The Hidden Cost of Bad CRM Decisions: Why Most Midsize Businesses Regret Their Choice

The real cost of choosing the wrong CRM goes far beyond the subscription fee.

Insightly and Ascend2 recently surveyed midmarket teams to understand how they choose and use their CRMs, and where they experience the most friction when their choices miss the mark. The research found that most CRM decisions are clouded by bias. For example, 32 percent of decision makers said they chose their CRM based on reputation rather than direct fit. That means that many teams don’t choose CRMs based on what their team needs to operate efficiently at their current stage of growth. 

Most CRM decisions are also rushed, with 38 percent of decision makers admitting to rushing the process rather than doing a thorough evaluation.

Those are just a few reasons why the CRM failure rate ranges from 18 percent to 69 percent . It starts with rushed, biased decisions—and the consequences and hidden costs of choosing the wrong CRM run deeper than you’d think. 

Hidden Cost No. 1: Stalling Growth by Bogging Down Sales with Complex CRMs

Fast-growing companies often choose a CRM they believe they’ll “grow into.” More often, though, it ends up dragging down sales productivity when speed matters most.

Growth brings hiring, onboarding, and evolving sales processes. If your CRM is clunky or overly complex, you’re faced with a tough decision: Do you want new reps spinning cycles learning a bloated or complicated system—or ramping faster by focusing on how to sell your product?

In high-growth environments, every hour spent wrestling with your CRM is a lost opportunity. 

Leaders don’t realize they’re often their own worst enemy when it comes to sales efficiency. While 97 percent of GTM professionals say their CRM impacts sales efficiency, only one-third say that impact is extremely positive—and one of the most common barriers to satisfaction is poor adoption.

Hidden Cost No. 2: Trying to Force Adoption When Fit Is the Problem

Ease of use is the top priority when choosing a CRM, yet only one-third of teams report full adoption. That gap isn’t just about training. It’s about fit.

A CRM that’s hard to use is a CRM that gets ignored. Once that happens, no amount of retraining or manager check-ins will fix it because the tool isn’t making selling easier. 

This problem often stems from overplanning at the expense of adoption. Many teams choose CRMs packed with features they think they’ll need later—only to end up paying for complexity they don’t use today. In fact, 40 percent of CRM buyers prioritize features over usability, yet two-thirds of sales professionals say they use less than half of what’s available.

Teams adopt tools that fit. Insightly found that 86 percent of teams with full adoption say their CRM is the right size for their team. For teams with low adoption, that drops to 62 percent.

It’s ironic: GTM teams talk constantly about product-market fit. We build, position, and sell around it. But when we buy tools for our own teams, we forget that same logic. If a product creates more problems than it solves or causes ongoing friction in daily use, it’s not the right fit.

Hidden Cost No. 3: Losing Trust in Your Pipeline Data

When a CRM isn’t used consistently or correctly, sales efficiency and data quality suffers. Delayed, inaccurate, or incomplete updates reduce pipeline visibility, hurt sales productivity, and make it harder for the business to scale.

If your CRM doesn’t fit your sales process, is too complex for even your most frequent users, and doesn’t integrate cleanly into the rest of your GTM stack—you don’t just lose visibility, you lose confidence in the system that’s supposed to power your entire revenue engine.

On the flip side, teams that are extremely satisfied with their CRM were more than five times more likely to report that their CRM has an extremely positive impact on sales efficiency; over four times more likely to report significant revenue increases in the past year; and significantly less likely to report CRM challenges, like too many manual tasks or inefficient processes. 

Hidden Cost No. 4: Underestimating the Total Cost of Ownership 

Unsurprisingly, the top CRM complaint was high initial or ongoing costs, a common issue for midmarket teams with enterprise CRMs. Despite this, many firms with 50 to 100 employees still rely on them, with 39 percent using Salesforce and 26 percent using Microsoft Dynamics. 

That’s a red flag. These teams are likely overpaying for systems they struggle to use and may never see real ROI from.

The subscription fee is just the start. When you choose a CRM that isn’t right-sized for your needs or growth stage, you’ll also be spending on these:

• Custom development
• Implementation services
• Endless training cycles
• Full-time staff to manage the platform

Enterprise CRMs are built for large, complex organizations. If you’re a midsize business paying enterprise-level costs just to make the system usable, you're not setting yourself up for scale—you’re retrofitting a product that was never designed for your team.

CRM is often the most expensive tool in a GTM stack. Add in all the effort required to make it work, and that investment quickly turns into inefficient spending, draining resources that should be fueling your growth.

Hidden Cost No. 5: Failing to Operationalize Sales and Marketing Alignment

CRM isn’t just a sales tool anymore. Of the go-to-market teams surveyed, 72 percent report marketing team members as CRM users and 64 percent say the same for their customer success team.

This shift reflects a broader change in how revenue teams operate. Half of sales professionals say aligning sales, marketing, and customer success is the key to driving revenue growth this year. That shift is driven by growing expectations for improved lead quality, faster lead response, and more personalized follow-ups.

Meeting those demands requires tighter collaboration—especially around these objectives:

• Automating lead scoring 
• Optimizing lead flows 
• Reducing manual tasks 

But when your CRM doesn’t bridge the divide, the cracks start to show: misaligned priorities, lost leads, and slowed pipeline velocity. The benefits of improving alignment and visibility are real. The upside of fixing it is clear. Teams with full visibility into the customer journey were more than three times as likely to report significant revenue growth in the past year (47 percent vs. 15 percent).

Is Choosing the “Safe” CRM Really Less Risky? 

Many leaders still believe that “nobody ever got fired for choosing Salesforce.” But is that actually true anymore?

If your CRM slows your sales team down with unnecessary complexity, leaves you guessing about your pipeline and deals, has a total cost of ownership that’s higher than the ROI it delivers, and makes sales and marketing alignment harder, not easier, then the real risk isn’t reputational—it’s operational.

The right CRM isn’t just a tool, it’s a growth multiplier. It fits how your team actually works. It’s easy to adopt. It brings sales and marketing together. And it gives you data you can trust.

Choose a CRM built for your size and stage—not someone else’s. You won’t just avoid regret, you’ll unlock your team’s full potential.

Steve Oriola is the CEO of Unbounce. He is a tenured CEO with more than two decades of experience scaling dynamic B2B SaaS platforms, including Act!, Constant Contact, Pipedrive, and Julius. He recently led Unbounce through the acquisition of Insightly CRM, where the two companies effectively merged. He served as executive in residence at Bessemer Venture Partners, where he participated in partner meetings and evaluated investment opportunities while providing advice and counsel to portfolio companies.