As an executive coaching team of 20-50 professionals, managing client relationships, scheduling sessions, and tracking progress across hundreds of clients can become overwhelming without the right systems in place.

A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system tailored to your team's collaborative needs can help you stay organized by streamlining communication, automating follow-ups, tracking client milestones, and managing workflows across multiple coaches. With the right CRM, your growing coaching practice can focus more on delivering impactful sessions while efficiently managing the administrative complexity that comes with scaling a team-based operation.

👉🏼 Try folk now to organize your reminders in one place

In this blog post, we'll explore the best CRM options for executive coaching teams like yours, highlighting the features that will help you enhance client experiences and support sustainable growth for practices with 20-50 team members.

Why you need a CRM

Implementing a CRM can revolutionize how your executive coaching team manages client relationships at scale.

Here's why it's essential for teams of 20-50 professionals.

Challenges without a CRM

As a growing coaching team juggling hundreds of client relationships and multiple projects across 20-50 team members without a CRM is nearly impossible. You might already be experiencing these challenges without realising it.

• Disorganization: Juggling multiple clients across team members without a centralized system leads to chaos and duplicated efforts.
• Missed opportunities: Without proper tracking, potential leads and upsell opportunities slip through the cracks, especially when managing hundreds of prospects.
• Inefficient processes: Manual tracking and communication slow down your workflow and create bottlenecks across your growing team.
• Lack of insight: Inadequate data makes it hard to analyze team performance and make informed decisions about resource allocation.
• Inconsistent communication: Miscommunication with clients and team members can result in missed deadlines and unsatisfied clients across your practice.

Benefits of a CRM

If you've been on the fence about investing in a CRM for your growing coaching team, there are some benefits that can be a game changer to your business on both client side communication and internal collaboration across 20-50 team members.

• Centralized information: All client and project details are stored in one place accessible to your entire team, making it easy to manage handoffs and collaboration.
• Enhanced efficiency: Automates routine tasks across your team, freeing up time for high-value coaching work.
• Improved customer relationships: Track interactions and preferences team-wide to provide consistent, personalized service regardless of which coach is involved.
• Better decision-making: Analytics and reporting tools offer insights to optimize your team's performance and business strategy.
• Increased sales: Efficient lead management and follow-ups across your team convert more prospects into clients.
• Consistent communication: Integrated communication tools ensure everyone across your 20-50 person team is on the same page, reducing errors and delays.
  

How to boost your executive coaching business with a CRM

Having the right CRM in your tech stack that aligns with your team's workflow and collaborative needs can take a lot of heavy lifting away from repetitive tasks, so that your 20-50 team members can focus on what they do best - coaching clients. Below, we go into more detail about how.

1. Map your process

A CRM can help your team have a clear understanding of your collective process, highlighting areas that are performing well and places to improve across all coaches.

• Identify key stages: Outline the critical phases in your team's coaching process, from initial contact to post-coaching follow-up, ensuring consistency across all coaches.
• Create custom pipelines: Use CRM features to set up tailored pipelines that mirror your specific team coaching workflow and can be used by all team members.
• Track progress: Monitor client progress and engagement at each stage across your entire team, ensuring no step is overlooked regardless of which coach is handling the client.

2. Lead qualification

You can also use a CRM to assess and qualify leads consistently across your team of coaches.

• Define criteria: Establish clear criteria for what constitutes a qualified lead that all team members can follow, such as executive level, industry, or specific challenges.
• Automated scoring: Utilize CRM tools to automatically score leads based on predefined criteria, saving time across your team and improving accuracy.
• Segmentation: Segment leads into categories for targeted follow-up by appropriate team members, ensuring personalized communication.

3. Outreach and follow-up

Instead of having each team member individually email contacts when it's time to follow up, a CRM's mail merge feature can help you automate this process across your entire coaching team. This is particularly useful for creating targeted campaigns that maintain consistency across 20-50 team members.

