PRODUCTIVITY: Top Five Free CRM Tools

You needn’t pay an arm and a leg to extend the power of your sales technology. Here are five free tools that any sales professional could love:Tool: ZoomInfo Firefox plug-inCompany: ZoomInfoLocation: Waltham, MADescription: Install this widget in your Firefox browser, and you can simply highlight any person’s name mentioned on the Web, right-click, and it will search ZoomInfo to bring you detailed information about that person. To get the information, ZoomInfo has Web crawlers that constantly search the business Web – millions of company Websites, news feeds, press releases, and other online sources – to identify people, companies, products, services, and industries.Tool: JigsawVendor: JigsawHeadquarters: San Mateo, CADescription: Jigsaw makes it easy to search, select, and download company information from a directory of more than 3 million businesses – for free! In essence, Jigsaw’s data is open source, so you can download up to 50,000 complete company records at a time without renting or buying costly directory lists. More importantly, you can import or integrate complete data records into your CRM or contact-management app.Tool: Hoovers.comVendor: Hoover’s (Dun & Bradstreet)Headquarters: Austin, TXDescription: Hoover’s has been around for a long time, but that’s because it’s so darn useful. Hoover’s provides an incredible wealth of information about publicly held companies, including financials, strategies, competitors, key executives, market dynamics, and so forth. It’s all built on a database of information on more than 30 million corporations and organizations and more than 35 million people. It’s a great place to bone up on a customer (or even a competitor).Tool: Demandbase StreamVendor: DemandbaseLocation: San Francisco, CADescription: This free software widget works like a news ticker that displays information across the desktop about which businesses are visiting a Website, their interests, and contact details for the most appropriate decision makers to contact for follow up. You can customize the ticker with the Watch List feature and flag existing customers, prospects, partners, and competitors at a glance.Tool: MyBrainsharkVendor: BrainsharkLocation: Waltham, MADescription: You can create, share, and track the impact of on-demand, multimedia presentations – for free. The site allows you create a voice-enriched multimedia presentation or podcast, selecting from various wizards that walk you through the process. It’s pretty easy to use, too. You upload a file that you’d like to add your voice to (a PowerPoint presentation, for instance), and then, using your phone, you record your audio, synchronizing it with your presentation. You can then share it as a URL link and track who views it.