Nine questions to ask a CRM before you buy

A CRM demonstration sets out, reasonably, to show the product at its best. The parts that work beautifully get twenty minutes, and the parts that will not get none. These nine questions ask about the second group. The answers usually decide the choice, and a trial settles every one of them.

1. Can I add the field my business actually needs?

Every business holds one or two facts that no CRM ships a field to hold. A system that cannot hold them produces a notes field workaround, and the workaround costs staff time every week. Ask for a demonstration of adding the field rather than a yes. Diract CRM adds fields, tables and links without a developer, and the honest test is watching somebody do it in front of you.

2. What happens on a phone with no signal?

A field business loses signal in basements, roof spaces and rural blocks. A note lost in one of those teaches people to stop writing notes, and that lesson sticks. Our guide to working from the phone covers what a phone should still do without a connection. Test it during the trial by switching the connection off, because no demonstration will show you this.

3. Where does customer email actually land?

A CRM without email filing holds a contact list. One that files a thread against the record holds the relationship. The question is whether filing happens from inside the mail tool, in one action, or as a separate copy and paste. Diract CRM files from inside Gmail or Outlook. A filing habit that needs somebody to change programs does not survive a busy week.

4. Who can see which contacts?

A business with pay rates, margins or sensitive matters needs some records restricted. Most CRMs treat access as all or nothing, which forces a choice between open and useless. Our guide to who can see which contacts covers the shapes that actually work. Diract CRM grants access by role, and a role decides both the tables somebody opens and the fields they read inside them.

5. How do I export everything I hold?

A supplier answering this crisply is telling you something good, whatever the technical detail turns out to be. Our guide to getting your data back out covers testing it during the trial rather than at the end. The floor is a contact list, and the real question is whether the jobs, notes and links come too. Diract CRM exports every table as CSV, with related records named rather than numbered.

6. What does a second company cost?

A second entity, a franchise or a bookkeeper's client list needs another workspace. Pricing for that varies enormously, and the discovery usually arrives with the growth that prompted it. Asking during the trial costs nothing at all. Diract CRM runs a second company as another workspace under the same login, which is the arrangement most small groups need.

7. Can somebody add a contact in ten minutes, unaided?

A CRM needing a week of training per person is describing a mismatch with the work rather than a complex product. The test is one new person, with no instruction, adding a contact and a follow-up task. That moment decides most of the adoption, and it costs ten minutes to run. Our guide to why the team stopped using the CRM covers what happens when that test goes badly.

8. What breaks when an integration stops, and who answers?

Connections fail when a token expires or a permission changes. The question is whether the business finds out that day or that quarter. A visible failure is safe, and a quiet one loses data for weeks. Support belongs in the same question, because a small business cannot afford a three day wait on something that stops somebody invoicing. Ask a real question through the support channel during the trial, which answers this better than any service commitment.

9. Does it work for a business like mine, and how often does it change?

A CRM with three customers in your industry and forty in another will keep being built for the other one. Asking for a reference in a similar business is reasonable, and the answer shows where the product's attention goes. Release history answers the second half, and most suppliers worth considering publish one. A product that never changes is either finished or abandoned, and one changing weekly asks the team to relearn it constantly.

Run the trial on real work

A trial filled with test records proves nothing. Three real customers, a real quote and a week of real follow-ups prove everything worth knowing. A business that does that usually knows its answer before the trial ends, and for the right reasons. A Diract CRM trial takes real customers rather than sample records, because only real work answers the nine questions above.

How Diract CRM answers these

Diract CRM adds fields, tables and links without a developer, and files email from inside Gmail or Outlook. Access comes by role, down to individual fields. Every table exports as CSV, and a second company runs under the same login. Documents can stay in your own SharePoint or Google Drive, which means the files never needed exporting at all.

What to change first

• Ask for a demonstration of adding your own field, not a yes
• Test the phone app somewhere with no signal
• Filing email needs one action from inside the mail tool
• Ask how access to sensitive contacts gets restricted
• The data exports during the trial, rather than at the end
• Ask what a second company or entity costs
• Three real customers and a real week go through the trial