Hi! we just rolled out a new CRM setup... and to be so real... it is a total flop. the sales reps are completely rebelling because the system requires way too many clicks just to log a basic update.

instead of using the platform... they've gone completely rogue. they are tracking everything in their secret Excel sheets... and they literally only log the deal into the CRM after it’s already closed-won... just to secure their commission check. like they are straight up refusing to touch the pipeline.

it's because our admin made the mobile layouts completely unusable... they added all these dependent picklists where you literally have to click through 12 dropdowns just to log a standard bolt-on attachment or a quick pricing tier change... so the reps just... don't do it.

management is completely blind to it because they only look at the final closed-won revenue numbers... but our pipeline forecasting is literally in the negatives. we have zero visibility because the system thinks we have $0 in the pipeline until a random $50k deal just spawns out of nowhere on Friday afternoon during the final vibe check... it's so bad.

has anyone successfully dealt with sales reps flat-out refusing to use a new CRM?? how do we fix the friction before this Excel shadow-IT completely takes over... it's getting weird.

okay i need to vent to people who actually get it because if i have to explain this to leadership one more time im going to lose my absolute sanity. basically our execs are completely obsessed with turning our CRM into this hyper-automated tracking machine. like they want instant dashboards, zero-click pipeline tracking, and automated everything... but they are completely blind to the fact that our data is actual garbage?? like cool love the vision bro, but you cannot automate a process that the Enterprise AEs are actively fighting every single day.

The main thing driving me insane is this myth of frictionless data capture. Mr. leadership thinks if we just automate all email and calendar logging, we'll magically know everything about the pipeline. except lmao nope...our activity timelines are completely drowned in automated out-of-office replies and useless internal calendar invites, so the data is just pure noise. the Enterprise AEs are literally bypassing the broken sync anyway by keeping their actual good notes on their local desktops. it’s so ironic because i spend six hours fixing broken sync integrations and storage limits just to look at automated dashboards that are entirely fabricated. automated telemetry cannot fix broken sales habits, full stop...

And don't even get me started on the workflow bloat... to try and "force" clean data, they made me build these crazy validation loops where every minor pipeline stage requires them to manually type into that mandatory 'Next Steps' text box. now the page layouts look like a literal NASA control tower. and shocker... it totally backfired. the team is annoyed so they just dump placeholder text like "asdasd" into the text box or straight up manipulate close dates to stop the automated Slack alerts from yelling at them. marketing is out here launching sequences using totally stale data, lead routing is breaking because of missing territory tags, and everyone is confused. at this point a clean Google Sheet beats a choked CRM any day of the week.

Is anyone else genuinely losing it trying to build advanced automated workflows for people who still can't update a deal status correctly?? how are y'all pushing back on leadership's crazy expectations without sounding like a hater??

This is something I only noticed after we'd been using our CRM for a while.

When we first rolled it out, everyone lived inside it. Before calling a customer, before following up, before making a decision... the CRM was the first place people looked.

A few months later, that changed without anyone really talking about it.

Someone would ping a teammate instead of checking the account. Someone else would ask "did anyone speak to them recently?" even though the CRM had notes. Decisions were happening first, and the CRM got updated later when someone had the time...also the funny thing is adoption never really dropped. People were still logging in every day, managers still had reports, dashboards still looked fine. If you looked at usage numbers, you'd think everything was working.

But it didn't feel like the CRM was driving the work anymore. It slowly became the place where work got documented after it had already happened...tbh i dont know if i should be happy or disappointed xD

Maybe that's normal once a company grows, maybe it's just a process problem, I honestly don't know. It just surprised me because nobody decided to work that way. It sort of... happened.

Curious if anyone else has seen this. If you managed to pull people back into using the CRM during the work instead of after it, what actually changed?