Zendesk Sell vs Pipedrive: An Honest Comparison for Business Owners
Zendesk Sell is retiring in August 2027. Compare it honestly with Pipedrive, feature by feature, and find out if your migration could be an upgrade.
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Zendesk Sell users know the decision point is coming. With Zendesk Sell being retired, many teams are now asking the obvious next question: is Pipedrive really the right CRM to move to?
In this episode of the Motii Playbook, Fred Schnell is joined by Ben Fuller and Kile Rogers to unpack why Zendesk has recommended Pipedrive as the official migration path, what makes it a natural fit for sales-led teams, and where businesses still need to be careful before making the move.
The conversation goes beyond a simple platform comparison. It looks at CRM fit, team adoption, integrations, reporting, migration risk, and the bigger opportunity for businesses to use this transition as a chance to review how their sales process actually works.
If you are moving away from Zendesk Sell, this episode will help you understand where Pipedrive is strong, where it may not be the right answer, and what to think through before committing to your next CRM.
Intro VO:
Motii acknowledges the traditional owners of country throughout Australia. We pay our respects to elders past and present, and acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the first peoples of this land. Welcome to the Motii Playbook. If you've ever felt like your systems are technically in place, but somehow still feel chaotic behind the scenes, you're in the right spot. This is where we share what we're seeing, what's working, what's not, and the lessons businesses learn the hard way. Think of it as practical strategy straight from the trenches. Let's dive in.
Fred Schnell:
Welcome to the Motii Playbook. One shift, one system, one measurable outcome. I'm Fred Schnell, Managing Director here at Motii. This is the second episode in our Zendesk Sell series. In our first episode, we covered everything you need to know about the actual retirement of Zendesk Sell. If you missed that episode, you can always find the link in the notes below. Today, we'll be talking about what's next, where to from here. And Zendesk itself recommends Pipedrive as the official migration partner. So today, we'll explore in a bit more detail why Pipedrive could be a natural progression for your business moving away from Zendesk Sell. I welcome Ben Fuller, Co-founder and Technology Guru here at Motii. Over the years, Ben has helped hundreds of businesses with their technology projects and also, in particular, with their CRM system migrations. We also have Kile Rogers with us. Kile is in our BD team here at Motii and he works closely with businesses navigating CRM decisions and helping them find the best fit for their business. Gentlemen, welcome.
Ben Fuller:
Cheers, thank you very much, Fred. Great to be here.
Kile Rogers:
Thanks for having us, Fred.
Fred Schnell:
So Ben, as briefly you mentioned before, Zendesk has officially partnered with Pipedrive as the recommended migration path. But why Pipedrive? Why do you think Pipedrive makes it such a natural fit for someone coming out of Zendesk Sell?
Ben Fuller:
I think there's probably three things involved in this decision of Zendesk to recommend Pipedrive. First of all is the quality of the native integration between Pipedrive and Zendesk. It is probably the best of the major CRMs. Obviously, their Help Desk clients are Zendesk core clients, and so making sure that that integration is nice, easy to use, and works straight out of the box is probably the major driver of this decision. Secondly, I think probably Pipedrive's quality as a sales CRM. It's easy to use, it's an activities-based CRM, it fits neatly with what Zendesk Help Desk does as a help desk. Thirdly, and I think probably maybe the most important factor for Zendesk at the end of the day, was not to introduce a competitor to their clients' tech stack. What I mean by that is, take for example HubSpot. It's a decent CRM, right? A bit a little bit expensive, but a decent CRM. But HubSpot has a help desk feature as part of their product suite. And it just does not make any sense for someone like Zendesk to introduce a product like HubSpot as the CRM, because then they will always be running the danger that the clients will be switching, or HubSpot will be trying to switch those clients across to their help desk feature. And so I think it's those three factors really at the end of the day. Probably one more thing maybe is Pipedrive has, like Motii for example, a really strong partner network. A number of different partners, including Motii in the Asia-Pac region, have built dedicated migration tools that will make that transition from Zendesk Sell across to Pipedrive nice and easy. And so that strong partner network may have weighed a little bit on their minds as well.
