What month three looks like
Month one is enthusiasm. Month two is compliance. Month three is the first rep who keeps their real pipeline in a spreadsheet because the CRM “doesn’t have what I need”, and nobody pushes back, because the person who built the system is gone and the manager gets their numbers by asking anyway. By month six the CRM is a place deals go to be reported, after the fact, by whoever remembers. The tool gets blamed. The tool was never the problem.
The two causes
Built for reporting, not for selling. Most CRMs are configured from the manager’s side: what do I want to see? So every field exists to feed a dashboard, and none of them help the rep decide what to do next. A rep will fill in a system that gives them something back: the next call, the stale deal, the proposal due a follow-up. They will not maintain a form.
Nobody owns it after the builder leaves. A system is a living thing. Fields go stale, automations break, a new product needs a new stage. If the builder was a consultant who handed over a document, or an admin who got promoted, the first drift goes uncorrected and every later one is cheaper to work around than to fix.
What survives month three
- The Monday view. Each rep opens the CRM to one screen that says: these deals are stale, this proposal is due a follow-up, this next step is yours. If that screen is useful, the fields that feed it get filled.
- The manager reads, doesn’t ask. The moment a manager can run the pipeline review from the CRM without asking anyone for a number, the reps know the system is the source of truth and the spreadsheets die.
- Evidence stages, not activity stages. See what stages should measure. Fewer fields, each one a thing the buyer did.
- An owner for hygiene. Someone’s job, weekly: stale deals, missing owners, broken automations. This is most of what Keep it running is.
- Training in the room, not a document. The team runs it with the builder watching, adjusting, retraining. A handover deck is a month-three problem scheduled in advance.
Why the guarantee starts at handover
Because adoption is the job, not the afterthought. The guarantee starts at handover. If your team isn’t running it thirty days later, I do another thirty days at no charge to find out why and put it right. That catches the drift before it sets, in month two rather than month three. Catch it there and it’s a ten-minute correction. Catch it in month six and it’s Get the team back in.