Do not start by cleaning records. Start by stopping the bleeding at the point of entry, because a cleanup on a leaky system just gets dirty again in six weeks. Pick the five fields the business genuinely runs on (account name, stage, amount, close date, owner), make them required or picklists, and delete or hide everything else so reps stop guessing. Then write a one page definition of what every pipeline stage means and get the sales leader to sign off in public. Only after that do the backfill: dedupe, merge, and fill the five fields on open pipeline first, closed history last or never.
3 hand-picked resources, 3 link-checked. Pick how you want to dig in.
Why we picked it An eight step sequence for cleaning a CRM that correctly puts validation at the point of entry before the backfill, which is the order most first ops hires get wrong.
From Default by Stan Rymkiewicz 14 min read
Open default.com →Why we picked it It walks through building a Stage Management Guide, which is the single artefact that turns a messy pipeline into a forecastable one. Directly usable as a template.
From First Round Review by Derek Draper 15 min read
Open review.firstround.com →Why we picked it The best plain English description of what a sales ops function is for, written by someone who rebuilt one from scratch. Useful whether you are taking the job or hiring for it.
From First Round Review by Don Otvos 18 min read
Open review.firstround.com →How revops and the gtm stack reads from a different seat.
