Over my career, I've witnessed the use of many instances of Salesforce and, with a few exceptions, I would say that manager misuse or under-use of Salesforce is a major stumbling block for successful adoption. Here are the biggest mistakes sales managers make when using Salesforce.

They don't log in.
Some sales managers just don't log in. They continue to insist that salespeople document sales activities and update opportunities, but then require salespeople to fill out external spreadsheets. That sends a clear signal to the sales team of the lack of importance of this work and sales people will do the bare minimum or nothing at all. It will be seen as busywork.

They don't use Salesforce for meetings.
Successful sales managers realize that they can easily create a report in Salesforce that shows the status of all opportunities by sales rep. If sales people keep opportunities updated regularly, this report can be the basis of group pipeline or forecasting calls. This can keep meetings less focused on asking questions related to opportunities that are in the report and more focused on what you can do to move these opportunities through the funnel.

They use Salesforce only as a big brother and not for coaching.
Salespeople can be wary of giving up too much information via Salesforce—like what they are doing on a daily basis and who their primary contacts are. In many cases, they worry giving up this information will make them less valuable of an employee so they hold these cards close to their chest. A sales manager needs to help salespeople understand the value (to the company AND to the salesperson) of using Salesforce to collaborate and communicate with the team to close bigger opportunities faster. Demonstrate this collaboration using Chatter on opportunities and model how communicating with opportunity teams in Salesforce can be a competitive advantage.

Salesforce is a powerful tool, but it's only as useful as you allow it to be. To achieve more success, sales managers must overcome their own barriers and inhibitions regarding the platform and use it to properly manage opportunities and collaboration across their sales teams. We offer extensive training and support to companies who want to get more out of their Salesforce instance—get in touch with our experts.