If you've been Googling "what is CRM software" then you're probably in one of two camps. Either someone in your company has mentioned it and you're not entirely sure what they're on about, or you've seen it pop up so many times in marketing articles that you feel like you should probably know by now. Either way, you're in the right place.
We're Red Evolution, a B2B web design and digital marketing agency based in Aberdeen, and we've been helping small and mid-sized companies get their sales and marketing sorted for over 20 years. We're also HubSpot Gold Partners, which means we work with CRM software every single day, so we should probably tell you that upfront. We'll do our best to give you the honest picture, not the sales pitch.
What we're going to do here is explain what CRM software actually is, what it does in practice (not in theory), and help you figure out whether your small B2B company actually needs one or whether you'd be better off saving your money for now.
So what is CRM software, in plain English?
CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management, which is one of those phrases that sounds like it was invented by a committee. In practice, a CRM is just a piece of software that keeps track of everyone your company talks to, whether they're an existing customer, a potential customer, or someone who downloaded a PDF from your website six months ago and you've not heard from since.
Think of it as a shared address book that actually remembers things. It stores contact details, tracks emails and phone calls, logs meetings, and keeps notes about where each person is in the buying process. Instead of that information living in Sarah's head, or scattered across three different spreadsheets that nobody updates, it all lives in one place where everyone on the team can see it.
That's really all it is at its core. The fancier CRM systems bolt on extra features like email marketing, sales pipeline tracking, reporting dashboards, and all sorts of automation, but at the heart of every CRM is a simple idea: stop losing track of the people who might buy from you.
Why spreadsheets stop working
We talk to a lot of small B2B companies who are managing their contacts and sales pipeline in Excel or Google Sheets, and honestly, for a while that works perfectly well. If you've got a handful of clients and a short sales cycle, a spreadsheet is fine and we'd never tell you otherwise.
But there's usually a moment, and you'll know it when it happens, where the spreadsheet starts to creak. Maybe a lead falls through the cracks because nobody followed up. Maybe your sales person leaves and takes all their knowledge with them because it was never written down anywhere central. Maybe you realise that you've got three different versions of the client list and none of them agree with each other.
That's the point where a CRM starts to make sense, not because it's fashionable or because some blog told you to get one, but because you're actually losing opportunities by not having a proper system in place. We've seen it happen dozens of times, and the frustrating thing is that the companies who need a CRM the most are often the ones who don't realise it until after they've lost a deal they should have won.
What a CRM actually does day to day
Let's get into the nitty-gritty of what you'd actually use a CRM for, because the marketing materials for these tools tend to be full of vague promises about "transforming your business" without explaining what happens on a Tuesday morning.
First, it gives you a single record for every contact and company you deal with. When someone rings you up, you can pull up their record and see every email you've exchanged, every meeting you've had, every proposal you've sent. You're not scrambling around trying to remember who spoke to them last or what was discussed. This sounds basic, but for a company with even five or six salespeople, it's a game-changer.
Second, it tracks your sales pipeline. You can see at a glance how many deals are in progress, what stage they're at, what they're worth, and when they're expected to close. If you've ever tried to forecast revenue by asking your sales team to email you their best guesses on a Friday afternoon, you'll understand why having this in one place is a relief.
Third, and this is where it starts to get genuinely useful for smaller companies, it can remind you to follow up. You set a task that says "call John at Acme Engineering next Tuesday" and the CRM nudges you on Tuesday morning. No more sticky notes on monitors, no more relying on memory. If you're running a complex B2B sales cycle where deals take months to close and you're juggling fifteen conversations at once, this alone is worth the price of admission.
Do you actually need one?
Here's where we're going to be honest with you, because we think it's more useful than just saying "yes, everyone needs a CRM, buy one today."
If you're a very small company with a handful of clients and you're not actively doing much new business development, you probably don't need a CRM right now. A well-maintained spreadsheet, a shared calendar, and good communication between your team might be perfectly adequate. We'd rather tell you that than sell you something you don't need.
