Buyer's guide
Seven things to check before you buy a CRM
Every product's feature list is long and they all look alike. What actually separates them is somewhere else.
Criteria
The seven that actually make a difference
1. If nobody enters anything, what survives?
The most important question, and the one least often asked in a demo. A tool that only reflects manual input is empty six months later.
2. How long does entering something take?
Time the gap between “the meeting ended” and “it's recorded”. If it is more than a minute, it will not happen in practice.
3. Is Persian genuinely supported, or translated?
RTL across the whole interface, Jalali dates, search that works in Persian, and Persian documents. The difference shows up in week two, not in the demo.
4. Where does the data live, and how does it get out?
Ask about a full export on day one. If the answer is vague, you are renting your own data.
5. Can history be rewritten?
If a stage can be moved back with no trace, the reports are not defensible. Ask whether history is append-only or editable.
6. What does year two actually cost?
Per seat, plus setup, plus extra modules, plus migration if you leave. Ask for the total, not the headline.
7. If it has AI, what gets sent to the model?
Ask what leaves your organisation, where it goes, and whether there is a ledger of that usage you can actually look at.
In the demo
Questions to put to any vendor — including us
A vague answer to any of these is itself an answer.
- Ingest one of my real, badly scanned documents right now.
- If my team enters nothing for a month, what is lost?
- How do I export all of my data, and in what format?
- What in your product is not built yet?
- Who is your closest customer to my size and sector?
- If I don't renew, what exactly happens?
- Which part of this demo is seeded data and which is real?
- What hours does support cover, and with what response commitment?
Three common mistakes
First: choosing on the length of the feature list. The tool with the most features and the least use wins that comparison almost every time. The right criterion is what your team will genuinely do every day.
Second: specifying every process before starting. A three-month implementation project usually formalises a process you do not understand yet. Starting small and correcting as you go almost always works better.
Third: ignoring the cost of leaving. On the day you want to go, the only thing that matters is that your data comes out complete and in a usable format. Ask on day one, not on the last day.
Buying questions
How do I know whether my team will actually use a CRM?
A simple test: for two weeks, with no tool at all, ask the team to write three lines in a shared file after each meeting. If that doesn't happen, the problem is not the tool and no software will fix it. If it does, you now know what the real minimum input is, and you can ask for a tool that works with that.Iranian CRM or an international one?
It comes down to payment and support. An international tool usually has no domestic payment gateway, may not be reachable from Iran, and does not support you during your working hours. Genuine Persian support — not just a translated interface — is something to check separately in either case.Should I try a free plan first?
Yes, if the free plan is the real product rather than a limited demonstration. Two weeks of real use shows you what no demo can.
Try it on your real contacts
The free plan has no time limit. Import your contacts and see when the first thing you'd forgotten comes back.