Close CRM Review: What Does This CRM Have to Proffer?

If you're a business owner, you don't need us to tell you that nothing is more important than the relationships you nurture with customers and/or clients. So, you need a tool to help you identify the best opportunities for nudging leads towards making that much-coveted purchase, ensuring no connection goes cold.

For this, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is vital for scaling sales teams. So it's no wonder that as many as 65% of companies use a CRM tool within the first five years of launching.

But with so many CRM systems on the market, which one's right for your business? 

Today, we're looking at Close CRM, an all-in-one solution for managing your client relationships. We’ll examine its features, pricing, customer support, and what makes it unique.

There's lots to discuss, so grab a cup of joe, and let’s get started!

Close CRM Review -About Close.io CRM

Close CRM calls itself a CRM software built for and by remote salespeople. It was founded in 2013 by a 100% remote team. Fast forward to today, where more and more people work from home at least some of the time, and it's clear that this certainly works in their favor! In fact, 24% of workers in May enjoyed hybrid working arrangements. 

With your sales team spread out over different locations, perhaps even across various states or continents, you need a solution to help keep everyone on the same page. This is where Close comes into its own.

Close is ideal for teams of under 100 people. It aims to double their productivity by providing access to all the tools salespeople need to do their jobs justice.

For instance:

• A CRM
• Email
• Global phone calls
• SMS messaging
• Video conferencing

The platform promises lightning-fast onboarding, a free trial, incredible support, and free migrations. You can also request a demo on their website. 

Close CRM Review – Close's Key Features

Close CRM’s features can be neatly split into two categories:

1. Features relevant for the average remote sales rep
2. Features that matter to sales leaders managing sales teams

Below we'll look at each, starting with the former:

Call Features

• Power Dialer: You can make over 300 calls a day! This feature alone usually requires a third-party app. A Power Dialer will dial the numbers on your lead list and move on automatically if a lead doesn’t answer. This empowers your reps to contact more numbers in a day and directly move from one successful call to the next. The Dialler will only start the communication with your rep once there’s a person on the other end of the line. Reps can see who’s being called in real-time and can access the client’s full history with your business. All in all, it’s a huge time-saver! Of course, you can also pause and resume the Power Dialer without losing your place.
• Customize: You can use local phone numbers in your chosen country (there are over 200 countries to choose from). Pricing for global calls is simple and transparent, charged per minute.
• Track and review: Close makes it easy to track, record, and review calls, to help you monitor progress and train new employees.
• Voicemails: Leave pre-recorded voicemails with easy automation, then move on to the next call. Leaving a voicemail on a failed call only takes a click.
• Crystal clear audio: Close promises high-quality audio, and their engineers are available to troubleshoot any issues straight away.

Email Features

• Syncing emails: Import your existing business email accounts into Close with just a click. Users can toggle between multiple email accounts as needed. As a result, you can always respond from the account your customer is familiar with. 
• Timeline tracking: When it comes to lead management, Close organizes your emails so you can chronologically review the timeline of your leads’ interactions with you. This works wonders for providing your sales team with clear context about each prospect.
• Email automation: You can send powerful email sequences to enroll contacts or companies into your CRM database in bulk. You can also automatically follow up on prospects you haven’t heard from in a while. In addition, automations are multi-channel, so you can reach out via email and plan calls and SMS messages to improve your sales outreach.
• Personalization: Close helps you track dynamic lead data in your CRM. This data can auto-fill templates to tailor your content to specific customers—for instance, their names, companies, geographic area, and more. You can personalize tags for contacts, save and share winning email templates, and use the bulk email feature to segment your mailing list. In addition, you can customize your send time and flexibly design your emails with HTML.
• Undo send – Made a mistake? Call emails back after you send them, and re-attach that file you missed.

SMS Features

• All in your Inbox: All SMS is synced to your Close CRM inbox so that you can respond and read texts from there. There’s no need to switch apps!
• Automate bulk text sends using Close CRM’s API.
• Use your existing number.

Video Conferencing Features

• Remote selling with Zoom: Close integrates with the Zoom video conferencing app to enable you to host video meetings with clients.
• Record and store video meetings: Previous cloud recordings can automatically be brought into the CRM. You can access recordings immediately after a call to see what went well and could be improved.
• Get instant reminders before your next Zoom call to ensure you’re always on time.
• Close keeps running while you’re in your Zoom Call so you can fill in customer records as you go along. 

Close CRM Review – Features for Sale Leaders

Now let’s turn our attention to the core features Close offers sales leaders:

• Built-in call coaching: Close comes with in-app listen, whisper, and barge features to help mentors train new reps. For the uninitiated, this means sales managers can listen in on the call, give advice only the sales rep will hear, and step in and take over the conversation if necessary. You can also replay the call afterward to walk sales reps through what they can improve and where they did well.
• Instant insights: Review your whole team’s performance at a glance. See which emails are getting opened, how many SMS messages are being sent, how many calls are occurring each day, and track conversion statistics. The ‘Activity’ view comes with a leaderboard that shows which team members are the most active. Alternatively, you can use the ‘Opportunities’ view to make accurate sales forecasting projections to help you hone in on the deals most likely to happen. On top of that, you can export your data. 
• Custom fields and activities: You can personalize your sales process with custom fields. More specifically, with custom fields, you can get your team to record details important to your unique operation. For example, saving the social profiles of your prospects, tracking lead communication preferences, and more. 
• Business pipelines: Easily create sales pipelines for different lead types. Visualize where they are in the sales funnel and establish automatic reminders for when to get in touch. You’ll also receive actionable revenue insights along the way. For example, sales velocity, number of opportunities, win rate, the average time to win, average value per win, and more. Plus, you can add multiple pipelines for greater precision. With this info to hand, you’re better positioned to adjust your funnel to maximize predicted profits. Lastly, deals can be updated with just a click, so reps can easily advance leads to the next stage.

