The Impact of Duplicate Data on Your Sales team

Poor duplicate management is an absolute drain on any sales team. When organizations don't prioritize duplicate prevention and data accuracy, sales reps must sort through duplicate records while lacking the upfront visibility they need to focus on selling.

According to a Salesforce.com survey conducted in 2022, sales reps spend less than 30% of their time on selling. Most of their time is spent on other necessary activities, such as manually entering sales data and completing administrative tasks. Therefore, it is critical for sales team leaders to provide solutions that free up time for selling.

Implementing effective duplicate management means having one less obstacle in the way of your sales team's success. To ensure efficient sales operations, it is essential to first have a clear understanding of duplicate management and its impact on sales.

Duplicate data in CRMs significantly impact sales teams in the following ways:

1. Wasted Time and Reduced Efficiency

When duplicate CRM records exist, Sales Representatives waste valuable time dealing with multiple records for the same customer. Time spent identifying and merging duplicates could be better utilized in productive sales activities.

This issue especially affects new sales reps, who have to spend time cleaning data in their territory before they can sell with the confidence that their efforts are being tracked correctly.

2. Impact on Team Morale:

Duplicate records cause confusion about which record is the most up-to-date, leading to mistakes in sales efforts. For example, a common occurrence is Sales Representatives mistakenly reaching out to the same companies as other team members due to copies of the same record existing in their CRM.

Repeated issues with duplicate data easily lead to frustration and reduced morale among sales team members. This frequently creates a work environment where team members don't trust their colleagues or their CRM data, resulting in reduced productivity and lower overall performance.

3. Poor Customer Experiences and Missed Sales Opportunities

Fragmented customer information can negatively impact customers' experience with a brand due to organizations having an inaccurate understanding of customer needs and behaviors. Thus, reducing the effectiveness of marketing and sales strategies.

When duplicate records exist, customers and prospects are often the victims of receiving conflicting communications from an organization because Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success teams commonly reach out to the same company by mistake. Sales reps also risk reaching out to individuals who are already customers or have been established as not to contact. This is both annoying and unprofessional. Common occurrences like these result in a negative perception of the brand, a decrease in customer loyalty, and missed sales opportunities.

4. Impaired Lead Management

Inefficient duplicate management affects lead scoring and prioritization, such as high-potential leads being overlooked or mishandled. This frequently occurs when teams have multiple contacts associated to different duplicate accounts.

The inability to effectively track and manage leads due to duplicate records increases the likelihood of losing potential sales.

5. Inaccurate Reporting and Poor Data Quality

Duplicates records can skew metrics and reports, causing incorrect data analysis from sales leaders.

When multiple sales reps are reaching out to the same company due to duplicate records in the CRM this creates inaccurate forecasting that result in misguided business decisions. Another common example of this is when a Sales Representative has a Closed Won attached to a primary account, but a Customer Success Representative attaches the renewal closed won to a duplicate account. 

6. Compliance and Data Privacy Issues

As compliance with data protection regulations becomes more complex, the risk of non-compliance and its consequences increases. Duplicate records further complicate data privacy by increasing the risk of violating regulations like GDPR and CCPA.

For example, duplicate records make it challenging to track and manage customer consent, ensure accurate reporting for regulatory purposes, and maintain data integrity, which impacts operational effectiveness and overall customer trust.

By knowing the impact of duplicate data on sales performance, businesses can understand the importance of efficient duplicate management and allocate resources effectively.

Strategies to Improve Data Management and Reduce Duplication

Duplicate management is the process of identifying and resolving copies of the same record in your organization's CRM. Duplicate records can easily occur due to manual data entry errors, improper imports, or data migration issues. Therefore, effective CRM duplicate management is necessary to maintain data accuracy and ensure high-performing sales operations.

To enhance data management and reduce duplication, businesses can implement the following best practices for CRM duplicate management.

• Establishing and enforcing guidelines:
  Having a standardized procedure for entering and updating customer information minimizes the chances of duplicate records and makes it easier to identify and merge duplicate records when they do occur.
  
  
• Regular data cleansing and deduplication activities: 
  Sales Managers regularly reviewing and merging duplicate records ensures data accuracy. Although this approach is effective, it typically takes time away from higher-priority tasks, so it may be worth it for sales leaders to consider services and tools that handle this for them.
  
  
• Training in Data Management and Duplicate Prevention: 
  Training and educating sales reps on the importance of data management and duplicate prevention is crucial. By providing proper training and resources, sales reps can actively avoid contributing to duplicate records and inaccurate data in their CRM.

Being proactive by implementing a combination of standardized processes, routine data cleansing, and training will reduce duplication for your sales team and improve overall data management in your CRM.

Leverage Expert Services to Streamline Duplicate Management

We now understand that effective duplicate management is essential for the health of any sales team. However, we also recognize that duplicate management is time-consuming and often becomes a low priority on a sales leader’s long list of responsibilities due to the repetitive nature of data deduplication and cleansing.

To optimize duplicate management while protecting sales leaders and reps' time for selling, businesses can leverage services and tools specifically designed for this purpose.

Outsourcing duplicate management to specialized service providers can be a cost-effective option. These providers have expertise in identifying duplicates and efficiently handling the process, enabling sales teams to concentrate on their core responsibilities.

By implementing effective duplicate management strategies, sales teams can streamline their processes and focus on selling rather than dealing with duplicate data.