Fred Schnell:
Okay. No, that sounds good. And so Kile, from your conversations that you're having with clients, what do you think people are most worried about when they change or move systems?
Kile Rogers:
Look, I think it's really a couple of things. A lot of those customers are going, we've spent time and put in effort and hours into trying to get our team to use it. We don't want to move to another CRM that's going to be too complicated that our sales team doesn't end up using, then we don't get the data and reporting we need to make the right decisions around our sales strategy. So I think that's really the big thing. Is it going to be simple and easy to use and easy for the team to adopt? The other issue is the data. Is it going to be easy and relatively simple enough for us to move our data across without too many hiccups or hurdles to try and make it a nice, easy, smooth transition? So I think they'd probably be the main things that I hear about from customers when they're talking about those sorts of migrations.
Fred Schnell:
And so Ben, you know you've done quite a few of these migrations. Do you think businesses tend to overestimate or underestimate what it means to move from one system to the other?
Ben Fuller:
I think it's usually underestimated. Data migration is one of the most complex parts of setting up a new CRM. And so the data migration itself is always underestimated. The architecture or the architecting of a CRM, I think it doesn't need to be super complex, and plenty of people are capable of architecting a CRM. But at the end of the day, it's really that data migration, and that's where a lot of complexity comes in. And so, I think also answering Kile's question as well, what people are worried about losing, I think the other thing that Zendesk Sell users are worried about losing is that integration to the help desk, right? Like for me, it would be at the top of my mind if I was migrating. I'm like, how is this going to work with Zendesk Help Desk, which is a core system that I have?
Fred Schnell:
So, how would it work in your experience? What is your answer to that question?
Ben Fuller:
Well, so basically you need to offer the same or similar functionality between Pipedrive and Zendesk Help Desk as what they currently have between Zendesk Sell and Zendesk Help Desk, right? And Pipedrive's native integration offers all of that, right? So with the native integration, what you've got is the ability to be able to see Zendesk tickets inside of Pipedrive, and Pipedrive deals, persons, and organizations inside of Zendesk. And the updates between the two, just using the native integration without us overlaying any complexity like say via Zapier or Make or the API, just using the native integration, we have instant updates, visibility of both systems in both platforms. And so you're really not losing anything by moving across to Pipedrive, and it's that out-of-the-box functionality that is there right from the get-go.
Fred Schnell:
Yeah. No, very good. Now you mentioned other CRMs, and there's plenty of CRMs out there in the marketplace. Let's be a little bit more specific. In your experience, what does a business look like and feel like where Pipedrive would be a natural fit?
Ben Fuller:
Well, the simple answer is that they would want to have a sales focus, right? They would regard sales as central or the key plank of their business. Because Pipedrive will cover those sales needs, right? And then the support or the help desk aspect they've already got covered with the Zendesk Help Desk feature. So wanting their teams to focus on those sales or regarding sales as core or the most important part of the business, they probably want an easy-to-use CRM. And they're probably on a budget as well. I think this is probably the other thing, they don't want to spend too much on the migration because in a sense, it's a forced migration, right? And so as an example, you can implement Pipedrive, like I'll use Motii's pricing, right? Pipedrive versus Monday.com, which we also implement. Generally, it's half as much cost to the client to implement Pipedrive as Monday.com. If you take something like HubSpot, Pipedrive is a third of the cost to implement. If you take something like Salesforce, it can be between 5 and 10 times cheaper to implement Pipedrive. And so because this is a forced migration, I think that that probably comes into it a lot.
Fred Schnell:
No, good point. Let's move a little bit to the sales and BD team's point of view, Kile. Why do you think reps really like using Pipedrive as opposed to avoiding it and finding workarounds using Post-it notes and Excel files?
