Monday starts with a familiar job: turn last week's event list into people your team can follow up with. Most rows are straightforward. Then one complete-looking contact stops you. The event list shows a new role, the CRM holds an old work address, and a call note says the person has changed companies.
You should not have to choose between importing everything and checking every row by hand. The useful outcome is simpler: let the clear records move, bring the few consequential conflicts to you, and preserve enough context to correct a mistake later.
Aim for a usable list, not a spotless one
A clean spreadsheet is not the job you are trying to finish. You need a dependable audience for research, follow-up or outreach. That means knowing who is ready for the next step and why anyone was held back.
Automatically choosing the newest value can erase useful history. Automatically merging similar records can join two different people. Automatically rejecting anything uncertain leaves good opportunities stranded. The easiest workflow does not force one rule across all three situations.
A useful list can be incomplete and still be safe to use. Its uncertainty is contained, visible and kept away from the people you are ready to contact.
Move the clear rows; isolate the uncertain ones
Every record should end with an outcome you can understand:
- Match: use the customer record you already trust.
- Add: create a new person or company from clear evidence.
- Update: add the new role or address without losing useful history.
- Hold: ask for a decision because the conflict could change who you contact.
The held records become a short work list, not a reason to stop the import. You can resolve the important exceptions while the rest of the audience is ready for its next step.
Make every change easy to check and correct
Customer information changes because the world changes. People move, companies rename themselves and better evidence arrives. A dependable process expects correction instead of treating it as failure.
Keep the source close to the working record. If a teammate spots the wrong affiliation, they should be able to correct that decision without rebuilding the list. When the same person appears in a later file, the earlier decision should help rather than create the same question again.
The easiest place to begin
Choose one list you already receive regularly. Decide which details genuinely identify a person or company, which additions are harmless, and which conflicts would make you contact the wrong person. Preview those outcomes before anything reaches your sales workflow.
That is the customer outcome guiding Cady's intake work: turn a messy source into a list you can act on, without hiding the decisions that deserve you. From there, the next job is sending the intended message safely. Read how to send the right message once, or follow the work on our public roadmap.