What Makes a Good CRM in the Era of AI?

Ed Miller  

President of SalesEthics

The best CRM is whatever you will use.

I say that every time someone asks me which CRM they should buy. It isn't the answer people expect, but it's the one I believe.

Here's what I see out in the field. Reps, managers and even executives get lost in their CRMs. They log in, click around, update a few fields, and walk away no clearer on what to do next than when they started.

That's a shame, because a good CRM is one of the most useful tools a salesperson can have. When it works, it keeps you honest about your effort, keeps you focused on your customer's decision, and keeps you from dropping the ball.

So let's look at what a CRM actually needs to do, and how to keep yours from getting in the way.

Why Do So Many Salespeople Get Lost in Their CRM?

Most people don't get lost because the CRM is missing features. They get lost because it has too many, and none of them are pointed at the work in front of them.

Before we talk about what a good CRM looks like, it helps to name what goes wrong. Here's what I run into most often:

• The CRM was set up to answer someone else's questions.

  In today's world, CRMs are tracking everything and everybody. Marketing wants its data in there. Customer service wants its data in there. Finance wants its data in there.

  None of that is wrong. But if nobody speaks up for the salesperson, the tool ends up full of fields that help every department except the one making the calls.

• More time in the CRM doesn't mean more sales.

  It's easy to assume that the rep who lives in the CRM is the rep who sells the most. That isn't how it works.

  Researchers who studied salespeople using a CRM found that the tool helped performance at first, then the returns leveled off, and past a certain point heavy use actually hurt sales.

  That makes sense. Every hour you spend tidying records is an hour you're not spending with a customer.

• It's hard to use, so people stop using it.

  If a CRM is clunky on a phone or takes ten clicks to log one call, salespeople will find a way around it. They'll keep notes on paper, in their email, in their head.

  There's research on this too. When two companies rolled out new sales software, their salespeople liked it right after training. Six months later, they had largely rejected it, and turnover had gone up.

  A tool your team resents is worse than no tool at all.

None of this means CRMs are the problem. It means a CRM has to be built around a few clear jobs, and kept to them.

What Does a Good CRM Need to Do for a Salesperson?

At a minimum, a CRM should help a salesperson do three things. If it does these three well, almost everything else is a bonus.

• It shows you what you actually did.

  A CRM should make it easy to keep track of your activities. What did I do last week? What did I do yesterday?

  How many calls did I make? How many leads did I call?

  You can't improve what you can't see. When your activity is right in front of you, you know whether a slow month was bad luck or a light week of effort, and so does your manager.

• It tells you what buying stage every account is in.

  This is probably the most important part of a CRM. Is this account a prospect? A lead? Qualified? In a solution discussion?

  As a salesperson, you should continually be helping your customer come to a buying decision. You can't do that unless you know what stage they're in, and what stage you need to help them get to next.

  Notice how that frames the job. The stage isn't there so a manager can grade you. It's there so you know how to serve the customer in front of you.

• It tells you what to do next, and makes time to do it.

  What sales tasks do I need to do tomorrow? Next week? What deadlines are coming up? What after-call work do I owe?

  A good CRM helps you manage your tasks so your customer can make a decision. Sometimes that means the CRM blocks out time for you to do the research or write the proposal.

  Just telling the CRM the proposal is due Tuesday doesn't help if you didn't block out time on Monday to do the work.

  This is one of the best-supported ideas in psychology. People who decide exactly when and where they'll do something are far more likely to follow through than people who only set the goal. A deadline is a goal. A block on your calendar is a plan.

If your CRM can answer those three questions every morning, it's doing its job.

What Makes a CRM Easy Enough to Actually Use?

A good CRM should be easy to use, whether you're on a phone in the parking lot or at your desk.

That sounds simple, but it's where most CRMs fall down. Here's what I'd look for:

• It works where you work.

  Salespeople aren't at their desks all day. If you can't log a visit from your phone in the thirty seconds before you walk into the next one, it won't get logged.

  Try it before you buy it. Sit in your car and record a call. If it's a chore, your team will treat it like one.

• It asks for what you'll use, and not much more.

  Every field you add is a few more seconds of typing, on every call, for every rep, every day.

  Go back to the three jobs. If a field doesn't help you see your activity, know the buying stage, or plan your next step, ask whether it belongs on the salesperson's screen at all.

