Update up your CRM while sales prospecting

A few years ago I did an email blast of executives in my Salesforce.com CRM. I wasn’t targeting low level executives but CEO’s, Presidents and Vice Presidents of Sales and Marketing.

I got a bounce back rate of between 19-22%! The data put in my CRM was probably less than 3 years ago at the time.

People change jobs, people quit or retire, or people get terminated from their position.

There’s no reason to keep bad data in your CRM if that person is longer there.

I did some more data cleansing in Salesforce.com in September 2013 and literally started with companies that started with an “A”.

I’m a little surprised on how many companies have merged, been acquired or simply gone out of business. I’ve also eliminated companies who are too small of a target to call on in the first place. We tend to call on companies of a certain size who based on the number of employees have money. They may not want to spend it with you but they have it to spend.

I happened to call on a company that we did a lead generation campaign back in 2011. I called the CEO and he answered his phone. He was in the middle of something and asked me to call back later. So I did. We finally connected and requested that we come by last Friday at 10 am.

A few of my staff and I went over to his office and met with the CEO, CFO and 5 others on staff. We did a short presentation and explained what we did.

Moral of the blog: Keep your CRM clean! Bad data in, bad data out! Keep in touch with past clients. You never know when they have additional work for you to perform.

I’m Ray Ruecker with Connect 5000 and wish you a happy November!