CRMs: The Colonoscopy of the GTM World
Deeply invasive, widely dreaded. Yet, vital.
An effective CRM can save your business. But for most companies, it’s more like a colonoscopy—deeply invasive, widely dreaded, and not something anyone volunteers for. Necessary? Definitely. Enjoyable? Absolutely not.
Ah yes, the CRM. The silver bullet of revenue woes. A single, unified platform to manage all your customer-facing activity! What could possibly go wrong?
Well, just about everything.
In mid-sized businesses especially, a CRM often becomes the digital equivalent of a junk drawer. Random things go in, no one knows where anything is, and may god help the next person who opens it.
For most of my go-to-market leadership career, I’ve had to fix the CRM before I could fix strategy or execution. Otherwise, it’s like trying to run a Formula 1 team when your drivers are blindfolded and your telemetry system is just a guy yelling guesses from the pit lane.
As the Cheshire Cat once said: “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.” That’s what happens without a functional CRM—you’re making GTM decisions with all the precision of a Magic 8-Ball.
Why Something So Supposedly Useful Ends Up So Spectacularly Broken?
Keep It Simple, Stupid.
The primary killer of CRM adoption is a delightful concept called sludge. According to Nobel laureate Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein in their book Nudge, sludge is “excessive or unjustified frictions that make it harder for people to get what they want or to do as they wish.”
And companies? They love sludge. They pile it on like it’s a competitive advantage.
Example: Leadership insists that Sales and Marketing document every single customer interaction, capture every phone call and email, and fill out every field imaginable—across a CRM pipeline with more stages than a Shakespearean play. It’s friction masquerading as strategy. Let me be clear—I like CRMs. But even I wouldn’t use one this demanding.
Worse still, most of the information you’re collecting? It’s never used. You’re asking sales reps to spend time creating data that serves absolutely no one. You are, quite literally, getting in your own way.
Here’s a real-world example: Once upon a time, our Director of Demand Generation requested that Sales collect both Industry and Sub-Industry, 60+ options to chose from. Sounds useful, right? Except… we didn’t segment by industry, didn’t have industry-specific content, and our reps had never been trained to tailor messaging. While collecting Industry might have been a forward-looking investment, Sub-Industry was pure, uncut sludge.
Then we get to everyone’s favorite CRM “feature”: the open text field. You know, those lovely little boxes where reps dump notes that can’t be read at scale, can’t be analyzed statistically, and can’t be used to coach anyone on anything. I’ve often wondered: Did Marc Benioff and the Salesforce team sit around and say, “Let’s create fields that mimic shouting into the void”?
And let’s not forget when a 10-day sales cycle is mapped against 12 pipeline stages. Unless every stage represents a distinct and essential customer behavior, all you’re doing is sludging your sales process into irrelevance.
The Zero-Sludge Recipe for CRM Adoption
Let’s settle something up front: unless you’re a tiny company running a free CRM, there are only two CRMs worth discussing—Salesforce and HubSpot.
Salesforce is for large orgs with big budgets and messy processes. It’s powerful, flexible, and wildly easy to screw up.
HubSpot is best for most mid-market companies. It has just enough power to get the job done, and just enough constraints to keep you from creating a CRM-shaped monster.
Anything else? It’s like buying a knockoff Android phone with a Cyrillic keyboard and wondering why it won’t connect to Bluetooth. And yes, for the love of all that is functional, building your own CRM is right up there with New Coke and Blockbuster passing on Netflix.
Also, let’s banish the “we’re unique” excuse. Your business is probably not that special. No really— it’s the sludge creating the illusion of uniqueness. Most businesses don’t need elaborate CRM customizations. What they need is clarity, simplicity, and the willpower to say no to sludge.
Here’s your No-Sludge CRM Adoption Checklist:
Track only the MVP fields: Close Date, Deal Amount, Sales Stage, Competitors, Close-Lost Reason, and Product. If it’s not directly tied to forecasting or coaching, drop it.
Automate everything: Most CRMs integrate with Outlook, Gmail, and VoIP tools. If reps have to log calls manually, it won’t happen. Full stop.
Make performance visible: Build dashboards that show adoption behavior and compare reps side-by-side. Shame is a surprisingly effective motivator.
Run regular KPI defense sessions: Make every rep explain their metrics in front of their peers. No one wants to be the repeat under-performer with excuses.
Show value back to reps: If your CRM is just a compliance tool, reps will rebel. But if the data fuels real coaching, peer learning, and better performance, adoption becomes a no-brainer.
And yes, you’ll still have some rotten apples. But your top performers will embrace a system that helps them win more, faster, thanks to less sludge.
In Summary: De-Sludge or Die
A CRM isn’t a magic wand—but when used properly, it becomes the nervous system of your revenue operation.
Keep it simple. Use the data. Coach from it. Inspect what matters. Run the playbook. And for the love of everything sacred in GTM—stop adding sludge.
Only when your CRM is clear, usable, and valuable will it empower your sales strategy with something called go-to-market science. You’ll finally be able to measure, iterate, improve, and repeat.
Until then, you’re not managing a pipeline—you’re babysitting a bloated digital mess that everyone hates.