Required fields are a tax, so charge only for what drives a decision
Required fields are a tax, so charge only for what drives a decision
Every required field is a small tax on every deal, paid by the rep who has to fill it and by the manager who has to chase the gaps. Configure too many and reps either invent values to get past the form or abandon the hub entirely. The instinct to capture everything "in case we need it later" is exactly how a clean hub turns into a graveyard of half-filled records.
So flip the question. Do not ask "what would be nice to know". Ask "what fact changes a decision we actually make". Deal amount, close date, stage, owner and the next step drive forecasting and follow-up, so they earn their place. Lead source earns its place if you genuinely act on channel performance. A speculative field nobody reports on is pure cost.
Tie field requirements to stages, not to the whole pipeline. You do not need a signed-contract value when a deal first appears, but you absolutely need it before the deal can reach the closed-won stage. Stage-gated required fields capture the right data at the moment it actually exists, instead of forcing reps to guess on day one and never correct it.
Watch the difference between a property the rep types and a property the system can derive. Days in stage, last activity date and deal age should be calculated automatically, never hand-entered. Manual fields that a tool could compute are wasted keystrokes and a guaranteed source of stale, wrong data. Automate every fact the system already knows.
The honest signal that you have the field set right is that the manager almost never has to chase a rep to "fill in the CRM". If data hygiene is a recurring nag, you are taxing the team for data you are not using. Cut fields until the hygiene problem disappears, then add back only what a real report demands.
INTERVIEW EWOUD: What is your minimum required-field set for a B2B deal, and which field do clients always want to add that you talk them out of? Any rule of thumb for how many is too many?