Start with seats and renewal dates, not with tools. Compare the seats you pay for with the people who logged in during the last 90 days, check that your edition and contact tier match what you use, find tools that do the same job, and list every renewal and notice date. Cut in that order, and leave the integrations and data quality your reporting depends on alone.
What this covers
- How do we reduce CRM and GTM tool costs?
- How much are we paying for seats nobody uses?
- Which tools should we consolidate into the CRM, and which should we keep?
- How do we stop tools renewing before anyone reviews them?
- What should we not cut?
- Who should own the CRM and the tool stack?
- What does a quarterly stack review look like?
How do we reduce CRM and GTM tool costs?
Work through five levers in order: unused seats, editions you do not need, contact or record tiers, tools that overlap, and renewal terms. The first three rarely change how anyone works. Overlaps take more care, because removing a tool means moving its job and its data somewhere else first.
All five work from one table: every tool, its owner, what it costs a year, how many seats or contacts you pay for, the renewal date and the notice period. If that table does not exist yet, building it is the first step, and it usually turns up a tool or two nobody remembers buying.
| Lever | What to check | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Unused seats | Seats paid against people who logged in during the last 90 days | Remove leavers' seats and reuse seats before buying new ones; move occasional users to a cheaper seat type where the tool has one |
| Edition | Features in your edition that nobody uses | Move down an edition at renewal, or keep the higher edition only for the users who need it, where the vendor allows mixing |
| Contact or record tiers | Many CRMs price by seat, and some marketing tools by the number of contacts stored or marketed to | Archive or delete contacts you will never email, such as long-term bounces and duplicates, after checking your retention policy |
| Overlapping tools | Two tools doing one job, or a tool doing a job the CRM already includes | Keep one, move the data and workflows, then cancel the other |
| Renewal terms | Renewal date, notice period, automatic renewal and price increase clauses | Decide before the notice deadline, and renew at the seat count you use, not the one you bought |
One caution on contact tiers: keep a suppression record of everyone who opted out before you delete contacts, so a later import cannot add them back and email them again.
How much are we paying for seats nobody uses?
Count the seats you pay for, count the people who logged in during the last 90 days, and multiply the difference by the seat price and by twelve. Then add every tool that does a job another tool already does. Run it for the CRM first, then for every other tool billed per seat.
16 of 60 seats had no login in the last 90 days: $17K a year. Three overlapping tools add $17K. That is $35K a year, 42% of the $82K these tools cost.
An illustration with made-up numbers, not a client's. The sum is unused seats × price per seat × 12, plus the annual cost of each overlapping tool.
Before removing every inactive seat, check three things:
- Occasional users. Finance or leadership may log in only at quarter end. A 90-day window catches most of them, and a view-only seat, where the tool offers one, may suit them better than a full seat.
- Open roles. Seats kept for hires who start soon. Hold them on purpose, with a start date, not by accident.
- Integration users. Some integrations run on a dedicated user seat that never logs in. Removing it breaks the sync.
The lasting fix is offboarding: removing a leaver's seats should be a step on the same checklist that switches off their email, so seats never pile up between reviews.
Want a second pair of eyes on your stack?
Take the free RevOps Health Check for a scored read on your CRM and systems, or book a free 30-minute review and bring your tool list. We will point out the overlaps and the seats worth reclaiming first.
Take the RevOps Health Check Book a free 30-minute reviewWhich tools should we consolidate into the CRM, and which should we keep?
Consolidate tools that copy data the CRM already holds or do a job the CRM already includes, such as meeting links, basic email sequences and standard pipeline reports. Keep tools that are the system of record for their own data, such as billing, the support desk and product analytics, and connect them to the CRM instead.
- CRM
- CRM $65K
Contacts, companies, deals, reports, meeting links and email templates, all included in the edition you pay for.
- EnrichmentPaid twice
- Enrichment tool A $12K
- Enrichment tool B $9K (duplicate)
Both fill company size and industry on the same records. Keep one, or run the second only where the first finds nothing.
- Meeting schedulingPaid twice
- CRM meeting links included
- Scheduling tool $2.4K (duplicate)
The CRM already books meetings and logs them on the record. The separate tool adds seats and a sync.
