They said get a CRM and I said no no no

okay, confession time. Last year was the first year i setup a proper CRM.
i’ve had a company for 15 years.

why? because I HATE CRM’s.

If you’ve ever tried to get one setup, you know what i’m talking about.

But you know what else happened last year?

I set my sales and marketing up for success because i was tired of fighting for every deal and leaving money on the table because i forgot to send a “hi how are ya?” followup to proposals and leads.

so here we are. in the land of CRM’s (customer relationship management)

Because having one is the difference between going “we have pipeline!” to “who do i know again?”

And that’s why they’re a marketing foundation.

Here’s what your CRM needs to do for you.

• track email opens and replies

• be able to add conversations from Linkedin (or wherever you do your networking)

• be GDPR compliant (duh) and be okay to send cold emails from

• be able to do automations and integrations (Zap connection at least)

• be able to schedule send (why is this a bonus? because you can do it from Gmail if your tool doesn’t have it and you’re low volume)

That’s it, those are the basics.

If you’re on a budget and you don’t want to pay for a CRM software, and you use Google Sheets;

Here’s a template in Google Sheets from Softr, the no-code platform. I’m not partial to them, but the CRM template slaps. Throw it in ChatGPT if you want some tweaks, then export-import it back to Google Sheets.

• Here’s the Google Sheet: Google Sheets CRM Template 

• Here’s their tutorial walking through it on YouTube

• Here’s all the ways you can setup it up for free.99 (Tracking opens with Mailtrack + Zapier).

You can add a column that tracks number of touchpoints too.

It’s not “cute”, but it will work.

And if you use Airtable, Lex Roman has a free Lead Tracker that can work as your CRM in the short term.

This Airtable base is designed to help you:

• Capture leads who fill out your contact form (contact form included!)

• Track where leads are coming from (first touch and last touch)

• Visualize leads and sales along a pipeline

You can use this template with the free version of Airtable.

Free plug for Lex because she’s awesome and taught me so much about sales i’m gonna hug the crap out of her when we finally meet in person. If you need someone to teach you about Sales at the founder level, grab her Lead Gen Bundle on Gumroad for $99. It’s for service companies, but hey, it will work for a small SaaS too!

The biggest problems i see with founders setting up CRM’s:

• not putting in the right fields (too much or too few)

• choosing an expensive one because “no one got fired for buying Hubspot” (no, but they have gone broke) 💸

• not updating it while they’re doing sales and marketing work

• not setting reminders

• not using it for followups

So here’s exactly how to setup a CRM that works for you:

1. setup your fields (fields list below!)

2. export your contacts from wherever they’re hiding (stripe, email contacts, etc)

3. import them in (match the fields accordingly)

Fields list:

• email address

• first and last name

• company name

• acquisition source (organic/paid campaign/social media/referral)

• website URL

• linkedin link

• phone number (opt, but can be useful)

• link to other contacts (great for referrals and mapping connections)

• section for notes

• section for interactions

And here’s how to make it a daily routine of using it

(literally what i’ve been doing for the last 5 months with great results → a 2-3mo pipeline and 1-2 proposals out the door a week… imagine)

1. set it as your top task in the morning, alongside checking your emails

2. set a pomodoro (15-25min) to get you kickstarted and in the zone

3. go through your reminders for followups (because you set those up!) for that timespan

There. do that for 3 weeks and it will become a habit.

Set it as a repeating task if you have that ability in your project management software (clickup, notion tasks, google calendar, etc)

According to ChatGPT + peeps i know + combo’d answers to the endless slack community threads, the top ones under $25/mo/user are here: CRMs for Small SaaS Startups. (seriously, i think there’s a new CRM that comes out every 3rd day)

Okay! pretty sure you had to hit “read in browser” long ago. Thanks for hanging in there.

Do you have a CRM-related question i didn’t answer here?

That reply button would love a hug.

Cheers!
Sophia 💜👩🏽‍💻
powered by Speedy’s hot sauce and a 5:23am alarm. 💀🔥⏰

P. S. We’re 30% through these foundations, you’re doing great!