Kile Rogers:
Yeah, look, great question. As far as Pipedrive, it's the fact that it's, I know I mentioned this before, right, really, really easy to use and adopt for your sales team, right? You don't need to have a PhD to be able to jump in and start navigating around. It's quite visual as far as your pipeline, the drag-and-drop functionality, people love being able to just visually see their deals moving through a pipeline. And obviously, we help as far as sometimes automating some of that process as well depending on different triggers, but that's getting into the weeds a little bit. The activities side of things, you know, Pipedrive was designed by some sales reps for sales reps to be able to follow up on all the various opportunities they're working on. So being able to clearly see what are my activities, where am I up to, what do I need to action today, what's overdue, or what don't I have an activity scheduled against, just having that high-level overview of all of your opportunities in your pipeline makes it really easy from a sales rep perspective to go, ah, okay, I've missed a couple of things there. Or from a sales management perspective to go, I can see the team dropped the ball on a couple of things there, I'll get them to chase up on that. So it's just being really, really easy and really simple to use, very visual. And as you start using it more and more, similar to what Ben said, it's easy to start customizing more and more to get better reporting or reporting on different things that you might not get when you first start using it. So as you want to keep pivoting your sales strategy, you've got that ability yourself to go and make those changes and take ownership of that program.
Fred Schnell:
Anything to add, Ben?
Ben Fuller:
No, I don't think so. I think probably we'll talk about a few other platforms a bit further down the track, but Kile's really covered off the greatest hits of Pipedrive there and why it is such a successful CRM.
Fred Schnell:
So we've spoken about how complex and stressful moving CRMs could be for some businesses. First, there's the platform decision itself, like, which platform is the right fit for my organization? But then I guess there is also the actual migration process itself, which, as we all know and we said that, is underestimated quite a bit. So if someone is deciding to move from a Zendesk Sell to say a Pipedrive, what does Motii do differently for a small and medium-sized business? Ben, can you just elaborate on that a bit?
Ben Fuller:
Yeah, yeah, sure. First of all, we've built a data migration tool, right? So this means that you'll spend less money, the data is migrated more quickly, more easily, there's less human hours involved, which like I said leads to lower cost. It's really that data migration thing, I think the biggest part of all of this. Then you've got the system architecture, right? Like, we could easily work with the client to exactly replicate their Zendesk Sell setup. However, it's probably not the smartest thing to do. No doubt since they first set up Zendesk Sell, some things have changed for the business. Maybe Zendesk Sell just wasn't set up all that well to begin with, right? And so Zendesk Sell is, it's an okay CRM, I wouldn't say that it's great, it used to be Base CRM. And so it's a little bit buggy, it's a little bit sluggish. And so it does have its issues, and so replicating it exactly is probably not the smartest thing. So that system architecture is the second thing there. Then adding another level of complexity is the integration to third-party platforms, right? So no one's tech stack exists in a vacuum. There's obviously the integration which we've spoken about already to Zendesk Help Desk, that platform. But our client will have on average five other softwares that need to be plugged into the CRM, right? And it's those third-party integrations, whether that's via Zapier, Make, or API, that add another layer of complexity. And generally, this is what people can't do themselves, right, which is integrate the third-party platforms. Then overlaid over the top of all of that is the training aspect, right? So as you know, Fred, Motii create a video-based training manual for everyone, and then there's the live training that we provide as well. And that's sort of broken down by team or department and requirement and need. And then sort of we analyze how sophisticated or tech-savvy the clients are and adjust our training to fit the audience. I suppose at the end of the day, like, the reason people pay consultancies like Motii or agencies like Motii is that we guarantee success, right? We save time, but we guarantee success at the end of the day. And so whether it's getting the system architecture right, getting the data migration right, nailing those third-party integrations so they work and they're not buggy, or providing the training, all of that just wraps up into one neat little package of we guarantee success. And so to come back and answer your question, that's why people will use an agency like Motii rather than trying to do it themselves.
Fred Schnell:
And so Kile, I am sure you've seen plenty of, or you've spoken to plenty of people out there that experienced system migrations that probably went badly and turned more into migraines than migrations. So in your view, what makes the difference between a migration that goes really, really well compared to one that does not go well?
