Who this guide is for

As a sales professional working in a team of 20-50 people, effective prospecting is crucial to building a robust pipeline and consistently closing deals. Managing leads, tracking follow-ups, and organizing outreach across your entire sales team can quickly become overwhelming without the right tools. A dedicated Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system designed for medium-sized sales teams can help streamline your prospecting efforts by organizing leads, automating outreach, and providing insights into team interactions—all from one centralized platform.

In this blog post, we'll explore the best CRM options for prospecting teams of 20-50 people, focusing on tools that will help your sales organization efficiently manage leads, improve follow-up strategies, and boost overall team performance.

Why you need a CRM

When your sales team of 20-50 people is prospecting at scale, managing relationships effectively becomes crucial for nurturing strong business relationships across multiple team members. A CRM system can streamline your team's prospecting efforts, ensuring no opportunities fall through the cracks when multiple sales reps are working simultaneously. Let's explore some challenges medium-sized sales teams face, and the benefits having the right CRM can provide.

Challenges without a CRM

If you're managing a sales team of 20-50 people, prospecting becomes exponentially challenging without the right CRM in your tech stack. Your team may already be facing these coordination issues without realizing how much productivity it costs.

• Disorganization: Scattered prospect data across multiple team members and platforms leads to massive inefficiency.
• Missed opportunities: Without a centralized system, critical follow-ups from different team members can slip through the cracks.
• Inefficient processes: Manual data entry and tracking across 20-50 users consume valuable time and resources.
• Lack of insight: Inadequate team performance analytics hinder informed decision-making for sales managers.
• Inconsistent communication: Disjointed communication channels across team members result in poor prospect experience.

Benefits of a CRM

Fortunately with the right CRM for your 20-50 person sales team, you can eliminate coordination bottlenecks and dramatically improve team productivity. Here are the key benefits.

• Centralized information: All prospect data accessible by your entire team, easily manageable across multiple users.
• Enhanced efficiency: Automates routine tasks across your sales team, freeing up time for strategic prospecting activities.
• Improved customer relationships: Consistent, personalized interactions based on comprehensive prospect data shared across team members.
• Better decision-making: Team-wide data-driven insights enable more accurate forecasting and strategy planning.
• Increased sales: Streamlined processes and coordinated follow-ups across your sales team lead to higher conversion rates.
• Consistent communication: Unified communication channels ensure seamless prospect experience across your entire sales organization.

How to evaluate and choose a CRM

With numerous CRMs targeting sales teams of 20-50 people – you want to ensure your decision-making process will identify one that fits with your team's workflow and scales with your organization's requirements.

1. Define your requirements

When selecting the best CRM for prospecting with a 20-50 person sales team, it's crucial to identify features that support team collaboration and scalability. Look for functionalities such as team lead management, automated follow-ups, email tracking, and team analytics. These tools will help streamline your team's prospecting efforts and ensure you can efficiently manage and nurture leads across multiple sales representatives.

Key features of a CRM for prospecting

• Automated processes: Streamlines tasks across your sales team by automating repetitive workflows.
• Contact enrichment: Automatically finds prospect email addresses and contact information for your entire team, enhancing efficiency.
• Structured pipeline: Tracks prospects through defined stages with team visibility, ensuring process clarity and effectiveness.
• Mail merge and email sequences: Increases team communication efficiency with follow-up templates and automated sequences.
• LinkedIn connection: Seamlessly imports prospects from LinkedIn for your entire sales team and tracks conversations within the CRM.
• Analytics: Provides essential team performance data analysis and predictive insights for better planning.

2. Budget considerations

For sales teams of 20-50 people, budget considerations become critical as costs multiply across users. Balance the per-user cost of the CRM with the return on investment (ROI) it can provide for your entire team. A good CRM should not only fit within your team budget but also offer features that can help you scale your prospecting efforts and drive growth across all team members.

3. Selection Process

Start by researching different CRM vendors that specialize in serving medium-sized sales teams. Read reviews from similar-sized organizations, ask for recommendations from other sales leaders managing 20-50 person teams, and consider the platform's scalability for your team size. Ensure the vendor offers dedicated customer support for teams your size and regular updates to keep the software aligned with your growing needs.

