How to export your old leads from your CRM

What you’re after

One file, usually a CSV, with one row per person who asked you for a quote, an estimate or information and didn’t buy. It doesn’t need to be tidy. It does need to be complete: every person, every phone number and email you have for them, and enough history to tell how old each lead is and where it came from.

Most owners can do this in ten to twenty minutes. The slow part is usually finding the right filter, not the export itself.

Two things to check first. Exports are often limited to admins or the account owner, so if you can’t see an export option, that’s the likely reason. And an export is a file full of personal information. Treat it like one: keep it off public share links, and send it the way we agree on your audit call rather than as a loose email attachment.

The columns that matter

Include these if your system has them. Don’t worry if a few are missing; the first four matter most.

Name

First and last, in separate columns if your system splits them. The first name is used on calls and in messages.

Phone numbers

Every number you have, each in its own column, with its label (mobile, home, work) if there is one. Mobile numbers matter most, because only they can get texts.

Email

The primary address and any others.

Date created

When the person first contacted you. This is how a six-month-old lead is told apart from a five-year-old one, and it affects the guarantee.

Source

Website form, Google, Facebook, referral, door knock, home show, bought list. Source decides how a lead can be contacted.

Status, stage or tags

Lost, unsold, not interested, customer, do not contact. Pipeline stages and tags often live in different places; export both if you use both.

What they asked about

The service, the job type or the estimate name. It’s what makes the first line of a call specific: “the roof quote you asked for” instead of “your inquiry”.

Last activity

The last call, email or note. It shows who your team already worked recently.

Consent and opt-outs

Any opt-in checkbox, the form name, the date and time it was submitted, and any unsubscribe, STOP or do-not-call flag.

Address or ZIP code

For time zones, calling hours and your service area.

Notes and the assigned salesperson are nice to have. Estimate amounts help you decide what to work first, but a price is never repeated to a lead.

What to leave out, and what to keep in

• Leave out current customers with an open job, unless you want them included as their own group.
• Leave out employees, vendors, partners and test entries. Every CRM has a few “Test Test” records.
• Keep opt-outs in, with their flag. If you delete them, a duplicate record for the same person can slip through. With the flag, the person can be suppressed on every channel.
• Keep bought or shared lists separate, and label them. They’re handled differently, and usually not contacted at all.
• Keep the people who said “not now” or “maybe later”. They’re often the best leads on the list.

The general method, in any system

Almost every CRM and field-service tool works the same way, even when the words differ:

1. Open the list of people. It may be called Contacts, Customers, Clients, Leads or People.
2. Filter to the people you want: created before a date, a status such as lost or unsold, or a tag.
3. Choose the columns, if the system lets you. Add source, date created and tags if they’re hidden.
4. Select everything. Check whether “select all” means this page or every result; they’re often different.
5. Choose Export, Download or Export to CSV, and wait for the file. Some systems download it straight away; others email you a link when it’s ready.

Notes on the systems owners use most

These are the things that trip people up, not step-by-step instructions.

HighLevel

Contacts and opportunities are separate. Contacts export from the contact list after filtering by tag or date. If your “lost” status lives in a pipeline, export the opportunities too so the two can be matched up.

HubSpot

Export from a filtered contacts view, and from deals if you track quotes there. Large exports often arrive as an emailed download link.

Salesforce

Leads and contacts are different records. Unconverted leads are usually the ones you want. A report filtered to them, exported to CSV or Excel, is often easier than the admin data-export tools.

ServiceTitan

Unsold or open estimates are usually the most valuable part. Reports are the common route: an estimates report filtered by status, with the customer’s contact details, exported to a spreadsheet.

Jobber and Housecall Pro

Clients or customers export from their list views. Quotes and estimates often have their own lists with a status filter. Export both, and keep the client name or ID on each so they can be joined.

Follow Up Boss

Filter people by stage, source or last activity, then export. Export rights are often limited to the account owner or admins.

Pipedrive

Leads, deals and people are separate lists. Lost deals, with their lost reason, are worth exporting alongside the people they belong to.

JobNimbus

Contacts and jobs both carry statuses. Export contacts, plus jobs filtered by status if that’s where your unsold work lives.

Spreadsheets

One row per person, one column per field, headers in the first row only. Format phone numbers as text so the spreadsheet doesn’t reformat them, and use one date format throughout.

Check the file before you send it

• Open it. Is the row count roughly what you expected?
• Are phone numbers in one or more clear columns, not mixed into notes?
• Are dates readable, and do the oldest and newest look right?
• Is there one header row, with no merged cells, totals or blank rows above it?
• Do names with accents or apostrophes look right? If not, export again as UTF-8 CSV if your system offers it.

Want a quick read before anyone else looks at it? Drop the file into Check your list. It runs in your browser, so the file doesn’t leave your computer, and it shows roughly how many leads you have, how old they are and what we’d guarantee.

If your leads live in more than one place

Many businesses have an old CRM, a new CRM and a spreadsheet from a trade show. Export each one separately and name the files after where they came from. Don’t merge them by hand. Duplicates are removed across files by phone and email, and keeping the sources apart makes consent much easier to sort correctly.

If you switched systems and the old one is gone, check whether you kept an export when you moved. Plenty of owners did, and forgot about it.