How to Merge Duplicates in Agile

Duplicate contacts are one of the most common and frustrating problems in any CRM. They clutter your database, confuse your sales team, and lead to embarrassing mistakes. At Add to CRM, we know that clean data is the foundation of an efficient sales process. This guide will walk you through exactly how to merge duplicate contacts in Agile. More importantly, we'll show you how to prevent them from ever being created in the first place.

Why Duplicates Hurt Your Sales Process

Duplicate records aren't just a minor annoyance; they actively damage your sales and marketing efforts. When you have multiple entries for the same person, you risk:

• Wasted Effort: Multiple sales reps might contact the same lead, leading to confusion and a poor prospect experience.
• Inaccurate Reporting: Your sales forecasts and performance metrics become unreliable when based on a bloated contact list.
• Poor Personalization: It's impossible to track a lead's full history when their interactions are split across several records.
• Increased Costs: You might be paying for more contacts in your CRM than you actually have.

Duplicates often stem from manual data entry errors, inconsistent data formats, or importing contacts from various sources without proper validation.

Identifying Duplicates in Agile

Agile CRM helps you spot duplicates by using a contact's email address as a unique identifier. If you try to add a contact with an email that already exists, the system will typically flag it.

However, duplicates can still slip through, especially if a contact has multiple email addresses or if they were entered with slight name variations. To find these manually, you can use the search bar in Agile to look for contacts with the same first and last name. This will help you uncover potential duplicates that the system might have missed.

Step-by-Step Merging Process

Once you've identified a duplicate, merging it in Agile is a straightforward process. Here’s how we do it:

1. Open the Primary Contact: Navigate to the contact record you want to keep as the master version.
2. Click "Edit": In the contact's profile, click the main "Edit" button to open the editing interface.
3. Select "Merge Duplicates": You will see an option to "Merge Duplicates." Click it.
4. Find and Select Duplicates: Agile will automatically search for other contacts with the same first and last name. From the list that appears, check the box next to the duplicate record(s) you want to merge.
5. Confirm the Merge: Click the merge button to combine the selected contacts. Agile will consolidate the information, activities, and history from the duplicate records into your single master contact.

Bulk Duplicate Management

While Agile doesn't have a one-click bulk merge feature for all duplicates, you can manage them systematically. We recommend setting aside time regularly to search for common names or recently imported contacts to clean them up using the manual merge process. This can be time-consuming, which is why a preventative approach is always better.

Preventing Duplicates with LinkAgile

LinkAgile is a Chrome extension that finds verified contact information from LinkedIn and adds standardized data to Agile. It's the most effective way to stop duplicates before they start. By automating data entry, you eliminate the typos and inconsistencies that cause duplicate records. Instead of manually copying and pasting information, you add clean, verified, and properly formatted contacts with a single click.

Why Clean Data Beats Cleanup

Think about the time your team spends finding and merging duplicates. It's a reactive process that drains hours from your week. A proactive approach saves that time and more. By using LinkAgile, you ensure that every contact entering your CRM from LinkedIn is clean from the start. This small step saves countless hours of future cleanup and keeps your sales engine running smoothly.

Getting Started with LinkAgile

It only takes a minute to get started:

1. Install the extension from the LinkAgile page.
2. Navigate to any prospect's LinkedIn profile.
3. Use the extension to find their verified email and phone number.
4. Click "Add to CRM" to send the clean, standardized data directly into Agile.

LinkedIn Integration for Agile: Avoid Duplicates Before They Happen

Our LinkedIn integration for Agile does more than just add new contacts—it helps you manage your existing ones. When you're browsing LinkedIn, LinkAgile automatically checks if a person is already in your Agile CRM. This simple, powerful feature is your first line of defense against creating accidental duplicates during prospecting.

Enriching Existing Contacts

If our tool finds that a prospect is already in Agile, you won't create a new record. Instead, you can use the opportunity to enrich the existing contact. With one click, you can update their profile with the latest information from LinkedIn, like a new job title or company. This keeps your data fresh and accurate without adding clutter.

Real-Time Duplicate Prevention

Seeing which contacts already exist directly on their LinkedIn profile provides real-time duplicate prevention. Your team can prospect with confidence, knowing they aren't creating redundant work or polluting the CRM. It integrates data quality checks directly into your sales workflow.

Best Practices for Duplicate Prevention

Beyond using the right tools, we recommend these best practices:

1. Standardize Your Process: Make it a team-wide policy to add all LinkedIn prospects using LinkAgile to ensure consistency.
2. Control Data Imports: Limit which team members can perform bulk data imports from spreadsheets, as these are a major source of messy data.
3. Schedule Regular Audits: Even with great tools, it's wise to do a quick data audit each quarter to catch anything that might have slipped through other channels.
4. Train Your Team: Ensure everyone on your team understands the importance of data hygiene and knows how to use the tools you've provided.

Conclusion: Build Clean, Not Cleanup

Merging duplicates in Agile is a necessary skill, but it's a reactive solution to a problem that can be prevented. The most efficient and scalable strategy is to build a clean database from the very beginning. By using LinkAgile, you stop duplicates before they are ever created, enrich existing contacts with fresh data, and save your team hours of manual work.

Ready to build a cleaner, more powerful sales pipeline in Agile? Try LinkAgile for free today and see the difference clean data makes.