How to build a CRM for your business, step by step

What a CRM is (and what it isn't)

A CRM (customer relationship management) is the place where the history of each contact in your business lives: how they arrived, what they need, what you replied and what the next step is. It can be a well-organized spreadsheet at first and a specialized tool when the business grows.

A CRM is not a database for storing contacts and forgetting them, nor software that sells for you. Its value is that no one is left without a reply and that you know which channels bring you customers.

Before choosing a tool

Answer these four questions in writing. They will save you weeks of setup that nobody ends up using:

• Where your contacts come from: WhatsApp, your website form, phone calls, social media or referrals.
• What steps a sale follows in your business, from the first message to payment.
• What data you truly need to follow up (not everything you could ask for).
• Who replies to each contact and who checks that no one is left unattended.

The seven steps to build your CRM

1. List your contact sources. Each one will be a value of the "source" field, so you can later tell which channel works.
2. Define between four and six sales stages. For example: New, Contacted, Proposal sent, Negotiation, Won and Lost.
3. Choose the minimum fields: name, contact method, source, what they need, stage, next action with a date, and owner.
4. Connect every entry point: have website forms create the contact automatically and make sure WhatsApp conversations are recorded.
5. Write your follow-up rules: how quickly you reply to a new contact and when you remind someone about a proposal with no response.
6. Once a week, review the contacts with no next action and the stalled proposals.
7. Measure the basics every month: how many contacts came in from each source and how many moved forward a stage.

Spreadsheet or CRM: when to make the switch

A spreadsheet works as long as one person handles a few contacts through a single channel. It makes sense to move to a CRM when any of these situations occurs:

• You forget follow-ups or find out late that someone wrote to you.
• More than one person handles contacts or sells.
• Contacts arrive through several channels and you don't know which works best.
• You want automatic alerts and reminders instead of checking everything by hand.

Common mistakes

• Buying the tool before defining the process.
• Asking for too much data: if filling in a record takes a long time, the team stops doing it.
• Creating stages that nobody uses or that mean different things to different people.
• Not recording the source of each contact: afterward it is impossible to know what brings you customers.
• Not assigning an owner: what belongs to everyone ends up with no owner.