Most companies do not fail because of their CRM software. They fail at CRM implementation. Our Sales Excellence Study shows a consistent picture: between 70 and 80 percent of all companies use only around 20 percent of the potential their CRM system could deliver. For most firms, the CRM therefore has no measurable effect on growth or profit. For roughly half of them, the cost of the system exceeds the value it generates.<\/p>\n
This is not a software question. It is a question of strategy, transformation and organisational readiness.<\/p>\n
At a glance:<\/strong><\/p>\n Data source: Sales Excellence Study 2025, a survey of sales decision-makers in Switzerland, conducted with SIVH and Bern University of Applied Sciences.<\/p>\n The sobering truth about CRM investments<\/strong><\/p>\n The numbers repeat year after year. Companies invest six-figure sums in licences, implementation partners and interfaces, and what they end up with is a system that has, at best, digitised the address book. Sales carries on working exactly as before, only with more mandatory fields.<\/p>\n If you cannot clearly answer what additional revenue or additional margin your CRM has generated over the past twelve months, you are very probably part of that 70 to 80 percent.<\/p>\n Why CRM projects fail: the three deepest causes<\/strong><\/p>\n First: CRM is treated as an IT project, not a growth project.<\/strong> Management delegates responsibility to the IT department. IT then selects a system on security and integration criteria rather than on sales effectiveness. The real challenge, transforming how marketing, sales and service actually work, never happens. A CRM project without sponsorship from the executive team and without ownership in sales is a software purchase, not a CRM implementation.<\/p>\n Second: the data is designed wrong.<\/strong> Many companies maintain email addresses, revenues and product purchases. What is missing: customer attitudes, their decision-making preferences, their jobs to be done. If you segment by revenue and postcode instead of by attitude and willingness to pay, you lose the very insight value the CRM was meant to create. The system then knows everything about what was bought and nothing about why.<\/p>\n Third: CRM is isolated from pricing.<\/strong> In a B2B context, customer data on willingness to pay and perceived value is the foundation of every pricing decision. Separating CRM from pricing means giving away one of the most powerful levers for profitable growth. Discounts then get granted on gut feel instead of derived from data, and margin quietly drains out of the business.<\/p>\n What actually works in CRM implementation<\/strong><\/p>\n We have guided a large number of companies through CRM transformation over recent years. The pattern among the successful projects is clear.<\/p>\n Transformation before digitisation.<\/strong> Successful companies are willing to fundamentally change how sales, marketing and service work, not merely to digitise it. That means uncomfortable decisions: about website tracking infrastructure, about lead scoring models, and about what salespeople are allowed to spend their time on and what they are not.<\/p>\n Attitude-based segmentation instead of demographics.<\/strong> Not “which products has customer X bought so far?” but “what is customer X’s attitude to innovation? What value are they actually looking for? How do they make decisions?” This data can be captured at scale and enables segmentation that genuinely leads to better engagement. This is where the insight value a CRM was built for actually appears.<\/p>\n Integrating CRM and pricing.<\/strong> Every quote issued, every price negotiation, every terms agreement has to be visible in the CRM. And in return, pricing decisions have to be fed by what the CRM reveals. Only that feedback loop turns a CRM into an instrument for profitable growth rather than a log of activities.<\/p>\n 10 to 20 percent higher profit: what CustomersX clients experience<\/strong><\/p>\n Our clients report an average profit increase of 10 to 20 percent following a rigorous CRM implementation. That is not a promise. It is the result of a transformation that goes far beyond introducing a system.<\/p>\n The path is not easy. There is resistance, there are corrections and there are setbacks. But the goal is reachable if you are willing to invest more in the organisational transformation than in the IT licence.<\/p>\n Five questions to answer before your next CRM decision<\/strong><\/p>\n Before you sign the next licence, answer these five questions:<\/p>\n If you cannot answer these five questions, you are buying software. If you can, you are starting a CRM implementation.<\/p>\n Why companies work with CustomersX<\/strong><\/p>\n The CRM consulting market is crowded. Most providers come from one of two directions. Either they are the implementation partner of a system vendor, in which case the choice of system is effectively made before the first conversation begins. Or they are classic strategy consultants, in which case the engagement ends with a presentation and the change in daily sales work never starts.<\/p>\n We work differently, in four respects:<\/p>\n We are not tied to a system vendor.<\/strong> We earn nothing on licences and nothing on implementation hours. Our recommendation on a system follows from your sales strategy, not from a partner agreement.<\/p>\n We bring CRM and pricing together.