Five Reasons Why Salespeople Hate Salesforce
I have personally been involved with thousands of “sales automation” projects, that are being used by roughly 100,000 salespeople. The general feedback from these salespeople is usually unprintabled. This is one of the main reasons why we created Spiro, which was originally designed to make salesforce.com actually usable.
Since the days of Siebel, following with salesforce.com, there have been billions — really! — of dollars spent on sales automation technologies. But as of yet, I have not found a single sales rep that would tell me they love their system. No one says that the highlight of their day is entering accounts, contact information, or jotting down activities in order to make sure their efforts are streamlined.
Here are the top 5 reasons salespeople hate Salesforce:
1. Salesforce Wasn’t Built For The Sales Team
Salesforce was put into place to organize sales operations and sales management, not to benefit sales. Most sales professionals feel that salesforce.com — or any CRM — is a way of controlling them. No one likes to feel that they are constantly being monitored. They want the freedom to go about their daily tasks on their time, without pressure, without force, and without big brother looming over their shoulder.
One telling example: when I asked a VP of Sales recently how he planned on getting his sales team to use the new CRM system, he said, “because I’ll fire them if they don’t.” It was a lie, but it showed the attitude.
2. Salesforce Looks Like It’s From 1999
There are so many different things that need to be done within salesforce.com that trying to figure out what to do next can take up way too much precious time. Trying to understand the difference and value between events, tasks, notes and activities, leaves no real way of differentiating all the facets of the Salesforce. Salespeople want to sell and make money. They want to be in contact with people, not sitting in front of a computer playing system analyst all day.
3. Salesforce Can Make A Sales Rep’s Job Harder
The main thing a field salesperson does with Salesforce is data entry. Everything a salesperson does in a day, every single task, every person she comes in contact with, must be documented. This means going to a computer after every single thing they do, or trying to use their mobile device, to type everything on a tiny keyboard. This is a major disincentive and makes people hate Salesforce.
One sales rep I know actually told people not to email him because if they did, he would have to fill out the Salesforce information for them!
4. Too Many Required Fields
Most versions of Salesforce have certain fields that are required to be filled out before the salesperson can move on to a different page or task. This can mean up to 98 fields that must be filled in so that marketing can measure the campaign success. I’ve seen required fields range anywhere from having the correct address or billing information, to even hair or eye color!
5. Not Built By Salespeople For Salespeople
Salespeople need a system designed with the key players (them) in mind. That’s why we built Spiro, the AI-Powered CRM. It does all the crap, admin work for you, and provides you with proactive advice on who to contact next. We’ve seen salespeople increase the number of prospects reached by 47% when they use Spiro.
When a sales team is happy and has the tools that actually increase productivity, management will be happy with the profits rolling in. Sounds better than the grunt and groans about an inadequate CRM system.
