What i hate about small business software tools is the vendors seem to assume that small business owners know about all the marketing/sales automation tools that are available and know how theu fit together. Nothing could be further from the truth. Small business owners want a different kind of simple. They want tools that don’t require dozens or hundreds of hours of customization or hiring an outside contractor to set it up. And it better be easy to connect to their email subscriber system, their social media manager, their appointment system, and their accounting system. Also important to me is how your tool will help me nuture existing customer relationships to drive future sales.

Small business customers want highly integrated CRM systems that are easy for one person to manage.

One more pet peeve. The only easy way i’ve found to differentiate between any of these offerings has been to automatically write off any product that requires me to contact the vendor in order to learn the cost of the product. Seriously?