Process
CRM Hygiene
Keeping pipeline records accurate and current so forecasts, attribution and follow-up can be trusted.
What is CRM hygiene?
CRM hygiene is the discipline of keeping records true: correct stages, real next steps with dates, closed-lost reasons, and no zombie deals sitting in the pipeline because nobody wants to mark them dead.
The rules that do most of the work
- Every open opportunity has a scheduled next step. No date, not open.
- Stages describe buyer behaviour, not seller optimism.
- Closed-lost carries a reason from a short fixed list.
- Source is set once, at creation, and never edited later.
- Anything untouched for 45 days is reviewed or closed.
Why outbound depends on it
Without hygiene you cannot answer the only question that matters after a quarter of outbound: which conversations came from this channel and what happened to them. Attribution collapses, and the channel gets judged on feeling instead of numbers.
Minimum viable setup
A spreadsheet with clean rules beats a CRM with dirty ones. Start with account, contact, source, stage, next step date, and close reason.