Close CRM Review – Integrations

Close CRM is designed to work with your tech stack. There are 42 integrations, including various email providers, sale analytics tools, communication software, data and backup services, and many more.

Some noteworthy examples include:

• Shopify
• Zendesk
• HelpScout
• Integrately
• LinkedIn
• MailChimp
• Marketo
• Slack
• Trello
• Gmail
• Hubspot
• Zapier
• Calendly
• DocuSign

…to name a few!

Close CRM Review – Close Pricing

Like most CRMs, Close CRM is a SaaS operating on a pay-per-month or pay-per-year model, with various pricing plans available to suit different organization sizes. You can save money by opting into annual billing (which is what we’ve quoted below)

If you first want to take Close CRM for a spin, you can do so with its 14-day free trial. Or sign up for a quick 10-minute demo to get a feel of its interface and key features.

Each plan also defines how many leads and contacts you can store. Leads are companies or organizations with whom you might do business. Contacts are the individuals within these organizations. All contacts in Close are attached to a lead.

Starter: $25 per month, per user, when billed annually

• You can register up to three users
• You can store 2,500 leads and 4,000 contacts
• Smart views: Save custom lead list views to suit your workflow and keep on top of outreach.
• View and respond to emails you send and receive both in Close and your external email provider, 
• Assign tasks to yourself and others and tick them off in Close.
• Built-in global calling
• Built-in SMS messaging
• Pipeline, activity, and opportunity reporting
• Email support and access to their self-help center
• $3 worth of monthly calling credit

Basic: $59 per month, per user, when billed annually

• You can register up to 30 users
• You can store unlimited leads and contacts
• You can forward calls to the next available agent automatically.
• Custom fields (limited to 250)
• Mask outgoing caller ID using an external phone number.
• Access to a team leaderboard and user performance reporting
• Compare the activity and performance of multiple team members using comparison reports
• $10 worth of monthly calling credit

Professional: $89 per month, per user, when billed annually

• You can register up to 100 users.
• Exclude specific email addresses and domains from syncing with Close for privacy.
• Bulk email sending
• You can create email sequences to get in touch with contacts at opportune moments, such as after a period of silence, after a deal has closed, to follow up on communications, etc.
• Call recording
• Access to the Power Dialer

Business: $129 per month, per user, when billed annually

• You can register unlimited users.
• Allow your team to call multiple numbers at once and connect automatically once someone picks up.
• You can assign custom roles and permissions.
• Access to built-in call coaching features
• Click to leave a pre-recorded voicemail once you hit the dial tone (also known as voicemail drop).
• Call transferring to another team member mid-conversation. 
• Group numbers: This is a number that, when dialed, rings a group of phones simultaneously. This ensures any group member can pick up and get to your customer quicker. 
• Visualize your data in graphs, controlling exactly which metrics to display.
• Access to a dedicated account manager and screen share support
• Custom onboarding for 6+ users

As you can see, Close CRM’s pricing might make you pause to consider whether it’s worth the price. While the platform is robust, many more sophisticated features are locked behind its higher pricing tiers. This might not be financially viable for many small businesses. The user cap also quickly forces small teams to upgrade to more expensive plans. 

Close CRM Review – Customer Support

As mentioned in the pricing section, Close CRM provides email support on all plans. However, business users can also access screen share support, a dedicated account manager, and quicker support. 

In addition, on any plan, you have access to Close’s self-help documentation, which includes articles spanning best practices, FAQs, feature explorations, and so on.

Close also features various helpful resources on its website, including a free resource library for sales operators. This includes a sales consultant directory, webinars, a sales brief newsletter, and more.

You can also book a call to get a tour of Close.

Lastly, Close CRM offers premium support as an add-on service. For a quote, get in touch with their team. This will unlock personalized onboarding, a data cleanup service, custom data, and migration services.

Close CRM Review – Close.com Pros and Cons

Last but not least, before we wrap up, let’s take a quick look at Close CRM’s main advantages and disadvantages:

Close CRM Review – Our Final Verdict

Close doesn’t under-deliver regarding its promise of being an all-in-one CRM solution. Unlike many competitors, the platform isn’t only feature-rich, but it also includes built-in global calling. On top of this, you get powerful coaching features and email functionality. You would typically have to install and pay for a third-party app.

All of that said, for us, this makes Close one of the best CRM apps for value for money – especially if you're looking for all this functionality in one tool. If not, the platform will likely be a little too expensive for startups. So, consider whether you’ll fully use the many integrated features Close has to offer before handing over your hard-earned cash.

With its many intuitive features, we consider Close a powerful solution worth checking out. Consider the platform’s free trial to better understand what it can do for you, or book a call with a sales representative for a tour. Or are you considering a competing sales CRM, like Salesforce or Pipedrive? Either way, don’t forget to tell us how you get on in the comments box below!