What data to capture in your CRM,
and why –
for marketing and sales

It’s true, capturing data in your CRM isn’t the most fun thing to do in the world. In fact, it sucks. It’s tedious. So why do it at all?

In one word: feedback.

CRM data provides a feedback mechanism for influencing better sales & marketing decision making in the future. This reduces the bias that is otherwise likely to creep in from you using a couple data points to tell yourself a story about what’s going on. CRM data keeps you a bit more firmly grounded in reality.

How? It allows you to pull patterns out of what otherwise appears to be noise. If you’re an engineer, this is probably music to your ears (check out Digital marketing for engineering companies for more).

There are other reasons to capture data in your CRM (e.g. recall), but feedback is the best reason IMHO.

I’m assuming you’re already covering the absolute basics, like contact info, location, probability of win, etc.  Below are some fields you may be capturing, but may not be putting to good use, or may not be capturing at all.

As for when to enter values into the fields, ideally you want to capture the info as you learn about the contact/deal. As soon as you have a pretty good idea about the answer to one of the parameters, enter it. It’s totally fine to update/refine your entries as you learn more about the person and the deal.

This applies particularly well for services or custom solutions-oriented businesses.

CRM Data to Capture and How To Use It for Marketing and Sales

Lead source

If you care about how people are finding you because you either want more or less of those people to find you in the future, then you care about lead source.

If you want to optimize where you spend your money, you care about lead source.

Not just at a high level (e.g. “website” or “trade show”), but the gory details (e.g. “google organic search for X” or “X conference 2019”), and not just the first step or the last step, but important steps along the way.

You’ll never get this completely right, but you’ll see the patterns emerge if your diligent.

Discovery Date

This will help you understand the length of your sales cycle based on things like deal type, buying phase, and how they found you.

Predicted Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

Helps you understand two things:

  1. Where to focus your sales efforts during the sales process.
  2. Where to expend more and less of your marketing effort in the future.

See How to determine the true value of a new customer for a reality check on this topic.

Company Fit

This could either be used in addition to predicted CLV, or in place of.

Similar to predicted CLV, this parameter can help you understand two things:

  1. Where to focus your sales efforts during the sales process.
  2. Where to expend more and less of your marketing effort in the future.

Consider ~4 buckets that look something like this:

  1. Not a fit – you shouldn’t really be doing work for this type of company. Disqualify.
  2. Limited Fit – you’ll do this kind of work when you’re hungry but wouldn’t otherwise. This company likely has a low predicted CLV.
  3. Good Fit – this type of company is in your wheelhouse / it’s the bread-and-butter of what you do. Likely falls near the median of your predicted CLV. Alternatively, this company is enabling you to gain experience in an area that you want to grow your capabilities.
  4. Great Fit – Either high strategic value aligned with your direction or well above median predicted CLV.

Main application area / niche of interest

A handle to slice and dice your data around. One application area may have a very different buyers journey, level of effort, LCV, etc than another.

Trigger event

This can help influence new topics for content, as well as positioning and messaging. If the event is observable (e.g. news release, job req), it may also help you target new potential customers directly.

Why not using internal resources

This can help influence new topics for content, as well as positioning and messaging. If the event is observable (e.g. someone changing jobs), it may also help you target new potential customers directly.

Deal stage

Helps identify areas for improvement (e.g. high loss rate in certain stage, correlation of time in stage to win rate) within the sales & marketing process.

It’s also useful for understanding your opportunity pipeline. This becomes especially useful for longer (months/years) sales cycles.

Reason(s) Deal was lost

The goal of assigning reason(s) lost is to find patterns of areas for you to make improvements. The intent is not to point fingers, and not to justify a loss.

Reason(s) lost can help you understand:

  1. if you should consider making changes to your marketing (e.g targeting of certain groups of people or needs)
  2. if you should consider making changes to your sales process (e.g. response time, questions asked)
  3. if you should consider making changes to your operations (e.g. technical capabilities, pricing model)

Useful reasons lost can include things like:

  1. Unable to connect in the first place
  2. We didn’t pay enough attention
  3. We didn’t have the capability
  4. They didn’t trust we could do it
  5. Our solution was too expensive
  6. They needed faster delivery
  7. Project put on hold indefinitely
  8. Competitor selected
  9. We walked because we weren’t hungry
  10. They decided to use internal resources

Each of these reasons will require peeling back a layer or two of the onion to truly be useful, but they at least point you in a direction. For example, if a competitor was selected, you need to know why. If you didn’t have the capability, which capabilities did you need? If you were too expensive, why was there a mismatch? Could you have conveyed your value differently early on?

There are other useful reasons for sure.

Examples of reasons that aren’t very useful in facilitating improvements:

  1. Not a good fit – This is too vague. Why were you not a good fit?
  2. Too early stage. Trying to figure out what direction to go. – This can be a good thing.
  3. Contact is not a decision maker – That’s ok. There are lots of influencers in a buying decision. For whatever reason, this was your (first) contact.
  4. Went silent – This is usually indicative of something within your sales process and needs to be explored. What’s in your control to change?

Deal value

Helps show trends in deal pipeline as an indicator of business health / opportunity pipeline. It also can help prioritize sales efforts, although LCV (Lifetime Customer Value) should usually be more important.

Job title/company/industry

Helps you refine who to target and who to not target in the future with content/messaging.

Next Steps

If you’re getting sales leads from inbound methods and want some tips on how to handle them, see this article on actionable inbound sales tips.

If you’re frustrated with your marketing, see here for how marketing can actually help salespeople.

If your totally broad based and have no niche, see here for why you need a niche and what to do about it.

If you’re in learning mode, check these out: