Quality over quantity is king with data - how to focus on creating a positive ROI

You recently audited your CRM database, and you were delighted to see that you had tens and thousands of records on file! Surely that’s a cause for celebration… isn’t it?!

Unfortunately when it comes to data management, a lot of records can be more trouble than they are worth.

Let’s take a look at why quality is always better than quantity when it comes to your CRM system. We will also see how you can get a solid return on investment by reviewing your data.

The problem with having lots of data

The critical issue with having lots of records in your CRM is that you have more data to manage and look after.

According to Marketing Sherpas, CRM databases decay at a rate of 2.1% a month. This rate can be even higher in industries like sales and technology where there is a high turnover of staff.

What does this mean for your company? If you have 10,000 customer records on file, 210 of those records will be out of date within the space of 30 days. It’s a scary thought, especially if you have spent a lot of time building up your database from scratch.

Inaccurate data can put your business at a disadvantage. It can lead to your sales team wasting time reaching out to the wrong people, negative customer feedback and money wasted facilitating longer sales cycles.

Ultimately all of this will result in the end result of your ROI plummeting.

The risk you also have with lots of data is that you will have more duplicate records. Up to 30% of the data in a CRM system can be duplicated. If you have a lot of records on file, the chances are that you won’t even realise until your sales team gets complaints from prospective customers.

How to make the switch from quantity to quality

If you have a lot of contact details in your CRM database, you need to carry out a thorough review and purge of your system. It’s a big task, but it will help your sales team to reach out to the right people in the future.

Nominate someone in your sales team and get them to:

• Remove industries that aren’t your target market. They don’t need to be in your CRM if you’re not going to sell to them
• Review patchy records and decide whether to remove them entirely or update them so they are accurate. Again, you don’t want records sitting in your CRM if they are going to be of no use to you
• Merge duplicate records together. This will reduce the size of your database and make it easier to manage it moving forward

The 1-10-100 rule advises that it is more cost-effective to prevent a record going out of date than it is to correct it. This means that the best course of action is to ensure that all information that goes into your CRM is as accurate as possible.

Make sure your sales team take the time to get all the data they can before adding it into the system, and create validation rules to reduce the risk of duplication.

How Metric Central can help you with this

How does a free audit to review your existing content sound?

Here at Metric Central, we will take a look at your CRM database in your behalf, making us the perfect choice if you don’t know how to review your content, or if you just don’t have the time.

And believe us, managing your CRM database can be a full-time role in itself!

We will refresh the details in your database, making them more accurate:

• We will update the contact details you already have on file
• We will alert you to any companies that have gone out of business (known in the trade as ‘goneaways’)
• We will advise you of any duplicate records you may have
• We will let you know which industries each company on file belongs to. This will make it easier to purge the ones you no longer want to market to
• We can also add additional information like financial information, number of employees and number of branches, to super-charge your CRM even further!

The best part? We update our master-database on a daily basis, meaning that your refreshed CRM system will be completely accurate.

What does this mean? It means your salespeople can use your brand-new CRM records with complete confidence!

Contact us today for your free, no-obligation audit, and see how quality is better than quantity!