B2B CRM: What Is It + 5 Best B2B CRMs For 2025

B2B sales often involve long processes and a lot of back and forth, but the feeling when your sales team closes a hard-earned deal is exhilarating. The right CRM for your B2B business can help your team close deals sooner, giving them a boost of confidence with every sale.

There are specific considerations B2B teams need to take into account when searching for CRM software. Since the challenges of B2B sales are different and the sales lifecycle is longer, a CRM needs to be able to support teams throughout every step of the process.

This post will guide you through what to look for in a B2B CRM, including how it differs from B2C platforms, and our recommendations for some of the best options, such as monday CRM.

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What is a B2B CRM?

A customer relationship management (CRM) platform for B2B businesses helps companies manage all their business-to-business communications and customer data in one place. When selling products or services to other businesses, your sales team might need additional data about clients compared to selling B2C, or business-to-customer.

Your CRM should be able to help you store and manage company data, whether it’s job titles of the person you’re interacting with, the size of the company, the company’s technological needs and existing systems, or even recent company news. A B2B CRM also makes it easier to link individual contacts who might work at the same company so that sales reps can get a complete picture of interaction and communication history to build a smart sales strategy.

What makes a B2B CRM important?

CRMs are incredibly important in B2B environments. With so much data flowing between two companies, yours and the one you’re selling to, it’s essential to be able to access all the data you need on demand to streamline your sales process and improve customer relationships.

Sales processes and marketing campaigns for B2B clients can be complex, covering a range of business needs, departments, contacts, and requirements.

With a B2B CRM, you’ll be able to create a single source of truth to provide more consistent service throughout the sales process and beyond.

No matter where a customer or prospect is in the pipeline, anyone from your team will be able to access real-time data that can influence campaigns and sales tactics.

B2B CRM software is also important because it helps businesses scale sustainably. Manually managing all different aspects of contact management can be cumbersome, so having a structured platform to keep all communications, contact details, and history in one place makes it easier to grow business operations while still maintaining strong organization.

What’s the difference between a B2B CRM and a B2C CRM?

There isn’t a huge difference between a CRM for B2B sales and B2C sales when it comes to software choices. That being said, there are discrepancies in how the CRMs are used. The differences will come down to how you configure a specific CRM solution to fit B2B or B2C needs. To tailor your CRM correctly, it’s important to be aware of the differences between B2B and B2C sales so that you can look for the right features.

B2B sales often have longer sales cycles since there are bigger budgets involved and sometimes multiple departments need to sign off before a deal is closed
B2B sales will focus more on contact management and tracking leads and interactions over providing service
Teams selling B2B will likely need more customizations and app integrations to fit their existing sales procedures
Marketing to businesses and customers is different, so a CRM for B2B sales should support nurturing leads through the entire sales funnel

Overall, B2C CRM needs are more immediate and transactional, making these platforms slightly different. When selling directly to businesses, you want to make sure the CRM you choose can be fully customized to fit more rigid requirements and offer features for long-term customer engagement.

What are the benefits of using a B2B CRM?

B2B CRM solutions offer businesses a number of advantages that make it easier for teams to maximize prospects and sales opportunities and close deals faster. Here’s a look at the key benefits of using a B2B CRM:

Personalize sales processes

With a B2B CRM, you have all the data you need at your fingertips to personalize each sale based on historical data, previous purchases, and communications. The data stored in your CRM makes it easier for sales and marketing teams to personalize campaigns and sales strategies so that you can close more deals and improve customer satisfaction rates.

Collaborate seamlessly

When selling to other businesses, it’s important that all your teams work together as one. Whether it’s sales, customer support, or marketing, a B2B CRM will keep all team members on the same page with access to up-to-date client data so everyone knows the status of a deal in the pipeline.

Make decisions based on real-time data

CRMs provide valuable insights into customers as well as your current sales strategies and marketing campaigns. With this information, you can improve team performance, implement essential changes, assess custom behavior, and make informed decisions based on real data.

Get visibility into your pipeline

When working with a lot of different leads and accounts, it’s easy to lose a deal in your pipeline. With a CRM, you can visualize everything clearly so that you know which deals need more attention. Tailor your strategies to different deal stages in your pipeline to make sure each lead is getting the right information at the best time.

Improve workflow efficiency

Thanks to automation and workflow management in B2B CRMs, teams can work a lot more productively and efficiently. Rather than focusing on all the small routine tasks, like moving deals through a pipeline or notifying stakeholders when a status changes, a CRM can automate it for you, making it easier to close deals quickly and without any mistakes.

Features to look for in a B2B CRM

Depending on who is going to be using your CRM, there are different features you should look out for. That said, no matter whether your software is being used by sales reps, marketing professionals, or customer service agents, there are a few core features that will help them all work more efficiently.

