Turn Google Docs into a Lightweight CRM in 5 Easy Steps

If you’re a small business entrepreneur, finding and choosing a CRM system is a time-consuming and expensive task. You could spend hours learning about different products, features, hosted vs cloud, SaaS vs ASP, and the list goes on. When your team is small, the best thing would be to find a simple solution that works, won’t take up too much of your time, and works with your existing tools.

Google Docs does exactly that. We’ve written a guide to show you how to turn your Google Docs into a fully functional CRM that integrates with your Gmail, provides team collaboration, and best of all, is free.

Step 1. Sign up for a Google Account

Get yourself a Google account which will include Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, and plenty more. Also, grab the Chrome browser if you don’t have it already.

Step 2. Get Ecquire from the Chrome Web Store.

Ecquire integrates your CRM with Gmail to automatically update contacts in your CRM with each email.

 

Step 3. Connect a Google Docs spreadsheet to Use with Ecquire.

Once you add Ecquire to Chrome, you’ll be automatically prompted to select the CRM you want to use.  Select Google Docs.  Be sure to disregard the shameless plug here that we connect to other CRMs as well like Mailchimp for example.

 

Step 4. Customize columns in the spreadsheet with information to your liking: demographic information, source, and lead stage.

Let Ecquire automatically create a spreadsheet with already defined columns. You can also customize columns for specific information that your users may need. For example, the sales team will need to know information on where in the funnel the contact is, how qualified of a lead, and what the next steps are.

Here’s a downloadable template that we created.

 

Step 5. Work as you normally would with your Google Docs CRM working in the background.

Record all your contacts and messages automatically into your Google Docs CRM – and without any data entry if you don’t want.

Send an email like normal, Ecquire will capture profiles and the messages for you automatically and with the best privacy and security imaginable… After you send your email you’ll see this over the Ecquire Icon in your Chrome URL bar… Click that $*%^Here is the Ecquire Drawer where you can see all the information we’ve grabbed for you and what you’re about to submit to your CRM. Add notes if you want or any other fields before submitting to your spreadsheet….After you hit submit, Ecquire will show you a direct link to the entry in your Spreadsheet CRM to view…  

See it in Google Docs via easy to see link.

 

Here’s what it looks like in the spreadsheet….

Bam!

That’s it.  Ecquire also works to capture profiles in your social networks as well.