A 30-day CRM hygiene sprint — step by step" style="width:100%;height:100%;object-fit:cover;display:block;">
Most CRM cleanups fail for the same reason: someone tries to fix everything in one pass, runs out of momentum in week two, and the instance drifts back to where it started within a quarter. This is the sequence we run instead — thirty days, four phases, each one locking in before the next starts.
Week 1: Stop the bleeding
- Freeze new custom properties — every request goes through one owner until the sprint ends
- Identify and merge the highest-impact duplicate companies and contacts first, not all of them
- Audit required fields on deal creation; anything not actually required gets unmarked
Week 2: Fix the record, not the report
Reports built on bad data just make bad data easier to see faster. Before touching a single dashboard, we fix lifecycle stage consistency and lead source attribution at the record level.
A CRM cleanup that starts with dashboards is treating the symptom. Start with the record, and the dashboards mostly fix themselves.
Week 3: Automate the decay away
Manual hygiene doesn't survive contact with a busy sales team. We put validation rules and workflow-based enforcement in place so the same mess can't quietly reaccumulate — required-field validation on deal stage changes, duplicate-prevention rules on contact creation.
Week 4: Hand off ownership
The sprint ends with a named data owner, a monthly hygiene checklist, and a dashboard that tracks the handful of hygiene metrics that predict decay before it becomes a rebuild.