4. Get a demo

Before committing to a CRM for your 20-50 person sales team, it's crucial to understand how it will meet your team's prospecting needs. A demo can provide hands-on experience for key team members, allowing you to see the features in action and ask specific questions related to your team's requirements. This step can help you make an informed decision and ensure you choose the best CRM for your team's prospecting success. Get started by booking a demo of folk.

👉🏼 Try folk now to never miss a follow-up

3 tips for implementing a CRM

1. Import your data in your new CRM

Transitioning your 20-50 person sales team to a new CRM involves migrating existing prospect data from multiple sources. Start by consolidating and exporting team data as CSV files from your current systems. Proper data migration ensures your entire team retains valuable prospecting information and maintains continuity in operations across all team members.

2. Create your first pipeline

Once your team data is imported, set up standardized pipelines tailored to your team's prospecting process. Define stages that reflect your team's approach, such as Lead Captured, Contacted, Qualified, and Follow-Up. This structured approach helps track prospect progress across team members and ensures systematic follow-up, enhancing your team's lead conversion rates.

3. Onboard Your Team

Effective CRM implementation for a 20-50 person sales team requires comprehensive onboarding and training. Conduct team training sessions to familiarize all members with the CRM's features and functionalities. This will empower your entire sales team to leverage the CRM to its full potential, driving better prospecting outcomes and supporting your organization's growth.

The 5 best CRMs for prospecting

1. folk

folk is the ideal modern CRM platform for sales teams of 20-50 people, offering customizable pipelines, AI-driven tools, and seamless integrations specifically designed to enhance deal management and team prospecting at scale.

Key features

• Contact enrichment: Automatically enriches contact details for your entire team by finding emails and LinkedIn URLs, enabling efficient outreach across 20-50 team members without manual data entry or additional costs.
• LinkedIn integration: Seamlessly import contacts from LinkedIn and Sales Navigator for your entire sales team, leveraging collective network reach and using templates for streamlined team communication.
• Mail merge and email sequences: Full email sync compatible with Gmail and Outlook across your team, with shared templates and tracking features, enabling unified communication management.
• AI-powered features: AI tools assist your entire team in managing contacts and relationships, automating routine tasks, and suggesting actions to improve collective productivity.
• 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 team members.
• Multiple pipelines: Cover your team's entire sales cycle with folk's customizable dashboards, and create multiple pipelines for different team segments.

Pros

• Ease of use: folk is praised for its intuitive interface, making it accessible to entire sales teams with quick onboarding and minimal learning curve for all 20-50 team members.
• All-in-one: folk streamlines your team's workflow by allowing all members to import contacts from LinkedIn, automatically find emails, execute coordinated email sequences, and track interactions in shared pipelines.
• Complete personalization: Extensive custom fields, pipelines, dashboards, automation and workflows tailored to your team's specific needs.
• Integrations: folk integrates seamlessly with over 6,000 apps, allowing your entire team to centralize workflow and reduce manual data entry across all team members.
• Collaboration: Create collaborative notes on each profile shared across team members, assign reminders to specific team members for coordinated follow-up.

Cons

• Reporting: folk CRM offers advanced analytics today, including pipeline and deal stage reporting, revenue forecasting with weighted probabilities, performance breakdowns by owner, channel, industry, region, or any custom field, and revenue insights.

Price and plans

You can try folk for free with a 14-day free trial perfect for testing with your entire team. After that, monthly or annual subscription plans are competitively priced for teams of 20-50 people.

• Standard: $20 per user, per month.
• Premium: $40 per user, per month.
• Custom: Starts from $60 per user, per month.

2. HubSpot

Hubspot CRM is a comprehensive platform offering integrated tools for managing sales, marketing, customer service, and operations, though it can become expensive for teams of 20-50 people at higher tiers.

Key features

• Marketing Hub: Includes email marketing, ad tracking, landing pages, and lead generation tools, suitable for capturing and nurturing leads across medium-sized teams.
• Sales Hub: Provides deal tracking, pipeline management, sales automation, and reporting to support team prospecting processes.
• Lead scoring: Prioritize leads with predictive scoring to help team members focus efforts on high-potential prospects.
• Automation capabilities: Automate repetitive tasks like email follow-ups and lead nurturing across team members to improve efficiency.
• Customizable dashboard and reports: Create team dashboards and reports to track metrics and gain insights into collective prospecting performance.

