A spreadsheet where every prospect takes up one row: name, phone number, last conversation, quote sent, date of the next follow-up. The tool most tradespeople, shop owners and sole traders already use, often without ever choosing it.
A tool that files every enquiry in a pipeline of stages (enquiry received, quote sent, to chase, won, lost), reminds you each morning who to follow up, and sends the follow-up emails itself, written once and for all. Your website form creates the records, with their source.
If you do the chasing on your own, if your list of prospects fits on one screen and you read through it every week without missing anything, keep your spreadsheet: it does the job and costs nothing. A CRM becomes worthwhile when the spreadsheet starts costing you customers. Three signals give it away: quotes sit without a follow-up because nobody reopened the file; enquiries arrive through several channels (your website form, the phone, your Google listing, Meta Ads) and some are lost before they are ever typed in; you no longer know where each customer came from, so you cannot tell where to put your budget. At that point a simple CRM with a staged pipeline, daily reminders and automatic follow-up emails usually pays for itself quickly, as long as it is connected to your website form. That is what we set up for small businesses, tradespeople, shops and sole traders, priced on quotation. Our guide 'Setting up a CRM in a small business' walks through the steps before you commit.
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There is no universal threshold. The right measure is not the number of rows but the number of things you forget. As long as you read your whole list in one go and every open quote gets its follow-up, the spreadsheet is enough. The day you find a hot prospect forgotten for weeks, you have passed the limit, whatever the number of contacts. A well-kept spreadsheet beats a CRM opened once a month.
Not if it is chosen at your scale. A simple CRM comes down to a few columns where you move cards along, plus a list of reminders in the morning. What makes one complicated is an oversized tool, or a fifteen-stage pipeline nobody follows. We set it up around the stages you actually use.
They are imported, but not as they stand. Before the import we clean the file: duplicates, contacts with no email or phone number, prospects you have not spoken to in a long time. We keep the columns that matter for follow-ups (first name, email, last quote, amount, source) and leave the rest. Your spreadsheet stays as an archive.
Every form submission creates a record with the name, the message and the source (the exact page, and the ad campaign if the visitor came from one). The record enters the first stage of the pipeline and triggers the first follow-up email if you have not replied within the window you choose. It is that connection that tells you, at the end of the month, where your customers come from.
They sound robotic when they are written like notifications. We write them in your own voice: short, with the contact's first name, a reminder of the quote in question and one simple question. Automation does not replace your phone call. It gets the follow-up out on the right day, even in the weeks when you have no spare minute to think about it. You approve every template before it goes live.
It is priced on quotation, sent within 24 hours, with a fixed price in writing before we start. The amount depends on what needs connecting: how many enquiry sources to plug in, how many follow-up emails to write, how much cleaning your existing file needs. If your spreadsheet is still doing the job, we will tell you rather than sell you a tool you do not need.
Our team looks at your situation and recommends the right solution. Free quote within 24 hours.