Content Analyst at Investors Clinic
When you start a business, Excel is like that topper friend from high school.
How do identify digital leads who revisited the site in the last month? Use Excel.
What’s the office address of Mr. Sameer I contacted 3 days ago? Open that Excel.
Where’s
that mailing list? Excel, of course.
Come to
think of it, Excel was probably named after that topper
But we
digress. Fact is your work seems impossible without Excel. It’s easy to set up,
simple to use, and it does the job.
Excel is
ideal—until one or both of these things happen:
- You
want others to collaborate on your data
- Your
business starts taking off
Imagine
sharing your Excel with 10 people and hoping everyone is on the updated version
at all times.
Frustrating,
error-prone, and not a productive way to work. Or imagine communicating with 20
prospective customers (as opposed to 3 last month). Suddenly your mailing list
needs better storage, you find it hard to keep track of every interaction with
every lead, and it becomes difficult when you quickly want to identify what
stage a potential deal is in.
This is
when you realise Excel is not enough.
While no
business says no to collaboration and growth, it’s important to bid goodbye to
tools your business has outgrown. When you’re committing yourself to more
relationships than spreadsheets can handle, it’s time to move from Excel to
CRM.
CRM—expanded as customer relationship management—is a tool whose name
sums up its function. Businesses around the world use CRM to create and nurture
relationships with their leads. Some businesses also use CRM for marketing
automation, which is a great add-on. At its essence, CRM is an all-inclusive
platform for sales teams to manage their business relationships. More specifically,
a sales CRM lets you create individual profiles for every lead, track your
deals, make calls, send emails, create reports, set up meetings, add notes,
share files, and review every interaction you’ve ever had with a lead.
That’s
one nifty bundle right there. A bundle that has at least 5 things going for it:
1. Data
security
An Excel
document is always at risk of getting shared without your knowledge. Imagine
someone putting your company’s contacts into a USB drive and walking off; it’s
easy to lose your data. But with cloud-based CRMs, your data is secure even
when you’re not in office. Different sales CRMs have different ways of ensuring
the privacy and security of their customers. Make sure you have complete
insight into a CRM’s security protocols before you decide to buy.
2.
Collaboration
This is
the single biggest advantage of CRM over Excel. Sales managers can assign leads
to their reps even as reps make calls right from the CRM. Some sales CRMs even
have a team inbox—a common inbox for all members of a team, so available reps
can step in and take over critical conversations in the absence of their
teammates. Versioning control is non-existent; all stakeholders can now work
together in real time towards a common goal.
3.
Single, simple setup
When
you’re using Excel, you also need an email client, a calling software, a
calendar and a bunch of other tools to manage your sales. Imagine one tool with
all these features. That’s where a sales CRM holds the edge. There are three
important benefits of using a one-stop sales tool:
- You
save valuable time
- You
become more productive
- Your
sales (and data) are organised better
4.
Automation
Automation
is a non-factor when it comes to Excel; it’s all about manual data entry. But
sales CRMs are different.
Say
you’re using the form on your website as an important avenue for lead
generation. Typically, a lead fills out the form, you get an email alert with
the lead’s details, and you head over to your Excel file. You type in the
lead’s details in the respective cells. And you rinse, repeat the process for
every web lead.
With CRM
tool, you can automate this activity. Every time someone fills out your form,
they can pop up as a new lead in your CRM. Just imagine the amount of time you
save with this simple automation.
And this
is just one of the many automations that sales CRMs offer.
5.
Advanced reporting
Every
business needs to quantify its efforts. Excel gives you pivot tables, bar
graphs and pie charts, but there are limits on the amount of data it can handle.
For complex reports across timelines and involving a massive number of records,
Excel comes up short. Sales CRMs let you create a variety of reports on demand;
they even have templates for common use cases. When it comes to generating data
the way you envision it, sales CRMs are more accommodative than Excel.
About
Investors Clinic:
Investors Clinic has a strong network of 34 offices across India, more than 1.5 lakh sq. ft. of office space and global foray with international presence in Dubai, Doha and Singapore. Investors Clinic’s brand value is reckoned at more than INR 2000 Cr with a turnover of INR 300+ Cr. Investors Clinic is strengthening its reach and presence very rapidly. Investors Clinic has a proven track record of working with more than 200 leading developers. The company is committed to providing best-in-class customer service through world-class technology, processes and response mechanisms. Investor Clinic is involved into end-to-end property deals, from property value appreciation to new property launches.
Related Post
When you start a business, Excel is lik..
As summer continues to be unbearable across many parts of the country, holiday homes are gaining momentum with people flocking to Hill Stations to escape the ch..
