CRM guide
Choosing a CRM your sales team will actually update
Every failed CRM has the same cause. Adoption is a design question and a management question long before it is a software question.
Every failed CRM has the same cause, and it is never the feature list. A CRM nobody updates is a database of stale information that people trust more than they should.
Why CRM projects die
They die because updating the system is work that benefits somebody else. The salesperson does the typing and the manager gets the report. Unless that imbalance is addressed, entries become sparse, then stale, then wrong.
The failure is rarely dramatic. Six months later the pipeline is nonsense, everybody has gone back to their own spreadsheet, and the subscription is still being paid.
Make the CRM useful to the person typing
The fix is to make the system give the salesperson something back. The next action on every deal, so they open it each morning to see what to do. Email tracking so they know a quote was read. Automated follow ups so nothing is forgotten.
When the CRM is the thing that tells you what to do today, it gets updated. When it is a reporting obligation, it does not.
Fewer fields, not more
There is a strong temptation to capture everything. Industry, source, competitor, decision maker, budget confirmed, and fifteen more. Every required field is friction on every deal, and friction is what kills adoption.
Start with the minimum that makes the pipeline meaningful. Value, stage, next action, owner and expected close. Add a field only when somebody can say what decision it will change.
Use it in the meeting or lose it
The single most effective adoption tactic costs nothing. Run the weekly sales meeting from the pipeline on screen. Do not accept a verbal update on a deal that is not in the system.
This changes behaviour within two weeks, because the cost of not updating becomes immediate and visible. No amount of training achieves the same thing.
Choose for simplicity at the point of entry
When comparing products, weight the daily experience of the salesperson above the reporting capability of the manager. A drag and drop pipeline that takes four seconds to update beats a more capable system that takes forty.
This is why Pipedrive does well with small sales teams despite being lighter on marketing and service than the suites. The thing it optimises for is the thing that determines whether any of it works.
Start with one pipeline, not five
The instinct on setup is to model every process the business has. Separate pipelines for new business, renewals, upsells and partner deals, each with their own stages.
Start with one. A single pipeline that everybody understands produces a forecast you can trust. Five pipelines built in the first fortnight produce five sets of half maintained data and an argument about which report is right.
Decide what a closed lost deal means
Pipelines rot at the bottom. Deals that will never close sit open for months because nobody wants to mark them lost, and the forecast becomes an aspiration rather than a number.
Set a rule. A deal with no activity for a defined period is closed lost automatically, and can be reopened if it revives. It costs nothing and it is the difference between a pipeline and a graveyard.
Common questions
01Why do CRM implementations fail?
Almost always adoption. The person entering data gets less from it than the person reading the reports, so entries become sparse and then unreliable. It is a design and management problem rather than a software one.
02How do I get my sales team to use the CRM?
Run the sales meeting from the pipeline on screen and refuse verbal updates on deals that are not in it. Reduce required fields to the minimum. Make sure the system tells the salesperson what to do next.
03Which CRM is easiest for a small team?
Pipedrive is the simplest to adopt for a pure sales pipeline. Zoho and HubSpot offer more breadth including marketing and service, with free tiers, at the cost of a little more setup.
Editorial note
This guide is general buying guidance and not accounting, legal or tax advice. Amounts and deadlines set by SARS change, so confirm the current figures for your own business before you rely on them.