Set Up a Simple CRM Your Team Actually Uses

Build a working CRM on your own account in a week, starting from the spreadsheet you already have, and get your team working from it for the first two weeks.

A CRM usually dies in a small team for the same few reasons: stages that describe how keen a buyer seems, an import that brings every duplicate along, deals where nobody owns the next step, and a board that drifts until nobody trusts it. Each of those is fixed in the setup and the routine around it.

This course builds in HubSpot's free CRM, with its real limits stated plainly and the alternatives worth a look if your team is bigger. You name each stage after something the buyer has done, write the rules for what gets a record, clean the file before it goes in, and connect your inbox so nobody retypes an email. Then come the two habits that keep it alive: a dated next step on every open deal, and a twenty-minute review each week. Every plan limit, menu and setting was checked against HubSpot's own pages in October 2026.

You walk away with your own pipeline, your contacts and open deals imported clean, your inbox feeding the records, the AI assistant set up with its training setting decided, and two weeks of your team working from the board.

Who it's for

Owners whose leads live in inboxes: want every enquiry in one place before another quote goes quiet.

Small teams with a sales spreadsheet: have outgrown it and want a free tool the whole team will open.

Anyone restarting a CRM that died: want rules and a routine this time, so the second attempt sticks.