Cleaning up a messy CRM in one week

Why clean-up pays off

Reps stop trusting a CRM full of duplicates, blank fields and deals that closed months ago. Once trust goes, so does usage. The good news is that most clean-ups take a focused week, not a project. Here is a day-by-day plan.

Monday: Measure the mess

• Count records without an owner in Leads, Contacts, Companies and Deals.
• Count open deals with a close date in the past.
• Note how many likely duplicates Manage duplicates finds.
• Copy a full backup from Import and export before changing anything.

Tuesday: Merge duplicates

Work through Manage duplicates object by object. Merge matches, keeping the record with the most complete history. Start with companies, because contacts and deals hang off them.

Wednesday: Fill the fields that matter

Pick the four or five fields you actually report on, such as owner, industry, lead status and source. Use bulk edit to fill them on selected records instead of editing one at a time.

Thursday: Fix stale deals

Filter open deals by close date before today. For each one, either update the close date and amount or move it to Closed lost with a reason. Your Pipeline value by stage report will immediately become more realistic.

Friday: Prevent it happening again

• Archive custom properties nobody uses.
• Agree that every new deal needs an amount, close date and owner.
• Schedule a monthly 30-minute data review.
• Check the audit log to see where messy records come from.