Why even the best CRM platforms still underperform in 2025

If you have invested in a leading CRM platform and you still struggle to get the insights you need, you’re not alone.

Just last week, I had a conversation with a sales leader who spent three and a half hours pulling data just to calculate something as fundamental as deal velocity. That is 3,5 hours, for a metric that should be available on demand in just a few clicks. Crazy!

Does that sound familiar? Because it certainly is quite common.

CRM platforms these days are powerful. Yet in 2025, many organizations, including well-funded B2B companies in SaaS, staffing, and recruiting, are still struggling with the same old stuff: incomplete reporting, poor user adoption, broken (or non-existing) hand-offs, and automations that never see the light of day.

The question is: why? In this blog post, we’ll be looking into why leading CRM platforms are still missing the mark in 2025.

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The real reasons CRM platforms underperform

It’s tempting to blame the technology. But more often, the real issues lie in how it was implemented, governed, and aligned with the business. Here’s what we see across B2B companies.

1 - Misaligned implementation

Many organizations essentially “copy-paste” another company’s CRM setup without considering their own revenue strategy, customer lifecycle, or KPIs. What they get is a platform that seems to do all it should, but in reality doesn’t produce any results. A CRM that works for one SaaS company may not work for another with longer deal cycles or different sales motions.

2 - Poor user adoption and change management

A platform is only as strong as the data it holds. And the data depends on your people. If your sales team still tracks notes in spreadsheets or your recruiters are double-entering candidate info, user adoption is the real bottleneck. Most CRMs fail not because of missing features but because teams don’t use them consistently. We wrote an entire blog about the importance of user adoption, with good reason.

3 - Missing, wrong, or fragmented data

Data is another big issue we see all the time. You’d think with all the digital tools at our disposal today, we would have all the data we need, right? Your close rate, attribution models, or pipeline velocity are only as accurate as your data inputs. But duplicates, incomplete fields, and disconnected systems lead to reporting no one trusts, all because the data is wrong or absent. This kills executive confidence in the CRM.

4 - Over-customization without ROI

Flexibility is a double-edged sword. Many organizations over-engineer their CRMs with custom fields and workflows, only to end up with systems too complex to maintain. Sales reps bypass these overly complex platforms. Leaders lose their patience. And ROI vanishes.

5 - Weak cross-functional alignment

Sales wants pipeline visibility. Marketing wants attribution. Customer success wants churn predictors. And leadership wants growth forecasting. But far too often, CRM rollouts prioritize only one department. When other teams don’t see value, adoption and trust collapse. They go back to their previous solution, and the result is data issues, no hand-overs, and a platform that doesn’t deliver any ROI.

6 - Lack of integrations

Disconnected quoting, billing, scheduling, or ATS systems create digital silos. Without seamless integrations, teams default to manual workarounds. This slows down revenue operations and hurts customer experience. And manual work is much more prone to errors, causing data issues slowly but surely.

The cost of an underperforming CRM

For B2B leaders, a misfiring CRM isn’t just a technology problem. It’s especially a revenue problem, and here’s why:

• Delayed close-rate insights mean missed opportunities to optimize sales cycles.

• Weak integrations with other platforms slow processes (for example, placements for staffing and recruitment companies) and reduce productivity.

• Poor lead and client visibility erodes trust and damages relationships.

Every hour wasted reconciling spreadsheets or pulling manual reports is an hour not spent closing deals, nurturing accounts, or driving expansion. And that’s exactly what the CRM is there for in the first place.

Turning your CRM platform into a growth engine

The good news? Underperforming CRMs can be revived. Here’s how high-growth B2B companies do this.

Start with a CRM gap analysis

Start by documenting exactly what the CRM should deliver: reports, automations, and cross-team visibility. Compare that with your reality. The gaps you find become your roadmap for optimization.

Define business-driven KPIs

Tie your CRM success to revenue outcomes. For example:

• Increase win rates by 5% through faster follow-ups.

• Reduce time-to-fill in staffing by 20%.

• Improve SaaS renewal forecasting accuracy by 15%.

• Increase deal velocity by 12%.

These KPIs align your CRM platform with leadership priorities.

Prioritize quick wins

Small fixes rebuild trust. Quick results make everyone enthusiastic for more. A single revenue dashboard or automated follow-up sequence can show immediate ROI, energize your teams, and build momentum. 

Clean and govern your data

Data makes or breaks your results, so take time to clean up your existing data. Deduplicate, standardize, and implement ongoing data hygiene rules. Set up processes to make sure to keep your data clean, and make sure everyone knows what to do in case there is a data issue. If your data isn’t trustworthy, your CRM won’t be either. Read our blog about data enrichment strategies to enhance your campaigns.

Phase your reconfiguration

Don’t overhaul everything at once. Instead, focus first on solving revenue-critical gaps (like reporting and pipeline automation). Then expand to marketing, service, and finance. This approach makes it easier to actually fix what is broken and make changes quickly.

Train for adoption

Generic training doesn’t work. Role-based, use-case specific training (e.g., “how sales teams track deals,” “how account managers forecast renewals”) ensures teams see daily value. Make your training specific enough so trainees see the immediate value and know exactly what to do and why.

Look for executive sponsors

A CRM transformation isn’t a sales or a marketing initiative — it’s an organizational one. With leadership actively championing adoption and accountability, CRMs become central to the organization’s growth strategy, not just another tool. Treat it like the strategic initiative that it is, and you’ll be far more likely to see ROI.

Looking ahead

Technological advances are happening at light speed. Here are a couple of things to keep in mind as martech evolves:

• AI and automation are only as good as your data. So if your CRM is messy, layering AI will only make the problem bigger.

• No-code CRMs are rising, enabling faster configuration without IT bottlenecks.

• Industry-specific platforms are gaining traction over generic CRMs because they’re tailored to workflows in specific industries and use cases.

The bottom line: your CRM must evolve with your business, so choose one that can grow along with your business.

A CRM that underperforms isn’t just frustrating. It is costing you deals, placements, renewals, and revenue growth. In other words: high costs without the ROI.

But you’re not stuck. With a clear roadmap, cross-functional alignment, and disciplined execution, you can transform your CRM from a source of friction into a high-performance revenue engine.

In 2025, the leaders who win aren’t those with the most features in their tech stack. They’re the ones who align their CRM with strategy, enforce adoption, and continuously optimize for measurable outcomes.