Lead exports from Apollo, ZoomInfo, LinkedIn tools, or a scraper look tidy in the preview, then make a mess the moment they hit HubSpot, Salesforce, or Pipedrive. Spend ten minutes on these six steps in Google Sheets first.
1. Drop the columns you will never use
Exports often ship 40+ columns. Keep only what maps to a real CRM property: first name, last name, email, company, title, phone, website, country, and source. Every extra column is another mapping you can get wrong.
2. Normalize emails and remove repeats
=LOWER(TRIM(C2))
Then flag duplicates with =COUNTIF($D$2:D2,D2) and keep rows where it equals 1. Run the same check against an export of your current CRM contacts so you don't re-import people you already have:
=IF(COUNTIF(CRM!A:A,D2)>0,"already in CRM","new")
3. Filter out risky emails
Remove rows marked "guessed", "unverified", or "catch-all" if your tool provides a status column. Also drop role inboxes you don't want in sequences:
=REGEXMATCH(D2,"^(info|sales|support|admin|hello|contact)@")
Bounces from a bad batch hurt your sending domain far more than a smaller list does.
4. Fix name casing
Exports mix JOHN, john, and John. One formula fixes the first-name field in emails and greetings:
=PROPER(TRIM(A2))
Spot-check names like McDonald or O'Neil afterwards.
5. Make company names match your accounts
Acme Inc., ACME, and Acme, Inc become three companies in your CRM. Strip common suffixes before import so association rules can match:
=TRIM(REGEXREPLACE(PROPER(E2),"(?i),?\s*(inc|llc|ltd|corp|co)\.?$",""))
Better still, match on website domain when your CRM supports it.
6. Tag the source and import date
Add a Lead Source column (for example "Apollo export") and an import date. When a batch turns out to be bad, you can find and remove exactly those records in one filter instead of guessing.
Test ten rows first
Import ten rows, open a few records, and confirm every mapped field filled and no duplicate was created. Then import the rest.
Rather hand off the cleanup? Send up to 200 rows to the $25 Quick Clean and get back a cleaned CSV (same-email duplicates merged, possible duplicates flagged) plus a change log within 24 hours. No CRM login needed: email us your CSV (reply to your receipt or send it to slrescue@mail.grokbot.com). Bigger list? Intro $99 covers up to 500 rows, and Growth ($299, up to 2,000) and Bulk ($499, up to 5,000) are on pureservices.store. Want to check the file first? The free CSV preflight checker runs in your browser.
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