Your company needs a CRM (customer relationship management system) when more than one person follows up with customers and you cannot tell within a minute who owns a given customer, when they were last contacted, and what the next step is. If you sell alone or with one colleague to a few customers, a well-organized spreadsheet is usually enough for now.
This article gives you a short test to run today on your real sales, a way to work out what lost leads cost you, then selection criteria and a rollout plan. Much of the advice on this topic comes from companies selling these systems, so we also cover when you do not need one.
A five-question test for when spreadsheets stop being enough
Pick five leads from the past two weeks at random. Try to answer these questions for each one within a minute, without asking anyone.
- Who is responsible for this lead right now?
- When was the last contact, and what was said?
- What is the next step, and on what date?
- Which campaign or source did it come from?
- What sales stage is it in, and what is its expected value?
If you fail on two or more leads, you have a problem. That does not mean buying a system today, but it does mean your sales decisions rest on staff memory. Find the cause first. Is the information never written down, or written in scattered places? The first is a discipline problem that no software will solve alone.
Other signs you have outgrown spreadsheets
Three of these signs recurring is enough to make the decision a serious one.
- Each employee keeps a private customer file, or chats on a personal phone.
- When someone leaves, their customer history leaves with them.
- Two employees contact the same customer without knowing it.
- The weekly sales report takes hours of copying and adding up.
- You cannot tell which campaign brings sales and which brings only leads.
- You cannot forecast the month's sales without asking each person.
- You find old leads nobody answered, by accident.
The nibusinessinfo guide for businesses makes a similar point about replacing spreadsheets and notes when customer data sits in several places. The last sign on the list is usually the most expensive. Harvard Business Review published research in 2011 on online leads and found that most companies do not respond fast enough. For diagnosing the rest of the path, see why you get plenty of leads and few sales.
When you do not need a CRM yet
Buying too early costs you a subscription and training time, and adds work with no return. Spreadsheets are usually fine in these cases:
- Few leads, handled by one or two people, with sales through direct relationships.
- You have not defined your sales stages. A system applies your steps and will not invent them for you.
- Nobody will enter data regularly. An empty system is worse than a living spreadsheet.
- Your problem is lead quality, and follow-up is fine.
Set up a spreadsheet with the seven fields below and use it for a month. If the team sticks to it, moving to a system later will be easy. If they do not, you have saved the cost of software nobody would have used.
Work out what lost leads cost you
Do the math with your numbers before comparing prices. This example is entirely hypothetical.
| Item | Hypothetical value |
|---|---|
| New leads per month | 300 |
| Leads not properly followed up | 10%, or 30 leads |
| Your usual close rate | 20% |
| Deals lost per month | 6 |
| Profit per deal | Write your number here |
Multiply 6 by your profit per deal, then add the hours spent building reports by hand. Compare the result with the system's monthly cost for all users. To find the second figure, review last month's leads: how many got no reply within a working day, and how many stopped after one attempt?
The seven fields to start with
Many CRM projects stall because the form asks for more than staff will actually type. Start with these and add others only when a clear need appears.
| Field | Why you need it |
|---|---|
| Name and contact | The basis of follow-up |
| Source or campaign | Ties spend to sales |
| Service requested | Routes the lead to the right person |
| Owner | A lead with no owner is a lost lead |
| Stage | Shows where sales stall |
| Next step date | The most important field, since it creates the daily work list |
| Reason lost | Tells you what to fix in the offer or price |
How to choose a CRM
Try the system with real leads during the trial, and have the person who will use it daily test it, along with the manager.
| Criterion | How to test it |
|---|---|
| Ease of use on a phone | Log a call and a next step from a phone in under a minute |
| WhatsApp and calls | Does the chat reach the customer's record, or stay on the phone? |
| Incoming leads | Connect your site form and lead ads, and confirm they reach a named owner immediately |
| Reminders | Does each employee see a clear list for today? |
| Permissions | Can you hide one team's data from another? |
| Reports | Pull leads and deals by source, employee and stage |
| Arabic | Check text direction and searching Arabic names |
| Export | Export customers and contact history to a file before you pay |
| Total cost | Price per user, paid add-ons, integration and training |
Customer data is personal data, so ask where it is stored and who can reach it, and review the Saudi law or Egypt's law on data protection with your adviser. If your sales process is so unusual that ready products cannot handle it, read off-the-shelf or custom software before deciding to build.
A 30-day rollout plan
- Week one. Write your sales stages and define each one, clean duplicates from your customer list, and name someone responsible for the system.
- Week two. Enter open leads only, connect the site form, and train the team with cases from their own work.
- Week three. Retire the old spreadsheets. If they stay available, everyone will go back to them.
- Week four. Run the weekly sales meeting from the system's screen only. What is not in it does not get discussed.
The last step decides whether the system succeeds, since staff log things regularly once they see their manager reading them. After that come the steps in business process automation, such as reminders and follow-up messages.
Your next step
Run the five-question test today on five leads, then fill in the lost leads table. If you fail the test and the loss exceeds the cost, try two systems with real leads for two weeks. If you want someone to connect the system to your site form, ads and follow-up messages, that is part of PlanKit's business automation service.