• It helps you serve the customer, not just report on them.

  The best use of a CRM is walking into a meeting knowing exactly where you left off. What did they ask last time? What did you promise to send?

  Research on salespeople's use of technology backs this up. When reps used it well, they gave better customer service and adapted better to each customer, and their sales improved.

  That's the right order. The customer is served first, and the numbers follow.

Ease of use isn't a nice-to-have. It's the difference between a CRM full of real information and one full of guesses entered on Friday afternoon.

Who Should Have a Say in Choosing the CRM?

Most CRM decisions don't sit solely with the sales department anymore. Marketing gets involved. Customer service and finance get involved.

That's healthy. Every one of those teams touches the customer, and a shared system can keep everyone telling the customer the same story.

But it also means sales has to show up to the conversation prepared. Here's how I'd do it:

• Bring the three jobs to the table.

  Before you look at a single demo, write down what your sales process needs from it: activity tracking, buying stages, and next steps with time blocked to do them.

  Then hold every option up against that list. A CRM can be perfect for finance and still fail your reps.

• Put a working salesperson in the room.

  Not only the VP. Someone who makes calls every day and will use the thing on their phone.

  They'll spot the extra clicks and the missing mobile features long before anyone else does.

• Agree on what the buying stages mean.

  If marketing calls something a "qualified lead" and sales means something different, the CRM will be wrong from day one.

  Settle the definitions together, in writing, before the system goes live. Then train your team on what each stage means, so everyone moves customers forward the same way.

A CRM chosen with sales at the table is one sales will actually use.

How Should a Sales Team Handle the AI Built Into the CRM?

CRMs are now using AI to make predictions and to automate work. They'll score your leads, suggest your next step, and flag the accounts they think are at risk.

That can be a real help. But a prediction is only as good as what it's aiming for.

If the sales team is choosing the CRM for themselves, I would make sure someone loads the AI-driven CRM with sales prerogatives and goals. Here's what that looks like in practice:

• Give one person the job.

  Someone on the sales side should own how the CRM is set up. Not as an afterthought, and not handed off entirely to IT or marketing.

  If no one owns it, the AI will learn from whatever happens to be in the system.

• Point it at the customer's buying decision.

  The heart of a CRM is the buying stage. The AI should be helping you move customers toward a decision that's good for them, not just pushing activity counts higher.

  When it suggests a next step, ask yourself: does this help my customer decide?

• Treat its suggestions as suggestions.

  You know things about your customers that no system does. If the CRM says an account is cold and you just had a great conversation with the owner last week, trust what you know.

  Then go update the record, so the system learns from it.

AI can make a good CRM better. It can't decide what your sales team is trying to accomplish. That part is still on you.

How Do Managers and Executives Keep From Getting Lost, Too?

It isn't only reps who get lost. Managers and executives can spend hours inside dashboards and still not know what to do Monday morning.

The fix is the same three questions, asked about the team instead of one person:

• Look at activity to understand effort.

  Activity tells you who's working and who's stuck. It's a starting point for a conversation, not a verdict.

  If a rep's calls drop off, ask what's going on before you assume anything.

• Look at buying stages to understand progress.

  Busy isn't the same as moving forward. A rep with fewer calls and more accounts advancing through the stages may be doing better work.

  Coach from the stages. "What does this customer need to get to the next step?" is a far better question than "Why is your call count down?"

• Protect your team's selling time.

  Remember the research: past a certain point, more time in the CRM means less time selling.

  Every report you ask for is time your reps aren't spending with customers. Ask only for what you'll actually use.

When leaders use the CRM this way, reps stop seeing it as a surveillance tool and start seeing it as a way to get help.

Conclusion

The best CRM is whatever you will use. Easy on a phone, easy on a computer, and built around a few clear jobs.

It shows you what you did. It tells you what stage your customers are in. And it tells you what to do next, with the time set aside to do it.

Everything else, including the AI, should serve those three jobs and your customer's buying decision.

So here's something to do this week. Open your CRM and pick your five most important accounts. For each one, can you say what you did last, what buying stage they're in, and what you're doing next, and when?

If you can't, that's where to start.

If you want help building a sales process your CRM can actually support, our Sales Strategy Consulting service is built for exactly stuff like this.