Almost every small business that moves to a CRM starts from a spreadsheet. Usually it is one Excel file on the office computer, or a Google Sheet shared with two salespeople, with a history that shows: columns added in 2023 and never filled, three different ways of writing dates, and a colour code only the owner understands.
That is fine. The sheet did its job. The move is mostly about deciding what to bring, cleaning it, and making a clean break. If you are still deciding whether you need a CRM at all, start with what CRM software actually does.
Signs the spreadsheet has done its job
You do not need to move just because CRMs exist. Move when you notice these:
- Nobody is reminded of anything. The sheet has a “next call” column, but someone has to sort it every morning, and on busy days nobody does.
- Two people edit at once and overwrite each other, or a salesperson keeps a private copy.
- IndiaMART and JustDial leads are retyped into the sheet, late or not at all.
- You cannot answer simple questions — how many leads came from JustDial this quarter and how many became jobs — without an hour of filtering.
- It does not work on a phone in the way your team actually uses phones: standing up, between jobs.
Step 1: make a copy and freeze the original
Before touching anything, save a copy called something like “Leads archive — do not edit”. You will clean the copy. The original stays as it is, forever, so nothing is ever truly lost.
Step 2: decide what to bring
This is the step people skip, and it is the most important. A CRM stuffed with five years of dead leads is harder to use than an empty one, because the live leads are buried.
| Rows | Bring them? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Open leads with activity in the last 3–6 months | Yes | These are your pipeline |
| Customers who have bought | Yes | Repeat work, AMCs, referrals |
| Leads that said “later” with a real date | Yes, with that date as the next follow-up | They asked you to call back |
| Lost or cold leads older than a year | No — leave in the archive | Clutter; you can still search the archive |
| Rows with no phone number | No | Nothing to act on |
| Test rows, supplier contacts, staff numbers | No | Not leads |
Step 3: clean the columns
Work column by column. Delete any column that nobody has filled consistently; you will not start filling it now.
Phone numbers
The phone number is usually how a CRM spots duplicates, so this column matters most.
- Format the column as Text before anything else, so Excel does not turn 9876543210 into 9.88E+09.
- Pick one format — ten digits, or +91 followed by ten digits — and stick to it.
- Remove spaces, dashes and brackets. Find and replace does it in seconds.
- Where a cell has two numbers (“98xxx / 97xxx”), move the second one into its own “alternate phone” column.
Names
One column, the name you would say on the phone. “Mr. Patil (Sai Hardware)” is better split into name “Patil” and a company or note “Sai Hardware”.
Source
Standardise to a short fixed list, because conversion by source is only as good as this column: IndiaMART, JustDial, Website, WhatsApp, Phone call, Referral. “IM”, “indiamart”, “India Mart” and “IndiaMart lead” all become “IndiaMART”. If you do not know the source for old rows, leave it blank rather than guessing — a wrong source spoils your source report later.
Requirement and value
Requirement is one line of plain text. Value is a number in rupees, with no ₹ sign, no commas and no “approx”. “₹1.2L approx” becomes 120000.
Status and dates
Map your old statuses to the CRM’s stages. “Hot”, “Warm” and “Pending” usually all mean “Contacted” or “Quotation”; decide once and apply it. Convert all dates to one format, and check a few by eye — Excel loves to swap day and month.
The colour code
Colours do not survive a CSV. If green meant “quotation sent”, add a column saying so before you save.
Step 4: save as CSV and check it
- Excel: File → Save As → “CSV UTF-8 (Comma delimited)”. UTF-8 keeps names in Marathi, Hindi or other scripts intact.
- Google Sheets: File → Download → Comma-separated values (.csv). Only the current tab is downloaded.
Open the CSV in Notepad or any text editor, not Excel, and look at the first ten rows. Are the phone numbers whole? Are commas inside a requirement (“cameras, DVR, cabling”) wrapped in quotes? If so, you are ready.
Step 5: import a small batch first
Import twenty rows. Open a few of them in the CRM and check that the name, number, source and value landed in the right fields. Fix the mapping or the file, then import the rest. It is much easier to delete twenty bad records than two thousand.
Step 6: make the clean break
From the day of the import, every new enquiry goes into the CRM and nowhere else — including the ones from IndiaMART, JustDial and WhatsApp, as described in managing all your leads in one place. The old sheet becomes read-only. Tell the team, and on the first few mornings check that nothing new has crept into the sheet. Two live lists is the most common way a migration quietly fails.
A worked example
Say you run a solar installation business in Nagpur with a Google Sheet of about 1,400 rows going back four years. After the copy and a sort by date:
- About 180 rows are leads touched in the last six months that are not yet won or lost. These come across as open leads.
- About 300 rows are customers with installations done. These come across as customers, with GSTIN where you have it.
- Around 40 said “after monsoon” or “next year”. They come across with a follow-up date set to that month.
- The remaining 900-odd — cold, lost, duplicates, no number — stay in the archive.
Cleaning takes one afternoon: phone column to text, sources merged from eleven spellings to five, values turned into plain numbers, an extra column added for what the yellow highlighting meant. A 20-row test import catches that the “Area” column was mapped to the wrong field. The full import follows, and the CRM starts life with about 520 useful records instead of 1,400 mixed ones.
Importing into Enkay CRM
Enkay CRM, from Enkay Technologies, imports CSV files up to 2 MB and provides templates with the expected columns, so you can paste your cleaned data into the template rather than guessing at field names. Import is on the Business plan (new signups get 90 days of Business features free, which is enough for a migration). Export to CSV works on every plan, so your data can always come back out. On a lead, the phone number is the only required field. If the same number appears on more than one lead, the lead page shows the others and you can merge them in one click. See pricing for plan details.
Whatever CRM you choose, the order is the same: copy, decide, clean, CSV, test, break. The software part takes minutes. The thinking is what makes the new list worth opening.
Frequently asked questions
Can I import an Excel file directly into a CRM?
Some CRMs accept .xlsx files, but many, including Enkay CRM, take CSV. In Excel use File → Save As → CSV UTF-8; in Google Sheets use File → Download → Comma-separated values. Save a copy of the original first, because CSV keeps only one sheet and drops formatting.
What happens to my phone numbers when I save as CSV?
Excel sometimes turns long numbers into scientific notation (9.88E+09) or drops a leading zero or +91. Format the phone column as Text before saving, and open the CSV in a text editor to check a few rows before importing.
Should I import all my old leads?
Usually not. Import open leads and all customers. Old leads that were lost or went cold more than a year ago are better kept in the archived spreadsheet, where you can still search them if a number calls back.
Can I keep using the spreadsheet alongside the CRM?
Not for the same leads. Two lists means two truths, and within a week nobody knows which is current. Keep the old sheet read-only as an archive and add every new enquiry to the CRM only.
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