CRM hygiene
The ongoing work of keeping CRM data accurate, complete, and consistent so people trust what they see.
What it is
CRM hygiene is the state of the data and the habits that keep it that way. A clean CRM has one record per real-world thing, fields filled in the same way, and stages that reflect what is actually happening.
Signs of poor hygiene
- Duplicates. The same company under three spellings.
- Stale stages. Deals sitting in Diligence for months after the team passed.
- Free-text chaos. One field holding “Series A”, “series a”, and “A round”.
- Empty fields. Required information that nobody fills in because nothing depends on it.
- Side spreadsheets. The surest sign. People keep their own copy because they do not trust the CRM.
How to keep it clean
Most hygiene problems start in the data model. Use selects and record references instead of free text. Make the fields that reports depend on required at the right stage.
Then automate what people forget. In Attio, workflows can flag deals with no activity, enrichment can fill company details, and email sync records conversations without manual logging.
Why it matters
Bad data compounds. Once people stop trusting the CRM, they stop updating it, and the data gets worse. Hygiene is cheaper as a habit than as a cleanup project.
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