Capturing Sales Data Using the New Google Forms

One of the first things I did when I launched MarketingSavant last year was to start doing much of my work in Google Docs. I knew that any team members I brought on would likely be virtual and it just made sense to work as much in “the cloud” as possible. We also use Zoho for CRM (after switching from Salesforce.com) and a maintain a couple of other cloud sites to make the business as accessible from anywhere as possible. So, you can imagine that I was delighted when Google announced their Forms-to-Spreadsheet support last year. It’s a great asset that they just improved on this week and I thought it was time to share something that I think might be useful to others seeking more reasons to use tools like these.

I’m a tools & process person. Ever since I started my first business (20 years ago, actually), I have always asked “isn’t there a tool for this” when I came upon a new challenge and I’m constantly asking “isn’t there a better way to do this?” There’s always a better way!

One of the process improvements that I wanted to make recently was the process for gathering information for proposals and stremlining the process for proposal development. So, like any good researcher, I bought a book. In fact, it’s one of the best books I’ve read in a long time on any business topic. Persuasive Business Proposals is a cross between a Bible and a cookbook for writing effective proposals. It’s a wonderful resource and I can’t recommend it enough if you’re looking to improve your proposal creation process. So, armed with a few more tools in my toolkit, I set out to put this all together in the form of process improvement.

Capturing proposal data

One of the things that’s great about Persuasive Business Proposals is the series of questions poses throughout the book that are designed to help you create better proposals. So, based on one of the lists of questions on creating “client-centered proposals” and with some insight from my existing but now outdated process, I decided that this was a great way to leverage the form functionality in Google Docs and integrate it into my workflow.

The idea here is that I’ll have a web-based form that I can invoke while on a phone call, fill out in real time, feed a spreadsheet for capture and storage and then use that captured data in the proposal process. No more losing notes or trying to understand handwriting or forgetting to ask a key question. It’s all here. More to the point, if you’re trying to help your small team (very large orgs may have “enterprise class” tools for this sort of stuff) synchronize their habits to your process, this could be a great tool for you.

Setting up the form

Setting up the Google Docs form is very simple. In the Google Docs “New” menu dropdown, you’ll find an entry for forms. Clicking on that takes you to the form creation area and simultaneiously creates the back-end spreadsheet that will capture the data you collect through the process.

You can add as many questions as you want (from what I can tell, there’s no limit that any reasonable person would exceed) and you can add things like text, multiple choice, checkboxes, lists, scales and grids. I won’t walk you through the form creation process here, Google has documentation for that, but I do want to share some of the screen shots and process pieces.

Setting up a Google Form

Using the form

Using the form is pretty easy. When I’m on the phone, I simply call up the form and start filling it out. When I’m done with the call, I submit the form and then visit the spreadsheet to call back the data that I need to do the proposal.

Integrating into workflow

I use Google Chrome to work with all of my Google docs and use a handy feature that Todd Lohenry shared with me on how to “create application shortcuts” that can basically turn a web document into an application in the start menu. So, as you can see, I have this form as a “program” in my taskbar and call it up as though I were opening any other program. Very slick, very quick and very cool.

While this isn’t a plausible solution for everyone, for me and for a small sales team, this is an ideal solution to help improve processes around capturing sales data. Sure, I probably could have created something in Zoho to do this, but for my needs and for the speed that Google docs offers, this is a great solution!