Asana CRM: 5 Reasons Why You Shouldn't Use Asana As Your CRM

Where do we begin? Asana is a project management tool, we've used it in our business for about 7 years now. It's served us well for a long period of time, but one thing we would never try to do, and advise against is trying to use it as a CRM. A project management tool should be left for exactly that - managing projects, not sales outreach or anything to do with relationships. Here are five core reasons you should not use Asana as your CRM.

❌  Asana can't be the central hub for communication

Part of the purpose of a CRM is not just storing contact records (that's the most bare-bones use-case of a CRM) but rather to be a central hub of communication across your company.

You email a customer, and someone else on your team emails that same customer. How do you know this happened? You don't when using Asana as a CRM. So customers may get 2-3 emails from different team members and it's a mess.

A proper CRM is going to ingest emails automatically, count the number of interactions you've had with someone, and nudge you when you're not doing a good job at staying on top of leads. Asana as a CRM on the other hand will not be able to handle this type of communication tracking.

❌ Asana as a CRM can't automatically prioritize leads based on engagement

Tracking who opened or clicked your emails is helpful information that can help close a sale.

A CRM can roll up these actions into a score, so your team can easily identify engaged leads. A good CRM will also mention the last date of a specific interaction, or how long it's been between interactions so you know it's time to follow up.

❌ Asana has inadequate CRM features like contact or sales management

Asana is designed for project management and collaboration, not as a full-fledged CRM. It does not have advanced sales management and reporting capabilities required for effective customer relationship management. Further, Asana does not provide the depth of contact information needed to effectively manage customer relationships, such as detailed contact history, lead scoring, and account management.

❌ Asana doesn't build business IP and doesn't scale well as a CRM

Tracking client communication and engagement in a proper CRM gives your business intellectual property and acts as a single source of truth for all your customer interactions. In the case that you ever wanted to sell or hand off your business, this information will be super valuable.

A mid-market scaling business will also run into issues trying to sort through large amounts of data. Asana lacks robust reporting and analytics capabilities, which can make it difficult to track what is working and what is not. This will limit your ability to make decisions based on customer data.

❌ Integration issues when you try to use Asana as a CRM

Want to send an automated email to your prospects? Want to automatically log a phone or SMS conversation? These "CRM" integrations are not possible with Asana. You'll very quickly find yourself discovering that Asana is not meant to be used as a CRM and basic capabilities are lacking.

❌ Asana as a CRM has decreased adoption among teams

You may have noticed at previous workplaces that if a team doesn't love a tool, they won't adopt it. Any type of business tool should help team members in their day to day workflows, making them more efficient (e.g. automated emails reach out to a lead that helps them close more deals). Asana as a CRM is not user-friendly nor intuitive and can be plain confusing when used as a CRM, leading to low adoption among team members.

What CRM should I use instead?

We wrote an entire article on this → Read here.

Looking for a CRM? Our team can point you in the right direction based on your business needs. Request a free CRM Audit here.