Are you using Excel to track sales leads? 7 reasons why you should not

7 reasons why using Excel to track sales leads is bad

Please don’t. Using Excel to track sales leads, that is. It’s a terrible idea.

Don’t get us wrong. I am one of those who have been quoted as saying, “In God we trust, rest must be backed up by Excel”. Among all the MS software that we use and we do use quite a few, this software from Microsoft is simply unparalleled in use, power and familiarity.

So, why aren’t we using Excel to track sales leads through the funnel?

Excel is free with your office 365 subscription, Saleswah is not. But, as we will see later, even that is not much of a factor. Here are a few things that Excel or Excel based lead trackers (see this, and this) just do not do.

1. Does not organize data in one place; or even link to data in multiple places.

You have a lead; that has a potential value, timeframe and associated contacts. You either will have an impossibly large and messed up spreadsheet or you will have to constantly refer to your email, PDA etc for information that proved difficult to capture in one place. If you know a excel based lead tracking software that does this well, let me know.

2. No time-stamped data capture

When you are monitoring sales activities, we need to understand things like how long an activity is overdue, when have we committed to do something, when is the next event and things like that. Getting Excel to capture that data is prone to error and requires massive efforts. And, as we will see later, prone to errors, data duplication and almost impossible to report on.

3. Welcome to data duplication.

Most of the stuff you will enter into your spreadsheet will be from information that exists elsewhere. So, you will send a quote elsewhere and copy down the value on your spreadsheet. You will have email addresses on your Outlook, mobile numbers on your phonebook/ cellphone and everytime you need to follow up on a deal, you leave your excel based lead tracker and jump into another software.

That is not how you do it in a CRM, obviously. You send a quote and it keeps the records, so even re-quoting is just a few clicks away. Your contact details are all in one place and you can keep them synced with G-Suite or Office 365. You can sync your calendar as well- and ensure no appointment is missed or no task is unattended.

4. No reporting capability:

Everytime you want a report, be prepared to spend time pivoting and massaging data. And, this is with basic “how much we will close this month?” kind of reports for single product, single market kind of companies. Excel templates for lead tracking just die when it comes to anything even a shade more complex.

5. No link, to anyone else or anything else

You have a team? Okay, then. Good luck with pulling all the data together and forecasting. Ever noticed how everyone has a different way of formatting data, inputting data or even abbreviations? And, even before we get to that, no sharing or collaboration on opportunities. No one knows what the other person in the team is doing. When a team member leaves, the data leaves too!

6. Complete absence of hierarchy in your data

You have a team, a hierarchy- reporting relationships. How do you share data on a need to know basis, strictly by hierarchy with your team members? How do they collaborate, escalate or even re-assign anything?

Such questions do not bother you when you are running your sales operations on Saleswah CRM. All customer data access is by hierarchy and bulletproof security guards it. Can you say the same about Excel?

7. Does Excel send you email or mobile triggers?

It does not; but Saleswah does. Everytime you create a sales lead or assign a task to your executive, he gets an alert on his browser, mobile app and also on email (what is task assignment, Excel will ask 😀 )

Enough said. Say goodbye to excel based lead management systems; get something much more professional and surprisingly, way more easy to use. Get your team on Saleswah.

Oh, and by the way, Excel is used for all spreadsheets- so basically, do not ever try to use any spreadsheet program to track your sales lead.

Sales lead tracker: Never let go a sales for want of follow up

We all want leads, but it is important to track them through the sales process

Saleswah keeps the focus relentlessly on sales; the process including keeping track of the sales cycle and progress of the opportunity through it is important. As important as the activities that the sales team performs- send literature, meet and present, demo, collect cheque.

As you grow, it is no longer possible or practical to track all individual leads manually. You need the sales lead tracker capability of Saleswah.

For small businesses, spending money getting noticed by customers and generating “enquiries/ leads”, it is important to ensure that

1. All enquiries immediately land up with the right sales person.

2. The sales person is able to log the stage and size of the opportunity, his chances of converting it into a purchase order and the customer influencers.

3. Furthermore, he should be able to log what the next action should be and schedule a task for himself in the calendar.

His boss knows it too!

Saleswah’s team management ensures that the salesperson’s manager always stays updated about

– the state of the sales funnel and the monthly forecast.

– the individual opportunities: their stage, status and chances and the actions- taken and pending.

How does the sales lead tracker work?

Saleswah is a hosted total sales lifecycle management tool. It allows you and your team to track a sales opportunity from start to finish, through all stages of qualification to close. Leads go through a process of assign, nurture and close after being captured.

Leads are first qualified and the best ones are “converted” to Deals whereas the less promising ones are rejected. The progress of each lead is tracked and any conversion or rejection has a reason and follow up comments.

sales lead tracker helps ensure nothing falls through the cracks

Who would use the sales lead tracker of Saleswah?

Saleswah is useful for all businesses, big or small – with one salesman or one hundred- who want to track the sales leads that they receive and take appropriate action to close them. This can be property dealers, insurance agents, office equipment vendors, trade-show exhibitors, companies running seminars, those who primarily get their leads from vertical portals etc.

Want to know more? Call us.