Sales data is the necessary fuel for development outreach. If you’re starting with inconsistent, out of date, or just plain wrong data, you can bet you won’t be making any progress. Whether you’re converting leads or cultivating your customer base, data is the driving factor. Are you showing your sales data the care it deserves?
Why Data Matters
Businesses with superior data management see lead generation jump 152% beyond the average. That’s an in-your-face stat you can’t ignore. On the flip side, CRM data decays at an average of 30% per year. With such a consistent annual decay rate, you need to stay on top of your data cleanliness to stay successful.
Bad or dirty data translates to inaccurate analysis and loss of critical business insights. You miss out on better lead qualification, stronger campaigns, and a better customer experience. That’s money left on the table and time wasted.
It’s time to take a good, hard look at your data and processes.
1. Put a team in charge
From C suite to database tech, you need a team of people focused on managing your data and your data processes. Gather team members from different departments involved at each step in your data collection process. The best way to keep your database up-to-date is to have a team watching it.
2. Audit your database
Here is where a specialized outsourced sales partner can help. Audits, while essential, can be extremely time-consuming and challenging for first-timers. Get an outside service to remove duplicates, eliminate junk data, and merge records. Outsourced sales partners can also help append data using industry tools to find missing contact information and update titles and industries.
3. Audit your data collection
Once you have a clean database, the best way to keep it is to ensure you’re collecting data correctly. Look at the various forms you have, both internal and external, and evaluate what data you’re collecting and how. Keep data collection forms as simple as possible to guarantee you’re getting all the information you need. Leverage progressive profiling through marketing automation to prompt return users to validate or fill in missing information using these forms as wells.
4. Standardize data entry
Part of ensuring quality data is using the same format across records. Use your data team to come up with how information should be entered (i.e., 123-456-7890 vs. (123) 456-7890 for phone numbers). Distribute this information to everyone who touches data and integrate it into your data training. Use these formats when creating forms, too. Opt for a drop-down menu whenever possible to avoid typos or bad formatting.
5. Connect your data
Avoid siloed data. Ensure customer service is talking to sales, sales is talking to marketing, and all three are connected to each other. All people and systems that gather data should stay connected to keep your databases accurate and up-to-date.
6. Establish a data clean-up routine
Your data team should determine how and how often to audit and clean your data. After your first overhaul these clean-ups should take less time and can even be automated with the right tools.
7. Invest in ways to use your data
While clean data is important, it does nothing alone. Analysis is what makes data such a powerful force. Invest in ways to manage and interpret your data, like the NuGrowth Accelerator app for Salesforce®. With Accelerator, businesses can get drilled-down segmentation by customizable KPIs, access developed go-to-market strategies, call cadences, and list progressions all within your current Salesforce system. Find out more about NuGrowth Accelerator and how it can unlock your development potential here.
Sarah Deak is a veteran copywriter and content strategist with NuGrowth Solutions. She likes to look for the unexpected angle and uses her background in education, business development, and marketing to create interesting and informative pieces to equip readers with actionable data