- ReportingPaid twice
- CRM reports included
- Dashboard tool $6K (duplicate)
The dashboard tool rebuilds the same pipeline reports from a copy of CRM data, and the two drift apart.
- Email sequences
- Sequencing tool $11K
One tool for one job. Keep it, and check its seats like the CRM's.
- Call recording
- Call recorder $7K
One tool for one job. Keep it.
Three jobs are paid for twice. Removing the duplicates saves $17K a year here, the same three overlaps as in the calculator above, and leaves one place for each kind of data.
An illustration with made-up numbers, not a client's.
Our usual recommendation, job by job:
| Job | Usually | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Meeting scheduling | Consolidate, if your CRM includes it | A separate tool adds seats and a second place for meeting data |
| Pipeline and activity dashboards | Consolidate into CRM reports | Unless you need data the CRM does not hold, a second tool rebuilds the same reports and drifts from them |
| Basic email sequences | Consolidate, if volume and features fit | Sequences inside the CRM log activity on the record without a sync |
| Enrichment | One budget and one order of providers, not two separate subscriptions | Two providers filling the same fields overwrite each other; a second source should only fill what the first could not |
| Billing, support desk, product analytics | Keep, and connect | Each is the system of record for its own data; the CRM should show a summary, not replace it |
| Cold email sending | Keep separate | Sending from a separate domain protects the reputation of the domain your team and customers use |
The savings go beyond licence fees. In our revenue consolidation engagement, a Series B company went from 12 disconnected tools to one source of truth, and the monthly reporting cycle went from two days to two hours. How the systems you keep should connect to the CRM is covered under connecting sales and marketing systems.
How do we stop tools renewing before anyone reviews them?
Put every contract's renewal date and notice deadline in one shared calendar, and start each review about two months before the notice deadline, not the renewal date. Many SaaS contracts renew automatically unless you give notice by a set date, and that date can be months before the renewal itself.
| J | F | M | A | M | J | J | A | S | O | N | D | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CRM, 90 days' notice | Renews in March | Review | Review | Notice deadline in December | ||||||||
| Enrichment tool A, 60 days' notice | Review | Review | Notice deadline in May | Renews in July | ||||||||
| Dashboard tool, 30 days' notice | Review | Review | Notice deadline in August | Renews in September | ||||||||
| Sequencing tool, 60 days' notice | Review | Review | Notice deadline in September | Renews in November | ||||||||
| Call recorder, 30 days' notice | Notice deadline in January | Renews in February | Review | Review |
- Review
- Notice deadline
- Renewal
The CRM renews in March, but with 90 days' notice the deadline falls in December, in the middle of the holidays. Start that review in October, or the contract renews at the same seat count for another year.
An illustration with made-up numbers, not a client's.
Each review ends in one of four decisions: renew as it is, renew with fewer seats or a lower edition, renegotiate the terms, or cancel and move the job elsewhere. If you plan to cancel, start the move before the notice date, because exporting data and rebuilding workflows takes longer than the paperwork.
Send renewal notices and invoices to a shared inbox rather than one person's email. When that person leaves, the notices keep arriving somewhere someone reads. More on that in what to do when your ops person resigns.
What should we not cut?
Do not cut the integrations, data quality work and admin time that revenue reporting depends on. A connector that costs little can carry every web lead into the CRM, and an enrichment field may decide how leads are routed. Before cancelling anything, list what reads from it and what writes to it.
- Integrations that move revenue data: forms to the CRM, the CRM to billing, product usage to accounts. Losing one shows up weeks later as missing leads or a wrong board number.
- Data quality: deduplication, validation rules, and the enrichment that routing and scoring read. Cutting these saves a line item and costs pipeline nobody sees go.
- Security features customers ask about: single sign-on, permission sets and audit logs. Moving down an edition can remove them, so check before you downgrade.
- The person who maintains the CRM. Cutting admin time is how the costs in this guide come back: nobody removes seats, nobody reviews renewals, and new tools get bought to work around problems.
To cut a tool safely:
- List what reads from it and writes to it: integrations, workflows, reports and fields.
- Move its job and its data to the tool you are keeping, and test that.
- Pause the old tool for a few weeks before cancelling, and watch sync errors and lead volume.
- Export the data and a record of the configuration before the contract ends.
- Give notice in writing, before the deadline.
