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CRM hygiene checklist for Founders

The crm hygiene checklist adapted for founders. Body, role-specific tweaks, common pitfalls, and how to run it with Strawberry.

This is the crm hygiene checklist adapted for founders. It exists because spending too much time on admin, and the checklist below is the shape that actually survives contact with how founders work day to day.

What this checklist is for

Purpose: keep your CRM accurate, deduplicated, and useful as a source of truth instead of a graveyard. For founders specifically, the value is that it turns a recurring admin task into a 5-minute repeatable artifact. This isn't a generic template - the items below are tuned for founders and the tools they actually live in.

The crm hygiene checklist (checklist)

  • Duplicate records sweep (same person across multiple companies, same company with email variants)
  • Owner re-assignment (people without an owner, stale owners, off-team owners)
  • Stage hygiene (deals stuck >30 days, lost without debrief, won without close date)
  • Contact freshness (last touch >90 days, missing role/title, invalid email)
  • Custom field discipline (required fields empty, free-text where picklist exists)

Adjustments for founders

founders typically live in Gmail, Google Sheets, Notion, Slack. That changes how this checklist runs:

  • Pull the inputs from the apps founders actually use, not generic SaaS exports.
  • Anchor on recent activity in the prospect or company - it's the highest-signal field for this role.
  • Skip items that don't apply to your weekly cadence; this is a starting shape, not a contract.

The most common way to mess this up

Running CRM hygiene once a quarter as a big cleanup project - it should be a weekly 15-minute sweep instead. For founders, this shows up as spending the saved time on more admin instead of higher-leverage work. Build the checklist into your week, not as a one-off.

How Strawberry runs this checklist

Strawberry can run the full hygiene sweep against your CRM, surface the diff, and queue the changes as drafts you approve - so the data stays clean without becoming someone's full-time job. For founders, Strawberry uses your live tabs and connected apps - so the checklist is filled with your real context, not a placeholder.

When to use this, when to skip

Use this checklist when the work recurs (weekly, per-prospect, per-meeting). Skip it when the situation is novel and judgment-heavy - the checklist is a baseline, not a substitute for thinking.

Caveats

Strawberry holds back on sending email, updating CRM records, or changing shared systems until a human approves the action. Treat the agent as a fast first-draft author, not an autopilot.

CRM hygiene checklist

1 duplicate records sweep

Step 1

duplicate records sweep (same person across multiple companies, same company with email variants)

2 owner re-assignment

Step 2

owner re-assignment (people without an owner, stale owners, off-team owners)

3 stage hygiene

Step 3

stage hygiene (deals stuck >30 days, lost without debrief, won without close date)

4 contact freshness

Step 4

contact freshness (last touch >90 days, missing role/title, invalid email)

5 custom field discipline

Step 5

custom field discipline (required fields empty, free-text where picklist exists)

FAQ

How long does this checklist take to fill out?

For founders, a first pass runs in 10-20 minutes. With Strawberry doing the data pulls, it drops to 2-5 minutes per artifact.

Can I customise this for my team?

Yes - the shape above is a starting point. Strip items that don't apply, add items that match your weekly cadence.

What is the biggest mistake?

Running CRM hygiene once a quarter as a big cleanup project - it should be a weekly 15-minute sweep instead.

Run the crm hygiene checklist in 5 minutes with Strawberry

  1. Open the source you want to verify

    Pull up the raw list in Gmail or paste it into the Strawberry chat field. For founders this is usually 20-80 rows, not a full enrichment dump.

  2. Ask Strawberry to run the checklist line by line

    Use the paste-ready prompt below. Strawberry opens the relevant tabs (Gmail, Google Sheets, Notion), runs each check, and writes findings into a structured table you can keep.

  3. Resolve the obvious fails first

    Bounced emails, role-bot patterns (info@, sales@), and duplicates against a CRM are the cheap wins. Strawberry flags these in seconds and proposes a clean version.

  4. Have Strawberry write the fixes back

    Once you approve the corrections, Strawberry updates the rows in a CRM or your sheet. It does not push changes without your approval - this is a guardrail, not a limitation.

  5. Save the run as a routine if you do it weekly

    founders who run this checklist every Monday should save the workflow as a Strawberry routine. The next run is one click and the agent uses the same prompt with fresh data.

Paste-ready prompt for founders

You are helping a founder run the crm hygiene checklist.

Inputs:
- A list pulled from Gmail
- Our ICP definition (ask me if unclear)

For each row, run these checks and return a table:
- duplicate records sweep (same person across multiple companies, same company with email variants)
- owner re-assignment (people without an owner, stale owners, off-team owners)
- stage hygiene (deals stuck >30 days, lost without debrief, won without close date)
- contact freshness (last touch >90 days, missing role/title, invalid email)
- custom field discipline (required fields empty, free-text where picklist exists)

Then write a short summary at the top: how many passed, which checks were the top failure reasons, and a clean version of the list with only the rows that pass every check.

Do not send anything or update any system. Stop after the table and wait for me to review.

Paste this into Strawberry's chat field. Strawberry will open the source list, run the checks, and write the table back. No sends, no auto-writes.

When this is NOT a fit

Use a different workflow if you only have a handful of rows to check (under 10). At that point the checklist is overkill - founders can eyeball them faster than spinning up an agent. The crm hygiene checklist earns its keep at 20+ rows or when you're going to repeat the run weekly.

Skip it entirely if the list came from a trusted source you already validate at intake (an inbound form with double opt-in, for instance). Running it again is busywork.

3 mistakes to avoid

  1. Running CRM hygiene once a quarter as a big cleanup project - it should be a weekly 15-minute sweep instead. This is the most common failure for founders. Strawberry catches it but only if you actually run the dedup step against the live system, not a stale export.
  2. Treating the agent as autopilot. founders who let Strawberry send or write back without review end up with worse data than they started with. The point of the checklist is the review, not the run.
  3. Anything that requires a hand-off to a dedicated team the founder does not have yet. No checklist saves you from this. If the inputs are bad, no amount of verification turns them into something useful.

Honest tradeoff

The crm hygiene checklist adds 5-10 minutes to every list. That's the cost. The benefit is the rows that hit send are cleaner, your domain reputation stays intact, and you stop emailing customers you already work with. For founders sending more than one list a week, the math is obvious. For one-off lists, ask whether the volume justifies the discipline.

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