Last week I was writing a handbook for our new salesperson. He starts making calls at the end of October. Before I wrote a single sentence, I pulled my own HubSpot numbers for the past twelve months. The handbook opened like an indictment. Of 152 calls, 27 have a note. Of 46 open deals, 34 have a close date in the past and 30 have no next step. If you got a report like that on one of your salespeople, they’d be in your office on Monday at 8:30.
The same report says something else. 635 sales meetings in a year, 142 of them in June, July and August alone. 222 deals. I’m more effective than at any point in twenty years of B2B sales. Both things are true at once. That contradiction is why I’m writing this column.
The battle that couldn’t be won
For fifteen years, every sales leader I know has fought the same battle. Log it in the CRM. Update the stage. Set a date. Write the next step. You fought it correctly, by the rules that applied, and you lost it again every week. Not because your salespeople were lazy. Because the battle was set up so it couldn’t be won.
The salesperson typed. The boss got a report. The salesperson got nothing. A tool that takes more from its user than it gives back dies of neglect, however hard you push.
The more uncomfortable part: a salesperson who is busy selling has no time to write it up. An empty CRM was never the sign of a bad salesperson. More often it was the sign of a good one with a full calendar.
Where the battle was actually lost
Discipline didn’t break down everywhere. It broke down exactly where I had to type something in by hand, field by field: call outcome, close date, next step. Each of those fields asked me to stop selling and start reporting.
In the same year, my CRM accumulated around 11,000 logged emails, 635 meetings, most of them recorded and summarised, and 244 notes. None of it took any discipline. All it took was a connected mailbox, a calendar and a notetaker in the meeting. The context built itself while I was selling.
The battle for data entry was lost wherever it was manual. It was won wherever nobody asked a human to do anything.
An empty CRM is no longer the boss’s problem
For years, the CRM was my notebook for the boss, who happened to be me. Today it does two things for me. Before every meeting it briefs me on the relationship: what we’ve written to each other, which deal is still open, why the last one fell through. And whether anyone from the company attended our September webinar on unanswered calls. After the meeting it turns the recording into a summary, draft minutes and a draft follow-up email. On day five it reminds me of the call I promised.
The biggest change, though, isn’t in the tool. It’s in where meetings happen. Almost everyone now wants them on Teams, not over lunch. For my quality of life that’s an enormous improvement: the meeting is recorded, summarised and logged before I’ve closed the call. When I do go for lunch or a coffee, I don’t put my phone on the table to record. That isn’t exactly socially acceptable. In the car afterwards I say what happened in a few sentences. The notetaker in the mobile app gives me almost the same summary I’d get from Teams.
For the first time in twenty years, my CRM gives me back more than it takes. I give it one sentence after a call, or a few sentences in the car, and it gives me back the whole relationship. That reverses the relationship between salesperson and system. An empty CRM is no longer the boss’s problem. It’s the salesperson’s. Whoever fails to log an outcome is no longer annoying their manager. They’re disarming their own agent. Mine knows nothing about my 125 calls without a note, because as far as it’s concerned they never happened.
Two touches tell you nothing
One more number from my year. Leads that made it to a presentation had received 14 touches on average: calls, emails, meetings, tasks. Qualified leads, 8.6. Disqualified leads, 2.2. That isn’t a law, it’s my year. It doesn’t mean every write-off was premature; plenty had a good reason after the first conversation. What it does say: the leads that stayed in play needed eight to fourteen touches before a decision. Whether the write-off was justified or the salesperson just gave up, two touches won’t tell you.
Nobody making 40 calls a day can keep in their head which lead is on its third touch and which is on its ninth. Only the system can hold that, and only if the outcome of every touch is logged. So I’m not asking our new salesperson for discipline. I’m asking for one sentence after every call: who he spoke to, what the other person said, what he promised. The system records everything else. That sentence isn’t a report for me. It’s the only thing his agent needs to prepare the next seven touches for him.
The right battle
If you run a sales team, the question for this week is simple. How many of your salespeople walk into a meeting with a briefing on the relationship they didn’t write themselves? If the answer is none, your CRM still works for you, not for them. And the battle over data entry will go on for another fifteen years.
The right battle isn’t about discipline. Everything that can be captured automatically should be: email, calendar, meeting recordings, a call outcome picked from a list instead of an empty field. The salesperson keeps one duty: a one-sentence assessment, written down, after every contact. And every salesperson gets an agent that hands that context back before every call. Whether they’ll then write that sentence without being told, I can’t prove with the report I opened with. My 125 calls without a note are a debt, not an argument. What has changed is something else: for the first time, I have a reason that isn’t the boss. And that’s the only kind of reason that has ever worked on salespeople.
So change the metric. Not the share of deals with a next step filled in. How many meetings a salesperson started with a briefing they didn’t write, and how many leads you wrote off without a recorded reason. The old metric rewarded typing. The new one rewards context.
For fifteen years, salespeople worked for the CRM. The right battle begins when the CRM starts working for them.
igor.pauletic@frodx.com
P.S. The handbook for our new salesperson runs to 36,000 characters. The chapter on where to click in HubSpot is the shortest one. He has an agent for that.
