Turn Google Docs into a Lightweight CRM in 5 Easy Steps
26Mar


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.

Install Ecquire

 

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

Integrate your Google Docs CRM with Gmail
 

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.

Create your main CRM database

 

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

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

Ecquire automatically updates your CRM from Gmail

Automatically create contacts in your CRM with Ecquire

Have peace of mind when your data is where it needs to be

Have you got any tips on how to use Google Docs as a business tool? Share them in the comments below.

About the author:

is the Director of Marketing at Ecquire.

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4 Comments

  • Lela Donelson

    Great for a quick and easy CRM. I will be doing a workshop in Houston to expand on the concept of Google as CRM. Of course part of it will be Ecquire! http://googlecrm.eventbrite.com

    26 Mar 2012 05:03 pm ()
    Reply

    • Federico

      Comment is awaiting moderation.

      21 May 2013 02:05 pm

  • The Ultimate Guide to Sales Prospecting with Linkedin | Ecquire

    [...] Here’s our guide on how to turn Google Docs into a lightweight CRM. [...]

  • Justin

    I used up my my free contact entries before I had time to test this.
    I noticed there is a “Date” column added to the spreadsheet. Does this update each time you enter the same person in?

    What I am looking for is an easy way to see a list of my customers and the last time that I contacted them.

    27 Sep 2012 10:09 pm ()
    Reply

    • Toan Dang

      Hey Justin, right now, we don't have an automatic way to enter the date into the spreadsheet. Reason being that Google Docs doesn't have a formula to enter the date when the contact was entered. You would have to create a special formula for that. However, we did make it a bit easier as you could at least manually enter in the date while you're adding the contact.

      27 Sep 2012 10:09 pm

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