Mastering monday CRM: 5 Tips for Small Business Owners

Kickoff to BotSquad’s “Monday.com Training for Teams” Series

monday CRM is powerful. Almost too powerful.

For small business owners, that power can be a blessing but it can also be totally overwhelming. With so many features, templates, and automations available, it’s easy to build something that looks impressive but quietly drifts away from how your business actually works. (Not to mention getting more and more complicated).

Mastering monday CRM isn’t about using everything.
It’s about using the right things, on purpose.

Here are five practical tips to help small business owners build a monday CRM system that stays clear, flexible, and usable as the business grows.

1. Be Clear About What Your “Leads” Actually Are

Before you touch automations, dashboards, or integrations, ask one deceptively simple question:

What does one item in this “Leads” board represent?

Is it:

• An inquiry?
• A potential job?
• A person? (AKA a potential customer)
• A company?
• Sometimes all of the above?

If you receive multiple enquiries from the same person or organisation, your “Leads” board is almost certainly managing inquiries, not customers.

This distinction affects:

• How you connect Contacts and Organisations
• Whether default CRM automations make sense
• How accurate your conversion reporting will be

Most CRM confusion starts here, with fundamental board structure – not with automations.

2. Name Boards and Items Like a Human Would

Board names and item names quietly shape how everyone understands the system, including future you.

If the name doesn’t reflect reality, people will:

• Use the board inconsistently
• Connect it incorrectly
• Build automations on false assumptions

A simple rule:

• One board = one type of thing
• Item names should be meaningful at a glance

If your board manages inquiries, call it Inquiries.
If it manages companies, call it Organisations.

Clean naming isn’t cosmetic. It’s structural.

3. Don’t Blindly Trust Default CRM Automations

monday CRM templates are designed for the widest possible audience. Your business is not average.

A classic example is the default “Create Contact” button in the Leads board. For many small businesses, this:

• Encourages duplicate contacts
• Breaks historical context
• Requires manual clicking instead of reliable automation

Before keeping any default automation, ask:

• Does this reflect how my business really works?
• What happens when I get repeat inquiries?
• Will this quietly create data problems later?

In many cases, match automations based on email or phone are safer, cleaner, and far more scalable than buttons.

4. Understand Core CRM Board Limitations Before You Commit

This is one of the most important things small business owners learn after it’s too late.

Core CRM boards cannot be duplicated and they cannot be moved between workspaces.

Once they’re created, they’re locked to that workspace forever. This wouldn’t be so bad – if you could ever delete your original Workspace. But you can’t. Ever.

This becomes a problem if you later want to:

• Separate sales from delivery
• Create a team workspace
• Reorganise your account as you grow

For that reason, I recommend to most of my small businesses clients that they intentionally start with non-Core CRM boards to preserve flexibility.

However, this choice comes with trade-offs you should understand upfront.

5. Know What You Give Up on Mobile When Using Non-Core CRM Boards

Non-Core CRM boards offer flexibility, but they don’t get the full CRM treatment in the monday mobile app.

If you use non-Core boards, you may miss out on:

• Dedicated CRM mobile views
• Some CRM-specific mobile shortcuts
• Certain sales-focused mobile interactions
• You also lose out on the Deal Stages Widget (only available in the Core “Leads” and “Deals” boards).

In practice, this means:

• The desktop experience is nearly identical
• The mobile experience is more “generic board” than “CRM app”

For many solo business owners, this is a perfectly reasonable trade-off. But if you rely heavily on mobile CRM features while on the move, Core CRM boards may be worth the constraints.

Even so, I would only recommend you consider using the Leads, Deals, Contacts and Accounts Core Boards at the most, or even just Leads and Contacts.

Leads and Contacts are the only boards that give you the auto prompt to log notes from calls and SMS. Leads, Contacts, Deals and Accounts are the only Boards that allow you to use the Shortcut Menu.

After all, there’s not much point mastering monday CRM if you build your systems upon a fundamentally flawed foundation.

6. Keep Sales and Delivery Distinct (Even If You’re Small)

It’s tempting to manage everything in one board when you’re wearing every hat.

Sometimes that works. Often it doesn’t.

Sales boards manage:

• Uncertainty
• Probability
• Conversion

Delivery boards manage:

• Commitments
• Deadlines
• Execution

Even a lightweight handoff between the two preserves:

• Clean reporting
• Historical context
• Sanity

You don’t need complexity.
You need a clear moment where selling ends and work begins.

Mastering Monday CRM Isn’t More Features. It’s Better Decisions.

Mastering monday doesn’t mean:

• More boards
• More automations
• More dashboards

It means:

• Clear definitions
• Honest naming
• Intentional structure
• Understanding the trade-offs before committing

When your CRM matches how your business actually works, it fades into the background and quietly supports you.

And for a small business owner, that’s exactly what “mastering monday CRM” should feel like.