Kick off and run the 60–90 minute workshop
- Timebox: 60 minutes if you have two decision-makers, 90 minutes if you need broader sign-off. Use a live CRM view (HubSpot or Salesforce) plus a shared sheet (Google Sheets/Excel) and a timer.
- Agenda: 5 min purpose and scope; 15–20 min map where leads currently fail handoffs; 25–30 min pick and score fields; 15–20 min agree owners, validation and next steps.
- Practical note: bring a real example or two (a lost lead, a misfired automation, a mismatched report) so the group focuses on fixing concrete failures rather than debating ideal models.
Pick the 6–8 canonical fields and score them quickly
Start by agreeing the narrow outcome: a lightweight data contract listing the 6–8 fields that must be correct for handoffs to work. Typical fields small teams pick first are: lifecycle stage, owner (sales owner/assignee), source/campaign (campaign id or UTM), contact email (validated), company match (company_id or domain), billing status (paid/trial/overdue), consent/subscription status, and a processing flag (manual-review/ready).
Use a simple scoring method to prioritise which fields to fix first: for each candidate field score 1–5 on (a) impact if wrong, (b) frequency of being wrong, (c) ease of fix. Add the three scores (max 15). Focus the workshop on the top 6–8 totals. This keeps decisions fast and outcome-focused.
For each agreed field capture a one-line rule: owner, validation, fallback. Examples:
- lifecycle stage — single dropdown shared between systems; required to move to ‘Sales Contact’; if uncertain fallback = ‘Marketing Qualified’ and flag for review.
- owner — must be an active sales user id (Salesforce owner or HubSpot owner); validation = non-empty + exists in active users list; fallback = ‘Unassigned’ and auto-assign into a human triage queue.
- source/campaign — store campaign id (not free text); validation = must match campaign catalogue (Marketo/campaign list); fallback = ‘unknown-campaign’ and mark for attribution cleanup.
- email — basic regex + mailbox verification where available; invalid emails go to ‘do-not-contact’ and into an email-cleanup task.
Also agree simple monitoring checks per field: saved CRM filters that show % missing, weekly counts of mismatched values between systems (Salesforce vs Marketo), and a daily ‘top 10 recent records failing rules’ list emailed to the owner.
Deliverables: one‑sheet spec, rollout checklist and a two‑week validation plan
Make three concrete outputs during the workshop: (1) a one‑sheet spec listing each canonical field, owner, exact validation rule, fallback value and SLA for fixes (e.g. owner must resolve within 48 hours); (2) a short rollout checklist to safely change fields and re-enable automations; (3) a two‑week validation plan with daily and weekly checks.
Rollout checklist (short): pause related automations or set them to audit-only; run the validation queries against recent records; fix the top 20 offenders manually; enable gated workflows that only run when the processing flag = ready; monitor for 48 hours; fully re-enable if error rate < agreed threshold.
Two‑week validation plan (practical): day 1–3 run daily spot checks of 20 new handoffs; days 4–7 reconcile source/campaign and owner counts; week 2 run a sample audit of 100 records across channels; if mismatch or failure rate > agreed threshold, pause automations and revert to fallback. Keep responsibilities simple: one owner for the whole plan (ops or head of sales) and one fallback reviewer.
If you want a starter one‑sheet and checklist to run straight away, Optira can share a blank template your team can fill in during the session.