Kile Rogers:
Yeah, look, I think there's two really big parts to this. And it's all revolving around the human element. So I think it's firstly the internal side of things. So it's making sure that the people internally know why you're doing this, why you're making the move, why to this particular system. Making sure that they're across it, they're involved in the process, that it's going to suit them if they're using it every day. A lot of the time we see where management sits there and rolls this out, and then the team that's actually using it day-to-day doesn't know how this system is meant to work. So then no one adopts it, they end up living in their own spreadsheets, management complains that the solution sucks. And it's often not the case, it's just the fact that it's not set up for success internally. And on top of that, then there's obviously the training side of things as well, right, where people just don't know how to use the system so it just becomes simply too hard and too manual. I think the other side of it, and this is tying back to what Ben was talking about integrations as well, right, is the customer side of things. So as Ben said, on average five different softwares that a business might use that needs to be integrated in. It's making sure that the customer feels like they're valued, they're important. You know, that you've got the history and you've got that one single view of all the conversations that you've had with them so they're not speaking to the sales team and having a conversation and then that's siloed from the service team or the support team who's having a conversation with them. So if I'm the salesperson, I can jump in and go, ah gee, I can see they've had this really big issue. I'm going to make sure I jump on that when I next call that particular customer so that they know that the left hand talks to the right hand. So I think for me, it's usually those two sides of things, the internal battle as well as making sure the customer is at the center of everything that they're doing within the business.
Ben Fuller:
I think it's a really good point because there's a lot of businesses that treat like a CRM implementation as a technology or an IT project without involving the people that actually use the system. And so you end up with a very expensive, highly customized CRM potentially that no one actually wants to use or no one knows how to use, right?
Kile Rogers:
Yeah. And I think the point there around the training is critical, especially in the first few weeks, right? Like, this is where the adoption can either succeed or fail, or the switch can either succeed or fail. And it's knowing what to look out for inside of the system, right? Like Motii, we know how to run a report that will tell us who is lagging and who is not, and who might need that additional training, right? And we know not to rely on everyone saying, yeah, it's all fine, it's all good, when we can see that there's three people out of ten who simply aren't using the system. And so it's making sure that you have a sort of no soldier left behind type thing when it comes to adoption of the system and making sure that everyone's along for the ride.
Fred Schnell:
Now, I guess every system will have its strengths and, well, as well as its limitations. So Ben, thinking about Pipedrive, who would you say Pipedrive is probably not the right fit for?
Ben Fuller:
Ah look, if you're less of a sales operation and more of a project management-orientated business where sales is obviously a part of that, but the key part is the onboarding and the implementation of whatever it is that you do or sell, then potentially Pipedrive's not necessarily for you. Pipedrive is working very hard on their projects feature at the moment and it does look really good, the new version of that that's being rolled out. But it's no Monday.com when it comes to project management, and it's not trying to be Monday either, right? And so I think if your business has a heavy sales focus, or if sales is absolutely critical in that sense, then Pipedrive is probably the best choice for you. But if that takes a bit of a back seat to the project management and implementation side of things, then Monday.com is probably a really strong choice for you. Keeping in mind that the native integration between Zendesk and Monday is not anywhere near what it is between Pipedrive and Zendesk, and to get the same level of integration, Motii will need to do some custom work with that integration with Monday.com to make that actually work in the same way as what it does with Pipedrive. And I don't think you'll ever quite get it there just because of the different ways that the two systems are structured. But Monday.com on that side of things is a strong option. I can't really, Fred, think of another use case outside of those two platforms in a sense because on one side you've got the sales-first CRMs like Pipedrive for argument's sake, and then you've got the project management platforms like Monday, for example, right? Usually, in that mix, you would throw your help desks and everything like that. But these are all Zendesk customers who are already running Zendesk. So they don't need another help desk platform thrown into the mix. And so in my mind, the choice is really between Pipedrive on one hand and Monday on the other hand, depending on what the client's requirements are.
Fred Schnell:
Now some platforms, you know, they claim to be very, very strong in kind of the marketing and lead generation side of things. What would you recommend in this respect with, you know, someone moving to a Pipedrive or a Monday?
