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GENERATE NEW BUSINESS
WITH CRM CLEANSING

Out with the old, in with the new. Cleansing your CRM database of old and out-of-date leads is a necessity with GDPR, and of course to ensure you aren’t paying to store dead leads. However, it is also an opportunity for lead generation and new business.

We are going to take you through why you should care if your data is out-of-date and how to leverage the information you learn from your existing contact base to make new sales and expand your network.

Read our last article on CRM cleansing if you want more information about what exactly a CRM cleanse is and whether or not you need one – CRM Maintenance 101: How Dirty Is Your Data? We include a downloadable checklist that will quickly determine the health of your CRM. If you prefer to speak to an expert, contact one of our experts.

Why Should You Care About Your Dirty Data?

According to the Data Warehousing Institute, poor data quality costs American businesses up to 600 billion dollars every year. Paying your staff to pursue dead leads, and pouring money into resources and marketing spend when your data is inaccurate, is an expensive mistake.

There are clear benefits of regularly cleansing your CRM database:

Regular cleansing reduces the cost of your CRM storage, marketing automation and other software or storage solutions.

Clean data will mean that your email deliverability rate and open rate will increase as the messaging will be reaching the correct targets – which should also mean fewer unsubscribes.

CRM cleansing will help keep your data compliant under the new General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). Your data needs to be accurate, up to date, and should be retained only as long as necessary – all areas regular cleansing will help with.

Your sales team will operate more efficiently because they will not be chasing leads that are already dead, and instead be focusing on creating new opportunities and sustaining positive relations with promising leads.

Cleansing your CRM of old leads also provides you with the information needed to develop new business relationships (see below) and provides you with an insight into trigger events in contacts’ lives, which can determine whether or not you close that sale.

What Does A CRM Cleanse Actually Involve?

There is some discrepancy about what a CRM cleanse actually involves. Searching for CRM cleansing in any online search engine will result in article after article listing hundreds of tools and services ‘needed’ to keep your database healthy, but many of these are extraneous and expensive. There are simpler options for startups and businesses on a smaller budget that avoid spending a fortune on the latest fads.

These are the key areas to address if you want your CRM database to remain healthy:

Contact data verification: This is best done at the point of data entry.  You need to verify web forms, CRM fields and customer service screens that your customers or your sales team fill out. Tagging the source of the data within your CRM is also key for GDPR compliance. If verification is not done at this point, a periodic checking for data accuracy is required. As this is time-consuming, many of our clients outsource this check through.

Regular health checks for your database: These need to become a routine part of your marketing process. This will show you how much of your database has eroded so you can take positive action to replace old contacts and delete dead leads.

Replacing dead leads: A CRM cleanse provides an opportunity to replace leads that have moved on from a company and improve business relations with old clients.

How CRM Cleansing Provides You With New Business Opportunities

It is easy to focus on CRM cleansing as just a cull of your dead leads but that is not the case. Maintaining your CRM’s health is not just about fighting disease, it is about the recovery process. When we perform cleansing services for our clients, the most valuable part of what we do is the data discovery element – replacing the old with the new.

1. Renewing old lines of communication

Replacing a contact in a business you have worked with before opens lines of communication. How are they currently doing? Do they have any new projects? Could your services be of any use to what they are hoping to achieve in the future? If they were happy with the work you have done then there is every chance they will be open to looking to you for future solutions – if you keep in contact that is. And in order to do that, you need relevant and up to date contact details.

2. New business opportunities

Chase up where your previous point of contact has moved on to. Could their new business require your services? How could you help? Moving over to a new company means a lot of change for your contact, and if your business is one they trust then they may choose your services because you are familiar and they have proven results. Keeping in contact and following up is key to ensure an in on new opportunities.

3. Leveraging trigger events

A trigger event is anything that could create a marketing or sales opportunity. Who has replaced your previous contact? Promotion is a key trigger event as employees that have just been bumped up the ranks want to leave their mark and implement positive change. Being first to reach out with a strategy based on a recent trigger event wins the sale 74% of the time.F

How could Growthonics help you?

Growthonics offers CRM cleansing and data discovery services to B2B companies of all sizes, all over the world. We guarantee complete confidentiality and security – any data we process will not be stored on a centralised database and will not be sold on. We remove leads you no longer need and replace them with active contacts with accurate contact details. We also help you become GDPR ready by tagging your data sources and replacing personal data with corporate data.