Recently I was sent an Excel spreadsheet with a dozen or so leads in it for me to follow up. I bet this is a very common way of passing lead information around a business and when I received it the file was typical in that column A was the Company Name, B was the Contact Name, C was the Phone number and so on. You get the idea.

Now don't get me wrong as I love Excel. I am familiar with it and appreciate the power a spreadsheet can deliver, but it tends to be used for almost everything in a business until the business grows to a point where they know that they need to invest in a software application that has been built specifically for the purpose to which they have been using Excel.

Leads should reside in a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system, and indeed I use such a solution myself. However, I thought I would try to use the spreadsheet I had been sent to see how easy it was to keep on top of my leads. So here I was about to start calling people with a spreadsheet of information and only a dozen prospects to keep track of.

What a mess! I make the first call and the person I need to speak to is out. I wish to add this as a comment so I know that they could be out of the office frequently and it may be better to email them. The second call allows me to leave a voicemail message. Again I can make a note that I did this in a column on the spreadsheet. The next lead generates an interesting discussion on the industry and I discover some interesting overlaps between our companies. I want to review their web site and then send an email to catch up at some time in the future. The fourth person says they are keen to discuss the offer in more detail but now is not a good time – could I call back on Friday afternoon. And so on….

As you can imagine I am losing track of what I have done, what I have promised to do, when I have agreed to do something, etc.

I now quickly load the leads straight into my CRM system and immediately I can start to see a logical picture of what has happened and what is to happen from within the system. Rather than having to scan every line of the spreadsheet to see what was the last thing I agreed, I am presented with a list of Tasks to do today. In addition any emails I have sent (or subsequently received) have been automatically saved in the CRM giving me a full history.

I know many people I talk to say they use a combination of Outlook, Excel and their 'head', but I just wonder how much wasted time is spent revisiting things to make sure nothing has been missed. Or worse you fail to get back to a prospect and they go elsewhere.