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Ask HN: Do I really need Salesforce for enterprise sales?

1 points by thinbeige ↗ HN
Just diving into CRMs and salesforce automation for enterprise sales and my findigs after one day of research:

- Salesforce (SF) has the biggest market share, an app store, a developer console but is expensive and unnecessarily cluttered, I am not able to setup a Gmail integration without contacting their sales team, something which should be a standard feature

- The rest of the crowd: as expensive and no clear advantage

- The only one which seems clever and sane is Streak, seamlessly integrated with Gmail, there isn't any feature I have missed yet even for large sales teams/cooperations, nice UI, super fine permission/role setup

So, Streak seems like an obvious choice, still wondering why so many opt for SF, it feels super cluttered and unintuitive. I know that I can customize everything but the other choices do not seem that inferior with their own integrations and stuff like Zapier. And again a simple Gmail integration is not possible in Salesforce out of the box and the reviews regarding this integration in the Chrome Extension Store are rather bad.

What CRMs/SFAs are you using?

6 comments

[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 26.1 ms ] thread
sirspacey
No. Hubspot CRM is free and an amazing CRM for enterprise sales. I've used it with several teams. Way easier when it comes to onboarding team members thanks to their stellar Academy.
thinbeige
I looked briefly into Hubspot but couldn't get warm (it felt buggy but again I spent just ten minutes there and disn't like it). Guess have to spend more time but the prices are also very high. And the separation of Hubspot CRM and Hubspot Sales + two price tags is confusing.
quuquuquu
How many sales reps will be using the system?

I would lean towards Streak, but in my past job we had 20 people using salesforce and I learned everything there was to learn in about 2 hours. Cases, Grids, Reports, Leads, export to Outreach etc

thinbeige
Ok and was the UX good, everything smooth and doesn't Salesforce stand in your way for daily operations?
quuquuquu
I'm sure SFDC was costing my boss a pretty penny, and many of my coworkers using it had no idea how to manipulate things on their own.

The UI is about as modern as AOL 2.0...

... but it also isn't a major hindrance.

Honestly, streak is right that I live in my Gmail inbox. I'd at least rather give them my money rather than Benioff.

alooPotato
Co-founder of Streak here, would love to know what you end up going with and why.

Of course happy to help with Streak related questions/setup/pricing/etc.