# Patch Crm Hygiene > The user says "the pipeline number is wrong," "the forecast keeps missing," "our CRM is a graveyard," or "I can't trust the data." Load for pipeline audit, contact-data cleanup, stale-deal sweep, or a defensible forecast. Pairs with operating-rhythm — the CRM feeds the weekly tactical's pipeline-cov - Skill: `ferroxlabs/patch-crm-hygiene` (Agent Skill) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add ferroxlabs/patch-crm-hygiene` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/ferroxlabs/patch-crm-hygiene/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: DevOps & Infra - Author: FerroxLabs (https://skillmd.com/u/ferroxlabs) - Updated: 2026-09-17 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/ferroxlabs/patch-crm-hygiene --- # CRM hygiene ## When to load this mode The user says "the pipeline number is wrong," "the forecast keeps missing," "our CRM is a graveyard," or "I can't trust the data." Load for pipeline audit, contact-data cleanup, stale-deal sweep, or a defensible forecast. Pairs with operating-rhythm — the CRM feeds the weekly tactical's pipeline-coverage number. ## What CRM hygiene is for A CRM is a single source of truth for two questions: *what is the realistic next 90 days of revenue, and which deals deserve an hour this week.* Both answers degrade fast. Stale stages, duplicates, unowned deals, "next step: follow up" with no date — each is a small lie. The forecast sums them. Hygiene is the discipline of writing down what's actually true. ## The procedure **1. Define stages by buyer behavior, not seller activity.** A stage is what the *buyer* has done. "Demo scheduled" is a stage. "Reach out" is a task. Map every stage to a buyer-observable event: - Stage 1: buyer confirmed a meeting on calendar - Stage 2: buyer named the problem and the cost out loud - Stage 3: buyer pulled in a second stakeholder - Stage 4: buyer requested pricing or asked legal/procurement to engage - Stage 5: buyer signed If a deal can't be mapped to an observable event, it's a hope. Move it to "not a deal yet" and stop counting it. **2. Sweep for staleness.** Look at the **last buyer-initiated touch** — not the last seller activity. Five "just checking in" emails do not advance a deal. The buyer not responding is the signal. - No buyer-initiated touch in 14 days → flag yellow - No buyer-initiated touch in 30 days → close-lost or move to a "long-term nurture" segment outside the pipeline - "Next step: follow up" with no date → the deal is dead. Close it. **3. Audit contact data.** Three checks: - **Duplicates** — same email or company at two contacts. Merge. - **Owner integrity** — exactly one owner per contact and deal. Unassigned and co-owned both don't get worked. - **Required fields filled** for active deals: contact email, company, stage, next-step description and date, deal value, source. Empty field on a stage-3+ deal means it's not stage 3+. **4. Reconcile pipeline math against history.** Sum the active pipeline. Multiply by historical close rate per stage (if unknown: 20% stage-2, 40% stage-3, 70% stage-4 as starting estimate, flag as hypothesis). Compare against the rep's verbal forecast. Verbal beats math by 30%+ → rep is forecasting from feeling. Math beats verbal by 30%+ → rep has stopped trusting the CRM. Both diagnostic. **5. Install a 15-minute weekly hygiene ritual.** Every rep, before the tactical: sweep their pipeline. Stale flagged. Next steps dated. Stages moved on buyer behavior. The weekly reviews the *result*, not raw chaos. ## Decision rules - **Buyer-observable behavior advances stages. Nothing else does.** A rep "feeling good about the deal" is not a stage move. - **The pipeline number is the math, not the rep's gut.** Both get logged. Persistent gaps are coachable. - **No deal lives more than 2x the average sales cycle.** If the average is 45 days and a deal is 120 days old, it's not closing — it's being avoided. Close it or escalate it. - **Contact data quality is a single-owner job.** Spread it across the team and it rots in three weeks. - **Don't add fields to fix data problems.** New fields create new empty fields. Fix what's required first. ## Anti-patterns - **The custom-field-of-the-month.** Three weeks after the new field is added, 80% of records have it blank. Fill existing fields before adding new ones. - **"Pipeline coverage of 5x quota" with no stage discipline.** 5x of garbage is still garbage. - **Marking deals "lost — no budget."** Usually means "lost — no urgency." Force the loss-reason taxonomy to map to real causes: no urgency, lost to competitor, lost to non-consumption, disqualified, ghosted. - **Quarterly CRM cleanups.** Three months of bad forecast between scrubs. Only weekly hygiene compounds. - **Buying a better CRM to fix a process problem.** A new tool inherits the old hygiene. ## Before / after **Before:** > Founder: "Pipeline says $1.2M. Reps tell me Q3 is going to be huge." Audit: 38% of deals last buyer-touched 30+ days ago. 22% have "next step: follow up" with no date. Two reps co-own five deals. Loss-reason empty on 60% of closed-lost. **After:** > Pipeline rebuilt: $1.2M raw → $640K active (stage 2+, buyer touch in 14 days, single owner, next step dated). Forecast: $185K weighted close, with three deals worth $310K combined named as "needs founder air-cover this month." Smaller number. Defensible. The weekly tactical now reviews seven deals instead of forty, and decisions get made.