I received a lot of feedback on my post encouraging you not to buy lead management software. That may sound a bit peculiar from a guy that earns his living selling lead management software. However, as I said, numbers don’t lie.

Chris Johnson, one of my favorite freelancers and sales cold callers, and I got into a chat about this. He’s doing his own Flat Rate Web Jobs start-up (clever concept) and trying to make it grow. He made this comment, “the hardest time for a bootstrapper I think is when they are making a living and going from 1-5 employees.”

This comment got me thinking deeper about our own client’s growth numbers.

Kaleidico, after several years of serving hundreds of sales organizations and managing millions of leads, has experienced many interesting trends. However, the one I’m going to talk about today pertains to my post on who shouldn’t buy lead management software.

That statement was based on the general premise that…

Sales Organizations Rarely Grow.

Do you buy it? It’s true. I know I am blowing the lid off a dirty little CRM secret, but its true. Despite how awesome ours or any other CRM system is–it probably will not make you grow.

Why?

I would say the big picture answer is that we often confine ourselves within a limiting belief system. Now, I’m the last to get New Age or Think and Grow Rich on you, but there is a psychological barrier that works on all of us. Faith is really hard.

Problem #1 – Faith we can go beyond our current condition.

We also build frameworks that trap us. These are the processes and procedures that create consistency in an organization. Chances are you are rarely willing to try a new process. This is where I think Anthony Iannarino hit square on with his post: Sales Process Problems. These frameworks create predictability, but they kill break-out growth.

Problem #2 – Rigid Process that limits our freedom to try something new.

We also often lack the knowledge or the experience to see bigger opportunities. Sure we can read lots of business how-to books, but until you have tried to trek up the mountain you have no idea the steps between a little start-up and GE.

Problem #3 – Knowledge, simply not knowing what we don’t know.

Finally, and probably the root of one, two, and three is fear. So many of our businesses, especially in weak economic conditions, feel like they are teetering on disaster. We are afraid of stretching out, for fear of what we might lose.

Problem #4 – Fear of trying something new, even if it might Zoom us.

The real point is don’t buy software (especially CRM software) and expect it to grow you. Buy software to support your growth, to give you flexibility to be creative, and help you learn what you might not know.

What do you think? Do sales organizations grow or just churn? Do you have an example of one that saw break-out growth? What happened?