Why Sales Reps Hate Using CRM

Photograph of a sales rep talking on a mobile phone and looking at reports in front of a laptop

“I love CRM!” said no sales rep, ever.

Sales reps hate their CRM. So they don’t use it. Can you blame them?

Most CRMs were developed decades ago and weren’t built to run revenue. They’re old, complex, and constantly demand data, with few meaningful insights to show for it. They are also notorious for having a terrible User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI).

But the worst part? Today’s CRMs are a major contributor to the biggest business problem hiding in plain sight—revenue leak. Every minute a seller wastes navigating CRM is a minute they could have spent following up with quality opportunities. Wasted time equates to revenue leak. And it’s time to put a stop to it.

This article discusses three top reasons why sales reps hate using CRM, ways to solve major CRM pains to run revenue effectively, and the impact of each solution.

3 CRM pain points for sales reps

1. Never-ending manual data entry: “72% of salespeople spend up to an hour a day on data entry and connecting records from different sales tools.”

2. Data is poor and insights are nonexistent: “47% of enterprises state they can’t rely on their CRM data to provide a single source of truth regarding customer data. The report also found 44% of enterprises are unable to perform advanced customer analytics with CRM data, while 40% are unable to use CRM data to drive improved personalization.”

3. Horrible UX and UI: “What is this, a software designed for dinosaurs?” (Every sales rep ever). It’s not just the reps complaining about a horrible UX/UI—their bosses agree, too: “50% of sales leaders say that their CRM is difficult to use.”

Why business should care about weak CRM adoption and usage

A lot of CRM implementations fail due to painfully slow user adoption and low usage (more instances of revenue leak).

It’s well understood that CRM systems are expensive. However, their promise of significant benefits makes businesses justify such a large purchase.

As such, it’s not surprising that CRM implementation failures are quite costly to organizations – especially larger enterprises. Just take a look at the 10 worst CRM failures of all time to see how costly (Cigna’s failed CRM implementation allegedly cost them around $1 billion).

Healthy CRM adoption and usage starts with making CRM tolerable for their primary users: sales reps.

3 ways to relieve CRM frustrations for sales reps

It doesn’t matter which CRM a company selects. Solve the three issues above, and there’s sure to be increased CRM adoption and usage (here’s why that matters).

1. Automate data entry. “According to a survey conducted by Introhive, the average rep spends five and a half hours per week manually entering data into their CRM systems—almost a full workday. Three hours of that time is spent logging activities such as phone calls and emails.”

Clari gives that time back to reps because it captures contacts they are engaged with and logs them into the CRM automatically.

2. Enhance CRM data quality. Companies should see an immediate increase in data quality by automating data entry. This creates the potential for insights—many of those, however, will likely need to come via another tool.

Clari spent a lot of time with Clari customers learning about key gaps in manually entered CRM data that could be filled using AI and automation. The result was Autocapture, a feature that gives users better, more complete data about customer relationships while giving reps time back to sell.

3. Supplement CRM with powerful platforms. Unfortunately, CRM users can’t do much to adjust their CRM’s UI/UX. But they can use supporting revenue technology platforms with a meaningfully better UI/UX to solve critical pain points. The most powerful platforms have bidirectional integration with CRM systems, allowing sales reps to minimize time spent in the clunky CRM.

Clari allows sales reps to update their CRM data without ever opening their CRM.

By deploying the three solutions above, companies can finally dethrone CRM from its longstanding title of “most hated part of the tech stack,” stop revenue leak at the source, and start running revenue like a pro.

Stop blaming sales reps for their hatred of CRM. Request a demo, and speak with one of our CRM painkiller experts.