CRM hygiene: a weekly 15-minute routine that keeps your contacts useful

CRM hygiene is a short, regular habit: fifteen minutes once a week to clear what is waiting, merge duplicates, fill the gaps that matter, close or reschedule stale tasks, and tidy how you tagged the people you met. Done weekly, it keeps your CRM useful for its one real job, which is telling you who to talk to next and why. This post gives you the routine minute by minute, the fields worth caring about, and a short UK GDPR note on what to delete.

Why a weekly routine beats a big clean-up

Most CRMs decay the same way. A few duplicates from an event, a few contacts with no company, a few follow-up tasks that slipped past their date. None of it is a problem on its own. After three months, though, you stop trusting the overdue list, so you stop opening it, so more slips.

A fixed weekly slot breaks that loop. Friday afternoon or Monday morning both work; what matters is that it is the same slot, short, and in your calendar as a recurring event.

What "clean" means for a networking CRM

You do not need every field filled. For people you meet, a record is in good shape when it has:

• A name and a way to reach them: an email, a phone number or a LinkedIn URL.
• A company, linked as a company record rather than typed into a note.
• How you met and where, such as "Conference, SaaStock London".
• One line of context: why this person matters.
• A next step or a deliberate "none": an open follow-up task, or a decision that no follow-up is needed.

Anything more is a bonus. The routine below checks exactly those five things.

The 15-minute routine

Minutes 0 to 3: clear the inbox of captures

Start with whatever came in this week and is not finished. If you capture with Shmor, send pending to the bot: it lists up to 10 people who still need an answer about how you met or a follow-up, each with its buttons. Tap through them.

If you use another capture method, look at people created in the last seven days and check each has the five things above.

Minutes 3 to 6: merge duplicates

Duplicates usually come from the same person captured twice: once from a badge and once from their email, or with a nickname ("Alex" and "Alexandra"). To find them:

• sort people by surname, then company, and scan for pairs;
• search for this week's event name and look for repeated names;
• check companies for near-identical names ("Northwind", "Northwind Ltd", "Northwind Analytics").

Then merge:

• HubSpot blocks a second contact with the same email and has a merge feature for the rest.¹²
• Attio lets you merge two person or company records from a record page.³
• ShmorCRM has no merge button. Copy anything useful onto the record you are keeping, then delete the other.

Prevention saves more time than merging. Shmor looks for an existing person by email, then LinkedIn URL, then name and company before creating anyone, and finds companies by web domain, then name, so the same person captured twice is updated rather than duplicated.

Minutes 6 to 9: fill the fields that matter

Filter for people missing a company, an email or how you met. Fix the ones you can in seconds, and leave the rest. Do not research everyone; a record with a name, a company and a reason is enough to act on.

In ShmorCRM, the Still to ask filter on the People tab shows people with an open question. In Attio and HubSpot, Shmor adds a Needs info field you can filter on.

Minutes 9 to 12: deal with stale tasks

Open your overdue follow-ups. For each one, make one of four decisions, and make it now:

1. Do it: if it takes under two minutes, send the message.
2. Reschedule it: to a specific date, with a reason ("after their funding round closes").
3. Change it: the next step is different now; rewrite the task.
4. Close it: the moment has passed. Mark it done and add a one-line note on why.

A task that has been rescheduled three times is usually a close. In ShmorCRM, the Tasks tab shows open, overdue and done; in Attio and HubSpot, open your task list and sort or filter by due date.

Minutes 12 to 15: tag how you met, and close loops

Two last checks:

• How you met. Make sure every new person has it. Over time, "Met via" (Networking event, Conference, Intro, Inbound, Online or Other) and "Met at" tell you which events and introducers bring you the people who matter, which is the best evidence you have for deciding where to spend next quarter's evenings.
• Closed loops. Did anyone this week reply, decline, or go quiet after your final nudge? Note the outcome on the record, so next month you do not chase someone who already said no.

That is the routine. Fifteen minutes, then stop.

Monthly: five extra minutes on old records

Once a month, sort people by last activity and look at the oldest. For each, ask: is there still a reason to keep this? If you have no relationship, no plan to get in touch and no business reason, delete it.

This keeps your CRM smaller and more useful, and it is also how UK GDPR expects personal data to be handled.

A UK GDPR note on keeping contacts

This is general information, not legal advice.

• Lawful basis. For the people you meet and follow up with, businesses commonly rely on legitimate interests. That means the use should be one the person would reasonably expect, such as following up on a conversation you had, and you should be able to explain why it is necessary.⁴
• Keep only what you need. The data minimisation principle says hold what is adequate and relevant for your purpose, and no more.⁵ A job title and how you met: yes. Their home address or opinions on their colleagues: no.
• Keep it accurate. The accuracy principle expects you to correct or delete information you know is wrong.⁶ The weekly routine is a practical way to do that.
• Do not keep it for ever. The storage limitation principle says you should not keep personal data longer than you need it, and expects you to set and justify how long that is.⁷ A rule such as "review anyone with no contact for 24 months" is easy to apply in the monthly pass.
• People can ask what you hold. Anyone in your CRM can make a subject access request, so write notes you would be comfortable for them to read.⁸
• Marketing is separate. Adding networking contacts to a newsletter is electronic marketing, which has its own rules under PECR.

ShmorCRM has an auto-delete setting for records that have not been updated: keep until deleted, or remove after 6, 12 or 24 months. That puts the storage limitation part on autopilot.

How Shmor helps

Most hygiene problems start at capture: a contact typed in a hurry, without a company, a reason or a follow-up. Shmor makes the clean version the default. You send a screenshot, card photo, voice note or line of text to Shmor on Telegram, or forward an email, and it:

• finds the existing person and company before creating anything, so duplicates are rarer;
• sets Met via and Met at, and keeps the first meeting rather than overwriting it;
• adds a note with your context and creates a follow-up task;
• asks how you met and whether to follow up when you did not say, and keeps a pending list until you answer.

It works with ShmorCRM, the micro-CRM built in, or with Attio or HubSpot. See setting follow-up tasks from a chat message to get the task side right, and what to write in your notes after meeting someone for the context.