How to Get Salespeople to Update the CRM

If you work with a sales team, chances are you have issues with the CRM not being updated from time to time. Perhaps even all the time. A salesperson once told us that on a list of things they would like to do, they would put updating the CRM right under having to clear a family of wild raccoons out of a dumpster. 

Giving the team strict requirements can make reps feel micromanaged and lead to resentment, and requires time spent on oversight. Meanwhile, providing incentives for regular updates often fails because these incentives can never measure up to the higher incentive level for activities related to closing new business. So what’s the solution? 

Understanding the fix requires taking a step back from CRM updates themselves. While motivating a sales team to make updates can be difficult, at the same time, commission payout errors are common at many companies and often go undetected. In many cases reps spend time on shadow accounting; keeping their own commission calculation spreadsheets to verify that their payouts are correct. This can take quite a bit of time and distract them from selling. 

The way to motivate reps to update the CRM is to tie CRM updates to what intrinsically motivates them: their earnings, and more specifically, their commission payouts. Giving sales reps real-time visibility on quota attainment empowers them to ensure that data is entered into the CRM correctly, and that they are thus paid out correctly. All of the time spent on shadow accounting becomes redundant when reps have a dashboard showing them their current commissions accruals, and what deals those accruals came from. That time spent shadow accounting is repurposed into something that provides value to the business: having up to date CRM data. 

Empower your sales teams with visibility and data, and in turn watch them keep the CRM up to date. It’s that simple. Get in touch to learn how Palette can help provide commissions visibility for your sales team.