![\"It's](\"http:\/\/go.franconnect.com\/hubfs\/Campaigns\/Sales%20Campaign\/Stock-cleaning-data.jpg\" "\\"It's")
<\/p>\nA dirty database is a like a dirty home. When a home is messy and unorganized, it’s hard to find anything. It seems to happen in an instant, too \u2013 once one item is put in the wrong place, the mess piles up. Particularly if you have kids or live with roommates, it can be difficult to keep all the dirt from coming in.<\/p>\n
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Your database is similar. Once one contact is tagged incorrectly, or a list is imported without the necessary information, your database starts getting messy. And with multiple people working in a database \u2013 such as your franchise development and marketing teams \u2013 it\u2019s hard to keep the \u201cdirt\u201d from coming in.<\/p>\n
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However, there are steps you can take to clean your data and keep it that way. Here are a few suggestions:<\/p>\n
Every project needs an owner, and cleaning and maintaining a good database is no exception. Identify one person in your organization to define and enforce processes for data import, data standardization, and regularly data clean up. All questions related to data should be directed to this person, and others should refrain from adding to the database without talking to this individual first.<\/span><\/p>\n A good first step in cleaning up your database is to ensure duplicate contacts are erased. Ideally your franchise CRM<\/a> helps with this by automating the process for you, but it\u2019s never going to be perfect. When someone submits multiple forms using different email addresses, you\u2019ll need to manually merge the contacts into one. De-duping your list is important because you don\u2019t want to have to look in multiple places to get the full picture of a franchise candidate, or worse, miss information because you don\u2019t realize there is more than one contact record for one person.<\/span><\/p>\n Inactive contacts \u2013 or inactive leads \u2013 are troublesome to understanding your franchise sales funnel<\/a>. Having inactive contacts marked as leads for too long inflates your pipeline and decreases your close ratio. If a lead is inactive, remove it from your pipeline. If you maintain a separate database for your franchisees<\/a>, it\u2019s important to suppress any inactive contacts there, too. There are a number of reasons why a lead may be inactive, whether they are in your CRM or in a customer database<\/a>. For example, the contact may have changed companies and is no longer a customer. Or this person may have transitioned to a new role within the company and no longer needs the information you are sending. Or sometimes during the sales process the person simply may no longer be interested in what you offer. Repeatedly sending information to someone who doesn\u2019t want to receive it only hurts your brand. It\u2019s important to identify these inactive leads and either tag them as such in your database, or remove them altogether.<\/span><\/p>\n Similar to inactive contacts, remove any contacts that have fake names, email addresses, or companies. People who simply want access to your information may use fake names and email addresses. Don\u2019t let these leads taint your database. Delete them.<\/span><\/p>\n FranConnect. Fran Connect. FranConnect Inc. Company names, states, cities, job titles, and other contact properties can be written a multitude of ways, making it difficult to segment by a specific field property. For example, if everyone at FranConnect is supposed to receive an update, and you segment by \u2018Company Name,\u2019 you may miss contacts associated with this property if there are three versions of it. When at all possible, use dropdowns on forms instead of an open-ended text option so information is kept uniform. It\u2019s also important to manually enforce uniformity when inconsistencies are discovered.<\/span><\/p>\n Whether you\u2019re in a sales and marketing CRM or in a customer database, create and use appropriate contact properties. Make sure contacts are marked accurately in the sales funnel; be sure you know which franchisees are in the opening process versus bringing in revenue; tag franchisees by location and region so you can make comparisons accordingly. These tags, among others, help you cater your content and messaging so the right contacts are receiving the right information at the right time.<\/span><\/p>\n Keeping your CRM and customer database clean takes time and effort, but it\u2019s worth it. It not only ensures you can communicate effectively with your audiences, but it enables you to get the most informative insights into your audiences when you need it.<\/p>\n In need of a franchise sales CRM<\/a> or a customer database for your franchisees<\/a>? Contact FranConnect to learn more about FranConnect Sales<\/a> and FranConnect Info Manager<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s important to maintain a clean franchise sales CRM and franchisee databases. Click to learn how!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":283288,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[107,98,106],"tags":[56,46],"class_list":["post-279967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-develop","category-expand-locations","category-franchising-best-practices","tag-best-practices","tag-franchise-sales"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.franconnect.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.franconnect.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.franconnect.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.franconnect.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.franconnect.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279967"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.franconnect.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":285111,"href":"https:\/\/www.franconnect.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279967\/revisions\/285111"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.franconnect.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.franconnect.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.franconnect.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.franconnect.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Remove duplicate contacts<\/span><\/h2>\n
Suppress inactive contacts<\/span><\/h2>\n
Eliminate spam or irrelevant contacts<\/span><\/h2>\n
Check for uniformity<\/span><\/h2>\n
Use contact properties appropriately and correctly<\/span><\/h2>\n