When a spreadsheet still wins over a CRM

Someone asks me to build a CRM roughly once a month. About a third of the time, what they actually need is a slightly better spreadsheet, and I tell them so — which is a strange thing for someone who builds software for a living to say, but it saves them money and me a maintenance headache later.

The questions that actually matter

A CRM earns its cost once a few things are true at the same time:

• More than one person needs to see the same lead at the same time, reliably.
• You need automation — reminders, status changes, follow-ups — not just storage.
• The data has outgrown what one person can hold in their head plus a filter.

If none of those are true yet, a well-structured spreadsheet with some conditional formatting will outperform a CRM nobody was trained on properly. I'd rather tell you that on a free call than build you something that ends up half-used and fully resented.

Where it flips

The moment a second salesperson joins, or a lead sits untouched because nobody remembered to follow up, the spreadsheet starts actively costing you deals. That's the actual signal to build — not company size, not "we should look more professional," but a specific, named failure the spreadsheet caused.

That's the brief I want: not "we need a CRM," but "this exact thing keeps going wrong." Everything after that is easier.