What is CRM?

CRM, meaning customer relationship management, refers to strategies that businesses use to manage customer interactions and data. With a CRM system like Pipedrive, you can organize, manage, track and improve the customer experience throughout the entire customer lifecycle. Our CRM platform helps you automate communications, simplify processes and build stronger customer relationships.

What is CRM software?

CRM software is a tool that enables you to manage customer data and nurture customer relationships.

Each CRM platform is different, but here are some practical CRM features to look for:

Lead management: Capture lead data from various sources, assign lead quality scores and match new leads with the right sales rep.

Pipeline management: Map your sales pipeline with a CRM to better understand how customers move through the buying journey and to encourage conversion.

Workflow and marketing automation: Automate repetitive tasks like prospecting, lead qualification and customer communications to simplify your workflow and provide potential customers with a personalized experience.

Reporting and forecasting: Use dashboards, CRM analysis and reporting tools to identify customer trends and assess sales performance.

That’s a simple CRM definition, but who should use CRM and what are the benefits?

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Who should use CRM?

A CRM system helps you manage all customer data in one database, improve sales management and track sales.

Here’s how those benefits work on a daily basis:

Manage CRM data in one database: A central hub for contact management makes it quicker and easier for salespeople to access valuable customer information.
Improve sales management: The data stored in a CRM tells you who your customers are, how they behave and what they want. This information helps you improve sales decisions and marketing efforts.
Track sales and financial performance: A CRM platform provides a rundown of your sales, revenue and financial performance. This helps you see how well you’re doing and pinpoint areas of the sales process that need improvement.

Learn more about the benefits of CRM

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How users benefit from Pipedrive’s CRM

Increase deals in your pipeline by 93%

Reduce average deal closing time by 46%

Increase average deal value by 21%

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Who benefits from using a CRM platform?

CRM software is useful across a range of industries, from SaaS and real estate to manufacturing and marketing. A CRM platform will benefit any large or small business that wants to improve customer satisfaction, increase efficiency and boost sales.

Within an organization, teams like sales, marketing, customer support, finance and operations can profit from using a CRM to perform the following activities:

Marketing attracts leads and passes them to sales, but keeping track of opportunities and follow-up activities is only possible with a robust, organized system.

A good CRM platform helps you track all sales activities before and after conversion.

Score every lead and follow them in real time along the sales pipeline to recognize opportunities for improvement, spot winning patterns and refine your sales funnel.
Addressing your target audience's challenges helps you build strong, profitable relationships.

A CRM will help you address specific pain points, build trust and keep the same customers coming back.

Use your CRM to get to know leads, prospects and customers via:
- Previous conversations
- Buying journeys
- Purchase histories
- Website activity
- Marketing campaign responses
Sales and marketing share many common goals. The better aligned they are, the better your business will perform.

According to Pipedrive’s State of Sales and Marketing 2021/2022 report, companies with well-integrated sales and marketing departments were twice as likely as companies with poor revenue team integration to exceed their annual revenue targets.

A CRM is a central knowledge hub for sales, marketing and other customer-focused functions. It enables teams to share valuable insights and make more informed decisions at all stages of the customer lifecycle.
Salespeople and marketers often spend valuable hours on mundane admin tasks. A good CRM can process some or all of this repetitive work with automations, letting your team members spend time nurturing leads and serving customers.

Pipedrive lets you automate almost any step of your sales process and even some marketing tasks.
- Trigger personalized emails to go out whenever a new deal enters the pipeline
- Schedule follow-up tasks when deals reach certain stages
- Score leads so reps know who to contact for the best outcomes
Research shows that automation directly improves business and individual performance. Our State of Sales and Marketing 2021/2022 report revealed that people who automate tasks are 16% more likely to hit their targets.

How Pipedrive can help small businesses

Time management is challenging for every business, but small businesses with smaller teams can struggle more to get things done.

Pipedrive’s CRM centralizes data and automates processes, so you can save time on one tool and focus on what’s important.

Small businesses can benefit from all the Pipedrive features listed above, particularly automation, pipeline visualization and lead management.

Read our guide to CRM for small businesses.

