CRM has long been a standard in business – companies implement it to “automate sales” and “set everything right”. But after six months it turns out: the funnel is still “leaking”, clients are lost, and the sales department works as before – on calls, Excel and intuition. Why is that? Why a CRM System Won’t Solve Your Sales Problems .
Because CRM is not a magic pill. It is a tool. And if night clubs and bars email list you do not change the processes, thinking and management, no system will save you. Why a CRM System Won’t Solve Your Sales Problems.
Yulia Pyankova, head of the CRM and Integrations unit at Completo, explained why CRM alone won’t solve your sales problems, and what to do to get started.
CRM is not a strategy, but an infrastructure
Many companies make the same mistake: they perceive CRM as a ready-made solution that will improve sales on its own.
In the minds of managers, this is almost magic – once the system is implemented, the funnel will automatically fill, tasks will become transparent, and reports will be convenient and beautiful.
But in reality everything is different.
CRM is not a strategy or a growth is the lead a good fit for your company? methodology, but an infrastructure, a way to record, systematize and analyze existing processes.
If these processes are absent or chaotic, CRM does not help. It simply reflects the disorder, sometimes even increasing it due to the many unfilled fields, irrelevant data and complex interfaces.
As a result, the company receives not a working tool, but a beautiful but useless interface that no one uses: sales do not increase, managers resist the innovation, and the system is “loaded” at a maximum of 10% of its capabilities.
The reason is the lack of preliminary work: no one has formulated why a company needs a CRM, what role it should play in the funnel, who is responsible for what, how the data will enter the system and what actions the business should take based on it.
A CRM without this is like an Excel spreadsheet without formulas and an understanding of what should be in it.
The file itself will not calculate anything. In the same way, CRM does not sell. It can become a reliable tool for growth – but only if it is based on established processes, and not on hopes
An example of how work on implementing a CRM system can be distributed using the Gantt system:
Image from the author’s archive
The lack of a sales system within the company is one of the main reasons for not getting results from CRM
One of the main reasons why CRM does not work is mobile lead that the company does not have a clear and structured sales system.
That is, managers work differently: some enter data into CRM, some write to the client in a messenger and forget, some call from a personal phone, and some tasks simply remain “in their heads.”
As a result, the CRM is not filled with relevant information, and analytics becomes formal: the numbers exist, but it is impossible to manage them:
- No funnel stages – no way to understand where customers are getting lost.
- There are no regulations, which means there is no unified approach to working with leads.
- There is no control culture – CRM turns into an archive, not a working tool.
It is important to understand: CRM is not a sales system. It is its digital medium.
The system itself is:
- Client communication scenarios and scripts;
- Clear division of transaction stages;
- Regulations for recording tasks, comments and results;
- Segmentation of the database by stages and priorities;
- Control mechanisms: manager – leader – CRM.
Example from practice:
The company had implemented a CRM, but managers managed 60% of tasks in WhatsApp, and only the results of interactions were entered into the CRM. Analytics showed “closed deals,” but the reason for the failure of half of the leads remained unknown.
After the audit, we identified the lack of a standardized sales process. We built a funnel structure, introduced regulations for working with tasks, and implemented communication templates.
After a month, both the number of active transactions and the quality of analytics increased.