4 Signs Your CRM Data Isn’t as Good as You Think It Is

One complaint we hear a lot from salespeople is that their CRM data hasn’t been updated in years. More often than not, this is happening because no one within the organization is accountable for cleaning up and maintaining CRM data. So, the data can just sit there for years and not be an accurate representation of who the target buyers/roles are, their contact details as well as their buying needs and preferences.

Imagine if you’re a salesperson and your team is focused on an ABM strategy to close high-value deals with enterprise businesses. But the data in your CRM platform hasn’t been updated for a few years. That will directly affect you and your team’s ability to hit the targets that have been set for your team. And what happens when you miss sales targets? It reflects poorly on your individual performance and puts you in danger of being put on a ‘warning list’ – or worse yet, of being fired. 

Historically, de-duplicating CRM records was a manual process that took a lot of time, which you likely don’t have to spare. Plus, it’s pretty common for several teams (i.e. sales, marketing, data/analytics) to be involved in updating CRM data. So, you often end up with a jumble of information that’s contradicting each other, which can lead to confusion among your sales team.

Here are some factors that can lead to duplicate records in your CRM:

• Human error due to various people handling data entry manually
• Data importing tools fail to identify duplicate records
• Integrations with outside sources could mean that other applications don’t sync up with the CRM data before inserting additions to existing records

Whatever the reason may be, duplicate records aren’t something you want to have happen. The first step to remedying this is to do a full audit of your financial health. Think of it in the same way you would audit your personal credit report so that you’re approved for credit cards (with higher credit limits), loans and mortgages. Look at your business credit score, what’s your credit risk score, how low or high is your credit limit, whether you’ve extended too much credit in comparison to your revenue and other factors. All these factors should be taken into consideration when deciding whether it’s smart to sign a contract with a new customer.

Your prospects’ financial health is just as important to monitor. Don’t let it fall between the cracks.

Imagine you’re trying to win a sales deal with a multinational corporation in the transportation industry. And until now, you’ve been speaking with a mid-level manager who is responsible for vetting businesses like yours. But that person doesn’t hold the final buying and decision power – that’s reserved for someone higher up on the executive team who sits on the buying committee.

So, you’ve done 75% of the sales work and built up a rapport with that mid-level manager. That’s exactly what you should be doing.

But after you’ve reached the end of the road of where you and the mid-level manager can go, it’s time to work your magic on the senior level executive who sits on the internal buying committee. Sounds great, right? Not necessarily.

What if your CRM platform doesn’t have this critical information? Then you’re going to have a serious problem. If you don’t believe me, then just look at the stats. Research from Validity found that 95% of the respondents said that data quality issues seriously hurt their ability to fully leverage their CRM system. That sounds about right to me. 

What does a company’s financial health have to do with you being able to close a sales deal with them? A lot. Before you scoff at this supposition, let me explain.

No one, and certainly not me, is denying how important it is to be able to close sales deals and generate revenue for your business. Your company can’t scale and be profitable without sales. And you earn commissions based on how well you sell. So yes, sales are vital to the growth of businesses.

But that’s just one side of the sales story. Your business growth will be stalled and even cut short if you bring on multiple customers who have a poor business credit score and a history of making late payments. That’s why finance and credit control teams exist – they do the financial vetting and confirm what level of risk is acceptable to take with a new customer and what level of risk could end up sinking the business for good. As much as you might not want that, it’s needed to keep your company running smoothly and keeping the cash flow healthy. Remember, without a healthy cash flow, your company will struggle to pay its bills on time and pay employees wages.

You’re probably thinking – ‘Finance guys have no clue about how sales works and what I have to go through to close a deal.’ You might be right there. But in the same token, you probably aren’t fully aware of what the finance/credit control team does and how their entire job is to look out for the wellbeing of the company.

As part of that responsibility, the finance/credit control team is going to pull credit reports on potential customers to see what their business credit score is, how low or high their credit limit is, how many changes have been made on their credit report in the last year, how well they pay their own suppliers (i.e on time vs. late) and how many public derogatory marks they might have (i.e. collections, liens, bankruptcies, etc.). So, if your finance/credit control team sees that a potential customer has a high credit risk score (a letter grade of C or worse) and has a very low credit score, they’re likely to reject that sales deal.

Now, I know how frustrating it can be when a sales deal gets rejected in the 11^th hour – after you’ve done all the hard work, spent months proving the value of your products/services and are so close to the finish line. I get it. You don’t want to waste hundreds of hours a month chasing after deals that end up being rejected. So then, why not take matters into your hands and be more proactive about vetting deals yourself before they go to the finance/credit control team?

With over 150,000 companies across different industries using Salesforce as their CRM platform, the US makes up the majority, at 62%. The great news is that Salesforce now has an integration (full disclosure: it’s with us) that helps salespeople like you avoid the bad data issues I’ve been talking about.

Best of all, this type of integration with Salesforce will help you and your sales team say goodbye to:

• Wasted time chasing risky leads
• Missing sales targets
• Sales deals being rejected by the finance/credit control team
• Losing commissions
  

Doing that extra bit of due diligence means you can hit your sales targets and get paid on time. That’s a win-win for your sales team and your business as a whole.