Think of fishing for a moment. To catch your dinner, you’ll cast your bait or lure and wait for a take. When that take comes, you’ll strike, reel in, and hopefully land the fish.
Even though it might sound simple, there are quite a few things that should go right for you to be successful. If they don’t, you stay hungry.
In your business, landing and keeping customers happy is similar. Your marketing team will cast the lure, your sales team will wait for the take, and then close the deal. Here, your lead and customer relationship management processes are crucial.
The thing is, as your business grows, you’ll win more leads, and you’ll have to manage more customers. This can get complicated. Fortunately, automation can simplify the process.
From our experiences with sheet.best customers, we know how automation can make teams more effective and efficient. As a bonus, it will cost you far less than other solutions on the market.
But what can you automate with sheet.best? Let’s take a look.
Quick Recap: Just a Few Things You Can Automate with sheet.best
- Scheduling appointments (sheet.best API + meeting booking software like Calendly)
- Automating follow-ups (sheet.best API + email client like Gmail)
- Automating emails (sheet.best API + email clients or email automation software like MailChimp)
- Lead scoring (sheet.best API + lead scoring system + update the record + emails or communication based on lead score)
- Task management (sheet.best API + project management software, custom web apps, push notifications, or emails)
And more!
Why Automate Lead and Customer Relationship Management?
Let’s start with the second question first. So, let’s consider why you should automate your lead and customer relationship management. There are a ton of benefits to automating your lead and customer relationship management, including:
- Seamless workflows. When you automate your lead and customer relationship management, you can develop consistent, seamless workflows that make these processes more efficient and your team more productive.
- Improved lead nurturing. You’ll engage with the right prospects at the right time. Your lead nurturing will be more effective, and you’ll close more deals.
- Increased employee efficiency and productivity. Through automation, you can eliminate many manual, redundant tasks.
- Better customer experience. When your team is more efficient and manages your customer relationships effectively, you’ll deliver a better customer experience.
- Improved customer retention. When you deliver better customer experiences, you’ll build stronger relationships with your customers.
- Reduced costs. Your teams will save time and get more done. This significantly reduces costs, especially if your leads and relationships usually go stale. Automation will help you stay on top so you increase your customers’ lifetime value.
What Can You Automate Customer Relationship Management with sheet.best?
Okay, you now know why you should consider automating your lead and customer relationship management processes. So, let’s look at what you can automate with sheet.best.
But first, let’s first recap how sheet.best works: With the tool, you’ll enter data into a spreadsheet like you usually would. However, once you have your data, you can turn your spreadsheet into an API that you can use almost anywhere.
This allows you to automate several parts of your lead and customer relationship management:
Automate Scheduling
Closing more leads largely depends on scheduling appointments with them as soon as possible after they get in touch with you.
With sheet.best you can use your API to record all your leads in a spreadsheet when they inquire through your website.
You can even give your team a dedicated web application to record lead details, no matter where they are.
Then, use your sheet.best API with a tool like Calendly to send automated messages for scheduling appointments. Instead of manually going through your lead lists, your team can fully automate the process to capture interest when your business is still top of mind.
👉 Need inspiration? Discover how you can build your own CRM with No Code.
Follow-ups
Follow-ups are critical. For example, during the lead nurturing stage, you’ll follow up after meetings or calls to ensure prospects have all the information they need.
Likewise, once you’ve turned prospects into paying customers, you’ll follow up after they’ve had any interactions with your customer support team.
Ultimately, it’s these follow-ups that allow you to build lasting relationships with your customers and increase their customer lifetime value.
For example, CHWIC uses sheet.best to communicate with customers about technical issues. Two teams (customer support & engineering) come together to resolve and keep track of issues, ensuring the users are in the loop!
sheet.best can help you automate these follow-ups. Simply assign the right status to the lead in your spreadsheet (e.g. “Post-demo”) and connect your sheet.best API with an email tool like Gmail.
Email Automation
Effective email communications are crucial during your marketing, lead generation and nurturing processes.
Here, you can use sheet.best to record email addresses in a spreadsheet as soon as a prospect gets in touch on your website or social media, or when your team records those details.
You can then use your spreadsheet to automate email messaging once an email address is recorded.
No-Code Lead Scoring with sheet.best
When you concentrate more of your nurturing efforts on those leads who are more likely to buy, you’ll increase your conversion rate and reduce your customer acquisition cost.
Luckily, with sheet.best, you can use APIs to write lead information to different spreadsheets based on the information either the leads or your team provides. In other words, you’ll be able to segment your leads and target the most promising ones.
👉 Need inspiration? Discover how you can build a lightweight CRM using sheet.best.
Task Management
Finally, you can also use sheet.best to set up automated workflows that simplify task management.
In this case, you’ll, for instance, use your API to push tasks to a custom mobile or web application that guides your team on every step they’ll follow in the lead management or nurturing process.
In turn, these tasks will be contained in a spreadsheet that forms the basis for your automated workflow.
For example, you can also use your sheet.best API to automatically email team members for status updates whenever a task is overdue.
👉 Need inspiration? Discover how to automate workflows with sheet.best.
Getting Started with Lead and Customer Relationship Management Automation
Let’s now look at the steps you’ll follow to get started with lead and customer relationship management automation.
Step 1: Decide What You’d Like to Automate
The first step is to decide what you’d like to automate.
As we’ve shown above, there are several options that you can choose from, depending on your needs and requirements.
In this example, let’s look at an example where you’ll segment your leads into different groups to, ultimately, focus on the group that’s most likely to buy.
You’ll end up with two or more spreadsheets that contain leads based on the information they’ve provided.
Step 2: Set Up Your Spreadsheet
The next step is to set up your spreadsheet.
sheet.best uses the first row of the spreadsheet to index the data in the column below it. In this case, you’ll likely create columns for first name, last name, email, and phone number in the spreadsheet you create for every group of leads.
Because you’ll capture lead information with these spreadsheets, you won’t enter any other information. In contrast, if you’d like to automate some part of your customer relationship management, you’ll likely populate the spreadsheet with relevant customer information.
Step 3: Create Your API
Once your spreadsheets are ready, you can create your APIs. To do this, you’ll go to the New Connection screen in sheet.best.
You’ll then name your spreadsheet and select the Origin. If you select Google Sheets, you’ll enter the Connection URL for your spreadsheet by copying it from your sheet’s sharing options.
In this example, we’ll name our sheet Strong Leads and use Google Sheets to generate a Connection URL. With all the information entered, we’ll click on Connect.
Step 4: Use the API
Finally, once you’ve created your sheet.best API, you can use it in the required or desired tool or platform.
In our example, we’ll likely create an API for each of your groups. Based on the information prospects or your team provided on your website or a custom web or mobile portal, the appropriate API will then write lead information to the right spreadsheet.
Start Building Stronger Relationships Now!
Close deals efficiently, nurture your book of business and keep your team productive. The best part? It all starts with a spreadsheet!
Make the most of your sheet.best account! Explore the documentation or get in touch with our Support team within your dashboard.