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Interactive guide

Define What Your CRM Data Means

Your CRM can contain the right records and still give every team a different answer. This guide walks you through the definitions underneath the system: what each record represents, how people and companies move through a relationship, what evidence moves a deal, who owns a handoff, and which fields a report can trust.

You will build a Business Truth Map: one reviewable artifact connecting records, lifecycles, stages, handoffs, milestone dates, field meaning, and unresolved decisions. The lab saves your progress in your browser.

Start with a broken answer

One Business, Four Kinds of Records

Chapter 1 of 9 · 10 min

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The learning path

One person and one company run through the whole guide. Priya Shah at Acme Manufacturing, followed from the form fill to the renewal, because a definition argument is far easier to settle against a record than in the abstract.

The records and how they move

  1. 01One Business, Four Kinds of RecordsMap people, companies, transactions, and qualification work without flattening them into one status.10 min · exercise
  2. 02Define Leads and ContactsChoose the person-record model and preserve identity, matching, conversion, and reporting history.12 min · exercise
  3. 03Build the Person LifecycleDefine relationship stages while keeping consent, fit, employment, work, and ownership separate.15 min · exercise
  4. 04Build the Account LifecycleDefine target, prospect, customer, former-customer, recycle, and reactivation evidence.10 min · exercise
  5. 05Define Opportunity StagesCreate a transaction and advance it only when the stage evidence exists.12 min · exercise

Ownership, fields, and disagreement

  1. 06Assign Owners and HandoffsBuild acceptance, rejection, overdue, and exception paths with one accountable owner.12 min · exercise
  2. 07Define Important Fields and SourcesRecord meaning, writer, source, authority, freshness, lineage, dependencies, and intended use.12 min · exercise
  3. 08Resolve Conflicts and Open QuestionsTurn stakeholder disagreement into an approved decision or a safe temporary rule.12 min · exercise
  4. 09Capstone: Publish the Business Truth MapRun a fresh end-to-end trace, inspect ten validation checks, and create the approval record.15 min · exercise