Workflow automation: Cut down on repetitive tasks like sending batch email campaigns, follow-ups, or notifications, and create easy automations to put lead nurturing and status updating on auto-pilot
Artificial intelligence (AI): AI in CRMs is empowering teams to improve complex work processes with the ability to get AI-driven insights and real-time analytics based on patterns and trends or use generative AI to create personalized communications and marketing content
Reports and analytics: Look for a CRM that allows you to not only track performance but also tailor how you see metrics and insights with customizable dashboards that can be configured to fit every team, role, and sales workflow
Integrations: The work tools you rely on every day, whether for communication, document sharing, or an email marketing client, should coexist seamlessly with your CRM so that data easily flows between platforms
Lead management: The CRM you choose needs to have advanced features to qualify, sort, and prioritize incoming leads to make it easier for sales teams to understand where to focus their efforts first

How to use AI to enhance your B2B sales

Choosing the right CRM for your business isn’t a decision that should be made quickly, but you also don’t want to waste valuable time testing out tons of different options. CRMs that offer advanced AI capabilities alongside customization options like monday CRM give you the most flexibility to build a custom CRM solution that suits your specific requirements.

monday CRM is an all-in-one centralized platform that can fit businesses of any size and in any industry. For teams that sell to other businesses, monday CRM offers plenty of sales hub functionalities that allow you to easily keep track of sales pipelines, contacts, workflows, documents, and more, all powered by AI to keep everything moving along smoothly. On top of that, the platform’s intuitive interface is easy to use for anyone on your team, even those without any technical skills.

B2B sales and marketing teams will find that the monday CRM features below empower them to tackle even the most complex tasks.

Personalize every interaction with AI content generation

Compose personalized email templates, whether it’s one or hundreds, rephrase messages to hit the right note, and generate summaries from meetings or phone calls to include in a customer history. monday CRM also allows you to create original and tailored content to engage potential customers at every step of the sales cycle.

Get reliable insights with advanced reporting and sales forecasting

Deep-dive into sales performance and break it down by sales rep or team to understand what’s working and what needs refinement to improve processes and relationships with customers. You can also use AI smart workflows to create sales forecasts so you can accurately predict future revenues based on prospects in the pipeline.

Save time to focus on sales with no-code automations

With monday CRM, you can create automations without any coding in just a few minutes, saving you hours a month on manual and repetitive tasks. With smart automations, you can set notifications when a deal’s status is updated, instantly assign new leads to the right agents, or automate follow-ups for stronger lead nurturing.

Create a single source of truth for contacts and leads

monday CRM makes it simple for you to manage contacts and leads in one place where you can import data from multiple sources, capture leads from customer forms and third-party apps, and merge duplicate data. This way, everyone on your team has a full picture of every contact and lead at their fingertips.

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Enrich your B2B CRM experience with these strategies and best practices

You can throw all your weight behind a CRM platform, but if your team isn’t using it correctly, you still won’t get the results you want. Here are a few strategies and best practices to implement to make the most of your B2B CRM.

Nurture relationships long term

B2B companies are more likely to focus on the long sale, so nurturing relationships over time, even over years, is critical to succeeding with any CRM platform. You can use a B2B CRM to keep prospects warm with email campaigns, quarterly check-ins, and personalized messages for important milestones.

Make sure marketing and sales goals are aligned

Both marketing and sales teams stand to benefit the most from a B2B CRM, but it’s critical that these two departments are aligned on goals. CRMs make it easier to collaborate, so make use of dashboards, shared goal setting, pipelines, automated task assignments, and other features to keep stakeholders from every department in the loop.

Segment your customers

To make the most out of your CRM, implement a segmentation system based on your company goals, whether it’s organizing leads and customers by business size, likelihood to purchase, product of interest, or engagement rates. This way, you’ll be able to keep the relationship growing with relevant and personalized communication.

Collect and implement feedback regularly

Many CRMs, such as monday CRM, offer the possibility to send forms and questionnaires that directly sync with CRM data. You can collect essential information about customer satisfaction and interests to make sure your sales strategies are aligned with customer expectations.

Regularly monitor and adjust

Your CRM strategy should never be set in stone. Always leave room for adjustments and set time aside every month or quarter to assess whether your teams are using the CRM to its full capacity. Look at metrics like ROI, customer satisfaction rates, customer churn, and close rate to see if your CRM has helped you meet your goals or if your strategy needs refinement.

Close more deals, faster with the right CRM

Choosing the right CRM is one of the most impactful things you can do to expand your B2B sales. The right platform can set your team on course to close more deals, thanks to reliable data, organized contact information, and smart automations that makes work quicker. Solutions like monday CRM offer teams plenty of flexibility without sacrificing ease of use, thanks to a customizable, intuitive interface, that teams love to use.

The content in this article is provided for informational purposes only and, to the best of monday.com’s knowledge, the information provided in this article is accurate and up-to-date at the time of publication. That said, monday.com encourages readers to verify all information directly.

Alicia is an accomplished tech writer focused on SaaS, digital marketing, and AI. With nearly a decade of writing experience and a degree in English Literature and Creative Writing, she has a knack for turning complex jargon into engaging content that helps companies connect with audiences.

Home > CRM and sales > What is a B2B CRM? The top 5 software for 2025

What is a B2B CRM? The top 5 software for 2025