CRM implementation steps for a small business, start to finish

1. Goal and owner: the five decisions above, written down.
2. Account and basics: the company's name, address, tax number and the defaults its documents use.
3. Bringing the data over: the existing customer list, cleaned and imported from CSV.
4. Sales pipeline: the stages as deals really move at your company.
5. Access: who sees what and who may change it.
6. Email: connecting the company mailbox, so mail lands on the customer.
7. Team: one short session together and one rule everybody keeps.
8. A check after a month: what works, what does not, and what you switch on next.

In most small companies the customers live in a spreadsheet or in an old program's export. Tidy it before you import: one row per person, one header row, separate columns for first and last name, duplicate rows merged. Then save it as UTF-8 CSV, or accented letters turn into question marks.

Do not bring everything: somebody who has not been a customer for five years, and whom you have no legal basis to keep, need not go into the CRM. The spreadsheet-to-CRM guide covers the steps and the pitfalls in detail.

• From a spreadsheet to a CRM, step by step
• CSV import
• Spreadsheet or CRM: when is it time to switch?

The pipeline's stages should be the ones that really happen at your company, for example: enquiry, site visit, quote sent, negotiation, won or lost. Five to seven stages are enough; a stage no deal ever sits in is one too many. Stages can be renamed later, so it need not be perfect the first time.

Access has two questions: what someone may do (whether they may issue an invoice, say), and which customers they see. It matters at three people already, because a leaving colleague can take the whole customer list along. Customers with no owner stay visible to everybody, so a new enquiry is not lost.

• How do I set up a sales pipeline?
• How do I let a colleague see only their own customers?
• Sales pipeline

With one rule everybody understands: what is not in the CRM did not happen. If you spoke to a customer, it goes on the contact's timeline; if they need a call back, it becomes a task; if they asked for a quote, it becomes a deal. Run the weekly meeting from the CRM, not from a separate sheet: if the manager asks from there, the team writes there.

• In the first week move only the daily work over: customers, calls, tasks.
• Make the old spreadsheet read-only on a set day, so there are not two versions of the truth.
• Let every question go to one person, and put the answers in one shared note.

After a month, look at three things. Does every new enquiry get into the CRM, or does someone still write in their own notebook? Does every open deal have a next step, or are many sitting in the same place for weeks? And is the weekly meeting run from the CRM? If all three are yes, the rollout has happened, and the next area can follow, such as quotes or the newsletter.

After registering, a setup wizard asks three things: the company's details and the defaults its documents use, which modules you want, then inviting colleagues. It can be skipped and finished later. One switch fills the workspace with example data so the team can try it out; clearing it removes only the examples, and what you recorded meanwhile stays.

CSV import, contacts, companies, deals, tasks, the internal calendar and mailboxes are part of the free plan (Users: 3, Contacts: 2,000, Emails / month: 500, Storage: 1 GB). Roles and record-level visibility can be set, and paid modules can each be tried for 3 days.

• Switching every module on on day one: the team gets lost in the menu.
• Adding twenty custom fields nobody fills in.
• Keeping the old spreadsheet going in parallel.
• Starting without an owner, hoping everybody works it out alone.
• Sending newsletters to imported addresses without being able to show consent.