5 important things you can’t do with a spreadsheet
Need another reason to ditch the spreadsheet? Here are five need-to-do things that a spreadsheet just can’t handle.
View a chronological record of every interaction. Having this data will eliminate your sales team spending time searching through notes and will instead give your team the ability to hand off a prospect to anyone without having to explain every last detail they’ve ever discussed.
Create a standardized sales process. A CRM can turn the methods that have been a success for your team into a template that all sales reps can access and follow at any time.
See the status of your pipeline. When you need a coherent sales forecast or an analysis of deals in progress, a CRM can give you an easy-to-read view of this information.
Communicate and collaborate. Just because you can share a spreadsheet doesn’t mean it’s a good collaboration tool. A CRM tool can make it easy to share notes, leave comments, receive notifications, and more, instantaneously and consistently.
Integrate with other business tools. The tools your team uses should be able to work together. A CRM like Nutshell can talk to your email platforms, customer support software, and more.
3. You’re doing copying and pasting
In some forms of work, copying and pasting data is great and sufficient… enough. However, when it comes to email marketing and communicating with customers, copying and pasting emails can be done with automation found within most CRM platforms.
This can also be incredibly time-consuming, seeing as you’re not able to email or call a customer directly from a CRM tool. Your sales reps spend a lot of time crafting proper communication with customers, so regardless if you’re contacting one prospect at a time or more than one, consider a CRM like Nutshell that offers templates, marketing software integrations, automated personal email sequences, and more, to help all of your reps stay on top of their inbox.
Not only are your reps copying and pasting one email template into another, wasting time, but they’re also likely doing the same as they send customer data to other reps, which can be a major hassle. A CRM keeps this customer information organized and segmented, so whoever needs access to it can, in seconds.
4. You aren’t getting insights
Without the reporting features of a CRM, your sales team will likely not get the insights and data they need to do their job successfully.
For instance, it can be a struggle to share reports or data with anyone, not just fellow sales reps, but also partners or customers. This is where a CRM can come in handy, as one like Nutshell provides easy-to-use and customizable reports that give reps an at-a-glance look into the business and your customers. Plus, creating manual reports is laborious and time-consuming and not only prevents your team from focusing on what they do best but doing this manually also leads to errors.
Another struggle your sales team could be facing is not knowing which pipeline stages to optimize. It’s incredibly challenging not knowing what’s working and what’s not without a CRM’s data.
Knowing what’s in the sales pipeline is crucial because if your organization is lucky enough to have leads coming in, but your team is struggling to manage them, what’s the point? A CRM can do this legwork for you.
Remember, at the end of the day, members of your sales team should spend their time selling, not analyzing information.
5. You feel stuck
Finally, if your sales team feels stuck and is struggling to do their job, a CRM can help.
When they feel like they’re treading water or barely staying afloat due to lack of organization, a CRM can be the lifeboat they need. If they’re feeling like they can’t provide the top-notch customer service they want to because the feeling of being unorganized is holding them back, a CRM is overdue.
If your organization is growing and scaling, and your sales team feels overwhelmed, a CRM can help keep their productivity levels where they need to be to succeed.
And finally, if the team feels stuck regarding not having the time to focus on top-spending customers, a CRM gives them the time and resources to do so.