Find the right CRM for your advisory firm.

“Clunky” and “bloated” are common descriptions by advisors about some CRMs that can tick off advisors. The user experience is poor and ultimately costly in the amount of wasted time it takes to do everyday actions in the CRM. The end result is low adoption of the firm’s CRM.

“I’m a financial advisor, not a data-entry clerk!” says an annoyed advisor when leaving an old-school, poorly designed CRM with a dreary interface. Design elegance and beauty matter in modern CRM software.

Old-school CRMs have steep learning curves, and it drives advisors crazy that training classes are required to learn them. Some CRMs even require a full-time administrator to keep them working properly. “I’d rather figure out my clients than spend time figuring out my CRM!” an advisor told us.

Many CRMs lack modern social design for advisor teams to collaborate and get work done with humanized activity streams, notifications, and even socially expressive emojis. Says one Wealthbox switcher: “My previous vendor calls their CRM product a ‘database’ and I love how Wealthbox calls its product a ‘workspace.’ That’s very telling.”

Buggy, poorly engineered CRM software that regularly crashes from server failure annoys advisors. Down time is a big time problem. “The frequent display of the ‘500 error page’ shouldn’t be part of a CRM user experience!” says one advisor, echoing the sentiment of many.

Millions of dollars have been wasted on failed implementations of CRM. Sometimes those spiffy comparison checklists of CRM features touted by vendors don’t translate well for end-users. “I should have actually used the CRM system instead of reading a checklist of features” gripes an advisor.

Beyond a CRM vendor’s pricing page, there are often unseen, expensive costs like training, administration, and extra add-ons to the product. “When you add these extra product costs, in addition to the productivity cost of low adoption in not using the CRM, it’s a serious issue!” an angry advisor told us.