This is exactly how I felt about Salesforce:
"Feeding the Monster": Like many knowledge management initiatives, CRM requires end-users to take actions that are not part of their natural work process in order to "update" the system. After all, CRM output is only as good as the input -- "garbage in, garbage out." Most end-users in small businesses, whether a partner in a law firm or an account manager at a consulting shop, interact with customers in their email system (usually Outlook). The act of opening the browser, putting in your password, navigating to the proper account, and filling in a form, fundamentally wastes that user’s time. The only way to motivate most users to "feed the monster" is by forcing them to update the system prior to the weekly meeting. Many sales organizations make updating the CRM system a requirement for getting paid. In fact, we added a paragraph in Groove Networks' sales compensation plan requiring the updating of our customer systems (feeding the monster) as a requirement for getting paid. […CRM needs to learn a lesson from Del.icio.us and the rest of the web2.0 crowd where the application provides real value to the user and incidental value to the network/community.]
Brian hits it right on the head... so much so that I just signed up for the Beta for Hubspot.
Tags: small business, crm, salesforce