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Understanding Model Match's CRM Data Model

Learn the difference between linked and manual records in the Model Match CRM, how Market Insights enrichment works, and which data updates automatically.

Understanding the Model Match CRM data model

Key concepts for understanding how data is organized in the Model Match CRM.

In this article:

  1. Records
  2. Object types: People and Companies
  3. Linked vs. manual records
  4. Lists
  5. Attributes: statuses, tags, and custom fields
  6. How it all fits together

To get the most out of the Model Match CRM, it helps to understand a few key concepts. Together, these form the CRM's data model.

A "data model" might sound technical, but it's really just a way of describing how your data is organized and how the pieces connect. If you've ever built a spreadsheet of recruiting prospects with columns for name, company, and volume, you've already modeled data.

The Model Match CRM has four main building blocks: records, object types, lists, and attributes. There's also one thing that sets Model Match apart from a traditional CRM: records can be linked to Market Insights, so production data stays fresh on its own.

Everything described below lives inside your workspace, which is your team's account. Your CRM data is only ever visible to members of your workspace.

Records

A record is a single person or company in your CRM. Think of it as one row in a spreadsheet. A record holds everything you know about that person or company: their status, contact info, custom field values, and a full activity history of notes, tasks, meetings, calls, and emails.

🧠 The most important thing to understand about records: a record exists on its own, independent of any list.

Being "in your CRM" and being "on a list" are two different things. A record can sit on several lists at once, or on none at all, and removing it from a list never deletes it from your CRM.

Object types: People and Companies

Every record belongs to one of two object types:

  • People: individual Loan Officers and Real Estate Agents.
  • Companies: Mortgage Companies and their Branches.

You'll see these reflected in the CRM navigation. The People page shows every person in your workspace's CRM, and the Companies page shows every company and branch. Lists are typed the same way: a list is either a People list or a Companies list.

There's no generic "contact" type in Model Match. Because the CRM is purpose-built for mortgage recruiting, every person is either a Loan Officer or a Real Estate Agent, and every company record is a Mortgage Company or a Branch.

Linked vs. manual records

This is where the Model Match CRM differs from a typical CRM. Every record is one of two flavors:

  • Linked records (green sparkle icon) are matched to an entity in Market Insights, Model Match's mortgage production database. Linked records are automatically enriched with production data such as loan volume, units, purchase/refi mix, and team size, and that data refreshes on its own. You never have to update a linked record's production numbers by hand.
  • Manual records (gray sparkle icon) were created by hand or imported without a match. They work like records in any CRM, but show no production data until you link them.

You can link a manual record to Market Insights at any time, and linking never disturbs your work. All of your notes, tasks, and edits stay exactly as they were.

💡 One rule to remember: your edits always win. Once you've edited a field on a record, such as a phone number, email, or title, Model Match will never overwrite it automatically. When Market Insights finds new contact info, you'll be asked to review and approve the changes before anything is applied.

Lists

A list is a named grouping of records, for example "Q3 LO Outreach" or "Charlotte Branch Targets." Lists are how you organize records around a recruiting effort or workflow.

A few things to know about lists:

  • Every list is typed as People or Companies when it's created, and only holds records of that type.
  • A record can belong to many lists at once, or none. The record itself is shared: the same notes, tasks, and history follow it everywhere.
  • Each list has its own privacy setting (Private, Everyone in the workspace, or Specific people) which controls who can see the list and its records.

🛑 Deleting a list never deletes its records. The list is just the grouping; the records stay in your CRM.

Lists can also carry their own list-scoped attributes (statuses, tags, and custom fields), which brings us to the last building block.

Attributes: statuses, tags, and custom fields

Attributes describe the information stored on your records, the equivalent of column headers in a spreadsheet. The Model Match CRM has three kinds you can shape yourself:

  • Statuses track where a record is in your pipeline. Every record has a status; the defaults are New, Contacted, Engaged, Won, and Lost. A list can define its own custom status set (with colors), which applies whenever you're viewing records inside that list.
  • Tags are colored labels for flexible categorization. Tags are scoped to a list, so each list has its own tag vocabulary.
  • Custom fields let you store any information the built-in fields don't cover: text, numbers, currency, dates, dropdowns, ratings, checkboxes, URLs, and more. Custom fields come in two scopes:
    • Object-scoped fields apply to all People (or all Companies) across your workspace.
    • List-scoped fields apply only to the members of one list.

💡 If you find yourself building the same set of statuses, tags, and custom fields for every new list, attribute templates let you save that structure once and apply it to any new list of the same type.

How it all fits together

Putting it together, the mental model looks like this:

  • Your workspace contains all of your CRM data.
  • Records (People or Companies) are the atoms. Each has its own status, owner, contact info, attributes, and a single activity timeline shared by everyone who can see it.
  • Lists are optional groupings of records, each with its own privacy settings and optional list-scoped attributes.
  • Market Insights enriches linked records automatically. Production data refreshes on its own, while your edits are always protected.

Two supporting concepts you'll see throughout the CRM:

  • Every record has an Owner, the teammate currently working it. Ownership is a working assignment used for filtering (like the "My contacts" tab) and routing; it doesn't control who can see the record.
  • Every record has one activity timeline, a running history of notes, tasks, meetings, calls, emails, and system events, shared by everyone with access to the record.

Up next

Now that you know the building blocks, dive deeper into linked vs. manual records and creating and organizing lists.