If you have decided you need to White Label a CRM, now the challenge is to find the absolute best one for your needs.
It’s not enough to just go out and find ANY White Label CRM product and company you are going to be married to for the next five to ten years or more. Finding the best product and partner for you will make all the difference in the world.
This article will help you get it right the first time.
Here are 8 things you should look for when searching for the best White Label CRM for you.
1. The product MUST be easy
Number one, top of the list for choosing the right CRM you will be putting your name on: Look for a CRM that is easy to use. Take note that every CRM company is going to say: “Our product is easy to use.” So, you can’t go by that.
It has to be easy for YOU. Sure, some systems are easy for software engineers and computer geeks, but you have to find the one that you and your customers will find easy.
Don’t get caught up trying to find a CRM with the most features. Features don’t matter if no one is using your system. Look for a product your customers will love and embrace—not just tolerate.
Here are some clues to look for when trying to find an easy CRM: If you need a consultant to set it up, or you need extensive training to use it, or there is a user manual you need to study, then that one is NOT an easy system—keep looking.
2. Features: Less is more
When it comes to White Label CRM features, generally, less is more, or better said: fewer is better.
CRMs are so bloated these days. All these companies want to get in feature wars. Who has more features? In the side-by-side comparison, whose features list is longer?
Users want to get in, do what they need to do, and get out. Confusing software with too many features is not the smart way to go. Ideally, your white label CRM will be flexible enough that you can hide features and whole sections you don’t want to offer your customers.
3. Software functionality
The White Label CRM product should do what you need it to do, right out of the box. Don’t settle for something that “sort of works” for you. And don’t think you’ll be able to fill in all the gaps. Do you need Email Marketing, Marketing Automation, and Workflow capabilities in your CRM? Will your customers need texting capabilities? Landing pages? Email click tracking? Make a list and find the product that does what you need it to do, today.
4. Specific functionality
When you White Label a CRM it’s not just about slapping your name on a product. There are specific White Label CRM tools your white label partner should be providing to you. Here are some things to look for::
- Can you easily offer different levels of the product? Like an entry-level version and then more advanced versions?
- Can you build your marketing content once, and then easily deploy it to your clients?
- What about future campaigns, email templates, and landing pages that you develop? Is there an easy way to get that new information to your customers?
- Can you sell the White Label CRM to completely different industries AND keep all the content unique to the industry?
5. A solid product
All software is not created equal! To be blunt, there’s a bunch of crap out there. Don’t subject your customers to slow, buggy, and unreliable software! Life is too short, and there are better choices for you.
Bugs: Let’s start with bugs. Consider it a red flag when you hear software companies make excuses and say, “All software has bugs,” or “Oh, yeah, that was another gremlin!” or “Not sure what THAT was—must have been a glitch.”
Yes, all software has bugs, but that’s why software companies have Quality Assurance Departments: To find them and get them fixed before YOU see them! It should be very rare that you find a bug in the software you are white labeling. You should not be testing their software unless you specifically ask to be a beta tester for the product.
So, when you discover bugs or hear a company say there was a “glitch” or a “gremlin” in their system, THEY have failed you. You can do better.
Speed: Your software should be blazing fast. If it’s not, then the developers are using old technology, or they have just created a hog. Do not accept excuses. Slow software can be a symptom of bigger problems just below the surface. Maybe they are trying to do too much. Remember less is more, and slow is bad.
The system is down: This should almost never happen, and when it does, you and your customers should be sleeping. Today, quality software is up 99.9999% of the time. Can you think of the last time Amazon was “down?”
If you and your customers are experiencing downtime, you have selected the wrong product.
6. A solid partner in it for the long haul
You are about to get married to the company providing your white label solution. Don’t overlook this important decision point. Make sure you actually like the people you will be working with, and make sure they are in this for the long haul.
The company you choose should be committed to the white label model. Look for a company with a track record of white labeling their software for at least five years. Not to mention a commitment to continuing down this path. White labeling a CRM sounds like a shiny, new, and easy revenue source for CRM companies looking to expand. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. When the road gets bumpy and your White Label CRM partner decides to abandon the idea, you don’t want to be left holding the bag.
They can just walk away, but YOU have invested time, effort, and money in this solution, and you don’t want to go scrambling to find something new. And then what do you tell your clients who have trusted you to provide them with these great tools?
7. Tools and support to help you succeed
In the white label model, you are the first line of support for your customers, and then your white label partner supports you.
The company you choose should provide you with resources and support to effectively resell their system. It is a tough road for you to take on someone else’s product and make it your own. At AllClients, one of the resources we provide our white label partners is a library of end-user training videos. This helps our partners launch quickly and look professional in the process.
AllClients also gives you a back office control panel allowing you to easily set up new users and deploy new content to existing users. Let’s say you have 1000 customers using your white label CRM and now you have new campaigns and emails you have developed. In your AllClients back office CRM tool, you just load them in there one time and then press a button: Instantly all 1000 of your customers will see the new content in their system!
The more tools and support you can get from the company the better. You will need to have conversations about what you are seeing in the marketplace and what additional features and functions you need to keep more customers and sell more licenses.
8. A 100% white label
You should be able to completely white label the product with your branding and no trace of the company that actually built it. You are out there telling your customers that you have the complete solution, including the software, the content, and the systems and strategies to make it all work. It’s not a comfortable discussion when your customer finds out that you did not really build the software. This does occasionally happen, but you don’t want to make it easy for them to find out.
9. Before you make that final decision… do your homework
You have done some research, and you have narrowed it down to one or two products you like. Now don’t just pull the trigger—do your homework!
Remember, you are about to marry this company, and you are going to put your name and your stamp of approval on someone else’s product.
It’s OK to take a breath, step back and take a couple of weeks to test out the product.
You don’t want to start a relationship and get down the road for a few months only to learn that this product has some glaring holes that you can’t live with.
It is a smart idea to install the product in one of your customer locations. Pick a business where you have a close relationship with the owner and tell her what you are doing. Install it, set it up, and run it through its paces for a couple of weeks. This process will tell you a lot about the product and give you the confidence that you have chosen the right white label CRM.