Pros

• User-friendly interface: The intuitive interface makes it manageable for sales teams to coordinate prospecting activities without extensive training.
• Comprehensive free plan: The robust free version includes essential CRM features, though limited for teams scaling beyond basic needs.
• Seamless integration with marketing tools: Smooth integration creates a unified platform for managing leads across team members.
• Automation capabilities: Automation tools help save time across team workflows by automating email marketing and lead nurturing.
• Extensive learning resources: HubSpot Academy offers free courses and certifications to help teams maximize platform potential.

Cons

• High cost at higher tiers: Pricing becomes prohibitively expensive for teams of 20-50 people as you scale, making it less cost-effective than alternatives.
• Limited customization in free plan: The free plan severely restricts customization options needed by growing sales teams.
• Complexity in advanced features: Advanced features require significant training investment across your entire team.
• Email marketing limits: The free plan restricts email volume, problematic for teams with larger prospect lists.
• Additional costs for add-ons: Essential features come as expensive paid add-ons, dramatically increasing costs for medium-sized teams.

Price and plans

Prices and plans on HubSpot's sales hub on an annual subscription become expensive for teams of 20-50 people.

• Starter: $15 per user, per month.
• Professional: $90 per user, per month.
• Enterprise: $150 per user, per month.

3. Pipedrive

Pipedrive is a web-based CRM designed for sales teams, offering lead management, automation, email integration, and customizable pipelines, though costs can escalate quickly for teams of 20-50 people with add-ons.

Key features

• Lead and deal management: Centralized tools to manage team leads and prospect interactions across sales pipelines, helping teams coordinate on opportunities.
• Sales automation: Workflow automation to handle repetitive tasks across team members, such as lead routing and follow-ups.
• Email integration: Email sync, templates, and tracking features for team communication management from the CRM.
• Advanced reporting and analytics: Team performance analytics and custom reporting tools to track collective sales performance and forecast revenue.
• Customization and security: Options to customize pipelines, fields, and user permissions across your sales team, with security measures for data protection.

Pros

• User-friendly interface: The intuitive interface makes it manageable for sales teams to navigate and coordinate pipeline management.
• Sales pipeline focus: Specifically designed for managing sales pipelines with visual approach that helps teams track deals collaboratively.
• Customization: Reasonable customization options, enabling teams to tailor the platform to their specific sales processes.
• Lead management: Effective lead management features, including scoring and tracking, which help sales teams prioritize collectively.
• Automation features: Includes automation tools that help streamline repetitive tasks across team members, saving time and boosting team productivity.

Cons

• Limited advanced features: Lacks some advanced CRM capabilities compared to more comprehensive platforms suitable for medium-sized teams.
• Basic reporting in lower tiers: Limited analytics features in basic plans require expensive upgrades for teams needing detailed insights.
• Price increases with add-ons: Costs escalate quickly for teams of 20-50 people when adding necessary features and integrations, making it less cost-effective than alternatives.

Price and plans

Annual subscription costs multiply significantly for teams of 20-50 people.

• 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.

4. Zoho

Zoho is a CRM system offering sales process management and workflow automation. While feature-rich, it can be complex for medium-sized teams to implement and manage effectively across 20-50 users.

Key features

• Sales automation: Automates sales tasks across team members like lead management, deal tracking, and follow-up actions.
• Lead and contact management: Manages customer information across the team, tracks interactions, and segments contacts for targeted campaigns.
• Multi-channel communication: Integrates with email, phone, social media, and live chat to manage customer interactions across team members.
• Sales pipeline management: Visualizes and manages team sales pipelines with drag-and-drop functionality.
• Email integration: Integrates with email services for team communication and email marketing coordination.

Pros

• Affordability: Competitive pricing structure can be cost-effective for teams of 20-50 people compared to premium alternatives.
• Customization: Extensive customization options allow teams to tailor the CRM, though requires significant setup time.
• Multi-channel communication: Supports multiple communication channels, enabling teams to manage all prospect interactions from one platform.
• AI-powered features: Zia AI assistant provides insights and automation, though learning curve can be steep for teams.
• Mobile accessibility: Offers mobile app for team members to manage relationships on the go, with offline capabilities.

Cons

• Steep learning curve: Complex customization options can be overwhelming for medium-sized teams, requiring significant training investment across 20-50 users.
• Complex setup: Initial setup and configuration can be challenging for teams without dedicated technical expertise or IT resources.
• User interface: Interface can feel outdated compared to modern alternatives, affecting team adoption and usability.
• Performance issues: Occasional performance problems with large datasets can hinder team productivity during peak usage.
• Limited third-party integrations: Integration challenges with third-party applications commonly used by sales teams can create workflow disruptions.

