How to Create a CRM in Excel
A customer relationship management (CRM) system is a solution to help businesses manage customer data to improve relationships, increase retention, and drive sales. A CRM can be created with templates and software. It allows you to save and organize information on your leads and customers for analysis and future communication.
Check out this tutorial on creating a customer database for more tips, including a template and an example.
To create a CRM system in Excel, download the template, fill in contact information in your Leads and Opportunities tabs, and then navigate to the CRM Dashboard tab to look at the automatically populated bar graphs and pie charts of your customer information.
Follow this step-by-step guide to create a CRM system in Excel:
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Download the Excel CRM template.
- Click the Leads tab and input information on your client, including the company name and contact name, dates of contact and contact information, lead source, and lead status.
- Click the Opportunities tab and input information on your deals in the Size of Deal, Probability of Deal, Deal Stage, Deal Status, Date Initiated, Closing Date, and Next Action columns.
- Click the CRM Dashboard tab and analyze the charts and graphs of your leads, opportunities, and potential revenue. This Excel spreadsheet automatically populates your information into a graph of leads by source, a pie chart of leads by status, a graph of deals by stage, a pie chart of deals by status, and a chart of potential revenue by stage.
Check out this guide to CRM dashboards for expert tips and templates to help you design and adopt a CRM dashboard.
For more resources to help you track leads, opportunities, and sales, check out this collection of Excel CRM templates.
Best Practices for CRM Tracking in Excel
Best practices for CRM tracking in Excel include standardizing your data entry fields, regularly checking for data input errors, and taking advantage of all the Excel features — such as formulas, charts, graphs, and conditional formatting — to create alerts. Start simple and then build in complexity.
- Standardize Data Entry Fields for Consistency: Standardizing data entries will help you create formulas and compare data quickly and efficiently.
- Check Regularly for Errors: Checking for errors ensures you don’t make mistakes with your customers or leads that could lead to a loss in revenue.
- Taking Advantage of Excel’s Features: Using formulas, tables, charts, graphs, and conditional formatting that can trigger an alert when contract renewal or payment is overdue is a great way to automate your process and help mitigate human error.
Adam Bilsing, founder of Bilsing Consulting, says, “With any CRM system — especially one built in Excel — clarity of scope is everything. The goal isn’t to replicate Salesforce in a spreadsheet; it’s to design a tool that actually gets used.”
Bilsing also stresses the importance of simplicity: “The best practice is to track only the metrics essential to your specific goals. Avoid the temptation to overbuild. Start simple, make it easy for the sales team to interact with, and expand functionality gradually in a deliberate, strategic way."
Learn more from these CRM strategies.
Here’s a cheat sheet for helpful Excel formulas you can use to create your CRM.
How to Use Smartsheet as a CRM
You can use a Smartsheet CRM template to easily keep track of your customers. Download the template and click Personal CRM Sheet > New Contact. Fill out the sheet, categorize the relationship, and then click Personal CRM Dashboard to see your contacts organized by relationship.
Follow this step-by-step guide to create a CRM system in Smartsheet:
- Download the Smartsheet CRM template.
- On the left side, click Personal CRM Sheet and then New Contact.
- Input customer information, such as contact info, employer, and relationship, and how you came to first contact the customer.
- Click the Relationship drop-down menu and select an option, such as Personal Relationship, Current Colleague, or Former Colleague. A separate sheet will be created for all your contacts in each relationship category.
- On the left side, click Personal CRM Dashboard to view your contacts by relationship category.
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