Small business CRM: Why Freshsales was the right choice for DRIVE

DRIVE is a driving school in Perth, Australia that focuses on quality driving instruction for learners through strategies, techniques and teaching aids to become confident drivers. Prior to Freshsales, DRIVE was using spreadsheets—which was ineffective even for its small business database. It needed a reliable and organized solution to funnel leads and manage information, and found Freshsales CRM best for its small business.

DRIVE – Perth’s Driving School

Steve Kolb owner and lead driving instructor of DRIVE with 28 years experience started the driving school in 2004. Before moving to Australia, Steve lived in London where he was an approved driving instructor for 14 years, and also ran his own driving school London Driving Center.

Steve Kolb
Owner and Lead Driving Instructor, DRIVE

He visited Perth for a holiday and fell in love with the city. Soon he found himself moving out of London and migrating to the capital of Western Australia.

As a small business owner with sole proprietorship, Steve was looking for a simple and efficient method to organize leads and customers, and track communication.

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Why Freshsales?

While there isn’t a bespoke software for driving schools, Steve wanted a tool better than spreadsheets to manage leads and tasks.

Steve looked at a number of different CRM software for his business. Being new to CRM, he relied on the internet to help decide:

“Spreadsheets didn’t work; it’s convoluted and time-consuming. I didn’t know much about CRMs so I made my selection based on reviews on the internet.”

No kidding. In fact, according to a report from Forrester, 70% of consumers online trust reviews from people far more than statements from brands.

In a world where online reviews help us decide where to eat and buy, it’s apparent why Steve among other buyers trusts reviews before making purchase decisions.

After reading reviews of CRM software on Capterra, his search led him to Freshsales after comparison against Pipedrive, Insightly and Zoho.

“I looked at several CRMs like Pipedrive, Insightly, Zoho, etc. In my research I found Freshsales to be affordable and easy to implement, even for a small business like mine.”

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Most used Freshsales features

Lead management

Before Freshsales, leads and contacts were managed in Excel. Contact details went into rows and columns, and notes scattered across the sheet. Too often data was overlooked, and eventually leads lost. The biggest disadvantage with Excel as a CRM software is that it’s not a CRM software.

Freshsales’ lead management feature enables Steve to track leads in the funnel, as well as their communication history:

“Using Freshsales, I can see every new lead visibly, and track any communication that’s occurred. It’s efficient, saves time and most importantly—we don’t miss out on leads.”

Steve receives new leads from various sources—facebook, web, organic search, email, referral, and other advertising channels. As a business owner, it’s important for him to analyze the best sources to revamp marketing strategies accordingly.

Using custom fields in Freshsales, Steve records where his leads are from, and filters them by source to track inbound leads.

Activity management

One of the reasons Steve wanted to start using a CRM was to save time running his small business. Sales Activities help him do just that.

Reminders to call new contacts are input as Tasks in Freshsales. End of the day when Steve returns home after driving lessons and logs into Freshsales, he is reminded of his Tasks.

“Contacting new leads on-time is critical to growing my business. With Freshsales, we’re able track who we’ve contacted and who we’ve not through Tasks and Appointments. This saves me time rather than going over each new record.”

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Freshsales— CRM for small business

A CRM is an extremely powerful tool to help grow your business.

For Steve, a CRM for small business meant keeping track of customer communication and staying on top of his tasks. So he implemented Freshsales for DRIVE.

“Freshsales has been instrumental in streamlining my small business to where I see a huge difference in time saved and productivity. It’s a great system with sincere customer support.”

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