Organize CRM Contacts header graphic
Organize CRM Contacts header graphic

Migrating to a new CRM is an opportunity to revamp your contacts. Discover the best way to organize CRM contacts so you can thank yourself later.

Migrating CRM contacts is pretty easy if you don’t care about how reliable your data is for the SDR or whoever is utilizing that data from one platform to the next. Migrating CRM data becomes an incredibly painful experience if you have boatload of zombie contacts whose relationship history has not been clearly defined.

Any business owner knows that organization is a key ingredient to success. Migrating to a new CRM is like New Years – it’s the perfect time to start fresh. Committing to staying organized helps everyone stay on the same page, streamlines operations, and avoid costly mistakes. In fact, you’ll also be getting a better bang for your buck if you have a good system for utilizing your CRM properly.

So, your first step will be to organize CRM contacts with tags or labels.

What is tagging or labeling?

Creating tags is so easy – a bit too easy for many CRM platforms. With CRMs, please apply whatever minimalist expression you wish to use (‘less is more’, ‘keep things simple’) to your “tags” or “labels” used in PipeDrive CRM.

After a lot of over-complications, I reduced the number of tags down to 5: Client, Lead, Resource, Friend, and maybe “dead”.

This leads me to your second step to organize CRM contacts: I recommend developing a process for purging the dead completely from your CRM. But after clearing them out, what then?

View our blog about Capsule to understand the ins and outs of a very basic CRM.

What if my tagging is a hot mess?

I’ve got bad news for you buddy. Yeah, I’m speaking to you.

You most likely created or uploaded the company contacts and therefore know the history of almost every person and company in there. It is now up to you to do the sorting.

What do you mean ‘sort’?

For the third step to organize CRM contacts, you have two choices: 1) Export your company contacts into a CSV and make your edits there, or 2) Defer to the illustration above.

We have five tag categories as discussed above. The illustration clearly defines at the contact level whether they are a “lead” or “resource”.

I exported my company and related contacts to a CSV file 

Nice work. Get to it! You are now at the fourth and final step to organize CRM contacts: Starting tagging.  

Remember the ‘dead’ tag? You can save a copy of your CSV with or without ‘dead’ contacts for good record keeping. The importing of the CSV file to the new CRM platform should already have dead tags from each row. You can then sort tags by “dead” or any other tag you like. 

The argument for doing a zombie “thriller” dance 

Perhaps every contact is another golden opportunity to revive a prospective client engagement. Ultimately, you do you; import the dead contacts into your new CRM, and do the Thriller dance all night long. Find a priest or use some client engagement platform– think sales sequencing software , Mailchimp, or some CRM that checks off all these boxes and bundles these items into one suite. Just make sure that you are actively engaging your dead leads. 

How do I know what tagging looks like in my new CRM platform? 

Each CRM operates slightly or completely differently than the last. For example, your CRM may fight you on the import and matching of tagging to their system of labeling of contacts. Regardless, it is important to organize CRM contacts so you can have your cleaned–up version of your company contacts CSV for months and possibly years to come. 

Bonus Resources 

Want more CRM support? Check out our other articles to get all the answers you need. 

Migrating to a New Platform? Organize CRM Contacts in 4 Simple Steps Summary 

Any business owner knows that small changes can lead to big payoffs in efficiency and productivity. In the future, you’ll be grateful for making sure that your contacts are well-organized and labeled. If you need any support, contact us here!