Founder Insights

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Why CRM Notes Had to Die

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Jenna Marks

Jul 7, 2025

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Summary

CRMs weren’t built for how modern reps work — they were built for how managers wanted data reported. This post unpacks why we removed the standard “Notes” field in Hexa, what we replaced it with, and why structuring sales context is the only way forward in a world where AI is part of the team.

Summary

CRMs weren’t built for how modern reps work — they were built for how managers wanted data reported. This post unpacks why we removed the standard “Notes” field in Hexa, what we replaced it with, and why structuring sales context is the only way forward in a world where AI is part of the team.

The problem with CRM notes

If you’ve worked in sales, you’ve done this before:

You get off a 43-minute call. You open the CRM. You dump every thought into the “notes” box. Later, someone asks what the next step was… and you scroll, skim, and curse past 12 paragraphs of unstructured ramble to find it.

The traditional notes field is:

  • A mess of context

  • A risk for forgotten follow-ups

  • A black hole for managers trying to get visibility

So we killed it.

What we replaced it with

Hexa doesn’t have a plain “notes” box.

Instead, every call summary is:

  • Auto-structured

  • Tagged with speaker attribution

  • Annotated with AI labels: Objection, Next Step, Urgent, etc.

  • Pushed directly into the deal timeline and contact activity view

You can still edit, add manual context, and drop insights — but the input is structured. Because structure is what makes the system smart.

Why it matters for AI (and teams)

AI can't reason with 3,000 characters of text blob. But it can reason with:

  • What was said

  • Who said it

  • What kind of signal it was

  • Where that deal is now

Structured data doesn’t just power summaries — it powers smart nudges, follow-up drafting, forecasting, and handoffs between reps.

How reps reacted

Some loved it. Others said, “What if I just want to jot something down?” We get it. So we made Hexa flexible:

  • You can add custom bullet points

  • You can type reactions or context

  • But it’s still parsed, tagged, and attached in a way that AI — and other teammates — can use

Final Thought

We didn’t remove notes to make life harder. We removed them because unstructured input slows everyone down. Sales is already chaotic — your tools shouldn’t be.

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