more productive by organizing and accessing all client documents in a centralized file storage system while simplifying the data management and retrieval process.

• To gain valuable insights into your conversion rate and profit margins, you can access Salesforce's opportunity scoring feature while prioritizing and focusing on the most promising leads.

• Salesforce allows you to assign product prices, generate sales orders, create quotes, and submit contracts for approval, providing a comprehensive solution to simplify your sales process.

Freshsales

To provide you with a fresh selling space, Freshsales, a CRM for consultants, streamlines sales deals and automates your entire process from pre-sales engagement to post-sales nourishment.

Freshsales could be your on-the-go solution because to support you in each stage, it provides you with lead scoring, lead management, and performance tracking features. This also makes it one of the top rated alternatives to Outreach platform. Well, if you're looking to close deals at a lower cost for your consultancy business, this could be placed on your list. We have also prepared an in-depth comparison between Hubspot vs Freshsales software, so you can have a better clarity on how they differ from each other and which one is better-suited for your business.

Key features of Freshsales

• To boost your lead conversion process, you can go with the efficiency of AI-powered Freshsales CRM for consulting. You can access contact scoring and personalized sales sequences, ensuring a more targeted and impactful approach.

• You can forge stronger client relationships by utilizing chat, email, and phone supported feature while strengthening seamless collaboration and communication throughout your consulting journey.

• Ensure your smooth operations and avoid commission disputes by implementing sales and territory management with Keap.

• Keap enables you to go with a comprehensive view of your sales forecast with data insights and user-friendly drag-and-drop contact cards so that you can smoothly trigger sales psychology.

Pipedrive

Pipedrive is a robust tool designed for sales pipeline, which means it’s a great CRM to boost sales consultancy especially if you care a lot about closing deals. What you may love about Pipedrive is its simple user-friendly dashboard and the intuitive way the sales pipeline is laid out. 

It has a simple Kanban-style that allows you to move clients along from the column depending on their status. Along the way, you can take notes, add details, manage everything you need to, and access each client's info in one place.

With Pipedrive, you can create your sales pipeline from an existing template, and then conduct sales forecasting, lead segmentation, and follow-up activities all in one place. People often find it hard to choose between Pipedrive CRM vs Freshsales, that’s why we have also drawn a comprehensive comparison exploring the key difference between the two. If you’re a Salesmate user thinking about switching to Pipedrive, then it’s important that you know the key differences between the two. For this, you can check out our blog on Salesmate vs Pipedrive platform for an in-depth comparison and make an informed decision.

Key features of Pipedrive

• With Pipedrive, you can manage your consulting projects more smoothly as it allows you to apply labels or filters, and segments to-do lists. That means you can be more focused now.

• Pipedrive enables you to integrate a wide number of sales and service tools so that your communication goes smoothly and you never fail in customer retention in your sales process.

• To provide you with flawless follow-ups, Pipedrive enables you to send emails in automation mode while customizing each template and tracking their progress.

• With Pipedrive, you can apply color code to easily differentiate your consulting leads, be it hot or cold, utilize live chat to interact with them, and import data whenever you need to.

Pipedrive has similar features to Keap, so it can be hard to choose between the two. A detailed comparison between Keap vs Pipedrive CRM can help you make an informed decision.

Bitrix24

Bitrix 24 is a well-known CRM software specifically designed for your consultancy firm to organize and streamline your consulting tasks. It could be your all-in-one solution to provide you with a safe space for effective consultancy tips. 

The tool has an outstanding built-in AI feature named Copilot that frees you up from mundane tasks while sparking new and crisp consulting ideas. It means you don't need to hop to consulting R&D, rather you can benefit from unlimited source ideas in a unified dashboard while saving costs.

Key features of Bitrix24

• Bitrix24 enables you to integrate multiple software like PayPal, WhatsApp, Zapier, Zoom, and so on so that your effective sales meetings take place.

• With this platform, you can provide your consulting tips through live chat while you can customize the chatbot for advanced settings.

• Its built-in lead scoring tool helps you understand which prospects or leads need your attention more and who already are in your sales pipeline. Also, it allows you to automate and manage the quality lead generation process.

• With Bitrix24 you can leverage an online time clock, video conferencing, and online tasks to keep remote workers productive.

Capsule CRM

Capsule, one of the top-notch CRMs for consultants, is really easy to use and its interface is clean and easily customizable. A really important aspect of Capsule CRM is its integration with Google Workspace (the suite of productivity tools formerly known as G Suite).

As millions of businesses now use Google Workspace to manage their communications, file storage, and calendars, you can provide consultancy hacks on their preferred software. Capsule helps you to improve the sales process, manage sales pipelines, and optimize performance.

Capsule allows you to track pipeline milestones, create tasks for meetings and appointments, send reminder emails, create automated approval processes, and trigger marketing sequences. Capsule is also one of the top-rated alternatives to Keap in terms of sales and marketing automation.

Key features of Capsule CRM

• To eliminate your headache in writing personalized and impactful consulting email content, Capsule CRM provides you with an AI content assistant.

• You can keep your keen eye on sales analytics data before interacting with your target audience and customizing your sales pitch with actionable tips.

• Capsule CRM enables you to create a sorted to-do list with custom task categories so that you can prioritize meetings and deadlines for consulting. And, you can see all those tasks in the calendar view.

• You can swiftly integrate your CRM platform with popular platforms like Microsoft 365, Google, Xero, Mailchimp, Zapier, etc. to smooth your workflow.

• This tool seamlessly syncs multiple platforms in a unified dashboard so that you never miss opportunities on sales and marketing campaigns, your audience’s latest tweet, their invoice amounts, and so on.

