Stop Fighting Your CRM

January 18, 2023

We’ve all seen it—teams using spreadsheets, sticky notes, or side conversations to avoid dealing with their CRM. It’s not laziness—it’s friction.

When Salesforce doesn’t match the way people actually work, they’ll find the path of least resistance. The result? Critical data lives outside the system, reports lose accuracy, and adoption drops.

The good news: fixing this usually isn’t about “retraining users.” It’s about reshaping the system to reduce friction and support real workflows.

Signs Your Team Is Fighting the CRM

Shadow tools everywhere: spreadsheets, shared docs, or chat threads carrying key business data.
Overcomplicated screens: too many required fields, tabs, or layouts for simple tasks.
Click fatigue: processes that feel like busywork instead of streamlining work.
Low trust in reports: people hesitate to rely on dashboards because they know the data isn’t complete.

If any of these sound familiar, your CRM is adding effort instead of reducing it.

Principles for Reducing Friction

Listen before configuring
Spend time shadowing users and asking where the process feels slow or confusing. Often, the “workaround” tells you exactly what Salesforce is missing.
Simplify inputs
Not every field needs to be required. Prioritize the ones that drive reporting or automation, and let the rest be optional.
Design for natural flow
Place the most important fields and actions where users look first. Tabs, dynamic forms, and conditional visibility should match the way the business actually works.
Encourage the right behavior by default
If the easiest path in Salesforce is also the correct one, adoption follows naturally.

The Mindset Shift

A CRM should feel like a partner, not a hurdle. When the system mirrors real-life workflows, people stop fighting it—and start relying on it.

You shouldn’t need to convince your team to use Salesforce. The goal is to make it the obvious, easiest way to get work done.