What is the best way to associate prospect contact information and sales tasks to a smartsheet sale

Jef Forward

We currently use smartsheet for our sales pipeline.  I love it.  As our prospects move through our sales cycle, we simply move them down the list.  I use the formulas to track all of our conversion rates and apply to project types and marketuing sources.  I find this reporting and linking feature invaluable. 

 

We use the attachments feature to keep track of our handwritten lead intake sheets (scanned to a pdf) .  We also attach a link to the drive folder that houses all of the particular documents of the project.  It is very handy.

 

What I am missing in this set up are three things:

1. ability to see a history of all communications between prospect and my sales team.

2. ability to apply repitive tasks to my sales team - associated with each succesive sales stage of a prospect, (or row in this situation).  I would prefer to see all tasks associated to each sales team member.  

3. ability to quickly see a "contact profile" with personal informationm social media, etc

 

I am considering the following options;

 

Option A - utilize an evernote workbook, per prospect, that has a check box task list for each succesive sales stage and use this as our (1) main document for our notes, tracking communications with phone calls and copy/past emails.  Google docs is an option, but the check box feature is less robust than evernote.  I could also attach all of the contact information to the top of the worksheet with a zap initiation of the prospect entering our sales pipeline.  This option lacks any social media intergration, and the ability to see open tasks across multiple team members and multiple prospects.

 

Option B - utilize a "contact based" or "conversation based" CRM that would do all of the above.  I can create zaps that would sync the crm contact to the sales pipeline row.  This would allow me to always have the appropriate task list associated per prospect in the CRM.  I could use the hyperlink feature associated with a cell and have a direct link to the crm contact or oppurtunity.  

 

I would love to hear about how other people or teams are working with smartsheet and sales.  Are there other options with in smartsheets that I am mising?

 

Thank you!

 

 

JohnHinkle

Something we have done for tracking customers, we started with the Client Contact List template and modified it to include all the data we want on our clients (social media info, contact history, etc). Then whenever we referenced a customer in another sheet (sales, project info, etc) we would hyperlink their name to their row in the contact sheet. Click the name and you are brought directly to the row containing their info.

 

We used a workaround to get a row specific link. This takes a little effort to set up (especially if you have a lot of users) but it works well once set up. Send yourself the row you want the link for (right click the row number and select Send Row). In the email, copy the link associated with the Login button. This link is a direct link to the row. Then, use that link for your hyperlinks. 

 

As far as seeing all communication... you could copy and paste emails into a discussion OR (even better) get your customers to use Smartsheet and add all their comments and correspondence to discussions.

 

You could also use Zapier to add all email correspondence to a sheet for that user. 

 

Honestly, Salesforce might be better for tracking all communications between your sales team and potential customers. 

 

I would check out the sales solution in Smartsheet's solution center. It has a lot of good information and templates: https://www.smartsheet.com/sales-solutions/sales-enablement

Jef Forward

John - Awesome idea - I have defineltly been under utilizing the hyperlink feature.  That is a great tip to hyperlink to the actual row instead of the sheet. 

 

We are not at a point of having our clients use the system.  They are mostly in their late 50's, early 60's and we need to keep it simple on their end.  I love of the idea of zapier auto push with certain client labels being applied in gmail.

 

I agree that salesforce might the better solution for the correspondence tracking, but I cant stomach the cost of sales force.  There seems to be several other crm that could also do this?.  I really appreciate your ideas!  

 

Thanks!

JohnHinkle

Happy to help! I haven’t used any other CRM's so I wouldn’t be able to recommend any. I would try searching Google for a good low cost CRM solution.