• Email campaigns: Leverage CRM automation to send personalized email sequences that nurture leads through the sales funnel, coordinated across your entire team.
• LinkedIn integration: Use CRM integration with LinkedIn to track and manage outreach efforts across all team members, ensuring consistent follow-up.
• Reminders and alerts: Set automated reminders for follow-up actions that can be assigned to appropriate team members, ensuring timely and effective communication.

4. Nurture existing leads and customers

A CRM can also help your coaching team nurture existing leads and customers by reminding team members to follow-up and ensuring no client falls through the cracks across your 20-50 person operation.

• Personalized recommendations: Use CRM data to offer tailored coaching programs or additional services based on client needs and history, accessible to any team member.
• Automated check-ins: Schedule regular check-ins with existing clients across your team to maintain engagement and identify new opportunities.
• Targeted content: Share valuable resources and insights through automated campaigns to keep clients informed and engaged, coordinated across your entire coaching practice.

How to evaluate and choose a CRM platform

Whether it's your first time investing in a CRM for your growing coaching team, or if you're looking to replace an existing one that doesn't scale well for 20-50 users, below are a few pointers for you to take into consideration as part of your decision making process.

1. Define your requirements

As a growing executive coaching team, it's crucial to identify the key features that will streamline your client management processes across multiple coaches. Look for CRM software that offers robust scheduling tools, team collaboration features, client tracking, and reporting capabilities that can handle the complexity of a 20-50 person operation. Additionally, consider integrations with communication tools like email and video conferencing, which are essential for maintaining seamless interaction across your team and with clients. We've listed a few key features you should look out for below.

Key features of a CRM for executive coaches

• Automated processes: Streamlines tasks by automating repetitive workflows across your entire coaching team.
• Contact enrichment: Automatically finds leads and customers' email addresses and contact information, enhancing efficiency for all team members.
• Structured pipeline: Tracks leads and customers through defined stages, ensuring process clarity and effectiveness across 20-50 team members.
• Email sequences: Increases communication efficiency with follow-up templates and automated sequences that can be managed team-wide.
• LinkedIn connection: Seamlessly imports leads and customers from LinkedIn and tracks conversations within the CRM for all team members.
• Reporting and forecasting: Provides essential data analysis and predictive insights for better planning across your coaching practice.

2. Budget considerations

Balancing cost and return on investment is vital for executive coaching teams of 20-50 people. While some CRM solutions may seem expensive when multiplied across your team size, the right tool can significantly enhance your collective efficiency and client satisfaction, leading to higher retention rates and new client referrals that more than justify the investment. Consider CRMs that offer volume discounts or are specifically designed for teams your size to ensure you get the best value.

3. Selection process

Researching and choosing the right CRM vendor for a team of your size involves several steps. Start by reading reviews and testimonials from other coaching teams with similar headcount. Participate in online forums and communities to gather insights and recommendations. Shortlist vendors who specialize in CRM solutions for professional services teams with 20-50 users, and ensure they offer excellent customer support and training resources that can scale across your entire team.

4. Get a demo

Before committing to a CRM for your entire coaching team, it's crucial to see how it works in action with multiple users. After narrowing down your options, take advantage of free trials or demo versions to test the CRM platforms with several team members. Focus on user-friendliness, team collaboration features, customization options, and how well the software meets your specific needs as a growing executive coaching practice. Compare the features, pricing, and support services of different platforms to make an informed decision. For a personalized demo tailored to coaching teams, you can contact the sales team at Folk and explore how their CRM can streamline your coaching processes across your entire team.

3 tips for Implementing a CRM

A lot of coaching teams who purchase a CRM often dive in and forget to use the first few weeks to really trial and experiment with ways it can fit with their collaborative workflow across 20-50 team members. Follow the three tips below as part of your implementation process to make the most of your new investment.

1. Import your data in your new CRM

Transitioning to a new CRM can be seamless if you properly import your existing data from across your coaching team. Once exported from various sources your team has been using, you can easily import this consolidated data into your new CRM, ensuring your entire team doesn't start from scratch or lose any valuable client information.

