We carved out 2 weeks to build this because all other CRMs suck. My team and I ain't got no time to manually enter every detail of our customers into the CRM, and I want every detail in our CRM.

My CRM must do these things for me

Document the sales process

As a manager, and for the other sales managers at Nubela, it is our job to stay abreast of where the sales process is at currently and has been historically. This is beneficial for many reasons including the enabling the option of having other sales staff to take over a sales process and be immediately empowered with the context of an existing customer sales process

Govern the sales process

Beyond documentation, the CRM should dictate the sales process. Like how TMP dictates task availability and dispatch by being the single source for tasks. The CRM should do the same for sales by defining the different stages of a sales proces and tracking it accordingly in a dashboard for both managers and sales staff.

Store contact information

"Have we contacted this guy before?"

This is a question that should be answered by a CRM. And in fact, this is the central value proposition for CRMs, to store the contact information for sales prospect.

The biggest problem is data entry

Most other CRMs have solved the above three problems adequately, if and only if data is entered into the system. In fact, I believe that the above three problems can be simplified and solved adequately with trello's UI.

The biggest problem, in my opinion, with modern CRMs is that my sales staff have to key everything in.

Specced written and submitted

With this, we are spending a bit of time to prototype an internal CRM that will eliminate all menial data entry. I will keep you updated on the progress. This is the specs I drafted today, if you are interested.