The number one complaint I’ve heard from prospective clients this quarter:
“Our CRM isn’t working.”
What exactly does that mean? Here are a few quotes from real conversations with leaders from companies who mostly self-implemented their CRM:
- “We don’t trust any of the data. I’d never want to rely on it for segmenting.”
- “It seems like it’s conflicting with our actual process - the pipeline stages and how things are logged don’t make sense.”
- “We don’t use any reporting, tools, or automation. We manually put info from HubSpot into a separate Google Sheet to track deals.”
- “Everything is manual now because the workflows were set up so poorly.”
Those came from four different companies. And I could share variations from many others.
If you can relate to any of these, please know you don’t need to suffer.
These are foundational issues that can be solved. But somehow, many companies still aren’t getting the value they expected from their CRM.
Here's what I've noticed: most companies approach their CRM implementation like a one time event. They buy it, implement it, and expect it to "just work."
But growth systems aren’t that simple.
It reminds me of something that Hannah Ajikawo shared on a recent RevOps Champions episode:
"Start by helping people buy. The original meaning of 'sell' comes from 'to give.' We lost that when we focused on throwing things at buyers and hoping the timing is right."
She’s right. There’s so much complexity creeping into every part of business. And complexity blocks growth. It creates confusion, slows decisions, and overwhelms teams.
As leaders, our job is to simplify and clarify what really matters.
At Denamico, we’ve been working on how to make it easier for companies to get the outcomes they expected when they invested in a CRM.
After years of working with companies facing these challenges, we asked ourselves:
- Who are our clients that see the most growth and sustained success?
- What are they doing differently?
The pattern was clear.
The companies that achieve the highest user adoption and continuous growth treat their CRM like a practice - like yoga or training for marathons. They keep showing up and making small, consistent improvements over time.
It’s not about a high-intensity, two-month project that distracts people from their “real job.”
It’s about steady, focused progress that compounds over months and years.
When that happens, the CRM evolves into the growth engine it was meant to be; the single source of truth for customers, campaigns, and revenue insights. It becomes indispensable to the business.
Reintroducing Our Performance Partnership
Once we recognized that pattern, we looked closely at how we work with those successful clients.
We analyzed insights, evaluated what creates the most momentum, and reimagined how we deliver that experience.
We’ve reintroduced what was previously our managed services as a new model called the Performance Partnership.
It’s designed to help companies turn HubSpot into a system that evolves with them; continuously aligning people, processes, and the platform to drive measurable growth.
Instead of focusing on maintenance, this model centers on progress; building maturity, month by month, toward predictable revenue.
Here’s how it works in practice: Each quarter, we identify high-impact focus areas - these could include cleaning critical data fields that affect your reporting, automating a workflow that's eating up your team's time, or training your team on features they're not using that would make their jobs easier.
Through years of client work, we’ve learned that sustainable momentum comes from strength in four key areas: Adoption, Data Quality, Automation, and Alignment.
We measure these through something we call Momentum Metrics™, a simple way to visualize how much closer your business is getting to predictable revenue.
At the end of the day, helping people buy isn’t about persuasion. It’s about removing friction and making simple progress.
That’s what the Performance Partnership is built around a structured, year-long rhythm of focus, improvement, and visibility that helps teams sustain momentum without the overwhelm.
As Hannah Ajikawo shared, here’s what matters most: "The original meaning of 'sell' comes from 'to give.'"
That's the foundation of how we work. We're here to help give you the outcomes you expected when you invested in your CRM.
If you’re curious how it works, or want to see what your Momentum Metrics might look like, explore the Performance Partnership here.
The goal isn’t more complexity.
It’s clarity, consistency, and progress that compounds.
Cheers to growing better. Together.
Kristin
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Kristin Dennewill
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