Want Clean Data in a CRM? 9 Deal Audits

Table of Contents

1. Close Date Past Due

Every open deal in your CRM should have a close date that’s in the future or today. You should never have close dates for open deals that are in the past. When you see one, immediately let the opportunity owner know. If they forgot about the deal, it’s probably no longer viable. And, if they constantly have close dates past due, but their deals are viable, they’re probably not in the system as often as they should be. Offer the team a refresher training so as to not single them out. Mostly everyone could use a refresher from time to time.

Filter: close date = before today AND deal stage ≠ won, lost, or qualified out (i.e. an open deal)

Side note – different systems allow for different types of filters. If you don’t have this exact filter option, you may have to use a date picker and update the date each week.

2. Not in Forecast, Upside, or Pipeline

Many sales teams like to grade or categorize their deals based on their quality and/or probability of closing. They use this in addition to deal stages. Whatever classification your team uses, look for open deals that do not conform to the agreed upon criteria.

Filter: Forecast, Upside, Pipeline = unknown AND deal stage ≠ won, lost, or qualified out (i.e. an open deal) 

3. No Products or Services Listed

If your company has any sort of an offering, whether it’s a product or service, you should capture that clean data in your CRM. Audit your data to ensure that all deals have a product or service listed. The primary focus should be on open and won deals. The secondary focus should be on lost or qualified out deals.

Filter: product = unknown

4. Lost or Qualified Out

Many companies like to differentiate between lost and qualified out deals. If you are unfamiliar, I’d recommend that you check out our article, The Importance of Tracking Lost and Qualified Out Deals. A quick synopsis here:

Lost deals are ones where you qualified the buyer. This essentially means that you had conversations about your product, the deal moved forward, but in the end they chose not to go with you. 

Qualified out is when you or the buyer find out toward the beginning of the discovery process that this arrangement is not right for you or them.

With this knowledge, we want to ensure that deals are properly categorized in our CRM. This is important for when your team reviews wins, losses, and qualified out deals. If lost deals are listed as qualified out, and qualified out deals listed as lost, it can result in an incorrect analysis. You want to get an accurate picture about what occurs in your pipeline in order to help your team make adjustments.

Check that qualified deals are listed as lost and unqualified deals are listed as qualified out.

Filter: close date = last week AND deal stage = lost, qualified out

5. No Associated Company

Check that every opportunity is tied to a company. CRM data should be circular. Contacts, companies, and deals need to be tied together. It becomes very difficult to analyze your data if this is not the case. 

You may find it helpful to first pay attention to open deals, then won, then lost and qualified out deals.

Filter: associated company = unknown

Another iteration, which depends on your CRM is:

Filter: # of associated companies = 0

6. No Associated Contacts

Identify deals that aren’t associated with contacts and notify the owner. This is an important step because it lets you know who were the key people involved with the deal. This helps down the line if you need to reach out whether it’s contract issues, renewals, or a customer success call.

Note that this can be an arduous task if you don’t have any contact data associated with your deals. 

You may find it easier to first focus on open deals, then won deals, then lost and qualified out deals.

Filter: associated contact = unknown

Another iteration, which depends on your CRM is:

Filter: # of associated contacts = 0

7. No Associated Campaigns

As noted in a previous article, Facing Data Quality Challenges? 13 CRM Audits to the Rescue, Campaigns are often associated with contacts before they are associated with deals. In your contact audits, you should check that your clean data from campaigns, especially from newly created ones, flows into the contacts as it should. In many CRMs, when a contact with campaign data is added to a deal, that campaign data then gets associated with the deal as well. If your system doesn’t natively do that, look into workflows that can accomplish this task. If you are unsure how a workflow can help, reach out to your support team for help. 

You may find it easier to first focus on open deals, then won, then lost and qualified out ones.

Filter: associated campaign = unknown

8. No Owner

You want to ensure that deals are assigned an owner so that every one receives attention and that we can report on each sales rep’s pipeline. We want to check this for open, won, lost, and qualified out deals.

Filter: deal owner = unknown 

9. Newly Created Deals – Last Week

This is a bit of a catch all and is used to ensure we didn’t miss anything we discussed above.

Check that all new deals added to your CRM have standardized data filled out (e.g. close date, deal stage, etc.) and are properly assigned to team members.

Filter: create date = last week, then sort by the necessary fields.

Additional Audits

Think about other deal data that is unique to your system and set up an audit. Perhaps you track if deals are Capex vs. Opex, if the deal is for products or professional services, or if the deal is for a new or existing customer. 

Wrap up – Clean Data and Audits

Remember that It’s important to have clean data in your system so your teams can execute as quickly and efficiently as possible. Once you create all of these filters, be sure to set a time on your calendar so you remember to perform the audits.