Ben Fuller:
The CRM that's strongest in that marketing automation area is HubSpot by quite some distance, right? Like HubSpot is really a marketing automation platform with a CRM attached rather than being CRM first. And if you are a business, like if you're mainly an e-com business that is heavily focused on digital sales, heavily focused on the marketing, things like abandoned carts and all that type of thing, then yeah, HubSpot needs to be a consideration for you because of the strength of the marketing automation side of things. However, I would be very surprised, Fred, if they don't already have in their tech stack something that fills that gap already, right? Because you're not going to be coming across from Zendesk Sell and all of a sudden realizing, oh, I need a massive marketing automation piece, because what's been doing that job for you previously? Right? And so usually that job is being done by ActiveCampaign or Mailchimp or Klaviyo, those types of products, right? And no doubt that will already exist in the tech stack. And so in that sense, again, Pipedrive fits well within that tech stack because of its, it's easy to integrate to those three major platforms. It's got an amazing integration with Mailchimp. Klaviyo's got a strong integration, ActiveCampaign's also got a strong integration there. But if you are that one in a million business that really needs marketing automation but hasn't had it so far, then yeah, HubSpot should be something that you would consider, right? You would definitely be looking at it for sure.
Fred Schnell:
So Kile, if someone's listening to this podcast and still isn't quite sure which way to go, what do you think would be the three questions that they should ask themselves?
Kile Rogers:
I guess the big three that I would think of would be, and I think I've already touched on this, or Ben and I've both touched on this. How easy is it going to be for our team to pick up and use so that they hit the ground running, they're not having to take months to figure out how to use the system? Where do we integrate this to? What do we rely on? What do we need to connect to, as Ben talked about right, that importance of integrating this into Zendesk so you've got that sales to support handoff right there. And I think probably the most important thing, arguably the most important part of it, is sales the primary thing, or the main thing that we need to manage out of this, or do we need something that's a little bit more of a wider-use tool for maybe project or operations management like a Monday.com as an example. So I think it's yeah, to break it down, sales versus projects and operations, make that decision first, and then how easy do I need this to be for my team to be able to use? And then once you've got those answered, then you can start to look at the integrations, what's easy to integrate into what other solutions like your Zendesk.
Fred Schnell:
Yeah, so Kile, look, is what you're saying basically you need to do an analysis of your tech stack, make sure that you don't have any gaps, and work out, well, make sure that whichever CRM you choose is not going to create any gaps in your tech stack, I suppose?
Kile Rogers:
Yeah, I think that's the important thing to have that internal look, is, do we have any gaps? If so, how do we fix those? How do we bridge those gaps? How do we reduce that knowledge gap between sales, between support, between accounts and finance as well? So I tend to see whenever businesses sit there and map that sort of stuff out, they've got a better idea of where they can then go from there or what's going to help find a solution as opposed to just going, oh, I'm just going to get a CRM for the sake of hosting some contacts and some data.
Fred Schnell:
Should be a bit more than just a database, right?
Kile Rogers:
Yeah, correct.
Fred Schnell:
Just with all the AI hype out there in the marketplace, Ben, how much should a business really be focusing on kind of the AI features that a tool has to offer?
Ben Fuller:
As far as their CRM goes, there's minimum requirements for it, right? Which is things like note-takers that integrate to the CRM so that when you do a meeting, the updates to the CRM are sort of semi-automated. And we've seen Pipedrive roll that out recently. We know Monday's got a good solid AI suite. I know platforms like Close, for example, have their AI agent called Chloe, which does outbound calls and then moves the deal to the next stage in the pipeline when Chloe the AI agent qualifies that person via the outbound call and stuff like that. And so it really depends on what your requirements are and what the top-of-funnel sales process looks like. Take Motii for example, right? I can't foresee us using an agent like Chloe to make outbound cold calls, it's just not in our DNA, right? And a lot of businesses are like that. But a lot of businesses will make outbound cold calls. And when you can make 100 calls in a minute using Chloe, which Close have integrated to their CRM, right, why would you pay someone a decent amount of money per hour or per lead to do that when you can get an AI agent to do it? It's just a matter of how many leads could you generate or how many leads could you set up for that agent. So to come back and answer your question, Fred, I think it depends a lot on what the business structure and requirements are. It's still very early days with bringing AI into your tech stack, and the changes are going to be huge over the next few years. But I think at the moment, no one's quite sure where everything's going to fall, and I wouldn't be too concerned about being a little bit conservative on the AI side right now. It is a massive buzzword, but you genuinely want to make decisions that are going to benefit the business and not just bring chaos, I suppose, is one way to look at it. And so AI is important, but I wouldn't say that you should base your whole decision on it at this stage. At the end of the day, business fundamentals matter more than the latest AI technology at this stage.