Who should own the CRM and the tool stack?
One named person should own the CRM and the list of tools around it, usually revenue operations once you have it. Finance approves the spend and each tool has a business owner, but someone has to know what every tool does and what depends on it, or the costs creep back within a year.
| Stage | Who usually owns the CRM | Who approves a new tool |
|---|---|---|
| Founder-led sales | A founder, with a part-time admin or outside help | The founder |
| First sales and marketing hires | A sales ops or marketing ops person, or an outside RevOps team | The head of sales or marketing, with finance |
| Growth stage | Revenue operations, for the CRM and the stack together | RevOps checks it against the stack; finance approves the spend |
This is revenue operations work, even before anyone has that title. Finance can see what the tools cost, but only someone who knows what each one does can say what is safe to cut. Marketing ops and sales ops usually own their own tools; RevOps owns how they fit together.
It is bigger than a quick fix if nobody can say what half the tools do, renewals keep arriving as surprises, or reports are rebuilt by hand because the tools disagree. That is the work behind our CRM audits and implementations, and RevOps as a Service runs the CRM and the stack from $2,500 a month when nobody in-house has the time to own it.
What does a quarterly stack review look like?
A one-hour meeting each quarter with RevOps, finance and the owner of each tool, working from the inventory. Reclaim unused seats, check editions and contact tiers, look for new overlaps, decide on every renewal whose notice deadline falls in the next six months, and check integration errors for the tools you keep.
- Update the inventory: tools bought this quarter, owners who changed, costs and seat counts.
- Seats: compare with logins in the last 90 days, and remove anyone who has left.
- Editions and tiers: features in use, and contact counts against the tier limits.
- Overlaps: anything new that duplicates a job another tool already does.
- Renewals: every notice deadline in the next two quarters gets a decision and an owner.
- Health: sync errors and data quality for the tools you keep.
- Decisions in writing: one line per tool, and finance updates the budget.
The review is one part of a simple operating rhythm for the CRM and the stack:
| How often | What | Who |
|---|---|---|
| Weekly | Sync errors, data quality alerts and access requests | The CRM admin or RevOps |
| Monthly | Leavers' seats removed, new tool requests, spend against budget | RevOps with finance |
| Quarterly | The stack review above | RevOps, finance and each tool's owner |
| Yearly | CRM edition and contract strategy, and the systems roadmap | The RevOps leader with the COO or CFO |
Tool spend is part of sales and marketing cost, so it feeds CAC payback. How to calculate that honestly is in the GTM metrics guide.
Want to cut tool costs without breaking anything?
Book a free 30-minute review. Bring your tool list and renewal dates, and you leave with the three changes worth making first, whether or not you work with us.
Take the RevOps Health Check Book a free 30-minute reviewFrequently asked questions
How do I reduce our CRM costs?
Compare the seats you pay for with the people who logged in during the last 90 days, and remove or downgrade the rest. Then check whether your edition and any contact-based tier match what you actually use, find tools that duplicate what the CRM already does, and make those changes before the notice deadline on your renewal.
How do you find unused software licences?
Export the user list from each tool billed per seat, with each user's last login date, and compare it with your seat count and with the list of current employees. Seats with no login in 90 days, seats for people who have left and duplicate accounts are the candidates. Check integration users and open roles before removing them.
Which tools should we consolidate into the CRM?
Tools that copy data the CRM already holds or do a job the CRM already includes, such as meeting scheduling, basic email sequences and standard pipeline dashboards. Keep tools that are the system of record for their own data, such as billing, the support desk and product analytics, and connect them to the CRM instead.
Who should own the CRM at a growing company?
One named person, usually in revenue operations once the company has that function, and before that a sales or marketing ops person or an outside RevOps team. They own the configuration, the list of tools around the CRM and what depends on each one. Finance approves the spend, and each tool has a business owner.
How often should we review our GTM tool stack?
Quarterly, in a one-hour review with RevOps, finance and each tool's owner. Reclaim unused seats, check editions and contact tiers, look for new overlaps, decide on every renewal whose notice deadline falls in the next six months, and check integration errors for the tools you keep. Remove leavers' seats monthly, as part of offboarding.
Keep reading: the GTM metrics and KPI guide and revenue operations for finance leaders (the CRM against billing, quote to cash and commission).