Why we don't use salespeople

There's a huge variety of roles: clients, carers, volunteers, referrers, trustees. There are people working in overlapping roles. Projects can take a myriad of different forms. There are different outcome measures - and not to mention whole lexicons of terminology specific to each charity. There might be a variety of local and national funders and funding streams requiring different services to be delivered in different ways, with different recording and reporting needs.

Each time we take on a new customer it’s fascinating and rewarding to gain an insight into their unique world.

Not just in terms of producing a software system flexible enough to support all these different models, but also in setting it up in a way that meets each charity’s specific and varied needs.

We decided early on that having a sales team wasn’t for us. Salespeople are expensive – a cost we’d have to pass on to the client. And let’s be honest: they can be pushy; there’s a danger they’ll blithely try to talk square pegs into round holes in a bid to get a sale – without having the analytical know-how to be able to advise someone on whether or not the system will suit their needs.

Our experienced implementation consultants listen to your specific needs, learn about your work, then support you to ensure your CRM system is set up and adapted accordingly.

They each have a deep knowledge of how our CRM system works, and are familiar with the non-profit sector and what makes it different. Many have worked for, or with, charities in the past.

We don’t use ‘hard-sell’ techniques, like aggressively chasing sales or trying to talk you into buying a more expensive version than you actually need.

A budget-conscious charity needs honest advice about whether or not a new software system will genuinely do what they need. Buying a CRM and discovering later that it doesn’t is a costly mistake – and one that we hear happens a lot, with charities hoodwinked by big commercial software firms who care only about getting you to buy their product.

It’s in no one’s interest for us to talk you into a CRM that doesn’t meet your needs. That’s why we avoid hard-sell in favour of expert advice and experience – we want you to choose Charitylog safe in the knowledge that it will genuinely benefit your organisation.

And we will always be honest about that.