2. Create your first pipeline

Setting up your first pipeline is a critical step in customizing your CRM for your executive coaching team. Design a pipeline that reflects the stages of your team's coaching process, such as 'Initial Consultation', 'Assessment', 'Coaching Sessions', 'Follow-Up', and 'Feedback'. This tailored approach ensures that your CRM aligns with your team workflow and helps all 20-50 team members track client progress efficiently and consistently.

3. Onboard your team

Effective CRM implementation requires that your entire team of 20-50 coaches is on board and well-trained. Conduct comprehensive training sessions to familiarize all team members with the new system, highlighting its features and how it can enhance their daily tasks and collaboration. Encourage them to explore the CRM and provide feedback, which can be used to further customize the tool to better fit your coaching team's specific needs and workflows.

The 5 best CRMs for executive coaches

1. folk

folk is a modern CRM platform specifically designed for teams of 20-50 people managing contacts, workflows, and relationships. It offers customizable pipelines, AI-driven tools, and seamless integrations that make it the ideal choice for growing executive coaching practices that need to coordinate across multiple team members while maintaining personalized client relationships.

Key features

• Contact enrichment: Automatically enriches contact details by finding emails and LinkedIn URLs, enabling efficient outreach across your entire team without manual data entry or additional costs per team member.
• LinkedIn Integration: Seamlessly import contacts from LinkedIn, track conversations within folk, and use templates for quicker, streamlined communication across all 20-50 team members.
• Mail merge: Full email sync with Gmail and Outlook, templates, and tracking features, enabling your entire coaching team to manage all communications directly from the CRM.
• AI-powered features: AI tools assist in managing contacts and relationships, automating routine tasks, and suggesting actions to improve productivity across your entire team.
• Integrations: folk integrates seamlessly with over 6,000 apps, including Gmail, Zapier, and Make, allowing your team to centralize workflow and reduce manual data entry across all members.

Pros

• Ease of use: folk is praised for its intuitive interface, making it accessible across your entire coaching team with quick onboarding and minimal learning curve for all 20-50 members.
• All-in-one solution: folk streamlines your team workflow by allowing you to import contacts from LinkedIn, automatically find their emails, reach out through customizable email sequences, and track interactions in a pipeline, eliminating the need for multiple tools and saving significant costs when scaled across 20-50 users.
• Team collaboration: Seamlessly import contacts from LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and more to track all your contact information within folk, with shared templates and communication tracking that ensures consistency across your entire coaching team.
• Customizability: Custom fields, pipelines, and workflows that can be standardized across your team while allowing for individual coaching styles.
• Cost-effective scaling: folk's pricing structure and feature set make it particularly well-suited for teams of 20-50 users, offering enterprise-level functionality without enterprise-level complexity or costs.

Cons

• Recently added reporting: Reporting features were recently added, so advanced analytics capabilities are still developing compared to more established platforms.

Price and plans

You can try folk for free with a 14-day free trial. After that, monthly or annual subscription plans are perfectly sized for coaching teams of 20-50 members:

• Standard: $20 per user, per month - ideal for growing coaching teams.
• Premium: $40 per user, per month - perfect for established coaching practices with advanced needs.
• Custom: Starts from $80 per user, per month - designed for coaching teams requiring enterprise-level customization.

2. HubSpot

Hubspot CRM is a comprehensive platform offering integrated tools for managing sales, marketing, customer service, and operations, though it can become complex and expensive for mid-sized coaching teams.

Key features

• Marketing Hub: Includes email marketing, ad tracking, landing pages, and lead generation tools to attract and convert leads across your team.
• Sales Hub: Provides deal tracking, pipeline management, sales automation, and reporting for managing client engagements across multiple coaches.
• Service Hub: Offers customer service tools like ticketing, live chat, and knowledge bases for comprehensive client support.
• Operations Hub: Syncs and automates business processes across different systems, though can be complex for mid-sized teams.
• Lead scoring: Prioritize leads with predictive scoring, though setup complexity may require dedicated technical resources for teams of 20-50.

