The Best CRM For Pool & Spa Stores

When we first started The Get Smart Group way back in 2009, we knew that sales & marketing automation were critical to the pool & spa industry due to the “big ticket, long sales cycle” nature of the products. Given that fact, we have always included a robust CRM (Customer Relationship Manager) solution in our overall marketing and sales offerings. The journey through three different “primary” CRMs, alongside a wide variety of email software, POS software, and others has led us to where we are today. I’m not going to spoil it just yet, because to truly understand the importance of a CRM in a Pool & Spa store, we need to define a few things first.

Types of Software in a Pool & Spa Store

There are a couple types of software that we regularly encounter in this industry:

Point of Sale Software (POS)
A few examples of this include LOU (formerly Evosus), RB Retail & Service Software, Lightspeed, Square, and others. These tools range from simple retail ordering systems to full blown inventory and route management solutions. In many cases, these software packages are responsible for the bulk of the Operations side of the business, but can be quite lacking on the sales and marketing side.

Email Marketing Software
Some smaller businesses use a dedicated email-only program for their marketing communications. Some names you might recognize include Constant Contact and MailChimp. While they’ve definitely added features over the years, these programs are really good at one thing: sending bulk emails. They occasionally include forms, or SMS/Text message functionality, but are quite thin in their overall usefulness.

Enterprise Grade ERP Software
We have seen some pool & spa stores switching to solutions like NetSuite and SalesForce, which are wayyy overkill for 99% of these retail businesses. If you have between 30 and 300 minutes to hear all my thoughts on this, please reach out…

Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) Software
And now, to the main event. Whatever CRM solution is used by a Pool & Spa store, you absolutely must have sales and marketing automation included. Without automation, it’ll be another piece of software that you’re not getting value out of. So what have we tried?

Back in 2009, I was among the very first Infusionsoft Certified Consultants for a marketing automation called (you guessed it), Infusionsoft. At the time, Infusionsoft was the best automation platform around and we onboarded retail stores nationwide onto the platform. Over the years, the pace of innovation at Infusionsoft (now called Keap) slowed to a near-halt, and we began looking for alternative.

This is where Active Campaign came into the picture. We used Active Campaign for about 5 years before a similar slow-down in innovation became obvious and we were losing faith that it was the right CRM platform for this industry. (Full Disclosure: We still support Active Campaign in limited instances)

Through our clients, we’ve also worked with SharpSpring, Marketo, Pardot, Nutshell, and a few others. Most of these tools started out trying to solve a very specific problem and evolved into their current state. They were good, sometimes? But always had a clunky interface or a glaring feature omission that we couldn’t overcome – so we have never recommended them.

Enter HubSpot. I’ve been aware of HubSpot for years, and have always been impressed by their software. The only major drawback was the price. They have always been more expensive than the tools I mentioned above, and it was hard to recommend the platform. However, in the past 2-3 years, they have come lightyears ahead and now surpass their competitors by a large margin – both in features/functionality and in value.

There are a lot of reasons that we now recommend HubSpot and I put together a quick six minute video showing a few of my favorite features:

When it comes to HubSpot, I could also go on for hours about the benefits and how it all ties together. But instead of doing that, I’d like to give you a live demo of the tool and how it can apply directly to your business.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you. All you need to do is fill out the form below and I’ll get a demo scheduled right away. We’ll go over sales and marketing automation, sales person tasks, pipelines, ad-tracking and a few other goodies.

Scott Reynolds

I have been an entrepreneur since I was 17 years old. I have worked as a script writer, videographer and video editor for infomercials, I worked as the technical director for a national Jury Consulting Firm and went on to own my own jury consulting company. From there, back in the mid-2000s, I partnered as the CTO / CEO on an international tech company startup bringing American TV to Expats abroad. In my experience, I have had success stories and failures that have taught me critical "in the moment" decision making, planning and execution skills. Most importantly, I have learned the critical tools needed to gain business, grow business and succeed in business. Since 2004, I have been working with other entrepreneurs and business owners to help grow their own unique businesses. Our focus is on a few key areas that impact business growth. Website design, lead capture and sales automation through HubSpot, idea focusing, growth planning and marketing & branding strategy and implementation. Most of our clients are companies with between $2m and $15m in revenue, who are looking to take the next strategic step for growth, although we have also helped companies grow to this level from a lower initial level of revenue. This "next step" is different for each company and each industry. It could be hiring a specifically skilled employee, developing a new sales strategy, rebranding, being trained in a customized HubSpot account and building an interactive website, launching an online or radio advertising campaign and incorporating just about any business tool you can imagine into the strategy. In addition to business consulting, we are also developing a network of affiliate marketing businesses across multiple niches. We have built dozens of micro-sites to help promote various products and manage multiple email accounts to drive traffic and revenue to a wide variety of products. My goal is to see my clients succeed while allowing them to continue to do what they are best at without getting bogged down in the technical details of what I bring to the table. If you own a business or have a great idea for a business, I have the skill set, the experience, the strategy and the best possible team in place to help you succeed.