CRM-Ing in Times of Market Jitters

This week on Funnel Frontier: Here's how you can keep selling strong and weather the market's mood swings

This week:

• Of CRMs and jittery markets
• monday.com puts out a portable Portfolio 
• Making 2025 an “aligned budget year” (via Forrester)
• Airtable vs Notion
• Substack + marketing = good idea? (via HubSpot)

Stat of the Week

77% of sales pros say they plan to invest more in sales intelligence. (LinkedIn)

CRM-ing through market jitters

First, the elephant in the room. Last week, the stock market dipped on weaker-than-expected jobs data in the US. 

Nothing “recession-esque” yet—indeed we got a bounce back—but you better believe the markets are dancing the jitterbug. So what does this mean for those of us in CRMLand? 

First, please don’t break up with your CRM. The tool’s ability to segment customers, boost deal close rates, and maintain customer satisfaction pay for themselves. One stat suggests CRM usage boosts revenue-per-employee by about 25%. 

Also, keeping customers who found you is paramount when times are crunched—and there’s always a CRM for that (i.e .customer retention).  

As an article from Harvard Business Review says “don’t cut your marketing budget during a recession.” Why? Because you risk missing the forest for the trees. 

As another HBR article states: 9% of companies come out stronger after a recession.

You could be in that 9%!

Some other ideas for CRM-ing through the fog: 

• Be judicious when managing information and keep detailed records via CRM—that way, you’ll be able to analyze your biz situation on the fly and pivot with aviatrix-like agility.

• Don’t be tempted by sweet treats—stay focused on the main business. Strengthen it and focus on core strategic goals to rationally use resources.

• Use CRM to keep the communication flowing with customers. 

Chaos into order, into opportunity. Yes, t’would seem there’s a CRM for that. 

The Week @ CRM.org

Good Small Business CRMs. A tasting menu of secret sauce for SMBs.

Top 10 Email Clients for Windows. Swipe left on spam, get satisfied with life-in-your-inbox.

Weekly Bloom 

Are We Giving Willpower Too Much Credit? Relying on willpower is like expecting a comedian to tell the same joke and get the same laughs every time—unrealistic!

A portable Portfolio from monday.com 

Minions this and minions that—you know what, sometimes the big shots need a helping hand too! 

And so, monday.com has dropped a new Portfolio management feature in full release, aiming to make enterprise project oversight a bit more breezy.

Waving goodbye to wading through reports one-by-one, this tool proposes to give a crystal-clear view of all relevant projects, from shiny high-level portfolios down to nitty-gritty tasks. 

Integrating with extant workflows, it uses templates and automation to try and keep everything same-y and well-oiled. There’s flexibility too, with “peak personalization” of your omniscience, via fields, dashboards, and other add-ins.  

Essentially, executives are enticed with a magic wand for managing strategic initiatives and boosting productivity without the usual setup hassle.

TL;DR: It’s for the masters of the universe, sipping coffee while watching their work organize itself.

Chief Product and Technology Officer Daniel Lereya summed it up like this: “we are democratizing project portfolio management methods by making them easy to master, which is a major differentiator to others in the market.” 

(Big) shots fired.

Stellar Strategies: Tips & Tricks for Sales, Marketing & Service

2025 is the year for Aligned Budget (via Forrester)

According to Forrester, business leaders are ready to open their wallets in 2025.

Their recent survey of 2,200 decision-makers shows modest budget increases are expected, but with inflation in play, spending wisely will be… wise. 

It seems there’s 4 key areas for marketers, sellers, and CX-ists to target for fiscal finesse:

• Prioritizing cross-functional alignment for better revenue growth and customer retention

• Investing in AI governance for trust

• Ditching bespoke tech stacks to reduce costs

• Experimenting with AI agents in marketing. 

Forrester’s data suggests that very well aligned CX teams contribute to 1.6x faster revenue growth, and 1.4x better customer retention. Meanwhile, tech sprawl is real, and cleaning up the bespoke apps and isolated infrastructure will be a great look for the new year, despite the upfront costs.

You guessed it, there’s more here.

Airtable vs Notion

Choosing between Airtable and Notion is like picking between a superlative spreadsheet and a go-go gadget.

Notion, your jack-of-all-trades, handles notes, wikis, and modest CRM-ing with flair. Airtable, on the other hand, is the spreadsheet-database hybrid champion, perfect for managing data-heavy tasks like inventory and project management. 

Notion's cheaper and great for docs, while Airtable excels at structured data and automation. Both have quirks and foibles, but shine in their own peculiar ways. 

For the full scoop, check our head-to-head here.

Substack + marketing = good idea? (via HubSpot)

If you're “all in” on engaging customers and building your brand, Substack could be gangbusters. If it's just for personal fame, expect it to flop.

There’s no secret—Substack is the new playground for founder-influencers ditching social media for a more intimate connection with audiences. 

D2C founders like Ghia’s Melanie Masarin use it to share personal musings and sneakily, subtly promote their brands. And unlike Instagram, the platform lets creators own their audience and monetize easily, charging subscribers directly. 

However, not all that Substacks is gold. Investors worry this personal branding could run amok, overshadow business performance. 

To Substack or not to Substack? More on pros ‘n cons here. 

Galactic Gourmet

CRM blips from around the web

FiscalNote adds new AI features to Fireside CRM. The “constituent relationship management” platform, which helps organize constituent messages to legislative offices, now uses LLMs to sort messages. 

Salesforce set to acquire PredictSpring. The California-based PoS startup has been a Salesforce ecosystem partner since 2019, with integrations for Commerce Cloud and Service Cloud. 

Savvy Wealth gains $26.5 million in Series A investment. The wealth management firm, which owns Co-Pilot CRM, closed out its funding round with $15.5 million from Canvas Ventures.

Astronomical Assets

Significant Stock Moves from Last Week

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