The CRM Death Spiral
Why your CRM isn’t working — and what to do about it
The Symptom: “We just don’t use it properly.”
If I had a pound for every time a client said that…
“We just don’t really use HubSpot properly.”
“We started strong, but now nobody logs in.”
“We’ve got a CRM, but we still use spreadsheets for reporting.”
These aren’t isolated incidents. This is a pattern — and it’s killing growth across industries.
It’s not a training issue.
It’s not a platform issue.
It’s a systemic failure of trust, ownership, and leadership.
I call it The CRM Death Spiral — and if you’ve invested in a CRM that now sits half-used, under-utilised, and untrusted… you’re in it.
Let me break it down.
The Spiral in Action
It starts small.
A few records are out of date.
A sales rep forgets to log a call.
Marketing sends a campaign based on a bad segment.
Leadership stops pulling reports because “they’re never quite right.”
Soon:
No one trusts the data
So no one uses the system
Which makes the data worse
Which reduces trust even further
And around you go again.
This loop isn’t just annoying. It’s dangerous.
Because once trust is broken, usage drops to near zero — and your CRM becomes shelfware.
Worse than useless, in fact:
It becomes a source of friction, confusion, and wasted effort.
🧠 The Real Problem Isn’t the CRM
Most companies try to fix this the wrong way.
They retrain the team.
They restructure their pipelines.
They even consider switching platforms.
But here’s the truth:
You don’t have a CRM problem. You have a leadership problem.
Here’s why:
You cannot run a business off a CRM that management doesn’t own.
If your CRM is being treated as a technical project — something for ops or sales enablement to “sort out” — you’ve already lost.
A CRM isn’t just a database. It’s a strategic control system.
It should tell leadership exactly what’s happening in the business, in real time.
But that only works if leadership takes ownership of it.
That’s where most businesses fall apart.
They expect usage to drive strategy.
But the reality is: Strategy drives usage.
What’s Actually Missing: An MCS
Let’s talk about what a Management Control System (MCS) is — and why your CRM can’t function without one.
An MCS is a framework that connects:
The strategy of the business
The metrics that matter
The processes that execute it
And the data that feeds it all
It creates a closed loop of visibility, accountability, and feedback.
When done right, an MCS transforms a CRM from a passive database into an active operating system — a central platform the whole business runs on.
But here’s the kicker:
You can’t build an MCS on bad data.
And you can’t fix the data without leadership buy-in.
Which brings us back to the death spiral.
How It Starts: Bad Data
Every CRM adoption failure begins with data that’s:
Outdated
Incomplete
Inconsistent
Unstructured
This happens for a number of reasons:
Multiple people entering data in different ways
Old leads imported during onboarding without deduplication
Lack of clarity around what fields are required, when, and why
No clear process for handoffs between teams
It doesn’t take long for your CRM to become a mess.
Once users see the data is wrong, they disengage.
And once they disengage, the spiral accelerates.
But again — this isn’t a user problem.
This is a lack of management control.
What It Leads To: Systemic Breakdown
Here’s what the CRM Death Spiral looks like in practice:
1. Sales
Reps stop logging calls and updates because “it takes too long” or “no one reads them anyway.”
They keep deal notes in notebooks or private docs.
Leads fall through the cracks. Follow-ups get missed. Deals die.
2. Marketing
Campaigns are launched using stale data.
Segments are built on faulty assumptions.
Attribution is impossible. Reporting becomes guesswork.
3. Operations
Start building workarounds in spreadsheets.
They stop trusting the CRM entirely and create shadow systems to track what’s “really happening.”
4. Leadership
Pulls reports from the CRM but doesn’t believe them.
Starts demanding updates via email and meetings instead.
The CRM stops being the source of truth and becomes a liability.
How We Fix It: Management-Led Adoption
This is why we’ve built our entire consultancy around one simple belief:
CRM adoption must start with leadership.
We call our approach Management-Led Onboarding — and it starts by treating your CRM not as a tech tool, but as the operational heart of the business.
Here’s how we do it:
1. Clean the Data
We work with your teams to review, clean, and structure the data.
This includes deduplication, standardisation, and validation — so we’re building on solid ground.
2. Map the Strategy
We use proven frameworks (like Business Model Canvas, Value Chain Analysis, and Customer Journey Mapping) to align the CRM to your business goals.
3. Build the MCS
We define your KPIs, reporting structure, workflows, and decision-making loops — and embed them inside the CRM so leadership gets live insight.
4. Drive the Adoption
Now, with clean data and clear strategy, we roll it out across Sales, Marketing, Ops and beyond.
We train teams not just on what to do — but why it matters.
5. Measure and Optimise
We track adoption, usage, and data hygiene over time — using tools like Sidekick and Databox — and iterate as we go.
The Result: A CRM That Actually Works
When leadership owns the CRM:
Sales gets clarity
Marketing gets impact
Ops gets visibility
Leadership gets control
And most importantly — the system becomes sustainable.
Not because people were “trained harder,” but because the business now runs through the CRM by design.
That’s the shift we create.
Final Thought: Don’t Build on Sand
If the data is wrong, nothing else matters.
Dashboards lie. Forecasts collapse. Revenue stalls.
But if you fix the data, align the strategy, and lead from the top — everything changes.
HubSpot (or any CRM) becomes a true engine of growth.
So stop treating CRM as a technical tool.
Start treating it as a strategic asset.
Because when leadership leads…
The whole business follows