Selling Without Pitching
At Human Scale Business, we relish the opportunity to develop relationships. We don't robotically administer sales pipelines. It's important that our customer relationship management (CRM) software reflects our priorities. Most don't. Most cater to the needs of much larger businesses and dedicated sales teams.
Searching for a New CRM
From April 2013 through February 2022, we had a great solution: Highrise ("Simple CRM Software") by the talented and thoughtful folks at Basecamp. Highrise had all that we needed and very little of what we didn't. However, Highrise stopped taking new subscribers and investing in development in August 2018 to focus on their core Basecamp product. For the last three and a half years, I've been looking for an alternative.
I'd almost given up.
A couple of Saturdays ago, however, I found myself poking around the web. I ran across an intriguing solution called Less Annoying CRM ("a CRM for People"). It seemed to offer much of what we loved about Highrise:
Argh! It didn't have a Zapier integration! I was crestfallen. As champions of process automation, that looked like a deal killer.
An Unexpected Email
For some reason, though, I felt compelled to send a message via the Less Annoying CRM "contact us" form:
Saturday, January 29, 2022, 1:03 PM MST:
You almost had me...but the lack of Zapier integrations is a deal-breaker, I'm afraid. I've been looking for an alternative to Highrise for years, and LACRM appeared to check most of the boxes. I guess I'll have to keep looking.
I didn't really expect a reply, much less one on a Saturday afternoon. Nevertheless, a couple of hours later, I received what was clearly a personal reply from Tyler King, the CEO and Co-founder.
Saturday, January 29, 2022, 4:11 PM MST:
Recommended by LinkedIn
I completely understand if you don't want to wait for the [Zapier integration] feature to be built given the uncertainty, but I just wanted to let you know that we're on it.
A few minutes later, Tyler elaborated.
Saturday, January 29, 2022, 4:28 PM MST:
We won't know exactly how much work will be involved in that project until starting it, but from our preliminary research, it seems like it should be a large but not massive project. I'm projecting that it'll take about a quarter to get the first version of the Zapier integration ready for customers.
He went on to describe the key sources of uncertainty that could delay the launch of the integration.
The No-Pitch Sale
I was sold...at least enough to start the free trial. (Their "Beginner's Guide" series of videos is excellent.)
On a personal level, I was a little concerned about Tyler's choice to exchange emails with me on a weekend. However, I did appreciate his prompt, thoughtful, and respectful replies. Tyler acknowledged the legitimacy of my concern (without a hint of the patronizing tone that too frequently characterizes scripted customer service) and provided relevant information regarding his company's development timeline.
He didn't pitch me. Tyler engaged me in conversation.
This morning, I archived and canceled our Highrise account and started our paid subscription to Less Annoying CRM.
extremely cool to know that you were a Highrise user. That is the template that I have been searching for.
Thanks, Dave! In case you're worried that I'm spending all my weekends responding to customer emails, here's how we handle weekend support: We have 8 CRM Coaches, and they rotate covering weekends (and get extra days off to make up for it). I believe in a "leaders eat last" approach, so I'm also in the rotation, meaning I cover weekend support roughly once every nine weeks. I'm glad I happened to be on support when you wrote in so we could connect!