This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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What's the best way to organize sales leads without getting overwhelmed? Sales leads, client leads, customer leads, people you should follow up with. How can you track inquiries, follow ups and deadlines, especially if you are just one person, you're not ready for a big system, but you understand that this could be a problem, especially as your business grows. When your inbox is bursting and you've got lots of other stuff going on and you're just like, wow, it's like a fire hose. What do I do, especially as a side hustler?
So today we're gonna hear from an interior design business owner. She's getting more inquiries than ever, which is great, but she's struggling to stay organized. I get it. This is kind of the story of my life, or at least it was for many years. So what are some good options?
Let's say some simple budget friendly options for keeping some of this communication and these leads organized, tracking follow ups and just managing communication in general. Thanks for tuning in today. The detailed question from our caller and my answer right after this quick shout out to our sponsor. [Music]
Hi Chris, I'm Olivia. I run a small interior design business.
And thankfully I've been getting more client inquiries than ever before, especially through social media and referrals. But keeping track of leads has become overwhelming. Right now I'm using a messy spreadsheet in my email inbox and I'm constantly worried about forgetting to follow up or missing important deadlines. I know there are some fancy CRM tools out there, but I don't wanna spend hundreds of dollars on something complicated that I might not even use. Is there a simpler, affordable way to organize my leads, follow ups and client notes that can grow with my business as I scale?
- Olivia, let me give you some very specific recommendations. I think this is gonna help some other folks too. Start with a simple lead tracking system. - All right, so there's these fancy tools that Olivia mentioned, Customer Relationship Management, CRM. But you can actually do this in Google Sheets, like Google Spreadsheets or Airtable or something else, but I've used Google Sheets.
It actually works great. Notion also works great. Any kind of database or spreadsheet where you can update the information and sort it according to different categories or rows, that is pretty much all you need. So you wanna create some key columns like client name, inquiry date, service requested, followup date, and what the status of the project is. Might be a new lead, it might be in progress, might be booked, it might be, I don't know, not now.
Could be whatever terms you want to use. But that way you can filter, sort and color code entries to keep leads visually organized at a glance. And also Google Sheets is free. It syncs across devices. You can look it up on your phone while you're out and about.
It's just great. But if you're ready for something a little bit more advanced but still budget friendly, there's options there as well. Trello is great. Use a Trello board as a visual client management tool. Then there you kind of create lists for each new project stage like new inquiries, followups, booked clients, same kind of process.
Just a little bit different in terms of the visual design. The drag and drop process of Trello is great for moving leads through your pipeline. HubSpot CRM, I think HubSpot has a free version. They also have paid tools. They make a lot of money, but they provide a pretty good service.
Their free version offers client tracking email templates and task reminders. It is beginner friendly. I've heard nothing but good things from people using HubSpot over the years. There's probably some others, but the key point is to start with one of them, start with one tool, learn it well, and just avoid switching platforms unless truly necessary. Now, as for this part about followup, some automated followups, email automation tools like MailChimp or Kit, formerly ConvertKit or MailerLite, they can allow you to create a simple followup sequence for your inquiries.
So if somebody fills out your contact form, you can put them in the sequence and they will automatically get new messages according to the sequence, however you set it. There are a lot of other tools we could talk about, but honestly, since you wanna keep it simple, which I think is great, Google Sheets or Airtable or Notion or something like Trello can work really, really great. You do not need to spend a lot of money. You do not need a lot of complexity. This is something you wanna keep easy and basic so that you can focus on much more important things, okay?
Go do some more important things. I wanna encourage you today to do one important thing, no matter how small, to get closer to a goal you believe in. Thank you for listening to the podcast. By the way, tomorrow is the Ides of March. How about that?
This was episode 2,995. New episode out every day, including the Ides of March and every other day, always completely free. My name is Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
