I can clean your CRM data - BUYER BEWARE

 I haven't written about the trials and tribulations of our CRM software for quite a while. For those of you that may not know, I was part owner of a software company that developed a nationally sold CRM package for a large software developer. I travelled the country training and teaching best practices of CRM.

Over the years we have had great salespeople and we have had people that should never talk to a living person.  Of course, we have had everything in between also.  Sales reps, calls & CRM are three passions of mine.  Each time we make a hire, we learn something new.  Some good things to look for and some bad things to look for as well   I do have to say, sometimes I am not very good at seeing and recognizing those little red flags. I have written about that before. 

Here are some little red flags that I suggest you keep your eye open for...

1. I make 75 calls a day.  Let's break that down a bit.  It sounds great on paper, but in reality, 75 dials does not mean 75 good quality phone calls. If you are doing your job well, you should spend at least 3-5 minutes per cold call and that is if you are a keyboard wizard. 
1. Look at the CRM call & email history (you don't want to sound stupid when talking to a prospect)
2. Check LinkedIn to see if the person still works there or has maybe changed jobs
3. If you even spend just 5 minutes per call?  That is a straight 6.25 hours of calling with NO breaks. 
2. Be aware of people that immediately want to "clean" your CRM data.
1. Make sure they live in that data and understand your process before any major changes.
2. Be sure they run any data structure changes by a CRM manager before just implementing

That being said, I am pretty passionate about making the effort to keep CRM data relevant and accurate. There is nothing worse, than picking up the phone to call someone and the information is not accurate or is missing data. Contact names, phone numbers, websites etc.

We hired a business development rep a while back that bragged on his ability to "clean CRM data". Please do yourself a favor and make sure you vet anyone very carefully that says that they can provide you with this service.

We are moving to a new CRM platform, and I didn't want to do a data conversion. I know there is so much junk/garbage in our database that I have been building new lists and managing that process myself. I know it is extra work, but at least then I know that the leads I am loading are legitimate and that they actually have need for our products/services.

For anyone that is a CRM database manager, you might be the only people that will truly feel my pain. 

Here are some of the things we discovered after he left our employ. We actually paid this man to do this!  Shame on us, right?

He went through EVERY record that was assigned to him and added a period behind the state abbreviation by hand! Yup, every single record. When I mentioned it to him, he said that it was required in order to do bulk mailings. 1. We don't do bulk mailings. 2. The USPS has not used periods after state initials since 1963.  Read more here (only if you are a CRM geek like me) State Abbreviations - Who we are - About.usps.com

Not only the state abbreviations, but he would change the world Lane to Ln.  or Road to Rd. Street to St. You get the idea. Imagine the amount of time it took to make all of those changes.

The website field in our CRM is a hyperlink. It is just habit for me to start an email address with www.  When we imported our data the first time, that is exactly how it set up the website format. It worked just fine as a hyperlink. He changed EVERY record removing the www. What an absolute waste of time and energy.

But that is not the worst of it. He consistently told me our CRM data was a mess and that he needed to spend a lot of time cleaning it up. Of course, that meant he had to spend his time doing that, not doing his job which was business development. Hindsight of course, was that it was likely a coverup for him not feeling comfortable doing his job. Oh, the irony. He complained constantly about the "mess of our data", but he is the one that messed it up!

The absolute worst was when he would completely change a prospect to a completely unrelated company and the original information about the prospect, we had been in communication with was just COMPLETELY GONE.  Most of those I just couldn't even figure out. It was such a puzzle we often gave up and just deleted the record.

So many times, I would find a mismatch between the contact's name, the company name and the website.  For example, contact name Sue worked for XYZ Company, the website was ABC company, and the company name was 123.  Sue never did work for ABC or 123 company. You may think I am exaggerating, but I absolutely am not. I spent so much time unravelling the mess of contact records you would not even believe it. We had an intern that helped unravel all of his accounts to get the data corrected. Luckily, most of my notes were complete enough that I could work my way backwards to figure out who I had been communicating with. But, seriously, WHAT A COMPLETE WASTE OF TIME.

Why am I sharing this now? As I am moving data over to the new CRM, I am still running across messed up data thanks to this rep.  We had documented procedures, I had field by field instructions about what should go where and how to best use our CRM.  He ignored it all. I guess he thought he knew better. The mismatched mess I ran into yesterday?  The person in the database never worked for the company/phone combo listed. The company/phone combo has never exhibited at trade shows and therefore were not even a prospect. I just deleted it all and started fresh with the prospect that I knew was an actual prospect. 

Be aware, of what is going on in your CRM database. It can be your best friend or your worst enemy. CRM is supposed to make your life easier.  My other advice is to not allow any "cleaning" of CRM data until they have used the software for at least 6+ months and have proven they can use it the way your procedures intend. 

Of course, a good rep may have fabulous suggestions on how to improve things. Just make sure they run them by someone that knows before implementing and wasting a lot of time and money.