When do you put potential prospects into your CRM?

[davidle]

I'm developing lists of people to reach out to about my services. I'm taking the time to find the most promising ones on LinkedIn, get their name, job title, phone and email. Then I'm calling them.

1. Some of these people have no interest in what I'm selling.
2. Some of them want me to follow up with them in a few months.
3. Some show interest in what I'm selling.

Right now, I'm maintaining these lists of people in two Google Sheets. One is for potential prospects. The other is for prospects who I've done the research on and have their details (name, phone, etc.).

My worry is, eventually the amount of follow-up I have to do will eventually make the more refined prospect Google Sheet unworkable.

My question is, when should I put these people into a CRM. Before or after I contact them? If before, then I'll have a lot of people in the CRM who have no interest (and I'll simply delete them, I suppose).

Also, any CRM recommendations (I'm the only salesman)? So far I've looked at Pipedrive, Base and Hubspot. I like Base and Hubspot (Sales) because you can record calls. I like Pipedrive in general, but it lacks call capabilities...and I'll save about $500/year if I go with that.

 

[netbert]

I'd suggest posting a similar question (and searching first) on the sub-reddit /r/sales/ as well.

Lots of discussion on CRMs (including using spreadsheets for simplicity), managing prospects/leads, and the stages that you're referring to (ie. stages of interest), etc.

There's also /r/crm/ but there's a lot more spammy promotion there. /r/sales/ is pretty good with moderation to keep a good signal-to-noise ratio.