Revenue Royale Workshop: Buy vs. Build – Why Your Custom CRM Was a Mistake

The Workshop on Event Day

Revenue Royale on June 11 in Berlin is a gala evening for 300 decision makers from Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success. We're there with our own table – and before the gala, we deliver our workshop.

Alena Zidek (monday.com) and Malte Lensch (Till Freitag) take the stage together. The topic: When does it pay off to buy a CRM – and when does a custom layer actually make sense?

What We Cover

The workshop is for revenue teams facing this decision – or who've made the wrong one before.

1. The Typical Custom CRM Mistakes

Most GTM teams have tried to build a custom CRM at some point. The reasons were usually solid: no tool fit exactly, IT didn't want license costs, or a developer said it'd take two weeks.

Three years later: the CRM runs on outdated code, the original developer is gone, and every update costs more nerves than the last. We show the patterns we've seen at dozens of companies – and how to avoid them.

2. When "Buy" Really Wins

A bought CRM like monday CRM delivers from day one:

• A interface that sales teams actually want to use
• Automations that work without developers
• Mobile apps, integrations, and reporting out of the box
• A support team you can actually call

We show where the limits of classic CRMs lie – and why monday.com draws those limits differently than vendors selling the same product for ten years.

3. When a Custom Layer Still Makes Sense

There are scenarios where a custom layer on top of a standard CRM is the right move:

• Industry-specific logic no tool covers
• Deeply integrated workflows with internal systems
• UI tweaks that genuinely speed up the sales process

The difference: today you build those layers with Vibe Coding in days instead of months – on a foundation you don't have to maintain yourself.

4. Live Patterns from Real Setups

Malte Lensch shows patterns we've built live for customers:

• Lead scoring automations that qualify in real time
• Deal pipelines that adapt to the sales process, not the other way around
• Custom dashboards for C-level reporting
• Integrations between monday.com and existing tools (ERP, telephony, marketing stack)

No slides with architecture diagrams. We show boards we've actually deployed.

Who the Workshop Is For

• Heads of Sales evaluating a new CRM
• Revenue Operations looking to modernize an existing setup
• CROs and VPs who have to sign off on budget for "yet another CRM project"
• IT leads who need to defend – or finally disprove – the "we'll build it ourselves" argument

If you've ever thought: "Our Salesforce setup is too complex to switch" – this workshop is for you.

The Speakers

Alena Zidek – monday.com Alena knows monday.com inside and out. She works with enterprise customers asking exactly the questions we cover in the workshop: Does it scale? Does it fit our stack? What about compliance?

Malte Lensch – Till Freitag Malte builds revenue operations setups for B2B teams. He's seen custom CRMs that worked – and many that don't. He brings the practice: what actually works, what costs money, and where teams lose time.

Workshop Details

What You'll Take Away

• A clear framework for the buy-vs.-build decision in your team
• Concrete criteria for when a standard CRM is enough and when a custom layer is needed
• Live insights into revenue setups that went live in weeks, not months
• The phone number of someone who's done it before

→ Tickets for Revenue Royale 2026

→ More about the event and our table