Using Sales Leads Spreadsheet to Boost Your Business [Complete Guide]

Looking for a powerful lead tracking solution to help your sales team?

We’ve got good news!

You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars on a complicated CRM, nor should you hire new talent to handle your lead tracking processes. The answer could well be in creating a simple document that does all the magic.

What you simply need is a sales leads spreadsheet to contain all lead information.

In this article, you’ll learn:

• What a sales leads spreadsheet system is
• Why a sales leads tracker is necessary for improving your results
• Key information to include in your sales leads spreadsheet
• How often to update your lead tracking document
• Four ways to ensure the accuracy of your lead tracking spreadsheet

So let’s begin…

What Is a Sales Leads Spreadsheet?

A sales lead spreadsheet system, also referred to as a lead tracker, is a document you create to organize your sales leads. It’s a tool that helps you track prospects throughout the different stages of the sales cycle and make informed decisions along the way.

A lead tracker can be created on Excel or Google Sheets. It contains the essential contact information for each lead as well as their progress status and communication log.

The document is easy to create and use even for beginners. It can be shared with other team members and updated in real-time to keep everyone on the same page.

How Can a Sales Leads Spreadsheet Boost Your Business Results?

Upon reading the definition, you may be wondering about the significance of lead trackers. Why would you need an additional document to monitor lead progression, especially if you’re already using a CRM?

Well…

A sales lead tracking spreadsheet is completely free and easy to create. You can use Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel, or any other software to build a leads table and manage prospect information.

Here’s what makes lead trackers such a powerful addition to your sales and marketing arsenal:

Maximum Efficiency

A lead tracker helps you store and manage prospect data more efficiently. You’ll save your team countless hours they would’ve wasted on finding and collecting lost information. You’ll make data-driven decisions and ensure that your team’s progress is being capitalized on.

More importantly:

This is the perfect way to keep everyone in your company organized. You’ll especially guarantee that your sales and marketing departments are well-aligned working towards the same goal.

Progress Tracking

A lead tracker helps you gain valuable insight into your target buyers and oversee their progress more clearly. You’ll be able to think statistically about every step in the process and enhance the efficiency of your sales and marketing strategies.

Accurate Forecasting

As you begin to fill your lead tracker with new prospects and gather more data, you’ll become much more efficient in forecasting your sales performance.

An effective lead tracking system helps you closely analyze your sales pipeline and calculate your ROI. Based on sales value, lead scoring, and conversions — you’ll be able to improve your forecasting and make accurate predictions about your results.

Sales Process Optimization

Having a sales tracking spreadsheet is essential for improving your workflow and refining your sales strategy. It’s an excellent way to you optimize your lead generation activities and take strategic steps towards enhancing your sales process.

For instance:

You’ll have a clear idea about the potential bottlenecks in your sales pipeline. You’ll also know which timing is best for boosting engagements when contacting new leads. Better yet, lead tracking spreadsheets can help you identify your top lead sources and concentrate on them in the future.

Automate Your Invoicing Sales Process

If you already converted your sales prospects into paying customers and want to take your workflow one step further, make use of the free Google sheets invoice template. After you’ve added all of your business information and branding to the Google sheets invoice template, with a few simple steps you can start automating your invoicing system.
This will save you and your team a lot of time entering new data to issue invoices, and eliminate boring repetitive work.
By automating your invoicing process you will be able to create invoices in a matter of minutes and even send them out via email to your customers with a few clicks.

What Information Should Be Included in a Sales Leads Spreadsheet?

Before you can start monitoring lead status and planning communications, you need to create a sales leads spreadsheet. It’s a table that contains multiple columns that will store lead information in the future.

To build a customizable sales leads spreadsheet of your own, head to Excel or Google Sheets and open a new file.

At the top row, add the following details:

• Company Name
• Industry
• Location
• Website
• Contact name
• Job Title
• Phone
• Email address
• Progress status
• Date of last contact
• Date of next contact
• Lead source
• Comments/Notes

The truth is…

There is no rule of thumb as to which contact details you should include here. As long as the information helps you gain key insights and make educated decisions, feel free to include it in your lead tracker. Store any data that you believe is necessary for you to close more sales opportunities.

Now:

Excel was the most popular spreadsheet software for the past few decades. However, Google Sheets seems to be the ideal option as it allows you to create unlimited documents, shared them with team members, leave comments, and make instant edits for everyone to see. 

How Often Should a Sales Leads Tracking Spreadsheet Be Updated?

This is often an overlooked question when it comes to tracking leads with spreadsheets. Many sales professionals neglect the importance of updating lead trackers with accurate information — which causes many data inaccuracies in the long term.

