How to Switch CRMs Without Sacrificing Your Sanity

So I have a lot of knowledge of using CRMs inside of my business. I also help entrepreneurs, creatives, photographers set up CRMs inside of their business. So I am coming at this from two different perspectives. And changing a CRM is not for the faint of heart. It is not that you wake up and you decide, oh, I would like to move from one CRM to the next. And all of a sudden, three days later, you are done.

I don't even care if you hire someone like me, that is not the timeline in which you switch CRMs. And so I do want to say though, as much planning as it may take to switch from one CRM to the next, it is not impossible, but I do want to encourage everyone to have a very good reason for switching a CRM inside of your business. It's, it's kind of like photographers when you're switching systems, because again, I have shot Sony, Canon, Fuji, and Nikon as a photographer.

And each time I bought a new camera, I bought new lenses, and then I ended up selling all of my old equipment. But those are pieces of equipment. It is not so simple when you are switching CRMs. Okay, so we are going to talk a little bit about what you should consider before you jump into a CRM switch. So first, I've already kind of mentioned this, but there is going to be a significant time investment if you are choosing to move from one CRM to the next.

And I absolutely recommend that you have an overlap between your two CRMs. So let's say that you decide on January 1st that you are going to start a subscription for a new CRM and you are going to start building out in that CRM. I would say it's going to take you a minimum of two weeks in order to get everything set up inside of your new CRM if you are going to do it yourself. That is two weeks of a lot of hard work in order to get. your new CRM setup.

But that doesn't mean that you can automatically turn your old CRM off and stop paying for it. You still need to figure out what to do for your currently in progress clients. Because if you have any clients that are on autopay, I highly do not recommend that you switch their systems so that you have to set up an autopay inside of a new CRM.

So it's going to take time for you to set up the new CRM and then you are going to have an overlap period where you are accepting new clients in your new CRM. You are probably going to move some of your old clients from the old CRM to the new CRM and start working on their project there. But there are going to be a select few projects where you are probably going to want to leave them in your current CRM and let the project run its course.

Okay. The second thing that I want to talk about in addition to the time investment is the features. Now we can all get shiny objects and syndrome. Sometimes we see that a CRM put out this one brand new feature that our CRM doesn't have and we're like, oh, so should I switch for that one feature? I almost never recommend that you switch from a CRM to another CRM just because they have released one feature. CRMs are constantly releasing new features.

So if you are trying to switch because a different CRM has this feature, I would honestly make sure that if there is nothing else wrong with your current CRM, that you are making sure that that is not in their planning, that they are going to release that anytime soon, because again, you would have spent significant time and money in order to migrate your business from one CRM to the next, only for you to realize that if you had just been a little patient, or waited a little longer that your

original CRM would get that feature as well. Now, this is not to say that if you have one of those CRMs where you feel like you have maximized all of the features that it has, and that by not having additional automations or additional forms or scheduling or whatever that feature is, if you feel like that is legitimately holding your business back.

Then that is a reason to switch CRMs, but just one single new feature, maybe even two or three, that is typically not a reason to switch from one CRM to the next. And the last item that I want to highlight is pricing because that is a hot button topic right now. If you are with a CRM and they have raised your prices and you are like, you know, that's too much for me, I want to look for a cheaper alternative. I am going to refer you back to the first thing that I want you to consider.

Yes, you will be paying more money for your current CRM long term, but is it actually going to be worth the savings when you compare it to the time investment? So if your new CRM is going to cost you 20 extra dollars a month and other than the price increase, you love your CRM, it works for your business, you feel comfortable using it.

I would really recommend that you not just immediately jump ship because of the increase of costs without considering if you can simply raise your prices in order to pay the additional fee. Now, of course, it depends on what kind of price increase we're talking about, but all things being equal. There is an actual cost associated with that time investment. It is time for you to move all of your assets over. It is time for you to learn another CRM.

It is time that you are going to be using two CRMs virtually side by side until you can finally let the other CRM go. So it is not as simple as saying, if I switch CRMs, I will save this many dollars per month. You do have to look at the bigger picture. Okay. Now, if you have considered all of those and you are still like Colie, I have made up my mind. I want to switch CRMs. These are going to be my three tips so that you can get organized before you make the switch.

Now the first one might seem a little weird. I want you to pull out a spreadsheet. I really wouldn't do this on a piece of paper, but if you want to write it down with a piece of paper you can, but I would get a spreadsheet or an Airtable hub or a click it. task list, whatever it is that you feel comfortable using. And I want you to create a very detailed list of all of your current CRM assets.

And when I say assets, I mean every single email template, every single form template, every single workflow, and every single package that you are currently offering inside of your CRM. Okay. I want you to make this detailed list inventory, if you will, of your assets, because I want you to know what each of these assets is and where it's located in your business.