Fred Schnell:
So if I hear you correctly, it's kind of getting the business foundation right, and the workflows right, is a lot more important than making sure that the tool actually fits with your kind of business structure and your team's requirements.
Ben Fuller:
Yeah, and I think also this comes back to sort of my philosophy around tech stacks more broadly, right? And this is even more important now than it was three or four years ago, which is you need to maintain as much flexibility as possible in your tech stack. And so you don't want to have the Swiss Army knife problem, right? Where you've got this one product that does everything because you're beholden to that software vendor. I'll use an example, NetSuite. Big ERP platform, they have a CRM aspect to it. Every single person who uses the NetSuite CRM thinks it is total garbage, which it is. And so Motii does a huge amount of work plugging Pipedrive's easy-to-use CRM to the NetSuite back-end, right? And so you want to maintain flexibility within your tech stack. And the danger of NetSuite, for example, or a HubSpot even, which is now got a module for just about everything, is that you get locked into the ecosystem. HubSpot is famous for getting you into the ecosystem and then ratcheting up the price across every single product, and all of a sudden you end up paying three, four, five times for a CRM module than what Pipedrive might offer or what Monday might offer from their CRM, right? And so I think the most important thing with all the change that's going on at the moment is to maintain flexibility within your tech stack and make sure that you're not locked into a specific vendor. That applies on the AI side of things as well, right? Make sure that you're not locked into a specific vendor which doesn't give you the flexibility from an AI perspective to roll out the latest and greatest. Because who knows where the hell we will be in 12 months from an AI perspective. And if you don't have a flexible tech stack that can't roll out maybe this new amazing feature that everyone now desperately needs, then you're behind the eight ball because you've locked yourself down too much.
Fred Schnell:
I guess it's that question, and it's a big debate always kind of the all-in-one system that does it all, the Swiss Army knife kind of approach, or the best-in-class software stack, right? Where you say, okay, for marketing I choose this, for sales I want this, for finance I want that, but making sure that these systems actually communicate to each other and exchange the information well enough.
Ben Fuller:
Well, this is a misconception of modern software. The misconception is that, let's take HubSpot or NetSuite, for example, right? People have this misconception that because their CRM, their help desk, their project management, their invoice generation, whatever else, are all done by NetSuite or all done by HubSpot, that it's going to be a smoother, easier process, right? Because of modern APIs and how interoperable software is, if you run your sales in Pipedrive, right, and then your project management in Monday or your project management in HubSpot's project management feature, for example, the transfer of data between Pipedrive CRM and the other tools' project management is seamless. It's exactly the same as if it was done within Monday or within HubSpot or within NetSuite, right? And so people have this misconception that they need to be using all of the same product because it's going to be easier and better. And it's just simply not. And so I think maintaining flexibility in a tech stack is not being beholden to a single vendor because you run the danger of not being able to keep up with the changes and slot whatever the latest and greatest product is into your tech stack. And you also run the HubSpot danger, which is they will get you into the ecosystem and then they will ratchet up those prices because when you need this tiny little feature here it's like, oh no, you've got to be on the next tier for that. And everyone needs to upgrade, right? So yeah, people need to be super careful with a lot of this stuff.
Kile Rogers:
I think just on that point too, Ben, I think what a lot of people forget as well, as you said, having that one throat to choke as far as a software vendor, but a lot of those vendors have also acquired a lot of those point solutions and bought them into their tech stack, right? Like NetSuite started out as an accounting and financials package, and then went and acquired a PSA or a project management solution to tie that to their consulting side of things, and then bolted in a CRM to that. So it's not necessarily all built on the same tech stack anyway, they've just acquired it, put the NetSuite label on top of it, and then gone, okay, there it is, now you've got your best-in-class one Swiss Army knife solution, here you go. But a lot of the times it's a 100% frustrating experience, and sometimes those acquisitions don't work, right?