How Pipedrive’s CRM helped Tiffany Largie grow her business to $2.5 million

Tiffany Largie, a successful entrepreneur, business speaker and consultant, found her sales team leaving money on the table as they struggled to keep up with data management.

Pipedrive’s simple CRM solution helped her team instantly begin tracking customer data in real time. The CRM software enabled sales reps to manage multiple revenue streams simultaneously, automating the sales process to help them close deals faster.

“We were managing between 150–300 outreaches a day. With Pipedrive, we could handle that data in real time in a way that didn’t require us to perform a lot of data entry.”

Read the full case study

Tiffany Largie Case Study

The advantages of using a cloud-based vs. an on-premise CRM platform

Unlike an on-site CRM (which lives on your company’s server), a cloud-based CRM is accessible online. Here are a few benefits of using an online CRM vs. an on-site solution:

Cloud-based CRM	On-premise CRM
Work from anywhere: All you need are your login details and a solid internet connection	Access is limited to set devices and locations
Access to real-time data means all employees work from the most up-to-date files	Manual updates can lead to employees working from out-of-date files
Quick and easy installation: The software and all its features are online and ready to use immediately	A complex structure needs expertise and time to install locally
Vendor support and maintenance make for a cost-effective solution	Costs add up with the internal staff required to provide support and maintenance
Easy to scale with added resources and various pricing plans as your business grows	Changes to the size or capacity of the platform require new purchases or additional software and take time to install

How to manage and improve customer relationships with CRM

A CRM platform can help you maintain better relationships with your customers by enabling you to:

Visualize the customer journey: A CRM system tells you where new customers came into contact with your brand. For example, via your social media page, website or sales email.

These touchpoints give you a clear picture of how customers move through the buying journey and what you can do to make it easier for them and encourage them to buy.

Identify trends in customer behavior: With a CRM, you can easily spot patterns in customer behavior. You’ll better understand buyer behavior and how to meet their needs.
Create a personalized customer experience: A CRM allows you to send personalized communications to customers. As a result, they enjoy their experience with your business and are more likely to keep moving along the sales cycle to make a purchase.

Build customer relationships with Pipedrive’s CRM

How much CRM software costs

Most CRM providers offer different plans and payment options to suit businesses in different industries, sizes and regions.

Most entry-level plans cost between ten to thirty dollars, while higher-tier plans can cost anywhere between fifty and five thousand.

Some providers offer a free plan with limited features, but it’s best to fully assess your business’s requirements before selecting an option that might only be good for your budget.

Pipedrive offers an Essential plan for new and one-person businesses, as well as more expensive plans, making it perfect for companies looking to grow.

Pipedrive is available in three currencies: US dollar, Euro and British pound sterling.

Find out more on our CRM pricing page.

Used by over 100,000 companies in 179 countries

In the forecast view, we look at what deals are due to close this month, next month just to make sure everyone is really honest about what they should be working on.

Carolyn PearsonFounder, Maiden Voyage

One of the favorite features within Pipedrive is the email integration. It pulls all of the clients details in, so that we don’t have to think about it.

Erin and DrewFounders, Pro Arts

As a business owner, my favorite feature in Pipedrive is the statistics and being able to look at the dashboard and use those metrics to help each individual on the team.

Lisa CoyleCEO, 360 Payments

Over 500+ integrations

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CRM FAQs

A customer relationship management system or solution is software that provides users with the features they need to manage relationships and data effectively. There are both on-premises and cloud-based CRM systems.

However, to get the most out of the software, you need to know how to use customer relationship management, which is why we offer onboarding to Pipedrive users. So, if you’re wondering how to use CRM software as effectively as possible, see if the tool you’ve chosen has onboarding support or video tutorials to help you get started. It’s also worth paying attention to the latest feature updates and checking the knowledge base for guides.
Customer relationship management strategies focus on defining a clear, standardized process that businesses can use to engage and convert leads, prospects and customers. It’s also important to build a pipeline so that you can help navigate new leads through to becoming customers and beyond.

Once the process and pipeline have been defined, they can then be customized to suit each individual use case.

Some common CRM strategies include building relationships, personalizing communication across different channels and developing support and loyalty programs to nurture customers.

See how Pipedrive works for your business