Laziness of sales reps is a myth

A common myth that is perpetuated when talking about broken sales processes and poor CRM hygiene is the laziness of sales reps. We wanted to ascertain if this is actually true and we spoke to around 50 of the best sales reps and what we found was surprising. “Poor CRM Hygiene is due to Sales Rep laziness” seemed an easy escape route to a problem that needs to be looked at more in detail.  Here are some observations that we collected when we interviewed these sales reps

1. More than 75% of the sales reps had detailed information regarding their deals. They had meticulous notes and data on the deals they were working on
2. But this data did not find its way into the CRMs or sales tools that they use. They were fragmented across multiple tools of theirs - some note taking apps, Spreadsheets, emails etc
3. The notes and data they were storing was not just for informational purpose, but were critical information that helped them  to sell better
4. This data if it had been available in the CRM would have been greatly useful to sales leaders for better sales forecasting as well as given visibility to all stakeholders

Why did this data not get into the CRM?

CRM debt

Most of the CRM setups were getting bloated with time resulting in a huge number of unused fields. This bloat results in confusion and disparity on which fields to use and update. The constant changes to processes also introduce inherent CRM debt which leads to frustration of sales reps

Clunky UI

CRMs act as great Systems of Records, but the UI/UX leaves a lot to be desired. Almost 95 percent of Salesforce users and 80 percent of Hubspot users reported this as the number one reason why they do not enter their notes and data into their CRMs. What should take a single click or maybe a couple ends up taking 6 to 8 clicks taking atleast 5x more time than it should. This is a time sales reps would rather spend selling

Break in flow of work

Selling is not a transactional event. Deals don’t close in a day. It happens over weeks or sometimes months and over multiple mediums - in person, Zoom, emails, messaging etc. The need to switch contexts from the application you are working on to access the CRM was a break in flow that hampered selling.  

The more we spoke to the sales reps, the more we realised that it was not the laziness of the sales reps, but the tardiness of the sales tools

Making the CRM work effectively(for Sales Reps)

Most sales tools have an inherent bias in the way they are built. It misses the needs of one of the most crucial stakeholders in the sales journeys - Sales Reps. CRMs are a great example of this. Though they are the backbone of any sales process, they tend to be poorly designed, unintuitive and difficult to access for sales reps. If this needs to be changed, sales tools must be rethought from the perspective of the sales reps as well. Here are few approaches that can fix this

1. Make the CRM access extremely frictionless
2. Make the sales tool accessible in places where the sales rep is - meeting apps, email, browser etc
3. Ensure the data is accessible for them to sell better rather than look at your CRM as just a data store
4. Fix CRM debt. Do periodic audits and cut all that bloat
5. Park the myth of laziness and solve the real problem

At Luru, we are working on solving this problem. We believe that giving an uncluttered interface that sales reps love to use and making it accessible where they are will improve the productivity of sales reps and sales efficiency manifold. Go ahead and give Luru a try. It’s free!

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