Set up a CRM or a spreadsheet that holds only the fields that change what you do next.
Darren, a seller, works to one rule in his CRM: no open prospect may have an empty next step. When he can't think of one, he marks the prospect as lost or as needing a closing message, and records that in the field.
A CRM (customer relationship management) is a place that remembers your prospects for you. It can be expensive software or a spreadsheet. Whichever you use, the fields you keep in it decide whether it helps you, and the tool matters much less. Keep the fields that change what you do next and drop the rest.
CRMs usually fail in one of two ways. A bare CRM works like a phone book: it holds names and numbers but has no record of who needs what next. An over-detailed CRM takes longer to update than the calls take to make, so nobody updates it, and within a month it is no longer accurate. Either way, the seller goes back to running the pipeline from memory and sticky notes.
The first group of fields is name, company or household, persona, source, consent note and contact details.
For the persona field, use the personas from lesson 1.2. The field shows you at a glance who you are dealing with. You might be talking to a founder or to the co-founder who signs off the money, or to the parent who books the meeting rather than the partner who decides.
The source and consent note fields come from module 5. The source field records where the contact came from, and in the CRM it feeds the scorecard from lesson 2.4. The consent note records what the prospect agreed to, through which channel and when, along with the date of any Do Not Call check. You read it before you call to find out whether you are allowed to call. Lesson 5.2, "PDPA basics for prospecting: consent, purpose and records", explains why both fields matter.
Contact details finish the group. If you want a field beyond these core ones, it has to change a decision you make.
The stage field shows where each prospect is in your pipeline. Keep the stages few and clearly defined, and give each one a clear rule for moving into it. Seven stages are enough:
Identified: on your list, no touch sent yet. Contacted: at least one touch sent. Replied: they responded in any way. Meeting booked: a real conversation is in the diary. Proposal: a proposal or quote has been sent. Won: they bought. Lost: they said no, went silent after the full sequence, or turned out not to fit.
Move a prospect only when the entry rule for the new stage is met. A prospect is at Replied when they have actually replied, and a call you feel went well does not count. Clear rules keep your counts honest, which the pipeline maths in module 7 depends on. Suppose you count a prospect as Meeting booked when all they said was "maybe next month". Your numbers will look better than they are until the month you miss your target.
Of all the fields, the next step and its date does the most work. Give every open prospect a next action and a date for it, such as "Call to follow up on email, 9 Oct", "Send closing message, 20 Oct" or "Check back after the outlet opens, Jan" (all invented examples).
Few deals end with a firm no. Most go quiet. A prospect replies warmly, you get busy and don't follow up, and two months later neither of you remembers the conversation. With a dated next step on every record, you can sort or filter by date each morning and see who needs you today. Use Darren's rule and never leave the field empty. If you have no next step for a prospect, mark them as lost or plan a closing message.
Sellers give the lost reason less attention than any other field, though it repays the effort more than the others. When a prospect moves to Lost, write down why in a few words. A single reason won't show you much, but thirty of them will. Over time, they show you where to improve your profile, messages and sources, and the evidence comes from your own pipeline.
Mei, another seller, records her lost reasons and reads back through them after a quarter. Most of her "not a fit" losses turn out to be businesses with only one outlet. This was already one of her warning signs from lesson 1.4, but those businesses kept getting onto her list, so she tightens her profile.
To count your reasons, keep them short and reuse the same phrases, for example "no budget", "chose a competitor", "no reply after sequence", "not a fit, single stall" and "timing, revisit after new outlet". If you have fifteen different ways of writing "no budget" (an illustration), you can't easily add them up. Review your reasons from time to time and adjust your profile, messages and sources to match what you find.
Any field beyond the core ones is optional, and at this stage most extra fields add noise. Industry sub-category, lead score, preferred contact time, social media handles and birthday all seem useful when you set up the CRM, and three weeks later they are usually empty. Add a field when you notice you keep needing that information to make a decision, and delete any field you have never used to decide anything.
Open your CRM or spreadsheet and list the fields you track now. Delete the ones you never use to decide anything. Then add whichever core fields you are missing: who the prospect is and how you met, stage, next step with a date, and lost reason.
List the fields you track now. Delete any you never use to make a decision, and add whichever core fields are missing.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).