Crucial, correct, and consistent: that’s how your CRM data should be.
Those are “the three C’s” of CRM data optimization. However, not all companies have those characteristics. According to an IBM report, one in three business leaders mistrust their data quality, while companies from the United States lose about $3.1 trillion in annual revenue because of bad data.
To save your business from falling into a bad data rabbit hole, check out these tips on how to make sure that your data is crucial, correct, and consistent:
Make it Crucial
Each and every field must have a reason for existing for data collection. Having too many fields that are not justified can cause to capture more data than needed. In order to identify the actionable data that your business really needs, you must work with your organization’s departments and stakeholders. Once you do that, express your reasoning to all the CRM users so they can understand what data is needed and its importance. A great way of communicating this is adding information bubbles to each field with a short explanation.
Make it Correct
Unfortunately, data expires quickly. A report from Dun & Bradstreet from 2018 revealed that every hour 13 companies would change their names, 211 businesses would move, 429 business phone numbers would change or be disconnected, and 284 company CEOs or owners would change.
Since people won’t tell you to update your data, you must do it and verify it yourself. You can identify records that can’t be contacted and flag open opportunities they’re associated with to understand why an opportunity is open over its close date. By doing this, you’ll be able to locate at-risk opportunities before their close dates arrives to pass without any sale.
You might also want to consider streamlining your CRM’s user interface if it’s complicated. This will allow you to increase productivity and the chances that your data will be accurate, complete, and entered on time. Also, it helps when CRM users comprehend the consequences of having data that’s inaccurate and incomplete. For example, a missing job title or job level might result in a quality lead getting overlooked or not properly scored.
Make it Consistent
The Gartner State of Sales Analytics report from December 2020 revealed that only 25% of businesses had a standard and organization-wide definition for sales metrics, which is a core aspect to any businesses. It’s essential to create standardized definitions, as well as making sure that everyone uses them. With that in mind, your data must be stylized in a reportable and functional way. This includes eliminating duplicates (a constant in any CRM) and making sure that your CRM is usable for all stakeholders. Ask yourself: Can executives analyze data easily? Is the sales team able to easily manage its pipeline and generate forecasts? Also, is customer support able to access everything they need to manage cases in an efficient manner? If your answers are no, then you might have to improve your data to be more actionable and accessible.
Making it Crucial, Correct, and Consistent is an Ongoing Process
CRM data optimization isn’t a one-time only activity. It is an ongoing and strategic process of maintaining and monitoring your data. To ensure that better-quality data will enter the system, you must educate your CRM users and make easier their data entry process. Once you focus on the three C’s to have the right and consistent data, your CRM users will feel confident when using the correct data and they will be able to do their jobs seamlessly and with positive results.
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