There’s a wealth of information in your customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation systems. Yet, myths based on anecdotal experiences prevent organizations from getting full value from these systems. To solve this problem, identify tribal truths, get the facts, and publicly publish your findings.

 As the leader of marketing automation for a global manufacturing company, I often heard, “those are junk leads; I don’t want the see them.” The global customer service director told me that hundreds of leads generated monthly were of not value to the company.  To understand more, I asked what made them junk. The global customer service director told me – and anyone who’d listen – the overwhelming majority of leads were job seekers and people looking for MSDS (material safety data sheet) documentation.

Rather than argue, I went to Salesforce, got the facts, shared them with the global customer service director and published them on a company-wide blog (along with this image) along with #GetTheFacts.  

The reality is that only 1% of all leads were job seekers and 2% of all leads were looking for MSDS sheets. This tiny bit of investigation put the job/MSDS seeker myth to bed and launched a more fact-based collaborative relationship among customer service, marketing and IT.

 #GetTheFacts became a popular part of the company blog. Requests for investigations, reports and training came in from around the globe. By challenging this one myth, we created a culture of curiosity that improved our understanding of leads, customers and Salesforce.

 Identify the myth/tribal truth, investigate it and share your findings.