De-dupe a CRM without nuking history

De-dupe a CRM without nuking history
The merge playbook for when sales finally lets you clean house.

1 — Snapshot the full object export before the first merge.
Why: merges are one-way in most CRMs; your snapshot is the only undo.

2 — Define your survivorship rules in writing first.
Why: 'keep the oldest record but the newest email' has to be a rule, not a judgment call per merge.

3 — Match on normalized email and domain, not company name strings.
Why: 'Acme Inc.' and 'Acme, Inc' won't match, but their domains will.

4 — Merge in batches of low-risk dupes first.
Why: starting with obvious matches surfaces rule bugs before you touch high-value accounts.

5 — Re-point activities and notes to the surviving record explicitly.
Why: orphaned activity history is how a clean merge erases a sales narrative.

That's the stack for this week. Forward to a teammate.