Pros

• User-friendly interface: Intuitive design accessible for coaching teams with varying tech skills.
• Comprehensive free plan: Offers essential CRM features, though limited for teams of 20-50 users.
• Integrated marketing tools: Creates a unified platform, though may include unnecessary complexity for focused coaching teams.
• Automation capabilities: Powerful automation tools, though can require significant training time across larger teams.
• Extensive learning resources: HubSpot Academy offers training, though the time investment can be substantial for teams your size.

Cons

• Expensive at scale: Costs become prohibitive for teams of 20-50 users, with professional tiers starting at $450 per month regardless of user count.
• Limited customization in lower tiers: Free and starter plans lack flexibility needed for growing coaching teams.
• Complexity overkill: Advanced features require extensive training that may not be justified for coaching-specific needs.
• Email marketing limits: Free plan restrictions become problematic when managing communications for 20-50 team members.
• Hidden costs: Add-ons and advanced features significantly increase total cost of ownership for mid-sized teams.

Price and plans

Prices and plans on the CRM suite for an annual subscription are as follows, which can become expensive for teams of 20-50 users.

• Starter: $15 per user, per month.
• Professional: $450 per month (not per user) - expensive for mid-sized teams.
• Enterprise: $1,500 per month (not per user) - cost-prohibitive for most coaching teams.

3. Pipedrive

Pipedrive is a web-based CRM focused on sales pipeline management, though it lacks some collaborative features that coaching teams of 20-50 people typically need for effective client management.

Key features

• Lead and deal management: Centralized tools for managing leads and clients, though team collaboration features are limited.
• Sales automation: Workflow automation for repetitive tasks, though may require multiple licenses for teams of 20-50.
• Email integration: Email sync and templates, though lacks advanced team coordination capabilities.
• Reporting and analytics: Data analytics and custom reporting, though team-wide insights can be limited.
• Customization and security: Pipeline and field customization options, though team permission management can be complex.

Pros

• User-friendly interface: Clean design makes it accessible for individual coaches.
• Customization: Allows tailoring for specific processes, though team-wide standardization can be challenging.
• Affordability: Competitive pricing for small teams, though costs accumulate for 20-50 users.
• Automation features: Streamlines individual workflows, though team coordination requires additional setup.
• Reporting capabilities: Provides insights, though team-level analytics may require higher-tier plans.

Cons

• Limited team collaboration: Lacks advanced team coordination features essential for coaching practices with 20-50 members.
• Basic reporting in lower tiers: Team-wide insights require expensive upgrades for larger coaching practices.
• No built-in marketing: Requires third-party integrations for comprehensive client communication across teams.
• Limited support hours: Can be problematic for teams working across different time zones.
• Scaling costs: Price increases significantly when adding features needed for team-based operations.

Price and plans

An annual subscription plan basis is as follows, which can become expensive for teams of 20-50 users.

• Essential plan: Starts from $24 per user, per month.
• Advanced plan: Starts from $44 per user, per month.
• Power plan: Starts from $79 per user, per month.
• Enterprise plan: Starts from $129 per user, per month.

3. Zoho

Zoho is a comprehensive CRM system with sales and marketing features, though it can be complex to implement and manage for coaching teams of 20-50 people due to its extensive customization requirements.

Key features

• Lead and contact management: Manages client information across teams, though setup complexity can be challenging for coaching practices.
• Customizable dashboards: Allows creating custom reports, though requires technical expertise for teams of 20-50 users.
• Multi-channel communication: Integrates various communication channels, though coordination across large teams can be complex.
• Sales pipeline management: Visual pipeline management, though team workflow standardization requires significant configuration.
• Workflow automation: Automates processes, though setup and maintenance can be time-intensive for mid-sized teams.

Pros

• Comprehensive feature set: Extensive functionality, though may be overwhelming for coaching-focused teams.
• Extensive customization: Highly customizable, though requires significant technical resources to implement effectively across 20-50 users.
• Zoho ecosystem integration: Works well with other Zoho products, though creates vendor lock-in.
• Multi-channel support: Supports various communication methods, though team coordination can be complex.
• Mobile accessibility: Robust mobile app, though team synchronization features can be limited.

