Is it time up on the way your GTM team are using CRM?

Maybe. Because the way we use software is changing faster than most GTM teams have noticed.

AI has moved from something you click buttons on an interface to something that you chat to, remembers things and does the work for you while you do something else.

And agentic tools are getting more capable every month, leading us towards a no or low UI world, and we’re getting there quickly.

So here’s a question.

When did you last open your CRM because you wanted to, rather than because you had to?

For most people, never. The CRM is where good intentions go to get logged.

You click through five screens to find out who needs a follow-up. You build a filtered view you’ll never find again. You type up notes from a call you’ve already half forgotten.

Now take the screens away.

You ask a question and get the answer in seconds. You tell it what happened on a call and the record updates itself. The gap between spotting something and acting on it shrinks to almost nothing.

The first gain is speed of use. There’s no hunting through menus or rebuilding the same report every month, and nobody is wrestling with filters. You ask, and you get what you asked for.

Speed of impact follows. The follow-up goes out today rather than whenever you get round to it, and the cooling prospect gets a nudge while there’s still something to save.

Your data gets better too. When updating the CRM costs you nothing, it gets updated. The information you’re making decisions on is current, complete and actually right, maybe for the first time.

Then output and action go up. Every hour you’re not fighting software is an hour back to conversations, which means more follow-ups, more re-engagement, and stronger relationships moving forward. Same team, same week, a lot more getting done.

This is one of the next big steps for your go-to-market engine. Get it right, and you stay competitive. Get it right early, and you can pull clear of the competition.

Because your CRM is about to become a database.

The people already treating it that way are moving faster than you.

The interface was always the weak link

Some CRMs have earned their interface.

HighLevel gives you social media scheduling, newsletter tools that do a very good Mailchimp impression, and automations you can design by dragging boxes around a screen. For that kind of in-depth functionality, a screen makes sense.

Most of what a GTM team does in a CRM isn’t that, though. It’s the daily grind of finding a contact, logging a call and checking who’s gone quiet. All of it goes through a screen built for the average user, which in practice means a screen built for nobody in particular.

The valuable bit was always the data. The interface was the toll you paid to get to it.

What changes when you can talk to it

Put an agentic layer between you and your CRM, and the toll disappears.

You stop navigating and start having a conversation with your data.

That matters more than it sounds. You can get information back the moment you need it and do tasks by asking rather than clicking. Profiling gets much more interesting, too.

Most of us never built the views our go-to-market needed, because setting up the parameters and filters was too much hassle. Now you describe the slice of data you want in plain English, look at it, change the parameters and ask again.

There’s one job I keep for myself, though. Yes, the agent can draft messages on your behalf, and you know where I stand on that. Anything a prospect sees has to feel human. Nothing goes out that a person hasn’t checked for accuracy and tone. The agent does the spotting, sorting, and remembering, and the relationship stays in human hands.

That’s the theory. Here’s what it looks like on my own setup.

What I’m actually running on HighLevel

I’ve put an agentic layer across HighLevel. I didn’t wait for HighLevel to build it for me, and you don’t need to wait for your platform either.

Finding the follow-ups that slipped

The first use case is the simplest and probably the most valuable. I ask the agent to report on follow-ups that should have happened over a set period and didn’t.

In the old world that meant building a report, picking date ranges, filtering by stage and hoping the activity data was clean.

Now it’s one question, something like “who have I spoken to in the last six weeks that hasn’t had a follow-up?” I get a list back that I can act on straight away.

For anyone who’s read my thinking on Shake the Tree, this is where the money is. The pipeline you already have is worth more than the cold list you haven’t touched yet. The hard part was always seeing it clearly, and that’s the bit the agent fixes.

Reminders I don’t have to remember to set

The second use case is reminders. I’ve built use cases where the agent sets them from context rather than me opening a task screen and filling in a form. If a conversation ends with “speak in a couple of weeks”, it gets captured.

It sounds small, but every reminder you forget to set is a relationship that cools off without anyone deciding it should.

Updating the CRM without typing

Third, I put data back into the CRM without typing it. I tell the agent what happened, and it updates the record, adds notes, and moves things where they need to go.

This is the one that changes behaviour. Most CRMs are full of gaps because updating them is a chore, so it gets done later, and later becomes never. Take the chore away, and the data gets better on its own.

An agent that watches the inbox and the diary

This is my favourite bit. The agent can monitor emails and meetings and start asking the questions proactively. Is this person a prospect? Where should they sit in the CRM? What should happen next?

Think about how many conversations start in an inbox and never make it into a pipeline, because nobody stopped to ask those questions at the time. The agent asks them every time.

Thinking and remembering less

Put those together, and you get the operational shift. I have to hold far less in my head. The agent picks up a lot of the thinking that used to sit with me, like who’s due a nudge and which conversation has gone quiet.

That frees me up for the part of selling that needs a human: the conversation itself.

Pushing it further

Once the CRM is just the database and the agent sits between you and it, you can start building more strands into your go-to-market engine.

ABM that reacts to the market

Take account-based marketing. You choose the accounts that matter and have the agent monitor them for activity, triggers and signals from the market. When something moves, you know about it, and you can change how you interact with, follow up with and nurture that account off the back of it.

Most ABM programmes run on a fixed cadence regardless of what’s happening at the account. This one flexes with what’s actually going on.

Your content library, working the room

You can also connect the agent to your content library and have it make proactive recommendations. It can suggest which article fits the challenge a prospect raised on a call, or which case study makes sense for an account that’s just started showing signs of life.

Your best GTM content stops sitting in a folder and starts showing up in the conversations it was written for.

Is your go-to-market keeping up?

Nobody really cares about the CRM platforms themselves.

Most of them are building their own agentic tools, and HighLevel has been nearer the front than most. They’ll get there.

The question that matters is what your competitors are doing with their go-to-market in the meantime.

A GTM team that’s already working this way finds the slipped follow-up the same day. It catches the inbox enquiry before it goes cold and reacts to a signal at a target account while you’re still building the report. Repeat that every day for six months and the gap between you stops being about effort. It becomes about capacity, and they have more of it.

Whether you’re on something basic like Pipedrive, something pricier like HubSpot or something broader like HighLevel, you can put a simple agentic layer on top of what you already pay for. Waiting for your platform to catch up means waiting while someone else pulls ahead.

Let’s wrap this up

So what’s stopping you?

A year ago, this needed developers, budget and patience. Now it’s hyper accessible. Training an agent to work the way you work gets easier every month. MCP connectors mean plugging an agent into your CRM, your inbox, and your calendar is becoming a setup job rather than a build project.

That’s exactly why your competitors are already doing it. If they’re running this and you’re not, they’re operating at a volume of follow-ups, actions and conversations you can’t match by working harder. You won’t out-hustle an engine.

This is one of the next big steps in building your go-to-market engine. Get it in place, and you can compete. Get it in place before the people you’re up against, and you can outstrip them.

Pick one use case this week. Get the agent talking to your CRM. Build from there, and keep the human bit human.

The CRM isn’t dead, but the way you’ve been using it is.