Is Your Voiceover CRM a Junkyard?

Tom Dheere
2 days ago
4 min read

Back in 1995, my voiceover CRM strategy was an index card box.

index cards inside a white, metallic drawer

It was clean. It was simple. It worked.

Fast forward to today, and my modern voiceover CRM strategy had devolved into a digital junkyard. Over three decades in this industry will do that, you know. You bounce from index cards to spreadsheets to various CRMs, and before you know it, your data is a hot mess.

Until recently, my contacts were spread out across Wix, Cloze, spreadsheets, and Wave Apps. None of these systems talked to each other. I had thousands of names floating around with zero cohesion. It makes Direct Marketing campaigns almost impossible.

If your contact list is a junkpile, you don't have a voiceover CRM. You have a ticking time bomb.

How 30 Years of Data Chaos Threatened My Business Domain

The realization hit me when I prepared to move my data into HubSpot for a new email campaign. I had 1,678 contacts sitting in my Gmail account.

It was a wreck, a mix of potential clients, active clients, past clients, VO Strategist students, industry friends, and more. Even worse, Gmail has a hidden junk drawer called the "Other Contacts" folder. That folder held an additional 3,783 contacts from decades past.

If you put an ancient, unverified list of contacts inside a new CRM, your bounce rates and spam complaints will skyrocket. When that happens, internet service providers notice. Google or your email host could freeze your account. Trying to build a business with a blacklisted domain is like trying to audition with a busted microphone.

CRM maintenance is not just about staying organized. It's critical to protect your business.

The Blueprint for an Voiceover CRM Strategy

To fix this, I implemented three rules to restore order to my CRM galaxy...

Rule 1: Isolate Your Target Audiences

I run two operations: a B2B voice actor business (The H Is Silent) and a B2C coaching business (the VO Strategist). They can't live in the same sandbox. The good news is that my coaching student database is in Wix. It won't touch my voice talent sales pipeline so I'm good there.

Rule 2: Trust Your Invoices, Not Your Inbox

Your accounting software is your source of truth. I went into Wave Apps and pulled the data for my paying voice over customers since 2020 (that's when I started using it).

Rule 3: Use Guardrails

Before a single contact was allowed anywhere near my new CRM, I ran the lists through DeBounce. It filters out bad emails before you ever hit send.

Going Nuclear with the Clean Slate

Once I identified the real data, I did something terrifying. I wired all 1,678 Google Contacts.

Then, I imported the "debounced" contacts back into it.

I also decided to keep my Wix CRM disconnected from HubSpot. Why? Because websites are spam magnets. By keeping them separate, my cleaned up database won't get polluted.

Remember my silly farmer analogy? You need fertile soil to grow your business. If your database is full of potentially toxic, unverified data, you are poisoning your own field. More data does not equal more value. A database of 500 hyper-focused, deliverable voice seekers is infinitely more valuable than thousands of random entries that threaten your domain health. Do not fear the clean slate.

Thanks for Reading!

Managing the technical parts of your business can feel overwhelming. If you suspect your data is a mess, or your marketing strategy is stuck in legacy thinking, we can map out a clear path forward.

Are you currently using a dedicated CRM to track your voice seekers, or are you still running your business out of a handful of spreadsheets?

If you're tired of guessing and want a professional audit of your business practices, let's look at the numbers. together Sign up for a comprehensive 60-Minute Voice Over Business Diagnostic to establish your own clean slate.

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