How to get your Sales Team to actually fill out the CRM
When I ran a recruitment sales team of 12 people, I often caught myself thinking the same thing most sales leaders think at some point: why can’t they just update the CRM like they should?
The system was there, the expectations were clear, and it was something we’d talked about plenty of times. And yet notes were often light, meetings and calls weren’t always logged, and contact details weren’t always as accurate or up to date as they could have been.
To be clear, this had nothing to do with effort or capability. The team was performing well and the financial results were strong. What sat uncomfortably with me was something else entirely. I could see that if one of our top performers got hit by a bus tomorrow, we’d be left with very little behind them. Too much of what made us successful lived in people’s heads rather than in the system.
Over time, I realised that part of the problem was simply the nature of great salespeople.
The best salespeople I’ve worked with are rarely the most organised. They tend to hate admin, they’re brilliant on the phone and in person, and they’re incredibly good at honing in on what needs to happen next to move a deal forward.
They don’t think in tidy process steps, they think in momentum. Who should I call next? What’s the objection I need to deal with? What’s the fastest way to get this moving again?
Seen through that lens, asking them to sit down and “update the CRM” can feel completely disconnected from how their brain works. When you’re dealing with high performers, it can be a bit like asking a race car driver to stop mid-lap and fill out paperwork.
The bigger issue, though, wasn’t just individual behaviour. If you want to build a sales business that lasts, you can’t rely on heroes. Of course you want good people, but you also need good systems.
Systems that capture what works, allow success to be repeated, and make sure that when someone leaves, the business doesn’t suddenly lose its memory.
Sales teams shouldn’t just be about trying to hire the best salespeople possible. They should be about building an engine that a wide range of people can step into and still deliver strong results. That’s where CRM discipline really matters. Not for control or oversight, but for continuity.
One thing that worked well for us was pairing opposites. We found that matching top performers with sales support or administrators who had completely different personality types made a big difference.
Highly organised, detail-focused people took care of notes, follow-ups and CRM hygiene, which freed the salesperson up to focus on conversations, relationships and closing. It wasn’t about slowing anyone down, it was about letting people play to their strengths while still protecting the business.
Another lesson came from leaning into how salespeople are wired. Salespeople are competitive by nature, and they respond well to visible progress. When we stopped treating CRM activity as admin and started treating it as part of the game, things shifted. Calls logged, meetings booked, proposals sent and deals progressed became small wins on the way to bigger goals. The CRM stopped feeling like a chore and started feeling like evidence that things were moving in the right direction.
The final piece was helping the team see the bigger picture. Better data leads to better forecasting, smarter resourcing and fewer last-minute fire drills. Over time, that creates more stability, a stronger culture and a better business overall. When people understand that CRM usage isn’t about surveillance but about building something sustainable together, their relationship with it changes.
Looking back, there wasn’t a single silver bullet for getting the team to fill out the CRM. What made the difference was designing systems around how salespeople actually think, supporting strengths rather than fighting them, and connecting individual activity to collective success. Once that clicked, CRM usage stopped being something we had to push, and simply became part of how the team worked.