Pipedrive announced that it has added powerful new capabilities to its #1 user-rated CRM software [1] to help salespeople get more qualified leads into the pipeline and take quicker action on the most promising deals. Highlights include: a powerful AI sales assistant that continuously gathers data on deals and sales activities and prompts salespeople to take the “next best” action to move the hottest deals forward; a more flexible user interface that enables salespeople to customize their view of deals in the pipeline to more closely mirror their sales process; and more robust performance dashboards and reporting that let sales managers coordinate the activities of sales teams to close more deals and grow revenue faster. These additions enhance the ease of use that is a hallmark of Pipedrive.

“At Pipedrive, we believe the primary purpose of a CRM for sales is to enable salespeople to be more effective at engaging with customers throughout the sales process to move deals closer to completion,” said Timo Rein, CEO of Pipedrive. “There is a famous quote: ‘Nothing happens until someone sells something.’ Without prospecting, lead generation, follow-up, and closing sales, a sales manager has nothing to manage and nothing to report. So, first and foremost, we design every Pipedrive plan from the salesperson’s point of view to ensure the success of individual salespeople. This mission drives every new capability we add to our product.”

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Pipedrive also announced today a new plan designed to meet the needs of the company’s larger enterprise customers. In addition, existing plans have been revamped to help individual salespeople and organizations of all sizes reach their sales goals and grow their businesses. To further support sales success, the company also launched Pipedrive Academy, a web-based online learning portal that provides recorded video courses that help sales professionals improve their selling skills and processes.

Pipedrive: Designed by Salespeople for Salespeople

With the new generation of Pipedrive, the first sales CRM designed from the salesperson’s point-of-view, the company continues to strengthen its commitment to putting salespeoples’ most pressing needs first. According to Pipedrive research, based on interviews and surveys with its customers, these include:

Speeding up prospecting. Three out of four sales professionals say prospecting is “quite” or “extremely” important and over half say it’s a “struggle” to find prospects and get them into the pipeline quickly. Of those who say it’s a struggle, 37% identified prospecting as the aspect of the sales process that needs the most improvement.

Reducing time spent on repetitive tasks. Three out of four sales professionals say it is important to reduce the time spent on repetitive administrative tasks and 40% say they struggle to keep the right balance.

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The new Pipedrive also better meets the top need cited by sales managers:

Getting greater visibility into sales team performance. Half of sales managers say the following managerial tracking and reporting tasks are “extremely” important:

• Reviewing the performance of each salesperson
• Understanding what must be done next in the sales process
• Quickly adjusting sales goals and/or processes based on monitoring key performance metrics in real time

“In our view, the improvements Pipedrive announced today to the platform will further strengthen their value proposition for sales-centric firms,” said Ben Dickie, Director, Research and Advisory, Customer Experience Management at Info-Tech Research Group. “Artificial intelligence has been a major area of investment in the customer experience space. Pipedrive’s new AI-powered recommendations for sales staff will help them close deals by moving from ‘gut feel’ to data-backed account insights. Expanding the platform’s customization and data visualization capabilities will also help broaden the platform’s appeal to large enterprises, helping them scale their client base upmarket.”

Pipedrive Plans Ensure the Right Fit for Every Customer

Pipedrive is updating, realigning, and renaming its three core plans for clarity and to deliver greater value to sales professionals. A fourth plan is a first-time offering for Pipedrive’s enterprise customers that delivers increased levels of service and support. New names and descriptors make it easier to differentiate between plans. The four plans are:

Essential (formerly Silver): The Essential plan gives sales professionals everything they need to get organized and stay focused on activities that lead to sales success. New capabilities include an AI-powered sales assistant and more pipeline customization options.

Advanced (formerly Gold): The Advanced plan adds new presets that speed up Pipedrive’s workflow automation of routine administrative tasks, which accelerates the process of moving deals to completion.

Professional (formerly Platinum): The Professional plan helps sales managers focus in real time on sales team performance and growing their businesses. New capabilities include an enhanced sales inbox that lets sales professionals customize emails to large lists; Caller℠, a built-in sales calling capability that comes with up to 300 minutes of free calls; and the ability for sales managers to track calls at the user level and adjust revenue forecasting based on deal movement through the pipeline.

In addition, the Professional plan includes completely redesigned sales managerial reporting with capabilities such as fully customizable goal setting, dashboard views, and access controls that empower sales managers with insights to better track the status of deals and make adjustments rapidly. Enhanced security reporting and the ability to set user permissions to control access to information at a more granular level and a new security dashboard give organizations greater peace of mind that customer information is protected and provides suggestions on how to better secure their business data. The Professional plan also includes a new mobile app, providing sales managers with on-the-go access to insights from their phones.

Enterprise (new): The Enterprise plan gives larger organizations all the benefits of Essential, Advanced, and Professional plans as well as additional support and service. Central features include the assignment of an Implementation Manager and Account Manager to each customer; set-up and onboarding assistance; coaching for individual users; support for pipeline customization; enhanced security and user permissions; and ongoing technical support via phone.

“Prior to adopting Pipedrive, we had a different CRM system that our salespeople just weren’t using,” said Lisa Coyle Co-CEO of payments provider 360Payments. “It was literally a battle every night for me to get salespeople to enter their data. They didn’t want to because it was complicated and had very little to do with helping them close sales. Pipedrive makes making sales so much easier than any other sales CRM because salespeople actually use it! They use Pipedrive to organize their day, keep track of deals and the activities that are needed to close deals, and manage the activities themselves so everything gets done.

“We welcome more granular pipeline and activity views, faster automation of routine tasks, and more advanced reporting so we can see how deals are progressing up to the minute,” added Coyle. “But really, what salespeople and management both want is a CRM system that salespeople want to use. That’s what we love about Pipedrive.”

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