Question

So, how do you keep track of sales leads? I'm aware of a number of products out there:

• Salesforce
• Highrise
• Pipe Jump
• A wiki
• Excel

None of them are really doing it for me. Since it's primarily me that does sales, I want an easy way to:

• Keep track of who I've been talking to about what.
• Stick them into some sort of pipeline that'll allow me to answer my bank manager's usual question: "what work have you got lined up for the next 3 months?"
• Know the supposed "value" of my sales pipeline to be able to be more proactive rather than reactive about finances.
• Associate a lead with a quote in FreeAgent Central.
• Know who I'm supposed to be poking because they haven't been in touch lately.
• Keep track of the wins and losses (and, in particular, keep notes on why particular ones were lost, see if I can spot patterns).
• Pretty graphs!

I know, not asking for much. So, is there anything out there that does what I want? What do you use? Am I asking the wrong questions of a sales lead tracking system?

Answer 1

Where I work we have a custom excel to do this. Building pipeline is quite easy, have a table of all clients (Sheet1), then split pipeline into stages that work for you, we have these:

• Prospect (You think there is a valid business lead)
• Qualified lead (expects a proposal)
• Low chance of winning (30% chance)
• Medium (50% chance)
• High (80% chance)
• Contracted
• Lost

Put expected revenue for next 12 months for each of the prospects. Then to get forecasted revenue multiply chance by revenue and draw graphs. If You pick up some VBA you can add more customizations quickly.