Ben Fuller:
Like there's a very well-known software business that back in 2020 acquired a marketing automation platform with a view to sort of competing with HubSpot. And that acquisition went terribly because it was more difficult to integrate that acquisition into the CRM than they imagined, and it ended up being a worse experience rather than just using Mailchimp along with the CRM, right? And so yeah, like Kile says, NetSuite's done it and so have a bunch of others. Nearly everyone's done it. It's like what we're talking about now, right? Zendesk Sell. Zendesk Sell was Base CRM. And I think it started off as Pipejump or whatever it was called back in 15 years ago or something like that, right? And so even, and I think when you think about it, what we're talking about and the reason we're here on this podcast today is because one of those acquisitions, Zendesk acquiring Base CRM, renaming it Zendesk Sell, rolling it into the Zendesk tech stack, didn't go as smoothly or as nicely as what everyone thought it would. And you end up with a little bit of a Frankenstein monster when it comes to how Zendesk Sell and Zendesk CRM, they don't integrate any more smoothly than what Pipedrive and Zendesk Help Desk are going to. And so I think that this even the conversation we're having emphasizes the points that we're making.
Fred Schnell:
100%. I mean Zendesk decided to go back to their core business and remove the CRM component because they said, well, we don't want to focus on both, we want to do what we do best, which is the support and AI support and everything else. We digress a little bit. Coming a bit closer to the close... so before we wrap up, a final question we ask every guest on the Motii Playbook. If a Zendesk Sell user is listening to this right now and is trying to work out what to do next, what will be the one mindset shift that you would hope they take away from today's conversation. Kile, let's start with you.
Kile Rogers:
Yeah, I think I sort of alluded to this earlier, but it's really just around documenting what those processes are internally. Having a look at what is it that you need to replace, putting that down into writing and going, okay, what have we got either side of that as far as a process that we need to bring this into so it's not just becoming an isolated or siloed process off the back of it. And that gives you from there the ability to go, okay, what do we need as a solution? What can we look at as a solution? What are the actual problems or gaps that we're trying to fill in or cover there? So I think it's really just about getting to better know your internal processes, what the gaps are, speak to your people, and find out from the people that are using it every day what do you wish we could do that we can't currently do? What do you like about what we're currently doing? And what do you not like that you wish we might be able to replace or get rid of or even automate? And I think that ties back to what we talked about quickly about AI before. Everyone talks about AI, but it's really about automating processes. So I think that ties in very heavily with that. So, know your internal processes, what are the gaps, and then from there you can have a better idea of what you can do to try and plug those gaps or those holes.
Fred Schnell:
And Ben, for you, what would be the mindset shift that you would like the listeners to take away from today's conversation?
Ben Fuller:
For me, I think it's probably see this as an opportunity, right? Like if you're a Zendesk Sell customer, see this as an opportunity, and don't be scared of diversity in your tech stack. I know that it might feel like you're going from using only Zendesk with your CRM and help desk to using the help desk and another platform. But as we've just spoken about, Zendesk Sell is just a rebadged Base CRM, which is a rebadged Pipejump, right? There's strength in diversity in tech stacks, and there's flexibility for businesses in that diversity. And so look at it as an opportunity, and don't be scared of diversity would be the takeaways that I would hope that listeners might walk away with today.
Fred Schnell:
Very good. Look, from my perspective, I think as a business owner, the biggest mindset shift I would like people to take away is that a CRM should not be seen as just another software. A CRM should be seen as the backbone of a growing business because a good CRM will provide visibility and allow businesses to really take informed decisions on how to grow and where to invest and potentially also where things may fall through the cracks. Kile, Ben, thank you so much for your time today. To all our listeners, if you would like to learn more about the Zendesk Sell transition, please head over to our website, motii.co/playbook. We've put together a helpful Zendesk Sell migration guide for you to download on that page. And in the final episode, out of the three series, we'll walk through what a CRM migration will look like step-by-step. And so for this, we'll be joined by Motii's Senior Implementation Specialist. So please make sure you subscribe so you won't miss the last episode. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you in the next one.
Outro VO:
That's it for another episode of the Motii Playbook. One shift, one system, one measurable improvement. All information shared in this podcast is general in nature. For tailored advice specific to your business, visit motii.co/playbook and book a momentum call with our team. See you next time.
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