So how often should you update sales leads spreadsheets?

As-Needed

Whenever a new lead enters your sales funnel, you can add them at the bottom of your spreadsheet with all the information. Pay close attention to the dates to ensure that you’re spacing your outreach and contacting prospects before they lose interest.

Another reason to update your document is when any changes happen to the progress status or when you have comments to add to keep your team members up-to-date.

Monthly

Schedule a monthly lead management report where you go through each prospect and ensure that they have been contacted and nurtured. Taking some time to analyze your lead tracker data is essential for enhancing your sales progress and optimizing your strategy.

You can assign different colors to represent lead status, date of next contact, follow-up action, etc. This enables you to monitor your results closely and manage lead relationships more efficiently.

How Can You Ensure Accuracy in Your Sales Leads Spreadsheet?

The sales leads tracking spreadsheet is a reference for forecasting results, evaluating progress, and adjusting your sales cycle. But in order for it to be effective, it has to provide accurate data for your SDRs to rely on.

Because it’s a document that you have to update regularly, there are a lot of mistakes that could affect your workflow. Therefore, you need to watch out for those and make sure that all the data you have is correct.

So how do you guarantee the accuracy of the information in your sales leads spreadsheet?

1. Use a Sales Leads Spreadsheet Template

A lead tracker template is a ready-made document that you can use for free to manage prospects. It’s made by a professional salesman with experience in creating complex spreadsheets to help you save time and enhance your workflow.

With a quick Google search, you can find hundreds of templates to use for free on Google Sheets or Excel.

So how do you use a sales leads tracking template?

For Google Sheets, you’ll create a copy of the document and rename it so you can use it in your sales lead tracking. If you’re using Excel, however, download any sample you want with a few clicks and get started with it.

You’ll also be able to make edits on the template to add, modify, or delete columns. Feel free to change the font family, the sizes, as well as the colors when necessary.

Once all of that is done, share the lead tracking document with other team members. Make sure to also explain how the spreadsheet works and who’s responsible for updating it.

2. Check for Data Inconsistencies

Mistakes happen…

No matter how focused on the task, human beings make errors every now and then. Whether it’s you who forgot to include the lead’s email or a team member adding the wrong prospect name, mistakes will always happen.

The solution?

Check your lead tracker regularly for missing information or data inconsistencies. For instance, you need to make sure that your salespeople are contacting leads before the follow-up date is due. Once a prospect is contacted, update their progress status and contact dates.

Now…

To prevent any data loss, you can download an xlsx version from Google Sheets and save it on your computer as a backup. Excel users can make a copy of their files and save them somewhere else for recovery if needed.

Google Sheets will give you the chance to check your editing history and recover any lost information. You’ll be able to tell who’s making changes so you can teach them the right way of doing things.

3. Look for Lead Duplicates

The last thing you want in your sales leads spreadsheet is duplicates.

Duplicates are identical rows in your document that have the exact same company details and prospect data. Such a mistake can cost you some serious opportunities as you’ll find yourself contacting the same lead twice with each outreach attempt.

At other times, your salespeople may contact leads that have already converted. Or even worse, you could have two salesmen reaching out to the same individual simultaneously.

Not only will this harm your sales conversions and work performance, but it’s also a sure way to increase the cost of customer acquisition.

To be fair:

It’s hard to spot duplicates and delete them all, especially when you have hundreds of qualified leads in your document.

Fortunately…

Google Sheets has many free extensions to help you scan for duplicates and merge them into a single row. This is extremely important to do whenever you’re finished adding new prospects or before importing your lead list into a third-party CRM.

4. Improve Your Spreadsheet Design

The design of your spreadsheet is fundamental for the success of your sales lead tracking processes. A cutting-edge design for your document will enable you to better visualize leads and grasp their progress in the blink of an eye.

How do you improve your lead tracking spreadsheet design?

• Use a professional, easy-to-read typeface
• Go for a readable font size
• Use modern color variations to represent different cells such as “lead status” and “follow-up date”
• Adjust the column and row spacing to contain enough text  

These changes will help you maintain full visibility over your workflow. You’ll notice key details that are hard to detect when you’re scrolling by (such as lead status and due dates) just based on color.

Bottom Line

A sales leads spreadsheet is the perfect way to organize prospect data and store it all in one place. A lead tracker will allow you to enhance your sales processes, save time, and amplify your performance at no additional cost.

It’s crucial to create a lead tracking document that covers the most important details about your prospects. There are a lot of ready-made templates you can edit and use to organize lead information and monitor their progress.

While using sales leads spreadsheets, be sure to keep your document updated with the latest details. You must update the lead status and score regularly — especially after following up and engaging with new leads.