Am I the only agency still managing clients in a spreadsheet?
Finn A. MarstersAgency Owner · retainer consultingNew ZealandGrowing Team·1h ago00
I have six retainer clients, an ops person, and somehow I'm still the only one who knows what's happening across all of them. We tried a big CRM last year — my ops lead spent two weeks building it, I couldn't figure out how to log a call without creating a deal, and we quietly stopped opening it. So the spreadsheet came back.
The frustrating part is I don't think the problem is the tool. I think it's that I never clearly decided what belongs in there. So before I burn another month on onboarding a system that dies, I want to know what you actually track. Not the feature list, the decision.
I leave for a two-week break in January with a phone that will still ring. That's the real deadline.
CONTEXT AT PUBLICATION
What a useful answer should help achieve
A clear decision rule for what to track so a CRM survives contact with a real week, and the next tool choice follows from that.
Already tried
A full CRM onboarding that collapsed after two weeks, then a return to the spreadsheet.
Constraints and unknowns
One ops person who is part-time on this, and cannot be the only person who maintains the system.
Agency Owner · retainer consulting · Growing Team · This snapshot stays with the question when the author updates their profile.
