Your reps are not using the CRM

The short answerReps avoid a CRM when logging something costs more than it returns. That is a design outcome, not a character flaw. Either the data entry is heavy, the data already there is wrong, the reports built on it never come back to help them, or the real process happens somewhere else entirely.

Entry costs more than it returns

Count the required fields on an opportunity. If closing one takes fourteen fields, eleven of which feed a report the rep never sees, they will fill in the three that gate the commission and leave the rest.

Every required field needs a named consumer. If nobody can say which decision it feeds, it should not be required.

The data already there is wrong

Nobody carefully maintains a system they do not trust. Duplicate accounts, stale contacts and a pipeline report that disagrees with the forecast call all teach the same lesson: this is not where the truth lives.

Nothing comes back

The best CRM adoption lever is giving the rep something they cannot get elsewhere. An account that just showed intent. A contact who opened the proposal twice. A deal going quiet. If the system only takes and never gives, avoidance is correct.

The real process lives in a spreadsheet

Find the spreadsheet. There is always a spreadsheet. What is in it tells you exactly what the CRM fails to do, and it is the cheapest requirements document you will ever get.

Before you buy training

Required fields per opportunity, and who consumes each one
Duplicate rate on accounts and contacts
Percentage of closed deals with a populated next step at the time they closed
Whether anything useful is delivered back to reps daily

Questions

How do you improve CRM adoption?

Reduce what it costs to use and increase what it returns. Cut required fields with no consumer, fix the data quality that makes it untrustworthy, and deliver something useful back into the rep workflow every day.

Should we mandate CRM usage?

Mandates produce compliance data, which looks like adoption and is not. If the underlying economics have not changed, the quality of what gets logged stays poor.

Why do reps keep a separate spreadsheet?

Because it does something the CRM does not. Reading it is the fastest way to find out what is missing.

Is low adoption a training problem?

Occasionally. Far more often it is a design problem, and training a system that is hard to use produces a temporary bump followed by the same behaviour.