5 Ways Your CRM Is Quietly Costing You Money
(And what to do about it without another “CRM project”)
Alex Rankin
1/30/20263 min read
Most consulting firms already have a CRM.
It might be Salesforce, HubSpot, or something that was set up years ago and has been “tweaked” ever since. On paper, it should be helping you win and manage work. In practice, it often sits there. It might get used just enough to justify its existence. But it's rarely trusted and almost never loved.
The problem usually isn’t the software. It’s how the system fits. Or more accurately, how it doesn’t.
Here are five ways CRMs quietly drain time, margin, and momentum inside consulting businesses.
1. It Holds Information, But It Doesn’t Help Anyone Decide
In theory, your CRM should tell you what matters right now. But the reality is more often that it is an expensive way to store things.
The things it was designed and built to tell you - like, who to follow up, which opportunities are cooling off, where deals are stuck - those answers tend to live in someone’s head or inbox instead.
So a business relies on memory. Or the same two or three people who “just know” what’s going on.
That works. Until they’re busy. Or away. Or gone.
At that point, opportunities stall and no one is quite sure why.
2. People Don’t Trust the Data, So They Stop Using the System
This is a slow death spiral most firms recognise.
The CRM isn’t fully up to date. Notes are patchy. Pipelines feel optimistic. So people stop relying on it. And because they stop relying on it, it gets worse.
Leaders sense this and stop making decisions off CRM reports because they know the numbers don’t reflect reality.
At that point, the system exists mainly to tick a box.
3. Senior People Are Doing Far Too Much CRM Work
Things get really messy and expensive when partners and leads are still writing follow-up emails, logging notes late at night or re-explaining the same services to similar prospects and chasing leads that should already be warm.
Not because they want to, but because the system doesn’t carry context forward properly.
Every hour of senior time spent doing this is an hour not spent on judgement, relationships, or high-value work.
4. Your CRM has no Memory of the Work You Actually Do
In consulting firms, the important context lives almost always lives outside the CRM.
Proposals, advice, regulatory interpretations, client emails, past decisions and the reasoning behind them.
If your CRM can’t “see” any of that, it never reflects how work really happens. New team members struggle to get up to speed. Knowledge stays locked with individuals. Risk increases over time and the business becomes more fragile than it needs to be.
5. Most CRMs Weren’t Designed for Consulting Reality
CRMs assume clean funnels, straight lines and clear hand-offs. But we all know that consulting work rarely behaves that way.
Relationships evolve and conversations loop back. Work starts informally before it’s contracted. Delivery and business development blur together.
When the system doesn’t match reality, people work around it. And once that happens, the CRM becomes something you maintain. Not something that helps you.
This is Where AI and Automation Actually Help
Not with another platform and definitely not with a six-month CRM overhaul.
The fastest gains usually come from adding intelligence around what you already have.
This could look like AI that:
Surfaces who needs attention now
Captures context automatically from emails and meetings
Drafts follow-ups and summaries so senior people don’t have to
Connects past work, proposals, and advice to current opportunities.
These might sound like small changes. But they can deliver big returns and leverage.
A Practical Place to Start
When we work with businesses on this issue, we usually begin with a short diagnostic. No disruption to their current systems and no plans for a rebuild.
The goal is simple:
Identify where your CRM is creating the most pain
Pinpoint which tasks can be automated quickly
Free up senior time without changing how your team works day-to-day
Most firms see value within weeks, not months.
If your CRM feels busy, but not helpful. Or if it's something that sits on the shelf and taunts you with its lack of productivity, that's the clue. But 9/10 times, you don't need new tools. You just need the ones you already have to work harder for you.
If you want to test whether AI-enabled automation could take real pressure out of your operations, start with one quick win. Then decide what’s worth scaling.
Contact us for an obligation free chat. No sales pitch. No pressure. Just an honest conversation about your situation.
If there's a fit, we'll scope the work properly and provide transparent pricing.
If there's not, we'll tell you that too—and often can point you toward resources or approaches that might help.