For more than 2 decades now, the same CRMs have pretty much dominated the entire market.

But since the rise of Open AI in 2020/2021, new CRMs are coming on the market with a firm intention to get their share.

I've noticed that people online are talking about the new "AI CRMs" or "AI Native CRMs" vs the Old CRMs, so what is the difference exactly???

Who are the Old (aka traditional) CRMs?

Old CRMs are every CRMs that have been here for at least a decade.

When people are referring to old CRMs, the ones they have in mind are always the same:

• Salesforce: the biggest CRM in the world that was founded before the year 2000.

• Hubspot: the 2nd biggest CRM which is keeping up fast on Salesforce.

• Pipedrive: the biggest CRM for SMBs, now going upmarket.

• Close: one of the leading sales CRM for SMBs and small enterprises.

There's also other players in the bracket such as Nimble, LessAnnoyingCRM, Copper or Streak.

Those CRMs have all in common that they were early players in the market and benefitted for a clear growth by staying in the game.

Who are the New AI CRMs?

The new CRMs have usually been built after the year 2017 and all have adopted AI as soon as they could, hence why people are calling them AI CRMs.

Usually, people are talking about those softwares:

• Breakcold: an AI sales CRM that updates your CRM without manual data entry

• Attio: a CRM for product-led-growth teams, with AI features

Other CRMs that can be named are Zero, TwentyCRM, Clarify or Folk.

What is the difference between the two?

Last week, I was browsing Reddit and I noticed that people have no idea what AI CRMs do or if they are actually useful. It can be confusing because traditional (old) CRMs also claim to use AI.

So first let's do some clarifications, what is an AI CRM?

I mean, it's pretty easy, right? It's a CRM with AI.

But what does that really mean?

Basically, the biggest difference between an AI CRM and a traditional CRM is that in an AI CRM, the CRM updates itself.

For example, depending on your conversations with prospects, the CRM will move them automatically in your sales pipeline.

If you forget to send a follow-up to your CRM contacts, your CRM will create a task automatically so that you never miss a follow-up again.

Long story short, every boring CRM admin task is automated so that you can get your time back and focus on selling. At least, that’s what a true AI-native CRM does. Like mine, Breakcold.

Difference of AI use between a TRUE New AI CRMs vs Old CRMs

CRM with AI Features vs AI Native CRMs

The main problem with “AI CRMs” today is that traditional CRMs like Pipedrive, HubSpot, or Salesforce are adding AI features that are very deceiving, which makes people think AI CRMs are just a fad.

For example, decades-old CRMs will use AI to draft emails or generate scrappy AI summaries about your leads, but none of that is really useful.

However, true AI-native CRMs are doing the useful stuff I explained earlier.

I mean, think about it for a second:

• Your AI CRM creates your tasks automatically.

• Moves your leads automatically.

• Creates your deals automatically.

• And so many other things.

All of that used to take hours every single day for each sales rep.

There’s a reason why CRM adoption is very low, salespeople absolutely hate manual data entry.

So if you have a sales team, the productivity you get back by using a true AI-native CRM is insane. Your sales reps will be able to sell more.

Therefore, instead of hiring one new sales rep to generate more sales, you can just get an AI CRM for your two sales reps so they can get back 40 to 50% of their time normally wasted on CRM updates.

Basically, with an AI CRM, you not only save money because it's usually cheaper than a traditional CRM you also make more money.

All right, I hope the difference is clear now.

Illustration of the main benefit to use an AI Native CRM for sales teams

Compared to old CRMs, there's a massive advantage to use of the modern CRMs for sales CRM.

For example:

Imagine you have 3 sales reps.

Each rep spends:

60 percent of their time selling.

40 percent of their time doing boring admin stuff (copying data, updating the CRM, writing notes, creating tasks, etc.)

That means they’re actually selling only 60 percent of the day.

Now imagine you delete the 40 percent admin time.

Suddenly, each rep sells 100 percent of the time instead of 60.

📈 What happens?

Step 1

Before:
3 reps × 60 percent selling time = 1.8 “full-selling reps”

After:
3 reps × 100 percent selling time = 3 “full-selling reps”

Step 2

Difference:
3 – 1.8 = 1.2 extra full-selling reps worth of sales output

…without hiring anyone.

Which one is better: Old or New CRMs?

If the goal of a CRM is to save you time to SELL MORE, then why using a traditional (old) CRM?

New AI CRMs are better by design.

By using a one of those CRMs (Breakcold), I saved about 83 hours in admin work in the last 3 months, here's how:

Time lost on in a traditional CRM

You might disagree heavily on my maths (and it's fine) but humans tend to underestimate (by a lot) how much time they spent on stuff.

I mean, there's a reason why all studies, backed by data, say that on average sales reps lose about 40% of their time in admin work (the majority being related to CRM).

Here's my estimate on how much time is lost in a traditional (old) CRM to create a CRM task and executing it:

• 1 min lost → finding the lead to create the task the first time

• 1 min lost → going to the task section, opening the task, then jumping back to the email or LinkedIn convo if the CRM has no built-in inbox

• 1 min lost → context switching across too many windows, you’re not focused and not doing the same thing in a row

• 2 mins lost → trying to remember what happened and figure out your follow up because you have no base to start from

Without realizing it, from start to finish, completing your CRM tasks becomes an admin nightmare and this is why CRM adoption is so low with salespeople who just want to... sell.

I completed about 1000 tasks using my modern CRM system (they were created by AI & more). I saved about 5 minutes for each task in CRM updates resulting in about 83 hours saved.

Is it possible to save time on admin work with a traditional CRM?

Of course, you can do it with what is called "CRM Workflows".

But first, you gotta be tech savvy to set this up so few people do it (1). Then you also to take into account that most CRMs don't integrate with socials like LinkedIn or other platforms (2).

Therefore, you'll have lots of back-and-forth to complete the tasks. It's not a perfect system on many aspects, for example, what if you complete the tasks outside of the CRM? Like sending a following up email, does it detect it? No. You get the point.

Are Old CRMs doomed to die?

The first AI features released by major CRMs were disappointing to say the least.

However, they're not stupid, otherwise they won't be making billions every year. They're iterating and looking at new little market entrants like us (Breakcold) to get the best ideas and adapting them for the enterprise customers.

On this screenshot, you can see Hubspot spying on Breakcold and they're not the only ones, other tools like Attio, SugarCRM or Clarify did too; as shown on the screenshot.