Salesforce, HubSpot and Zoho are excellent products. If your sales process looks like most sales processes, one of them will serve you well and you should not pay anyone to rebuild it.
When off-the-shelf is right
- Your pipeline is conventional and your team is small
- You need to be up and running this month
- The integrations you need already exist
When custom earns its cost
- Your process is your competitive advantage and the tool keeps forcing you to change it
- Per-seat pricing has become a serious line item
- The CRM needs to be part of a larger system: operations, inventory, a customer portal
- You are paying for a product and using a tenth of it, while maintaining a tangle of workarounds
The middle path
Often the best answer is to keep the platform and customise it properly: tailored objects, automation and integrations with the rest of your stack. It is less exciting than a new build and, for many businesses, exactly right.