• You can attach files of your consulting agreements, quotes, proposals, or any other files that neither your customers nor you need to go here and there to find the relevant document.

ClickUp

ClickUp consultancy CRM is an all-in-one productivity hub where you can collaborate via docs, chat, and whiteboard. Your consulting firm can leverage Clickup to generate leads, provide customer support, and crack upsell and cross-sell deals with your existing customers.

ClickUp helps you to close deals faster through automated workflows that assign tasks, trigger status updates, alert teammates, and close deals faster. ClickUp automates the sales process for your consulting business by adding custom statuses, so you know which deals are in progress, or nearing the finish line.

Through Clickup's dashboard widgets, you can easily optimize and collect data on individual accounts or sales pipelines while doing quarterly check-ins. Click up is also a renowned alternative to Airtable, a project management tool. It also comes with robust form building capabilities which makes it one of the good alternative to Typeform.

Key features of ClickUp

• To simplify your consulting presentation and apply your sales intelligence for sales engagement, ClickUP enables you to utilize collaborative docs, spreadsheets, and Whiteboards in one go.

• ClickUp enables you to leverage real-time chat without having any additional chat software, where you can add consulting videos or project links while providing a quick reference to your team.

• With ClickUp, you can swiftly integrate multiple apps at your fingertips, likely Microsoft Outlook, Github, Dropbox, Slack, Figma, and so on.

• To provide your team with actionable items in an eye-soothing blueprint, ClickUp enables you to utilize and customize templates where you can add different colors, blocks, and fonts to highlight areas.

• Also, you can fast-track customer interaction in automation mode while modifying your strategies with ClickUp’s in-depth data insights.

Salesflare

Salesflare is a B2B sales consulting tool that offers highly customizable no-code CRM software for your consulting needs that can easily be adapted by your consultant team and help you manage relationships with your valuable clients. 

From Monitoring your internal and external consultancy operations to collecting data for managing deals becomes smoother with Salesflare. With Salesflare you can seamlessly bend satisfying customer experience and revenue growth in your business.

Key features of Salesflare

• Salesflare enables you to effortlessly capture leads, qualify them into your sales pipeline, and delicately manage them when you’re approaching with emotional intelligence to boost sales.

• With Salesflare, you can access data insights be it for marketing, sales, or it's your team’s performances. This helps you to know whether you’re missing out on opportunities or your strategies don’t align with current trends.

• This accounting CRM leverages access with a mobile app that you and your team can connect to your target audience at any time from anywhere.

• It helps you to track whether your target audience opens your emails and clicks on the links that you’ve already sent either from Gmail or Outlook. Also, you can send automated and personalized email sequences in one go.

Pipeliner CRM

Although the Pipeliner CRM is used by many consultancy firms, it's a little outdated and not so user-friendly compared to others. Well, it can be a drawback of Pipeliner, but surprisingly it has a ton of features that can smoothly streamline your consultancy purposes.

With this tool, you can track all activities of your prospective clients, qualifying leads, and even your internal team members. It becomes helpful when you target to reach out to people where they are without any intricacies and provide them with the solutions that they wish for. 

Pipeliner’s pricing rises quite steeply as you need more functionality, which probably makes it a better fit for mid-sized companies with deeper pockets. 

Key features of Pipeliner CRM

• To effortlessly qualify the different types of leads in sales, engaging them, segmenting them, and smartly managing them, Pipeliner CRM’s Automatizor helps you through our consulting journey.

• Your consulting leads can come from anywhere be it a website, email, or any other channel, and that’s why this tool provides you with customizable lead-capturing forms.

• With Pipeliner, you can segment your accounting firm's documents and other documents with specific requirements without having any third-party tool. Also, you can use the drag-and-drop feature for easy sharing.

• This tool helps you simplify the auditing process while updating pipelines with custom fields that are easy to manage and easy to understand your current state.

• Also, you can walk through a detailed analytical report to modify your next consulting strategies while trying to enhance customers' satisfaction and the internal team's performance.

monday.com

The next one of the best CRM for professional consultancy services is monday.com. This is a highly customizable and flexible CRM software that can create custom client workflows and boards to fit specific consultancy needs. 

It easily tailors third-party integration to work for you, without any development help. You can edit deal stages, add as many columns as you’d like, manage multiple pipelines at once, and more.

Furthermore, you can get an instant overview of each deal with a single click, and quickly access all the information you need to close deals. View contact details, understanding deal progress, and what needs to be done next become easier with this tool. There are also many great alternatives to Monday CRM, that you can check and compare with to ensure it’s the best suited software for you.

Key features of monday.com

• You may have multiple consulting projects in your hand and with monday CRM you can efficiently manage them in one single dashboard from modifying your ideas to executing those in the right place.

• With monday’s built-in AI tool, you can generate emails, paraphrase content, and summarize them before sending them to your consultant clients.

• This tool enables you to ask multiple sales qualifying questions to your customers with its captivating forms.

• To onboard your customers, this tool helps you with seamless contact management and simplifies customer interactions while integrating your favorite apps.

Choose the right CRM for your consultancy firm & fly high while maximizing revenue

“Invest for the long haul. Don’t get too greedy and don’t get too scared.” - Shelby M.C. Davis.

Investing in a CRM is an important step in taking your consulting firm’s client relationships to a new height. Using a CRM for your consulting business does not provide just a one-time profit, it affects the whole sales process in the long term. That’s why you should be picky while investing your time and money in a perfect CRM that can be aligned with your goals.

Well, to eliminate the probability of facing hurdles on the way and to implement the sales automation process in the right place, the smart choice would be Zixflow. 

Want to know how? Then go and grab the experience with Zixflow's free trial right away!