But if any of the following sound familiar, it's probably time to have a proper think about it: you've got leads coming in from your website and you're not sure what happens to them after the first email. Your sales team can't tell you, off the top of their heads, how many active deals they're working on. You've had situations where two people from your company contacted the same prospect without realising it. You're spending time every month trying to pull together sales reports manually. Or you've lost a deal and you're not really sure why, because nobody kept proper notes.
If you nodded along to even one of those, a CRM would probably help. If you nodded along to all of them, a CRM would almost certainly help and you should probably have got one last year (sorry, but it's true).
How much does it cost?
This varies enormously, which is annoying but true. At one end you've got free options like HubSpot's free CRM, which is genuinely free (not a 14-day trial, actually free) and covers the basics well enough for a lot of small companies. At the other end you've got enterprise systems like Salesforce that can cost thousands per month and require a dedicated administrator to keep them running.
For most small B2B companies, we'd suggest starting with something free or low-cost, getting your contacts and deals into it, using it for three to six months, and then deciding whether you need the paid features. There's no point spending money until you've proven to yourself that your team will actually use the thing, because the most expensive CRM in the world is useless if nobody logs into it.
We should mention that we're HubSpot partners, so obviously we have a preference there, and if you want the full picture on what it costs as you scale up, we've written a detailed breakdown of HubSpot pricing that doesn't pull any punches. But there are other good options out there too, and we'd honestly rather you picked the right tool for your situation than the one we happen to sell.
The biggest mistake small companies make with CRM
We've set up CRM systems for enough clients over the years to know what goes wrong, and it's almost always the same thing: the company buys the software, spends a week getting excited about it, and then three months later nobody's using it properly because they didn't change their habits.
A CRM only works if people actually put information into it. That means logging calls, updating deal stages, adding notes after meetings. It's not glamorous work, and it takes discipline, especially in the first few weeks when it feels like an extra chore on top of your actual job. But if your team doesn't commit to using it consistently, you'll end up with the worst of both worlds: you're paying for a system that's got half the information in it, and the other half is still in people's heads or in random email threads.
The companies that get real value from their CRM are the ones where someone senior (usually the MD or the sales director) makes it clear that this is how we work now, and holds people to it. It doesn't need to be heavy-handed, but it does need to be consistent. If the boss doesn't use the CRM, nobody else will either.
Getting started without overcomplicating it
If you've read this far and you're thinking "right, we probably do need to look at this," here's what we'd suggest as a starting point.
- Pick a free or low-cost CRM. HubSpot's free tier is a solid choice, but Zoho, Pipedrive and others all have entry-level options that work well for small teams.
- Import your existing contacts. If they're in a spreadsheet, most CRM systems will let you upload a CSV file in about ten minutes. Don't worry about getting it perfect first time, you can tidy things up as you go.
- Set up your sales pipeline stages. Keep it simple. Something like "New lead, Contacted, Meeting booked, Proposal sent, Won, Lost" is fine to start with. You can always add more stages later.
- Get your team using it for two weeks before you start tweaking anything. The biggest temptation is to spend three weeks customising fields and dashboards before anyone's actually entered a single contact. Don't do that. Use the defaults, see what works, then adjust.
- Review it after a month. Sit down with your team and ask what's working, what's annoying, and what's missing. Then make changes based on real experience rather than guesswork.
If you're also thinking about how your website fits into all this, and how you can use it to actually generate leads that feed into your CRM, our guide on how to build a lead generation website covers that whole process from start to finish.
Is it worth it?
Hand on heart, for most small B2B companies that are actively trying to grow, yes, a CRM is worth it. Not because it's magic, and not because it'll transform your business overnight (anyone who tells you that is selling something), but because it stops you losing track of the people and conversations that turn into revenue. It makes your sales process visible, repeatable, and less dependent on any one person's memory.
The companies we work with who use their CRM properly almost always say the same thing after about six months: "I can't believe we managed without this." And the ones who don't use it properly say "CRMs don't work." The software is the same. The difference is the commitment.
If you'd like to have a chat about whether a CRM makes sense for your company, or you want some help getting one set up without the usual pain and confusion, you're welcome to get in touch. No hard sell, no pressure, just a conversation. We'll even tell you if we think you don't need one yet.
