At what point does a sales team need a CRM instead of a spreadsheet?

[pactsoft]

I keep having this argument with a friend who runs a small sales team. He swears a shared spreadsheet is fine as long as everyone's disciplined about updating it. I think once you cross a certain number of people or leads, it just breaks down no matter how careful everyone is.

Where's the actual tipping point in your experience? Is it team size, number of active leads, or something else, like how many people touch a single deal before it closes?

Also curious what actually goes wrong first. Is it leads getting forgotten, follow-ups slipping, or just nobody having a clear picture of the pipeline until someone manually chases it down?

[Salem]

CRM is what you're selling, how about you enlighten us with your own market research to date.

[rproffitt]

My son is working for some company and they have made the mistake of building their own CRM.

That's the first "goes wrong" in that story.

It's CRM. If your management doesn't know CRM and how to run their business then you better have an exit plan.

[aditisan]

A spreadsheet is fine when the sales team is small and has only a few leads. But as the number of leads and salespeople grows, it becomes harder to track follow-ups and customer conversations. I had say it’s time for a CRM when you start missing follow-ups, creating duplicate entries or spending too much time managing the spreadsheet. Basically, if the spreadsheet is becoming difficult to manage, that’s probably the right time to move to a CRM.