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If you want to keep your sales data organized, boost your team’s efficiency, and close more deals, one of the best things you can do is use a customer relationship management system, or CRM.
In this sales CRM playbook, we’ll give you the info you need to know about CRMs—from their benefits to their features to how to choose the right CRM for your sales team.
Read through this guide for an overview of sales CRMs and click through to the additional resources for more specific information and tips.
A sales CRM centralizes lead, contact, and pipeline data, streamlining sales processes, improving collaboration, and enabling data-driven decision-making across teams.
Automation and integrations are critical to maximizing CRM value—helping reps focus on selling by reducing manual tasks and connecting with tools like email, calendars, and marketing platforms.
Successful adoption depends on ease of use, clear internal communication, and training, with companies encouraged to involve stakeholders early, set usage expectations, and celebrate early wins.
A customer relationship management system, or CRM, is a tool that helps businesses manage, understand, and improve their relationships with their contacts to, ultimately, increase revenue. Sales, marketing, customer support, and other departments can use a CRM to manage contact information, track interactions, automate tasks, collaborate across teams, report results, and more.
Sales team can use CRMs to:
Learn more about the basics of CRM here:
Why use a CRM? Here are some of the key benefits for sales teams.
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Your CRM serves as a central location for your lead and customer data, communication history sales data, and more. With all your data in one place, your team stays organized and on the same page.
You can then use your data to make your interactions with leads more effective. CRMs also have features for analyzing and reporting on your data, providing useful insights into your sales performance.
In your CRM, you can set up pipelines and design your sales processes, keeping your processes consistent and making it easy to track leads throughout the funnel. You can also easily assign leads to sales reps and tag in team members at any point, improving collaboration.
CRMs also make your team more efficient, enabling you to close deals faster. Your team won’t have to go searching for information — it’ll all be available right in your CRM. You can also automate repetitive tasks such as assigning leads, advancing leads through your stages, sending emails, and tracking results.
Learn more about how CRMs can benefit your sales team:
Want to learn more about what CRMs can do for your sales team? Explore the top CRM features and capabilities.
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CRMs are powerful tools for tracking leads and opportunities. You can store your lead data, including contact information and data on needs, preferences, interactions with your team, and more, in your CRM. You can also easily track where an opportunity is in your sales funnel. This information is available to your whole team, making it easier to reach out to leads at the ideal times and convert them into customers.
Learn about Nutshell’s lead management features
CRMs also enable you to automate aspects of your sales process, saving your team time and helping to keep things on track. Your CRM can automatically:
When you design your sales process in your CRM, sales reps can see exactly what they need to do at every stage, improving efficiency. You’ll also have instant access to sales data and insightful reports.
Learn about Nutshell’s sales automation capabilities
CRMs help you to collect, organize, and manage all of your contact and account data, such as contact information, preferences, call notes, interaction history, and purchase history. Your CRM serves as a central location for all your data, ensuring your whole team has easy access to the same information.
Learn about contact management with Nutshell
In addition to having all of your data in one place, your CRM may help you analyze your data and get insights about sales performance with dashboards and reports. Nutshell, for example, even lets you download presentation-ready charts. A CRM can help you report results, forecast sales, analyze customer segments, and more.
Discover Nutshell’s reporting features
By integrating calendars and other scheduling tools with your CRM, your team can see information about meetings and events as well as when tasks are due for opportunities. Having this information available in your CRM helps your team stay on track with all of their most crucial tasks.
Explore Nutshell’s calendar integrations
Within your CRM, you can see data about all of your company’s interactions with prospects, leads, and customers including emails, chat messages, and call notes.
This keeps your sales team on the same page about contacts’ interaction history with your business, so they can personalize their communications with them. You may even be able to reach out to contacts through your CRM. For instance, you can send emails, including automated drip sequences, right from Nutshell.
