What belongs in the document
- Who creates the record and at what moment: before the first conversation or after.
- The fields required to create a record.
- The fields required to move to each next stage.
- The deadline for recording after a contact: on our projects, by end of the working day.
- What goes in a comment and what goes in a field. A comment does not stand in for a field.
- How to mark a repeat enquiry from the same customer.
- How duplicates get handled: who merges them, and by what rule.
- Who closes a deal as lost and when, with a mandatory reason.
- Payment date and amount: recorded as fact, not as plan.
- A next-step date on every active deal.
- What to do when a customer arrives through a different channel, so the source is not lost.
- Who checks that records are complete, and how often.
The three fields that get skipped
- Loss reason. Without it you will not learn why you lose, and you will treat price where the fault is speed.
- Next-step date. Without it there is no stalled-thread list, and the rep works only with whoever writes in first.
- Payment date and amount. Without them the month of an order is set by the record date, and the report stops reconciling with the bank.
You check the rules with a sample, not with a survey: take ten closed records and reconcile them against the conversations. A mismatch in more than two out of ten means the rules exist on paper only.
How to make them stick
- Required fields are made technically required, not requested politely.
- Once a week, ten records get checked against the conversations.
- Data completeness sits in the bonus part of the comp plan as its own line.
- Every new rep goes through the rules in their first three days and demonstrates them in practice.