Initiating and closing sales is a tedious process, often made even worse by complicated software that makes you fill out endless forms before you even start the work. Seems like people in the Northern Europe are particularly frustrated with existing CRM solutions and are busy building their own tools. Cases in point are a new start-up from Estonia - Pipedrive and an early-stage start-up from Finland - Deal Machine. Both companies offer sales management software but from different perspectives. Pipedrive from the point of view of experienced sales managers, Deal Machine from a young generation of innovators. What is the difference between the two and why would you choose either one of them?

Pipedrive's website will tell you that the reason to use it is the service's simplicity. The software offers you a pipeline view of all your sales from idea to negotiation stages, a social feed where you can see latest activities by other team members and chat about specific deals. Naturally, you can customize certain things for your company's needs and Pipedrive guarantees safety of any information you put into the system. The start-up's founders - Urmas Purde, Timo Rein and Peep Vain, claim over 20 years of sales experience and describe Pipedrive as a perfect software for sales teams of up to 20 people working in sales, advertising and PR agencies. Overall, it seems like a nice and simple tool created by the sales people for the sales people.

A bunch of young entrepreneurs from Finland would tell you that there is a more interesting CRM solution out there - Deal Machine. Their service promises not only to make your sales simple and straightforward but actually make them exciting by adding game dynamics to the process. The start-up was founded last summer in Finland and launched their service already in September 2010. It's greatest advantage, apart from the cool game dynamics, is that it's easy to migrate to the system from your current CRM software through their open API.

Pipedrive is at an earlier stage than Deal Machine in their operations, but given the experience of its team, the company could drive far and fast. The question is whether it is enough to offer a clean and simple alternative to the existing CRM solutions for people to start using the service. When it comes to Deal Machine, on the other hand, the question is whether or not game dynamics make a real difference to attract and sustain the interest of sales managers.

If you had to choose between the two solutions, which one would you choose? A clean and simple service created by experienced sales managers or an equally straightforward yet funky one created by fresh-faced entrepreneurs?

Compare and contrast: Pipedrive

Compare and contrast: Deal Machine

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