Learn about email tracking in Nutshell
Another key CRM capability is enhanced collaboration with your team. Through a CRM, you can assign leads to team members, tag in team members for help with a task, and share calendars, pipelines, and more. Your whole team has access to the same information, making it easier to work together and stay aligned toward the same goals.
Learn about collaboration with Nutshell
Learn more about CRM capabilities:
Want to get more out of your CRM? Explore these how-to resources for tips on how to set up and use your CRM to get the maximum value.
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Setting up your CRM will involve importing your data, defining your pipelines and sales processes, and connecting tools such as your email, phone, and calendar.
Check out these resources for information on getting started with CRM, including for specific industries. You can also explore our help center or contact our support team for information about Nutshell.
Quality data is crucial to getting the most value from CRM. Here’s how to ensure your CRM data is high-quality.
Explore these resources to learn more:
Another way to get more from your CRM is by integrating it with other tools such as email platforms, your calendar, chatbots, contract and proposal tools, and more.
Choosing the right CRM is essential for improving your team’s sales performance and efficiency and getting the most value from your investment.
You’ll want to carefully research your options and include all key stakeholders in the selection process to ensure you choose a CRM that meets your needs and aligns with your company’s goals and workflows.
Some things to consider include the features you need, the size of your team, the complexity of your sales process, and your budget. Also consider the quality of the customer support a CRM company provides, as this can make a significant impact on how much value you get from your CRM. You can evaluate this using the company’s website, reviews, and your experience in trialing the tool.
Learn more about how to choose the right CRM:
Typically, CRMs are priced per user per month. CRM companies also usually offer several packages. Basic packages typically include just the most essential functions while higher tiers also include more advanced features.
Check out this article to learn more about CRM costs and compare the pricing of some of the most popular CRMs:
Want more help choosing a CRM? We’ve put together a ton of resources to help you explore your options and make the best choice for your business. Explore the articles below.
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Learn about alternatives to popular CRMs:
Learn about common issues you may face with certain types of CRMs:
Compare various types of CRMs:
Try Nutshell free for 14 days or let us show you around before you dive in.
Table of Contents
Most small businesses can implement a user-friendly CRM in 2-4 weeks. The timeline depends on your team size and complexity—simple setups with basic workflows take less time, while businesses with multiple integrations or custom processes may need 6-8 weeks. The key is proper planning: teams that spend time upfront on data preparation and clear goal-setting typically launch faster and see better adoption rates.
Start by involving your team in the selection process and clearly explaining how the CRM makes their jobs easier, not harder. Choose a user-friendly system that matches your current workflow, provide hands-on training in multiple formats, and identify a few team champions to advocate for adoption. Most importantly, automate repetitive tasks so reps spend less time on data entry and more time selling—when they see immediate value, they’ll use it.
A sales CRM helps your sales team manage individual leads through the pipeline and close deals—think contact management, pipeline tracking, and one-on-one relationship building. A marketing CRM focuses on automating campaigns and nurturing large groups of leads through email marketing, lead scoring, and analytics. Many modern CRMs, including Nutshell, combine both capabilities so your sales and marketing teams can work from the same system and stay aligned.
Sales CRM pricing for small businesses typically ranges from $12 to $100 per user per month, depending on features and team size. Entry-level plans start around $12-$25/user/month with basic contact management and pipeline tools, while mid−tier plans($40-$75/user/month) include automation, advanced reporting, and integrations. Many vendors offer free trials, and some have free plans with limited features. Focus on total cost including setup, training, and any required add-ons—not just the monthly price.
Yes, most modern sales CRMs integrate with popular business tools like email platforms (Gmail, Outlook), calendars, marketing software, accounting systems, and communication tools (Slack, Teams). The number and quality of integrations vary by platform—some offer hundreds of native integrations while others rely on third-party connectors like Zapier. Before choosing a CRM, check that it connects with your must-have tools to avoid workflow disruptions and ensure your team can work seamlessly across systems.
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