Because when you actually begin setting up your new CRM, It is going to be helpful if you can come to this one master document, click on a link, it opens the email template, and you are basically copying and pasting it from one CRM to the next. You are going to have to modify the smart fields, but in general, this is going to be the most efficient way to get your assets copied from one CRM to the next.

And this is regardless if you are the one that's migrating or if you are hiring somebody to do it for you. Now, if you are going to hire someone, make sure that they are not going to do that for you as part of the process. Because I personally do that now because it makes it easier for me and my team to make sure that we have moved over the items that you need. The second thing that I want you to do when you have decided to move from one CRM to the next is you need to make a backup of your data.

And by data, I mean your current client list, all of their contact information, all of the invoices and sales and projects that you have worked with them on, as well as copies of their contracts. Now, how far back should you go? As far back as you have time for, I'm going to be honest. I tell most people minimum of two to three years. You should be getting that information. Especially if you have clients that come back often.

Now, Beyond that, you need to decide whether or not you think it's still helpful for you to download copies of all of the contracts. I will say one of the, one of the most difficult parts of changing CRMs is that there is no master download. There is no way for you to click a button and basically download everything out of a CRM. None of them are built this way. So we are talking about going into individual projects, downloading contracts as PDFs, downloading invoices as PDFs.

And hopefully your current CRM will allow you to export all of your financial data, including payments that your clients have made when their projects were in a CSV file. I hope that your current CRM allows you to do that. The third thing that I want you to do is I want you to start your trial account. No one should be making a decision to go from one CRM to the next CRM without actually trying out the CRM for yourself. It doesn't matter if I'm telling you what my recommendation is.

Going into a CRM is like holding a camera. It doesn't matter how good the camera is, if it feels weird in your hand and you don't understand the layout, you don't like the menus, you don't like where the buttons are, you are going to feel a certain kind of way about going into that CRM and working on your business every single day. Your CRM has to be a piece of software that you enjoy going into work. If you log in every day and you hate being in there.

It is going to make it hard to become a part of your business. All right, once you have all three of those things done, it is now time to start migrating and setting up your new CRM. So the first thing that you're going to want to do is connect all of your integrations. We're talking about your email accounts, your calendar accounts, your payment accounts, and any other tool like QuickBooks that your business may rely on that your new CRM has an integration for.

I highly recommend that you get all of these set up and that you make sure that they are working and verified before you move on to getting any other assets into your brand new CRM account. The second part is the most time heavy, and that is replicating and migrating all of your assets. Now, emails! are the one thing that it is going to be simple to copy and paste. Nothing else is going to be simple to copy and paste. You have to replicate the forms. You have to replicate the contracts.

You have to get your lead capture, modify all the questions, create your questionnaires. And when all of that is done, then you can start building workflows that you may or may not have had inside of your old CRM. Now, workflows and workflow steps and workflow triggers are not universal between CRMs. So, you may find that there are some workflow steps, actions and triggers, that you had in your current CRM that do not exist in your new CRM. You may find the opposite is true.

You may find that you had your workflow set up in a certain way in your current CRM, but that there is going to be a better and improved way to set them up inside your new CRM. Now, whether or not that is true, it's probably going to come in part four and part four is where you learn. your new CRM and how to optimize your new systems. So there's a couple of ways that you can learn a new CRM.

Almost all of the CRM companies, Dubsado, HoneyBook, Sprout Studio, 17 Hats, Tave, they all have a learning database. They all have a knowledge base somewhere where you can read articles, you can watch how to videos there or on YouTube, that will help you learn how to use your new CRM. The second part is you can consider hiring a strategist like me to help you do the migration, but either way you should be able to learn how your new CRM works and optimize it for your particular business.

The second thing that you're going to want to do is because you are investing all of this time and money, I do really encourage you to take a hard look at your client experience now to see if there are any opportunities to improve it. in the new system. So if it has been more than six months since you have evaluated your email templates while you are copying them into the new CRM, you might want to give them a facelift.

You might want to update the language, make sure that you don't need to write any new emails, include links to new blog posts and new pages on your website that you've created since you originally wrote that email. The second thing is I want you to take this opportunity to refresh your portfolio pictures. If you are a photographer, if you created your proposal or your booking workflow or your smart file a year and a half ago, you probably have better pictures now.

So use better pictures when you create your new forms so that you are giving your client experience a facelift at the same time that you are migrating into your new CRM. I want to make sure that everything in your new CRM reflects your brand voice and your current portfolio style. Last, I want you to test everything. You should test it as a fake client. You should have some of your buddies test it as fake clients. You should see every single email that goes out.

You should be looking at it in mobile and on a desktop to make sure that everything is good going forward. So, once again, I just want to remind you, I want no one to take the decision of moving from one CRM to another one lightly. Make sure that you are looking at everything for your business and these CRMs to ensure that if you do decide to move, that it is a good decision for you and your business going forward.

Now, if you would like any additional tips and tricks, I have a few blog posts linked in the show notes that will help you get my favorite CRMs set up in less than three hours. Alright, that's it for this episode. See you next time.