How To Successfully Migrate From Salesforce to HubSpot CRM

A good CRM is one of our best sales tools. It's important to choose the right one for you and your team. If you're planning to leave Salesforce and make the switch to HubSpot CRM you can skip right to Step 2 where we dive into details of how to do the migration!

Still on the fence? Here's your first step.

Step 1: Determining the Right CRM for You.

Perhaps Salesforce is more CRM than you really need. Or maybe you just want to combine your marketing and sales into one system rather than try to integrate two platforms. Maybe you're not sure what to do[read our post How to Choose the Right CRM for You]. When it comes to choosing the right CRM for you, here are a few questions to consider:

• How easy is it to use?
• Can anyone on my team learn it quickly?
• Do I need a lot of fancy bells and whistles?
• What are my business goals/objectives?
• What do I need to be tracking to help reach those goals?
• Am I working with a marketing team that needs to see my data as well?
• How secure is it?
• What types of features are in place to keep information confidential and protected?

HubSpot CRM doesn't need a lot of customization and it's simple to use. You may not get as much functionality as Salesforce, but if you don't need it then it's not a loss. Keeping marketing and sales on the same platform may be worth it for you.

Step 2: Clean Your Data

As you prepare to migrate from Salesforce to HubSpot CRM, it's a good time to review for data integrity. HubSpot help documentation points out these key areas to examine, and how their CRM deduplicates data:

• When you add Contacts to HubSpot CRM, the system will deduplicate by email address.
• When you add Companies to HubSpot, the system will deduplicate by Company Domain Name.
• When you add Deals or Tasks, there is no deduplication.

Step 3: Select Migration Tools

You have a few options and tools for performing the actual migration.

CSV Import—a CSV file import is the least technical route. You can export your data from Salesforce and import via CSV file. However, you will lose some data, such as cross-object associations which will have to be done manually. You can also not import tasks or engagements (notes, calls, emails) via CSV. See HubSpot help docs for instruction here>>

Salesforce Integration—this is a native integration in HubSpot that lets you import data to all objects. A few specifics to this integration: All objects must be associated with a Salesforce Contact or Lead in order to sync. All Contacts and Leads must have an email address in order to sync. Requires HubSpot Marketing or HubSpot Sales Pro subscription. See HubSpot help docs for instruction here>>

Third-party Systems—there are other platforms that will do the import. Platforms from Import2 and Trujay Group provide data migration services from most major CRM on the market. Downsides of third-party: costs and limited support. You can use HubSpot Support to help you with the first two migration options, but not with third-party systems.

HubSpot Technical Consultant—you can also, for a price, utilize a HubSpot consultant to provide custom, personalized solution to fit your needs. This may be a good option if you don't have in-house technical assistance for a more complex migration. Learn more about these services here>>

API Endpoints—this is the most technical route and requires internal development resources not provided by HubSpot. With the API, you can import data to all objects while maintaining associations between objects. See HubSpot's API documentation>>

Once you've decided on your method of migration, you can begin mapping your information.

Step 4: Mapping

Next, it's time to map you data. This means you need to define and create custom properties in HubSpot CRM. Property mapping will be mostly self-evident (First Name will map to First Name, Company to Company, etc.) but you may have custom properties that you'll need to define in HubSpot CRM before you begin a migration.

You'll want to pay special attention to activities such as tasks, calls and documents. If you sync those activities as tasks and calls, they will be migrated correctly.

If you're using an API in your migration, put these activities into the API. Another option is to determine if the notes are applicable or not. They may not need to be migrated at all. You may be able to keep a Salesforce license open for a finite period of time and refer back to those notes and records, as needed, to determine if they need to be migrated.

Properties like Deal Pipelines, Sales Processes, Templates: you'll need to recreate these from scratch in HubSpot CRM, or you may be able to move these via a script (we haven't found a way to do it so please tell us if you have a good method!).

Step 5: Testing

You've cleaned the data, mapped information, created custom properties, and set up your migration tools to migrate your Salesforce data into HubSpot CRM. Before you do a final import, start with a small data set to make sure it all works correctly.

How about you, reader? What CRM does your organization use? Have you ever migrated from Salesforce or another CRM to HubSpot CRM? Share your experience in the comments below.