"CRM [Customer Relationship Management] is one of the few apps where target users, sales reps, don't want to use it," says Jim Burleigh, CEO of , a provider of cloud-based analytics. "CRM is about preserving institutional knowledge and ensuring institutional processes." When it comes time to collect, enter and improve data in CRM systems, the sales representatives will ask, "What's in it for me?" In most organizations, the answer is not a whole heck of a lot.

"There is no incentive, no compensation for getting the data right," Scheppele says. "The compensation is for closing the deal."

Getting sales representatives to embrace automation can have unintended consequences, however. The biggest of these is the escalation of the "Big Data" problem.

Consider this: The average sales representative has anywhere from 20 to 50 open sales opportunities at any given time. For a small organization with a sales team of 10, they have to keep track of a manageable 200-500 opportunities. For a large organization with a 100- or even 1,000-member sales team, the opportunities start spiraling out of control. A 1,000-member team with a modest number of opportunities, say 25 each, will generate data on 25,000 leads.