One of the key factors of being a successful sales or account manager is having a clear overview of your sales reps’ leads and prospects. Because of the fast-paced environment of Sales, communication errors happen all too often. In some cases, leads are being mismanaged while in other cases, they are not even entered into the database correctly. In any case, these mistakes can cost you dearly.
Therefore, it is crucial to find a tool to manage your leads that is reliable and easy to use. Often, companies look towards expensive specialist software or have their IT department build a custom database. However, an alternative way of keeping track of your sales leads is adopting an automated Excel sales lead template.
Why use Excel to track sales leads?
- Flexibility: Excel spreadsheets can be modified and changed according to your organization’s needs and requirements. As such, there is no need for complicated software solutions or putting pressure on your IT department to build a customized sales leads tracker.
- Accessibility: Whether you are working from a tablet, a desktop, laptop, or smartphone, sales representatives and account managers always have access to the Excel Sales Lead template and can make changes on the go.
- Compatibility: Microsoft Excel is easily compatible with other software that your firm might be using. Therefore, current data is easily imported into Excel spreadsheets.
- Ease of use: Many employees are familiar with spreadsheets and if they are not, it is easy to train them. Indeed, using an Excel-based template is ideal for beginners and advanced users alike.
View all your sales lead metrics in an automated dashboard:
How to get started
This spreadsheet-based workflow template is a pre-built system that allows you to collect leads data from your team of sales reps.
The template can be used by sales teams of any size, in any company. It provides your reps with a quick and reliable way to record and update their own private database of leads, while merging all of that information into an automated list and dashboard for managers.
What’s a spreadsheet-based workflow template?
A standard spreadsheet template is a single file containing pre-built charts and formulas, but a Sheetgo workflow template is a complete system. It consists of multiple Excel files that transfer data between them.
This allows reps to work in their own private sheet while sharing data with managers automatically. This means there’s no need to copy-paste data from file to file or waste time locating and verifying data manually.
A spreadsheet-based workflow template gives you:
- Organization and data privacy: Each file is dedicated to one sole task, providing better data protection and reliability. Instead of working in one large shared spreadsheet, colleagues manage their own data in their own private spreadsheet. This means less chance of manual error or overwriting someone else’s data. Information is exported from these files and merged in the manager’s master sheet and dashboards automatically.
- Scalability: You can expand an Excel-based system as your sales team grows, without redesigning the system or switching to a new solution. Whenever you need to add more data, you can simply connect more spreadsheets to the workflow.
- Integration: Excel is compatible with everything, so you can easily import and combine data from other software packages. In a couple of clicks, you can connect data from Operations, Finance, or other company workflows to create an integrated data management system.
Generate an automated list of all sales leads:
What you get with this template
When you install the Excel sales lead template, four Excel files with pre-built Sheetgo connections are saved to the storage solution of your choice:
- Three Sales rep spreadsheets. Share each of these files with your sales development representatives.
- One Leads tracking management master sheet. This is the central master sheet for the manager.
How to install the workflow template
1. Click the blue button bellow to get started.
2. Sign up for Sheetgo with your Google, Microsoft, or Dropbox account.
3. Click Install template and choose your preferred platform to store your copy of the template.
Please allow a few moments as Sheetgo creates the connections and saves a copy of the template files to your chosen storage.
Leads tracking template
Spreadsheets workflow template to monitor your team of sales reps and the status of leads.
How to use the Excel sales lead template
Step 1: Open and explore the Sales rep files
To open the Sales rep spreadsheets, double-click one of them in the workflow view. This file now opens in a new tab.
If you prefer working in the Excel application, simply click Open in Desktop App and continue working directly in Excel.
Each Sales Rep spreadsheet has three tabs: Instructions, Leads (Input), and My Dashboard.
In the Leads (Input) tab, the rep should enter the contact details for each of their leads, along with which stage of the funnel they’re currently at.
In the Dashboard tab, each Sales rep can monitor their personal progress and performance.
Step 2: Share the Sales rep files
To share the Sales rep files with your co-workers, simply click Share when you have the spreadsheet open and enter the correct email address.
Step 3: Transfer the data
Once your colleagues have started entering leads into the Sales Rep files, the workflow needs to be transferred to bring that information back to the master sheet.
To do this, go to the tab with the main workflow and click Run located in the left bottom corner of the screen.
Take a look at your master sheet and you will see that the lead data from each of the sales rep files have been combined in the Consolidated Sales Leads tab.
The template uses this data to generate the automated dashboard, giving you an overview of sales leads per rep, sales per rep, leads to data, and how many open leads are at each stage of the funnel.
Step 4: Automate the workflow
To ensure you’ve always got the latest data in your master sheet and dashboard, schedule automatic transfers. Moreover, automation saves you precious time.
Click Automate instead of Run and choose how often you want transfers.
How to add an extra rep to the workflow
This template contains 3 pre-connected Sales Rep spreadsheets, but it’s easy to add extra files for additional team members.
Go to your drive storage (Google Drive, OneDrive, Sharepoint, or Dropbox) > Sheetgo Templates > Leads tracking management.
Right click on one of the files, then Make a copy. Rename the file for the new colleague.
Inside Sheetgo, open your Leads tracking management workflow and go to Connections.
You will see that this workflow contains one connection called Consolidated Sales Leads.
Click on the 3-dots menu (⋮) and Edit Connection.
Under Source data > Multiple files, you will see that the connection is currently pulling data from the 3 Sales Rep files into the master sheet.
Click +Add another source file and select the new file that you have just created.
The file appears in Sheetgo.
Now select the correct source tab. In this case, that is Leads(Input).
Click Finish and Save.
If you go to Workflow, you will see that there are now 4 Sales Rep files connected to the master sheet.
Design your own sales solution
Connecting Excel with Sheetgo enables you to create a dynamic sales system that’s tailored to your business. You can connect additional files to the workflow, or use forms for standardized data inputs.
If you’re looking for a more complex sales lead management solution or you need help customizing the template for your company, book a meeting with our automation experts.
Congratulations!
Your automated sales leads template in Excel is now up and running! Check out this post about Sheetgo’s automated Expense tracker template and discover more workflow templates in Excel!
