8% is the magic number for CRM

We recently got into a discussion about gamification and CRM.  It’s true that the more information in the CRM system the better the value of the CRM system.  Gamification encourages sales reps to enter more information but there a problem. Sales reps should be selling, not entering data in CRM.  Logically we know sales reps need to spend more than 0% and less than 100% of their time entering data into their CRM system.  But from a value point of view what’s the optimal amount of time?  Rebecca Wettemann did a bit of digging into past ROI case studies and estimated the percentage of time spent by sales reps entering data versus their productivity. The optimal amount of time seems to be 8%.  Now we need to do a lot more investigation on the topic but 8% feels like the right number.  If we go with that premise, the real challenge for the organization promoting CRM is not how to encourage more data, but how to encourage better data without exceeding 8% of the employee’s time.