EP 02 Do We Even Need the CRM Anymore?
A first-person look at why sellers resent their CRM, why companies cling to it anyway, and what the next generation of sales systems might finally get right.
Most sellers talk about their CRM with the same enthusiasm people reserve for filing taxes. I’ve worked inside enough go-to-market teams to know exactly how this conversation goes. Ask a room full of salespeople how they feel about Salesforce or HubSpot and the range spans from quiet resignation to outright annoyance. Yet every company depends on these systems as the backbone of forecasting, reporting, and pipeline operations.
That contradiction became the heartbeat of Episode 02. What started as a casual teardown quickly turned into something closer to a group therapy session. We joked, sure, but beneath the laughter was a serious question that kept resurfacing. If nobody wants to use the CRM, and nobody trusts the CRM, then why does it remain the center of gravity for every revenue organization? By the end, we found an answer that was more honest than optimistic, but at least it pointed us somewhere new.
CRMs Were Never Designed For How People Actually Sell
I kicked off the episode with a story I’ve lived through more than once. I tried to buy a tool I already knew, already loved, and had purchased several times at previous companies. I didn’t need a pitch. I didn’t need a deck. I didn’t need a discovery call. I walked in essentially waving my credit card, saying, “Just send me a contract. I want to implement this right away.”
Two weeks later, I was still stuck in discovery. Not because the rep wanted to drag things out, but because their CRM literally wouldn’t let them move the opportunity forward until every required field was completed. The system forced them to treat me like a stranger with zero context, even though I was trying to speed up the process.
This is the part that drives me insane. CRMs enforce a rigid, seller-centric workflow that ignores buyer reality. If a buyer is educated, ready to purchase, or actively trying to accelerate, none of that matters. The deal can’t progress until the CRM says so. It’s a brake pedal disguised as workflow.
Sales Reps Don’t Sell Inside the CRM
At one point Scott summed it up perfectly when he said, “Salespeople use spreadsheets and notes. They don’t use the CRM except right before the pipeline call.” He’s right, and I’ve seen this play out across teams of every size. The CRM is where deals get described, not where they get done. Reps don’t live in Salesforce. They visit it reluctantly to avoid being grilled in pipeline review.
The deeper issue is that most CRM fields don’t help reps sell at all. They exist to satisfy Marketing’s reporting needs, Product’s feature insight requests, CS’s implementation visibility, Finance’s forecasting categories, and Leadership’s dashboards. Every team has a data wishlist, and the rep becomes the one forced to enter it all. None of this improves their ability to close deals, which is why the data ends up incomplete, inconsistent, or simply wrong.
How CRMs Became “Software by Committee”
As we kept talking, one phrase stuck and became a running joke for the rest of the episode.
“It’s become a hodgepodge of fields. 500 fields. And 90 percent aren’t filled in.”
This is the fate of almost every enterprise CRM instance I’ve ever touched. Every department believes they need just a few more fields to get the visibility they want. Over time, those “just a few” stack into hundreds. Eventually the system becomes bloated, fragile, and borderline unusable. I’ve worked with RevOps teams who literally hit Salesforce’s custom field limits and had to hold quarterly field deletions that inevitably broke something downstream.
When software becomes a dumping ground for competing requirements, it stops being a tool and turns into a compliance obligation. Reps feel burdened by it. RevOps feels held hostage by it. Leaders feel skeptical of it. And the buyer, ironically, feels the rigidity in the sales process without ever knowing the cause.
The Core Failure: Humans Are the Primary Data Source
All the frustration funnels into one glaring truth. CRMs fail because they rely on humans to manually populate fields. You can design the most elegant schema imaginable, but it collapses the moment it requires a sales rep to fill out twenty fields after a busy day of calls. Human beings are inconsistent, distracted, and not incentivized to maintain pristine records.