Price and plans

Zoho's free plan is limited to three users, insufficient for teams of 20-50 people. 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. Salesforce

Salesforce is a robust CRM platform designed primarily for large enterprises, offering comprehensive tools for sales, marketing, service, and analytics, though it's often overkill and expensive for teams of 20-50 people.

Key features

• Lead management: Comprehensive lead tracking across large teams from first contact to conversion, though complex for medium-sized teams.
• Sales automation: Extensive automation capabilities for large-scale operations, often excessive for teams of 20-50 people.
• AI-Powered insights: Salesforce Einstein provides advanced analytics, though requires significant investment to fully utilize.
• Customizable dashboards: Enterprise-level dashboard customization that can be overwhelming for medium-sized team needs.
• Email integration: Comprehensive email platform integration designed for large-scale operations rather than medium-sized teams.

Pros

• Comprehensive feature set: Extensive enterprise features, though many are unnecessary for teams of 20-50 people.
• Highly customizable: Enterprise-level customization capabilities that can be overwhelming for medium-sized teams to implement and maintain.
• Extensive integration capabilities: Comprehensive third-party integrations designed for large enterprise environments.
• Advanced analytics and reporting: Powerful enterprise analytics tools that require dedicated resources to fully leverage.
• Mobile accessibility: Robust mobile app with full feature access, though complex interface can be challenging for team adoption.

Cons

• High cost: Prohibitively expensive for teams of 20-50 people, with high licensing fees that multiply across users, making it cost-prohibitive for medium-sized teams.
• Steep learning curve: Requires extensive training investment across your entire team due to enterprise-level complexity.
• Complex setup and customization: Implementation requires expert consultants and significant time investment, adding substantial costs for medium-sized teams.
• User interface: Enterprise-focused interface is not intuitive for medium-sized teams, hindering adoption and daily usability.
• Overwhelming for medium teams: Enterprise features are overkill for teams of 20-50 people, leading to underutilization and poor ROI.

Price and plans

• Starter Suite: $25/user/month provides basic CRM features for small businesses.
• Pro Suite: $100/user/month includes advanced tools for growing businesses.
• Enterprise Plan: $165/user/month offers extensive customization and automation for large companies.
• Unlimited Plan: $330/user/month provides comprehensive features for large enterprises.
• Einstein 1 Sales: $500/user/month provides AI-driven insights and advanced features for large enterprises.

Conclusion

Choosing the best CRM for prospecting can significantly impact your 20-50 person sales team's growth and efficiency. Each of the CRMs mentioned—folk, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Zoho, and Salesforce—offers different approaches, but for medium-sized sales teams, folk CRM stands out as the clear winner. While others either become prohibitively expensive at scale (HubSpot, Pipedrive, Salesforce) or overly complex to implement (Zoho, Salesforce), folk CRM provides the perfect balance of powerful features, intuitive design, and cost-effectiveness specifically tailored for teams your size.

For sales teams of 20-50 people looking for a modern, intuitive, and comprehensive solution that scales perfectly with your team size, folk stands out with its team-friendly pricing, customizable pipelines, AI-driven tools, and seamless LinkedIn integration. Don't miss the opportunity to try folk for free and see how it can transform your entire team's prospecting process.

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

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

FAQ

What features should a CRM have for prospecting teams of 20–50?

Look for shared pipelines, contact enrichment, LinkedIn import, email sync and sequences, task automation, team permissions, collaboration notes, and analytics. These enable coordinated outreach, timely follow-ups, and scalable processes.

How much does a CRM cost for a 20–50 person sales team?

Entry plans run $15–$25 per user/month; mid tiers $40–$100; advanced up to $500. For 30 users, expect about $450–$15,000/month. Value options like folk are $20–$60 per user with a 14‑day trial.

Is folk CRM a good choice for teams of 20–50 doing prospecting?

Yes. It offers shared pipelines, contact enrichment, LinkedIn import, Gmail/Outlook sync with sequences, team analytics, and simple onboarding. Learn more at folk.

How can a CRM be implemented across a 20–50 person team?

Import current data, define a shared pipeline and fields, set roles and permissions, connect email and key apps, create templates and sequences, train the team, and monitor adoption with dashboards and reminders.