Creative agencies rarely lose work to a rival studio. They lose it in the weeks when everyone is busy making the last project and nobody touches the pipeline. Then the project ships and there is nothing booked behind it. The best CRM for creative agencies depends on how you win work. Fluid CRM ($16 per … Read more
You worked out your close rate, someone quotes 21% as the B2B average and you still can’t tell if your number is good. The answer depends on what you counted. For a small team it also depends on how few deals the number is based on. Close rate is won deals divided by every deal … Read more
Most small teams set a sales quota at the start of the quarter and look at it again when the quarter is over. By then the number is history and nothing can change it. Quota attainment is worth tracking while there is still time to act on it. Quota attainment is closed revenue divided by … Read more
Someone tells you a healthy pipeline is 3x your target. You add up your board, divide by your target and get a number you have no way to judge. Is 2.6x a problem or fine? That depends on one number most guides skip. Pipeline coverage ratio is your open pipeline due to close this quarter … Read more
You picked a CRM, opened the settings and found forty things you could configure. Many guides to CRM implementation then hand a small business a project plan that runs for weeks. A team of five does not need the plan, and it still has six choices to make before the first deal goes in. CRM … Read more
What you know about your customers sits in your inbox, a spreadsheet and your own head. A CRM database puts it in one place, and for a team of 1 to 10 it is much smaller than the vendor guides make it sound. A CRM database is where a business keeps everything it knows about … Read more
You can build a working CRM in Google Sheets with features that are already in its menus, and the hard part is keeping it small enough that you still update it in month three. This guide gives you the tabs, the exact columns and four formulas you can check against example rows. A Google Sheets … Read more
A startup founder talking to investors has the same problem as a founder selling, which is too many open conversations to hold in one head. One investor asked for your numbers on Tuesday, another said to come back after the next release and a third still owes you an intro. An investor pipeline is how … Read more
Most advice on choosing a CRM for SaaS treats every software company as the same buyer. A founder who closes ten demos a month and a team with 400 self-serve signups a month need different tools, and one of them barely needs a CRM at all. A CRM for SaaS should hold the sales conversations, … Read more
You started a company to build a product, and now the product needs customers and nobody else is going to find them. Most advice on founder-led sales tells you why it matters and then stops before the part where you have to fit it into a week. Founder-led sales is when the founder personally finds … Read more