Reps aren’t lazy. They’re practical. Their job is to close deals, not update systems for everyone else’s reporting needs. When the CRM offers nothing of value to the rep, they give it the bare minimum required to stay out of trouble. As a result, dashboards degrade, forecasts wobble, and internal teams scramble to build parallel truth systems outside the CRM.
This is the tragedy of modern CRM data. It’s critical, yet untrusted. It’s necessary, yet inaccurate. Everyone depends on it, yet no one truly owns it.
Forecasting Works… But Only Through Sheer Manual Labor
Eventually we hit forecasting, which exposed another layer of absurdity. Plenty of leaders brag about how accurate their forecasts are. Scott pushed back gently but firmly. If you peel back the process, “accuracy” usually emerges through pure manual grind.
Leaders call every rep.
Then every manager.
Then the VP.
Then the CRO.
Numbers get adjusted, negotiated, and smoothed until the forecast feels right. The CRM becomes supporting evidence rather than the actual source of truth.
I’ve been that leader. I’ve been in rooms where the entire forecast depended more on gut feel and tribal knowledge than system intelligence. It works, but only because everyone is manually stitching together the truth. That is not how forecasting should work in 2025.
Why AI Changes the Equation Completely
This is where the episode pivoted into the future, because the solution becomes obvious once you articulate the problem. If CRMs fail because humans enter data, then the fix is simple. Stop requiring humans to enter data.
AI can now extract structured insights from calls, emails, and meetings with remarkable consistency. It can automatically populate fields that reps would never fill out reliably on their own, including:
- competitors mentioned
- relevant use cases
- risks or blockers
- timeline signals
- decision criteria
- procurement steps
- sentiment and executive involvement
Even more valuable, AI can surface what we don’t know. It can flag missing security discussions. It can detect that procurement hasn’t been brought up. It can identify that someone’s vacation is actually a timeline risk. Instead of punishing reps for missing data, the system becomes a coach that helps them gather it.
The rep becomes more effective. The data becomes more reliable. And the CRM finally becomes something more useful than a digital filing cabinet.
The CRM Isn’t Dying But It Is Changing Roles
Despite all my frustration, I don’t believe the CRM will vanish. It’s too entrenched in finance, compliance, customer lifecycle tracking, and overall GTM architecture. It’s not going anywhere. But its role is changing rapidly.
“Salesforce becomes Oracle. The backend. Tools like GTM Engine become the place reps actually live.”
That is the future I see taking shape. The CRM becomes the database layer that keeps the business connected. AI-driven tools become the interface where sellers actually operate. The administrative burden gets absorbed by the system, not the humans.
What Comes Next: The CRM Fades Into the Background
By the end of the episode, I felt more optimistic than when we started. CRMs as we know them weren’t built for a world where AI captures reality automatically. Once human data entry stops being the bottleneck, the old CRM architecture starts looking outdated.
Future systems will understand deals better than people can track manually. Reps will get real-time coaching instead of nagging required-field errors. Leaders will forecast based on behavioral signals, not gut feel or rep storytelling. And the CRM will quietly slip into the infrastructure layer where it always belonged.
What emerges in its place is a smarter, more adaptive workspace that empowers sellers instead of hindering them. Buyers will finally experience a process that matches their pace, not a system’s constraints. And organizations will finally be able to trust their own data without interrogation.
That’s the future I want. And honestly, after years of fighting against the limitations of legacy CRMs, it’s the first one that actually feels possible.
About the Author
Robert Moseley IV is the Founder and CEO of GTM Engine, a pipeline execution platform that’s changing the way modern revenue teams work. With a background in sales leadership, product strategy, and data architecture, he’s spent more than 10 years helping fast-growing companies move away from manual processes and adopt smarter, scalable systems. At GTM Engine, Robert is building what he calls the go-to-market nervous system. It tracks every interaction, uses AI to enrich CRM data, and gives teams the real-time visibility they need to stay on track. His true north is simple. To take the guesswork out of sales and help revenue teams make decisions based on facts, not gut feel.
