Earlier this week there Nick Harris asked:

Anyone use any kind of CRM software?
If yes, what do you use?
// @liz_e
@seanuk @Malarkey @sazzy—
Nick Harris (@pixelenvy) February 05, 2014

A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is system for tracking what stage your leads/proposals are at in your sales pipeline*. It also helps keep track of what you’ve said to which customer.

(*ok, this is a wanky phrase but, if you don’t think think you have a sales pipeline, and you are billing for work, you must have one in some shape or form!)

There were a few shout outs on Twitter for the apps Highrise (which I’ve used), Salesformics, Daylite & Capsule (looks good) but we’re not going to drill into those in this post because I just want to start by saying what my simple sales process is.

I’d love to hear your comments on this, comments on my/your process or any other thoughts on CRMs (especially some of the apps above). I’ll then put together a separate freelancer CRM app post.

My Process

For years I sort of played around with Highrise because I Like its lightweight, non-prescriptive approach but, over time, I found I just wasn’t kinda doing much with it. And, rather than learn a new, complex bit of CRM software, I decided to knock a quick Google spreadsheet.

Google Spreadsheet

My Google spreadsheet is split into several worksheets:

1. Leads
2. Proposals (all)
3. Proposals (open)
4. Projects (all)
5. Projects (open)

Let’s now go through what each of those does.

Leads

If someone has been referred to me for work, or if there is a person or company I’d like to get on the radar of, I’ll add an entry to this worksheet. I’ll make a note of:

• A unique code for this lead (I like codes, it’s the relationalist in me)
• Name / Company
• Status (lost, won, open, stale, dead)
• A short description of current status (e.g. ‘Need to email‘)
• The date it was last updated

Once a week or so I’ll take a look at the OPEN (or STALE) rows and decide whether or not I need to take some action (e.g. call them, send an email etc). If so, I’ll update the row with what I did and modify the date field.

(Note: unlike a proper CRM I suppose I haven’t got a full audit trail of what I did and when, but I’m cool with that)

To be honest, I don’t spend as much time on this worksheet as the ones that follow.

Proposals (All)

Hopefully, as some point, I’ll have warmed my lead up enough to get to the stage where I’ve submitted a proposal.

The ‘Proposals (All)‘ worksheets contains these fields:

• Unique proposal code
• Project code (if/when this turns into a project, see later)
• Client name
• Description of current state
• £ Value

I tend to create proposals a number of different ways depending on the scale of the work, and depending on the client etc. It could be in an email, it might be a PDF, I may have created one in Quote Roller. Either way, I’ll record in the spreadsheet where I can find the original proposal because, if I don’t, you can guarantee I’ll be tearing my hair out months later looking for it.

(Some folks print out key records and put them in a file, I’ve tried that but it just doesn’t work for me very while. Doesn’t feel very digital).

Proposals (Open)

This should be pretty obvious. If the client is still considering the proposal then it’s open. And this worksheet is then important because I tells me that I need to contact these people to find out where they are with it.

Now this is something I chatted to Nick about: when I first started dealing with clients direct, I would be shy in contacting them. Thinking that sending the proposal email was enough to win the work. I probably did this because contacting the potential client felt a bit pushy, a bit salesy (who wants to be that pushy person?).

However, the thing is, your proposal (whilst important to you) is rarely the most important thing to the potential client. They to have a business to run, department to look after etc – your proposal is only one issue in their in-tray. You have to stay in touch with them to make sure your proposal gets the attention it deserves*.

(This is also an saying that there are 7 touch points before making a sale. I dunno if this holds water but people rarely buy things like complex websites without a few steps of interaction.)

Some folks are scared of asking about their proposal in case someone says “no‘, they don’t want it. However, in an odd way, that’s a good response as you can move on; better hear ‘no‘ than nothing at all.

When anything happens, I’ll update this worksheet with when I last spoke to the person and date stamp it. This allows me to quickly scan the list to see who I’ve not spoken to for a while.

Projects (All)

At some stage, clients will agree to some of the open proposals (hurray!). At this stage I take them off “Proposals (Open)” and I create a new entry on the “Projects (All)” worksheet. This sheet contains these fields.

• A unique project code
• The related proposal code (one must exist)
• The client
• Status (OPEN, CLOSED)

I used to add some financial information on this sheet but now I create a project in Free Agent (and I make sure I put the project code in Free Agent as well).

This newly created project code also crops up in Red Booth (which I use to manage projects) and Harvest which I use on & off for time tracking.

Projects (OPEN)

I’ll also make a note of this new project on my ‘Projects (OPEN)‘ worksheet. These are projects which me and my team are working on right now; this is my work in progress.. Typically around 5 to 10 things on here.

Fields on this worksheet include:

• Project code
• Client name
• Brief status (e.g. “Emailed to arrange a meeting w/c Jan 20th“)
• Date last updated

For some projects I also capture certain financial fields :

• Billing total
• Estimated supplier cost (I work with team of freelancers to deliver)
• Monies received (so far from client)
• Difference (function: between ‘billing total’ & ‘estimated supplier cost’)
• Amount still due (function)

This is a killer worksheet for me. This gives me an ‘at a glance‘ view of where my business is and what money is still left on the table.

Note: I do less financial stuff here now since I use FreeAgent’s project facility.

A Quick Recap

This spreadsheet is my birds eye view of where I am in terms of leads, proposals and projects. I also use it to get a feel for how much money is still left on the table (this helps me budget & forecast).

If you’re not doing a sales process already, I hope what I’ve posted here will be of some help to you; please feel free to shout out with any questions.

If you do have a process in place at the moment, I’d love to hear your comments on the above or any info about your process.

Thanks

Joel

p.s. did I mention the conference in Cardiff?