Cons

• Steep learning curve: Complex implementation that can be overwhelming for coaching teams without dedicated IT resources.
• Complex setup: Initial configuration is challenging and time-intensive for teams of 20-50 users.
• Performance issues: Can experience slowdowns with large datasets, problematic for busy coaching practices.
• Limited third-party integrations: Integration challenges outside the Zoho ecosystem can limit flexibility.
• Technical expertise required: Advanced features need technical knowledge that most coaching teams don't have internally.

Price and plans

Free plan limited to three users, insufficient for teams of 20-50. Annual subscription plans are as follows:

• Standard: $20 per user, per month.
• Professional: $35 per user, per month.
• Enterprise: $50 per user, per month.

‍

5. Capsule CRM

Capsule CRM is designed for small businesses but lacks the advanced collaboration and scaling features that coaching teams of 20-50 people typically need for effective client management and team coordination.

Key features

• 1 sales pipeline: Limited to single pipeline, insufficient for diverse coaching programs across teams.
• 30,000 contacts: Contact capacity suitable for smaller operations, though team access and management can be limited.
• Task management: Basic task organization, though lacks advanced team coordination features.
• Customer milestone tracking: Tracks client progress, though team visibility and collaboration features are limited.
• Basic automation: Limited automation capabilities for teams requiring sophisticated workflow management.

Pros

• Simple interface: Clean design suitable for individual users, though team collaboration features are basic.
• Basic contact management: Handles client information adequately for small teams, though lacks advanced team coordination.
• Some customization: Limited customization options, insufficient for teams of 20-50 with diverse needs.
• Third-party integrations: Integrates with common tools, though team-level functionality can be limited.
• Lower cost: Affordable for very small teams, though lacks features needed for larger coaching practices.

Cons

• Limited scalability: Not designed for teams of 20-50 users with complex collaborative needs.
• Basic features: Lacks advanced analytics and automation essential for growing coaching practices.
• Minimal email marketing: Requires third-party tools for comprehensive client communication across teams.
• Limited support: Email-only support insufficient for teams requiring immediate assistance.
• No advanced communication: Lacks built-in phone/SMS features essential for comprehensive client management across large teams.

Price and plans

• Starter plan: Starts from $21 per user, per month.
• Growth plan: Starts from $38 per user, per month.
• Advanced plan: Starts from $60 per user, per month.
• Ultimate plan: Starts from $75 per user, per month.

👉🏼 Try folk now to manage contact-based reminders with your team

Conclusion

Choosing the best CRM for your executive coaching team of 20-50 people is a critical decision that can significantly impact your collective efficiency, client management, and overall success. For teams your size, folk CRM stands out as the clear winner, offering the perfect balance of powerful features, intuitive design, and cost-effective scaling that growing coaching practices need. Unlike other platforms that become expensive or complex at your team size, folk CRM is specifically designed to handle the collaborative needs of mid-sized professional teams while maintaining the simplicity and personalization that coaching businesses require. Take advantage of folk's free trial to see how it can transform your team's client management and operational efficiency. Remember, the right CRM is not just a tool but a strategic partner in your journey to coaching excellence. Try folk for free here.

Need a helping hand? Use our free tool to find your perfect CRM match.

FAQ

What is a CRM for executive coaching teams?

A CRM centralizes client data, schedules, communications, and progress tracking so 20–50 person coaching teams work consistently, automate follow-ups, and scale without losing personalization.

Do executive coaching teams need a CRM?

Yes. Without one, teams face duplicate work, missed follow-ups, and poor visibility. A CRM unifies workflows, assigns tasks, and keeps every coach aligned on client history and next steps.

How do you choose a CRM for a 20–50 person coaching team?

Define must-haves (pipelines, reporting, email/LinkedIn sync, permissions), test with multiple coaches, check onboarding and support, then compare total cost at your user count before committing.

How much does a CRM cost for 20–50 users?

Plans range roughly $400–$6,000+ per month depending on features and tiers. For example, folk starts at $20/user/month (about $400 for 20 users) with a 14‑day trial.