Still using a spreadsheet to track your sales funnel?
The size and quality of a company’s sales funnel is a key determinant of future growth. Successful firms apply intense focus on tracking and nurturing all aspects of their customer leads and opportunities. Likewise, potential acquirers will deeply scrutinize a seller’s revenue forecast and underlying data before making an offer decision.
Yet most companies rely on Excel to manage their sales process, despite all of the inherent limitations that spreadsheets pose.
Typical Spreadsheet-Based Sales Process
- Each sales rep manages their own personal spreadsheet.
- Individual spreadsheets are e-mailed to a sales manager who cuts and pastes the data into a master file.
- Sales meeting agendas and action items are manually generated in separate files.
- With no real-time visibility, the sales manager often calls sales reps to get the latest status on opportunities.
- Customer contacts are individually held by each sales rep and customer interactions are not recorded or shared.
Poor Data Quality
- Spreadsheet data is often not “clean” and lacks the structure to result in any meaningful analysis.
- Historical sales information is buried within the accounting system, making it impossible to validate trends in the forecast.
- Contact management is ad-hoc, resulting in missed opportunities.
- Management reports and charts are manually generated on a regular basis.
- Since the finance department cannot rely on the sales funnel data, they produce their own inaccurate revenue forecast, ignoring the status of the underlying sales opportunities.
We design and customize SaaS tools that automate sales funnel tracking
Emerging cloud-based platforms, such as Airtable, can be designed to tailor-fit a sales solution to meet your unique business requirements.
Intuitive Cloud Software
- Always up-to-date “single version of the truth”.
- Data is always accessible via browser or mobile app.
- Easy adoption for management and staff via intuitive user interface.
Real-time Dashboards
- Visualize a real-time dashboard of key metrics including historic trends.
- Group, filter and sort data in different views.
- Link customers, contacts, opportunities and interactions in a relational database.
Efficient Collaboration
- Access the latest opportunity status in real-time — low value communications are eliminated.
- Sales meetings cover a pre-defined set of views without manually producing agendas and reports.
- Action items can be tracked and updated within the system.
Better Customer Management
- Record and link all meaningful customer interactions.
- Automate follow-up reminders so important items are never missed.
- Preset alerts for known replenishment or renewal opportunities.
Structured Sales Process
- Establish well-defined criteria as opportunities advance through each stage of the funnel.
- Capture status updates as deals progress.
- Consistently apply known win probabilities and improve forecast accuracy.
Insight-driven Actions
- Capture reasons why leads are won or lost and immediately adapt to changing market conditions.
- Analyze customer feedback and adjust the product roadmap.
- Tier customer targets to focus resources on important relationships and the highest value opportunities.