You have an HR handbook, departmental training materials and documented procedures. But do you have standards and rules for your marketing and sales database? That's the question Lauren Kincke asks in a post at The B2B Lead Blog. "Without some law and order, your database will start looking like the Wild West of marketing and sales data," she cautions.

To help ensure your B2B database is law-abiding, Kincke offers a to-do list of data maintenance. Among her suggestions:

Create a CRM data-standard sheet, and separate the data elements into three categories:

1. Information that must be there and must be correct for all of your systems to align properly (key IDs, emails, etc.).
2. Information that should be correct in order for the rules within your CRM/marketing-automation system to work. "For instance, if you have set up custom validation rules surrounding addresses, outline what those rules are and how data has to be formatted to fit within those rules," she advises.
3. Information requested by other groups working in your database (marketing, sales, customer support) to help them work more efficiently.

Determine what data needs to look like within all the key fields identified above. For instance, should "State" always be a two-letter abbreviation instead of a full name?

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