How often should we review and clean our CRM data?

Monthly maintenance (30 minutes)

• Merge obvious duplicate contacts (same email or very similar names)
• Archive contacts you know are no longer relevant
• Check that last-interaction dates are current
• Spot-check 10–20 records for obvious errors

Quarterly review (1–2 hours)

• Run a report of inactive contacts and remove if no intent to re-engage
• Check if your deal stages or statuses are being used correctly
• Ask your team: are there fields we created but never use?
• Verify company information is still accurate for key accounts

What not to do

• Don't obsess over perfect data from day one
• Don't spend hours manually cleaning old records
• Don't create new fields every month
• Don't merge duplicates too aggressively (keep one if you're unsure)

When data quality matters most

Accuracy becomes critical when you:

• Run forecasts or reports from the CRM
• Make decisions based on pipeline numbers
• Export lists for campaigns

Until then, "good enough" is fine. Maintenance should take an hour a month, not a week.