Data is the fuel that drives marketing, sales, and customer success strategies. When managed effectively, it empowers Go-to-Market (GTM) Teams to execute targeted campaigns, accelerate deal velocity, and improve customer retention. However, when data management goes awry, it quietly erodes revenue potential resulting in missed opportunities and misalignment between teams.
For Revenue Team (Marketing, Sales, & Customer Success) leaders, recognizing the signs of unhealthy data management is crucial to ensuring that data remains a strategic asset rather than a liability. Let’s explore some of the most common red flags and their impact on GTM success, as well as how to fix them.
Red Flag #1: Duplicate, Incomplete, or Inconsistent Data
The Impact: Imagine an Account Executive or BDR reaching out to a high-value prospect only to find that multiple conflicting records exist with different email addresses. Worse yet, marketing continues targeting an account with Acquisition messaging and programs—even after they’ve become a customer. Duplicate, incomplete, and inconsistent data create inefficiencies, miscommunication, and ultimately, lost revenue opportunities. They also contribute to a poor customer experience, increasing the likelihood of failed deals or non-renewals.
How to Fix It:
- Establish a single source of truth by integrating CRM, MAP (marketing automation platform), and customer success platforms.
- Implement a data hygiene strategy that includes regular deduplication and standardization of records.
- Utilize automation tools to detect and merge duplicate records across platforms.
Red Flag #2: Lack of Data Standardization and Governance
The Impact: Without standardized data entry practices, teams struggle with unreliable reports and inaccurate forecasting. Marketing campaigns fail due to misclassified industries, sales pipeline stages become ambiguous, and customer success loses track of engagement trends.
How to Fix It:
- Develop a clear data governance framework that dictates naming conventions, required fields, and update cadences.
- Enforce consistent data entry through validation rules and dropdown selections within CRM and marketing automation tools.
- Assign data stewards within each team (Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success) to ensure compliance with data policies.
Red Flag #3: Low Data Literacy Across Teams
The Impact: If teams don’t understand how to interpret or use data effectively, decision-making suffers. Sales may ignore high-intent accounts identified by marketing due to skepticism over scoring models, customer success may overlook churn signals, and marketing may struggle to justify budget allocations to leadership.
How to Fix It:
- Provide ongoing data literacy training tailored to each function (e.g., sales teams learning to interpret intent signals, marketing understanding account engagement models, etc.).
- Foster a culture of data-driven decision-making by incorporating key metrics into weekly team meetings.
- Create shared dashboards that offer visibility into full-funnel performance and customer health indicators.
Red Flag #4: Misalignment Between Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success Data
The Impact: If marketing, sales, and customer success operate in silos with separate data definitions, handoffs become unclear and customer experiences become disjointed. High-value accounts fall through the cracks, renewals become last-minute scrambles, and revenue growth stalls.
How to Fix It:
- Align on a shared data model that includes common definitions for lifecycle stages, account statuses, and engagement metrics.
- Implement cross-functional data reviews where RevOps leaders from each team meet to assess data integrity and alignment.
- Ensure technology integrations allow seamless data flow between marketing, sales, and customer success platforms.
Red Flag #5: Inaccurate or Stale Data
The Impact: Outdated job titles, incorrect company hierarchies, and inactive email addresses result in wasted marketing spend, inefficient sales outreach, and missed opportunities to deepen relationships and expand within existing accounts.
How to Fix It:
- Leverage real-time enrichment tools to keep contact and account data fresh.
- Implement a cadence for database cleansing, ensuring that inactive, outdated, or incorrect records are archived, updated, or deleted.
- Encourage teams to validate and update data as part of their daily workflows rather than relying solely on bulk updates.
Data: The Common Language of Revenue Teams
In order for marketing, sales, and customer success teams to drive revenue efficiently, they must speak the same language: DATA. A commitment to shared data quality standards, cross-functional collaboration, and continuous education in data literacy can transform how teams engage with prospects and customers alike.
The success of your GTM strategy depends on the health of your data. Don’t wait for inefficiencies and revenue leaks to become painfully obvious. Take a proactive approach today to ensure that data is working for you, not against you.
Want to learn more about optimizing your revenue engine? Contact our experts to explore how we help enterprise teams build and scale data-driven revenue growth strategies.