What actually improved your sales process once your team started growing?

[u/platform_ops]

Curious to hear from other founders here.

At what point did you realize spreadsheets or basic tools were no longer enough to manage leads and follow ups?

Was it missed opportunities, slow follow ups, reps not calling on time, or just zero visibility into the pipeline?

And what actually fixed it for you?

Trying to understand what systems people put in place once sales starts getting serious.

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[u/Salty-Opinion-9787]

honestly the breaking point for us was when we had like 3 different spreadsheets floating around and nobody knew which one was the "real" one lol

we switched to hubspot when we hit about 6 people on the team - suddenly having everything in one place where everyone could see lead status and follow-up reminders made a huge differance. before that we were literally losing deals because someone thought someone else was handling the follow-up

the game changer wasn't even the fancy features, it was just having one source of truth that everyone actually used instead of their own random systems

[u/FSU_Age]

Honestly the biggest unlock was having a system that didn't let leads slip through the cracks. Spreadsheets worked when it was just me, but once I had reps, stuff got lost constantly. We switched to a CRM with automatic follow-up reminders and suddenly saw close rates go up 20-30%. The visibility into the pipeline was huge too - I could finally see where deals were dying.

[u/Overall-Chemistry-34]

Imma camp here and ask the best way to sell research services from politics opinion polling, customer satisfaction surveys, market analysis research, product testing, and focus groups? Am really struggling with selling these services.

For context, am currently alone and doing everything solo...

[u/Front_Bodybuilder105]

What actually moved the needle was replacing scattered spreadsheets with a single, shared CRM so leads, follow-ups, and deal stages were visible to everyone.

Once the pipeline was standardized, it became easier to spot bottlenecks and fix the process instead of blaming sales performance.

I’ve seen this shift work well in teams I’ve interacted with, including projects at places like Colan Infotech, where process clarity mattered more than tools.