Remember in the last blog when we cringed at bad data in Marketo? Well, buckle up because Salesforce is no different. Your CRM might look shiny on the outside, but if your data’s trash, so are your reports. And guess what? It’s on you to fix it. But fear not—I’ve got the tools and dashboards to help you keep that data squeaky clean.

Why Do I Care?

Because bad data in Salesforce can tank your sales pipeline faster than your uncle’s ’95 Ford on a dirt road. You don’t want your team pulling up lists of leads with blank phone numbers or weird email addresses like “test@test.com” (real professional, right?). So, let’s use these dashboards to keep that junk in check.

1. The Magic of Group By: Your Data Detective

Let’s start with one of Salesforce’s easiest but most powerful tricks: “Group By.” It sounds simple, but this baby will help you find patterns in your data that are otherwise as hidden as grandma’s moonshine recipe.

Here’s how to use it:

• Group by Lead Source and boom—suddenly you can see that half your leads don’t even have a source. What’s that? Maybe your team’s being lazy, or your integrations are flakier than a cheap biscuit.
• Group by Last Modified Date—you’ll spot which records haven’t been touched in months. Spoiler: they’re probably outdated as hell and need some TLC. Or the ol’ delete button.

Action Step: Make it a weekly ritual to check these groups. Look for weird gaps, and don’t be afraid to mass-update fields or clean house on dead records.

2. Dupes: The CRM Roaches

Duplicates. They’re like cockroaches. You think you’ve gotten rid of them, but every time you look, more keep popping up. Duplicates screw up reporting, send your sales reps into a frenzy, and make your CRM about as reliable as a broken lawnmower.

Create a Duplicate Detection Dashboard:

• Build filters to catch duplicates based on email, phone number, or (God forbid) the same name showing up twice with different info.
• Don’t just look for exact matches—find leads with slight differences in their names but everything else identical. Trust me, it happens more than you think.

Action Step: If you spot dupes, get aggressive. Merge, delete, or send them back to marketing for a rework. No mercy.

3. Field Standardization: Ain’t Nobody Got Time for Sloppy Fields

Ever seen a lead with their state listed as “Texas,” “TX,” and “Texasss” (yes, I’ve seen it)? Or a job title that’s everything from “Sales Ninja” to “Head of Biz Dev” to “The Big Cheese”? Yep, those will wreck your dashboards faster than you can say “WTH happened here?”

You need Field Standardization Reports:

• Group by fields like state or job title and see what hot mess you’re dealing with. For state names, standardize to a single format (I recommend the 2-letter state codes—clean and simple).
• For job titles, roll up those jokers. VP of Sales, Vice President of Sales, Sales Boss—whatever you do, make sure they all feed into the same title for reporting purposes. Your C-suite will thank you.

Action Step: Set up an automated process that fixes these inconsistencies before they even hit your reports. It’s way easier than cleaning up a mess after the fact.