Gmail CRM for Founders: You Probably Don't Need One

What is a Gmail CRM?

A Gmail CRM is a customer relationship management tool that runs inside Gmail. It's usually a Chrome extension or a sidebar. You'll also see it called a CRM inside Gmail or a Gmail CRM extension.

It does 3 things:

• Saves contacts from your emails
• Puts each lead in a stage, like cold, warm, closed or dead
• Reminds you to follow up

The idea is simple. You stay in your inbox, and the Gmail CRM keeps the records.

Tools like Streak and a long list of Gmail add-ons work this way. For a team with a sales process, that's useful. For a founder doing the selling alone, it often isn't.

Why founders quit their Gmail CRM

A CRM is only as good as the data in it. Someone has to type that data in. That someone is you.

Here's how it often goes:

• Week 1: you set up 6 stages and import your contacts
• Week 3: you forget to move 5 leads
• Week 6: the pipeline is wrong, so you stop looking at it

Now you have a second job. You update a board so you can look at a board. None of that gets a deal signed.

Where deals actually die in your Gmail inbox

Go back through the deals you lost in the last 6 months. Open the threads.

Most of them didn't die because a lead sat in the wrong stage. They died in the inbox:

• The prospect asked about pricing, and you replied 3 days later
• You said "I'll send a case study," then forgot
• You sent a generic answer to a specific question
• You sent the follow-up on day 12 instead of day 3

A CRM would have recorded every one of those losses neatly. But it wouldn't have acted to stop any of them. Tracking a deal and closing a deal are 2 different jobs.

What to use instead of a Gmail CRM

You don't need a record of your sales. You need something that works the deals while you run the company.

That's what Unfair does. It lives inside Gmail and gets involved in every sales conversation:

• It drafts the reply. A lead writes in. A strong reply is ready instantly. You read it and send it.
• It remembers the lead. Budget. Timeline. What's bugging them right now. What they want to achieve. Unfair picks it up from the emails themselves.
• It uses what it remembers. Every later reply builds on what the lead already told you. They don't repeat themselves, and you don't send an answer that ignores their budget.
• It writes it all down. The notes are there when you want to look.
• It sorts your sales emails into one folder. No newsletters, receipts or spam when you're in sales mode.

Unfair logs the lead for you. You log nothing.

Now compare that with a CRM. A CRM waits for you to type. If you forget, the lead dies and the CRM doesn't notice.

Unfair doesn't wait for you. It reads, remembers and drafts replies. So you spend less time on sales admin and more time on calls and closing deals.

When you do need a CRM

Sometimes you do. Be honest about whether you're there yet.

You need a CRM when:

• You have 2 or more people selling, and handoffs are getting dropped
• Investors or your board ask for pipeline numbers
• You need to forecast revenue by month
• You have so many leads that you can't remember who is who

If none of those apply, a CRM is probably overhead.

A solo founder with 20 live conversations doesn't have a reporting problem. They have a follow-up problem.

TL;DR: Gmail CRM for founders

A Gmail CRM is for you to log leads and move them through stages. It doesn't do your selling.

If you're a founder closing deals from your inbox, pick a tool that works the deal, not one that needs your input. Unfair logs the lead for you. You log nothing.

Use a CRM when you have a sales team and a larger process. Use a sales system like Unfair when you want to spend less time on sales admin and more time on calls.

Gmail CRM for founders: FAQ