Solving the four common data problems in your CRM

Good data is the gold standard in today’s market. It’s your silver bullet, and the quality of the data that exists in your CRM directly impacts your sales team’s ability to nurture leads and grow your business. Yes, it’s that important. Yet many companies are still trying to make do with poor data while relying on their inherent marketing and sales strategies to carry the day.

Unfortunately, even the most brilliant strategies will eventually hit a wall because that dynamic account-based marketing strategy or new sales initiative still relies on complete and enriched data. And if the quality of this data is poor, the strategy is doomed. Resolving these data issues early may be difficult but it is entirely necessary because it offsets the long-term costs of postponing it.

Why you need to eliminate poor data now

Poor data comes from many places but absorbing the costs of clearing it immediately is always better than allowing it to jeopardize future revenue. In some cases it exists because a company doesn’t know that it’s bad — or they fail to understand the size of the problem. In others the company may realize they have poor data but they don’t know how to clean up their CRM or prevent incidents of poor data in the future.

Poor data existing inside the CRM can be classified as such if it meets one or more of the following criteria: incomplete, duplicate, incorrect or simply missing. To solve for these common data issues, let’s take a look at how to correct each of these problems and bring that data back to the gold standard we should expect it to be.

Isolating incomplete data

If incomplete data is a problem in your CRM, your sales reps, imports from other teams, and your policies (or lack of) are likely to blame. Allowing sales reps to fill in data as they see fit allows them to escape doing the bare minimum and providing minimal long-term impact for the company. In some cases this could be an issue of time or laziness; in others the salesperson could genuinely only see certain pieces of data as necessary, while your company benefits from the entire package.

To avoid this issue, leadership must outline strict guidelines directing which data must be included in every entry. This ensures that each item in the CRM provides the maximum impact while supporting the same appearance.

Deleting duplicate data

Ask a rep to enter data on a customer and you could easily end up with several copies of the same information listed in different ways. To solve this, you want to not only clean the existing duplicates, but prevent future ones. Instituting a simple validations or implementing apps can eliminate your risk of duplicate files that say the same thing over and over. And over and over. And over and … you get the picture.

Identifying incorrect data

Incorrect data can come from many sources. Sometimes the data was entered incorrectly to start. In other instances everyone on your team followed policy to the letter but now the data is simply old and out of date. Training end users to spot incorrect/missing data and following a standardized pattern for handling it is an effective solution, but it may not be effective for all companies. If your company is one where this strategy will not work, then it’s best to set aside time at the end of each month or quarter to give your data a thorough review. Even creating a simple field to flag to identify a record that needs a data review can make a huge impact.

Managing the missing data

Unlike the other issues above, the problem of missing data can more often be tied to issues with your team as opposed to your CRM. Your team must understand that they own their CRM and that the CRM will only be what they make of it. Encourage/mandate that they use this resource for all essential information. Be sure everyone understands what is expected to be included in the database and the penalties for missing information — your team and its CRM will be better for it. There are many apps that can connect to your CRM data that can automatically populate missing data and clean poor data.

Need a head start?

Our Path to Success guide is a helpful tool to help you roadmap your needs. Download it here. Need someone to help you? We’ve spent over 55,000 hours helping customers with their CRM. Learn more about how we can help you here.