A basic CRM for a small Australian business runs about $12 to $30 per user each month. That is the cheap part. The dear part is the six years of customer details sitting in your phone, your ute glovebox, and two old email accounts.
A CRM is just one place that holds every customer and every job. Plenty of advice stops at picking one. Then you sign up, stare at an empty screen, and go back to the notebook. This is the bit nobody explains: getting your real customers into it.
What You Need Before You Start
Block out two hours. Grab:
- Your phone contacts
- Your last 12 months of invoices
- Any job notebooks, whiteboards or scraps
- Your email inbox
- A laptop
Use the laptop. This job is horrible on a phone screen.
You do not need a bookkeeper or a tech person. Just two hours and a bit of patience.
Step 1: Dump It All Into One Spreadsheet
Open a blank spreadsheet. Make seven columns: first name, last name, mobile, email, suburb, last job, last job date.
Now work through one source at a time. Phone contacts first. Then invoices. Then the notebook.
Do not tidy as you go. That is the trap. You will spend 40 minutes perfecting eight rows and quit. Just get everything in one place. Tidying is the next step.
The count usually surprises people. Say you are a mobile mechanic in Geelong. You reckon you have about 100 regulars. Then you go through old invoices and find 340 names. Those extra 240 already paid you once. They are the cheapest work you will ever win. If that mess is still living on paper, here is what it costs you.
Step 2: Clean It Before It Goes In
Rubbish in, rubbish out. Fix four things.
Duplicates. Same person, two numbers. Keep the mobile they actually answer.
Number format. Make every mobile look the same. 04 at the front. No spaces. No +61 on some and not others. Your system sends texts. A broken number is a text that never lands, and you never find out.
Missing emails. Leave the cell empty. Never guess an address.
Dead names. Someone moved to Perth. Someone still owes you $800 from 2023. Delete the row. Do not pay to store people you will never ring.
Step 3: Add the One Column That Matters
Add a column called type. Fill it in for every single row.
For a sparky in Toowoomba, that might be: rewire, switchboard, small job, real estate agent, builder. For a removalist in Adelaide: house move, office move, storage, repeat client.
This column is the whole reason you are doing this. It lets you message 40 switchboard customers about a safety switch check. The other 300 never hear about it. A list you cannot cut into groups is just a phone book with extra steps.
Pick five types. Not fifteen. You will never fill in fifteen.
Step 4: Check You Are Allowed to Message Them
This is the step everyone skips, and it is the one that bites.
Someone gave you their mobile to book a job. That is not a licence to market to them forever. Marketing messages need consent. Every one needs a clear way to opt out. Those rules are real, and the fines are not small. The ACMA sets out the spam and consent rules for Australian businesses.
Two jobs here:
- Add a consent column. Mark yes for anyone who agreed to hear from you.
- Make sure every marketing text and email your system sends carries an opt-out line.
Past customers you have actually worked for are usually fine for service reminders. A list you bought off someone is not. If you are unsure about a row, mark it no. One angry customer costs more than ten extra names.
Step 5: Import, Then Check 10 Rows
Save the spreadsheet as a CSV file. Import it into your system. It will ask you to match your columns to its fields. Take the extra minute and match them properly.
Then open 10 records at random. Check the mobile. Check the type. Check the last job date.
If those 10 are right, the rest are almost certainly right. If two are wrong, fix the spreadsheet and import again. Redoing it today takes 20 minutes. Redoing it in six months means unpicking every note you have added since.
Step 6: Set the Rule That Keeps It Clean
Lists rot. Yours will too, unless you stick to one rule.
The rule: every new customer goes in on the day you meet them. Not Sunday night. Not at the end of the month. The day.
A new number goes straight in. Give it a type and a suburb. That takes 30 seconds on your phone in the driveway. Skip it for a fortnight and the mess is back. Notebook and spreadsheet, running side by side.
A clean, sorted list is also what makes the smart stuff work. That is when AI CRM features start winning you jobs.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Importing the mess and promising to clean it later. You will not.
- Building 15 columns you will never fill in.
- Doing the whole job on your phone.
- Blasting the full list on day one. Start with one group of 40.
- Deleting the spreadsheet after the import. Keep it for a month as a backup.
How Long Does This Really Take?
Two hours for a sole trader with a few hundred customers. Half a day if you have five years of paper invoices and a crew.
That is the honest answer. One Saturday morning, and you only ever do it properly once.
The Bottom Line
Your customer list is the hard part, and it is worth the Saturday. Get it into one place and clean it. Sort it into types. Check you are allowed to message people. Do that, and everything clever your system does afterwards actually works. Skip it and you have paid $30 a month for an empty screen.
Rather not do the import yourself? That is exactly what Light Leads CRM sorts out for you. We do the messy part so you keep your weekend.
See how it works. Book a call.