<\/strong> That is the third root cause in this article, and it is precisely the gap in the market: CRM consultancies do not calculate prices, pricing consultancies do not understand sales processes. We have both in one team. That is why we talk about willingness to pay and contribution margins, not just pipelines and dashboards.<\/p>\n We work from our own data.<\/strong> Through the annual Sales Excellence Study, conducted together with SIVH and Bern University of Applied Sciences, we survey Swiss B2B sales decision-makers. That means we know not only what is happening inside your company, but also where you stand relative to the wider market.<\/p>\n We come from both research and practice.<\/strong> Our consultants teach on the CAS Sales programme in partnership with Bern University of Applied Sciences and publish on customer centricity. What we recommend is methodologically grounded and tested in real B2B projects.<\/p>\n How we support you<\/strong><\/p>\n Depending on where you are, we start at a different point:<\/p>\n You do not know whether your CRM is delivering anything.<\/strong> We run a potential assessment: we examine usage, data model and processes, and show you within a few weeks how much of the potential is being used today and which three levers would have the biggest effect.<\/p>\n You are facing a system selection or a replacement.<\/strong> We run the evaluation vendor-neutral: requirements derived from your sales strategy, longlist and shortlist, structured vendor comparison and negotiation support. The outcome is a decision you can defend to your executive team.<\/p>\n Your system is live but the impact is missing.<\/strong> We guide the transformation: building attitude-based segmentation, rebuilding lead scoring and tracking, adapting sales processes and roles, connecting pricing, and carrying the organisation through the resistance.<\/p>\n Your team lacks the capabilities.<\/strong> Through SIVH and Bern University of Applied Sciences we develop sales teams and sales leaders alongside their day jobs, from single seminars through to a full CAS programme.<\/p>\n Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n A CRM is not an IT system. It is a growth instrument. The difference between using 20 percent of the potential and realising the full effect lies not in the software but in the willingness to rethink ways of working, data and pricing together.<\/p>\n Customer centricity is hard work, but it pays off. \ud83d\ude80<\/p>\n Free CRM check<\/strong><\/p>\n In 45 minutes we work through the five questions from this article for your company. You leave with an assessment of where you stand relative to the market and the two or three levers with the biggest effect on your margin. Free, no sales presentation, no obligation.<\/p>\n Book your free CRM check<\/strong><\/p>\n Frequently asked questions about CRM implementation<\/strong><\/p>\n Why do so many CRM projects fail?<\/strong><\/p>\n Because CRM is run as an IT project instead of a growth project. The software gets introduced while the way sales, marketing and service work stays the same. Without that transformation, there is no measurable effect on revenue or profit.<\/p>\n How do I measure the ROI of a CRM implementation?<\/strong><\/p>\n Through business metrics, not usage metrics. What matters is conversion rate along the funnel, average deal size, discount levels, retention rate and contribution margin per segment. Login counts and completed data fields are hygiene factors, not impact.<\/p>\n What is attitude-based segmentation?<\/strong><\/p>\n Segmentation based on customers’ attitudes, decision-making preferences and jobs to be done, rather than on demographic attributes such as revenue, industry or postcode. It explains why customers buy, which makes both engagement and pricing far more accurate.<\/p>\n What does CRM have to do with pricing?<\/strong><\/p>\n In B2B, data on willingness to pay and perceived value is the foundation of every pricing decision. That data is created in customer conversations and belongs in the CRM. When CRM and pricing are separated, discounts get granted on instinct and margin is lost.<\/p>\n How long does a CRM transformation take?<\/strong><\/p>\n The technical rollout takes a few months depending on scope. The organisational transformation, meaning changed ways of working, new data concepts and integration with pricing, is a process spanning twelve to twenty-four months with ongoing corrections.<\/p>\n Which CRM system is the best?<\/strong><\/p>\n That question comes too early. Only once you have clarified which ways of working need to change and what data that requires can you evaluate sensibly. The choice of system is the consequence of the strategy, not its starting point.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Most companies do not fail because of their CRM software. They fail at CRM implementation. Our Sales Excellence Study shows a consistent picture: between 70 and 80 percent of all companies use only around 20 percent of the potential their<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":993783,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_vp_format_video_url":"","_vp_image_focal_point":[],"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[35,57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-993779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crm"],"yoast_head":"\n\n
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