Importing Previous Deals from a Spreadsheet

1. Why Import Past Deals?

1. Full Historical Context: Having your legacy deals in HubSpot means you can reference past project scopes, close dates, or revenues all in one place.
2. Better Reporting: HubSpot’s analytics let you see trends over time—like which services sold best or your win rate. Including old data enhances accuracy.
3. One Central Platform: With all deals consolidated, you avoid searching multiple tools or spreadsheets to see what happened two years ago.

2. Preparing Your Spreadsheet

Before importing, you need a CSV or Excel file with each deal in a separate row. The columns represent deal properties (fields). Here’s a recommended list of columns:

2.1 Recommended Column Headings

1. Deal Name
   • A short, descriptive title of the deal (e.g., “XYZ Corp – Strategic Planning”).
   • If you didn’t keep a name historically, create one that’s consistent.
2. Deal Stage
   • If the deal is completed, you’d put “Closed Won” or “Closed Lost” (or a custom final stage in your pipeline).
   • For old deals, you might store them at whatever final stage they ended up in.
3. Pipeline
   • If you have multiple pipelines in HubSpot (e.g., “Consulting Projects” vs. “Coaching”), specify which pipeline the deal belongs to.
   • If you only have one pipeline, you can omit this column or leave it consistent for all rows.
4. Amount
   • The total value of the deal in your currency (e.g., “10000” for $10,000).
   • If you’re uncertain of exact amounts for older deals, estimate or leave blank.
5. Close Date
   • When the deal was finalized or completed (YYYY-MM-DD format usually works best).
   • For lost deals, you can use the date you officially marked it lost or discovered you didn’t get the work.
6. Create Date (Optional)
   • When the deal was originally opened.
   • If you track how long it took to close, you may want to preserve this date.
7. Deal Owner
   • The user in HubSpot who managed the deal (your name or your assistant’s name).
   • Must match exactly how the user is named in HubSpot. If you’re a solo consultant, just put your own name.
8. Associated Company
   • The exact company name as recognized in HubSpot. If the company record doesn’t exist yet, HubSpot can create it during import, but be careful to use consistent naming (e.g., “ACME Corp” vs. “Acme Corporation”).
9. Associated Contact (Optional)
   • The primary contact’s email or name if you want to associate deals with a contact.
   • If contact doesn’t exist, HubSpot can create it if you map an email address (though you might do a separate contact import first).
10. Deal Description (Optional)
    • A short text describing the project scope or any notes you want to carry over.
11. Lifecycle Stage (Optional)
    • Some users prefer to link deals to a contact’s lifecycle stage. Usually, though, this is a contact-level property, not a deal-level property.
12. Closed Lost Reason or Lost Reason (Optional)
    • If the deal ended as lost, you can store the reason (e.g., “Price too high,” “Client used in-house team,” etc.).
    • If you have a custom “Closed Lost Reason” property, ensure you match the exact dropdown values or keep it free text for now.
13. Custom Deal Properties (As needed)
    • If you created custom fields like “Source of Deal,” “Detailed Scope,” “Consulting Service Type,” etc., each should have its own column.

Note: You don’t need all these columns if your data is simpler, but the more detail you include, the richer your CRM history will be.

3. Executing the Import in HubSpot

1. Log into HubSpot
   • Go to Deals → Import.
2. File from Computer
   • Select your CSV or XLSX file.
   • If you have both Contacts and Deals in the same file, consider a multi-object import. But for deals alone, you’ll do a single-object import.
3. Map Columns to Properties
   • HubSpot tries to auto-map if your column headers match known deal properties (e.g., “Deal Name,” “Deal Stage”).
   • If it doesn’t find a match, manually select the correct HubSpot property.
4. Review & Confirm
   • HubSpot shows a summary of how many rows will be imported.
   • Make sure your pipeline or deal stage mapping is correct. If you see “Appointment Scheduled” for old deals that actually closed, fix it.
5. Finish
   • Click Finish Import. HubSpot processes the data and logs any errors.

4. Best Practices & Tips

1. Clean & Validate Data First
   • Make sure no duplicates or inconsistent naming (like “Acme Inc.” vs. “Acme Incorporated”).
   • If you plan to link deals to existing companies, ensure the names or domain references match exactly.
2. Keep a Backup
   • Save a copy of the spreadsheet before importing in case you need to re-import or fix something.
3. Separate Contact & Deal Imports
   • If you also need to import contacts and companies, do that first so they exist. Then deals can link to them.
   • Alternatively, do a multi-object import if you prefer advanced mapping.
4. Check the Pipeline
   • After import, go to Deals → Board View to confirm the deals show up in the correct stage columns.
   • If anything looks off, update the stage or the pipeline property accordingly.
5. Double-Check
   • For older deals, you might not have perfect data for every column (like missing close dates). Decide how thoroughly you want to fill those. A partial import is still beneficial to see approximate dates and amounts.