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A Spreadsheet CRM: Automation at work
About this Tutorial
Video Transcript
00:19 So Stuart who is actually featured here in the tutorial videos made this. Um but I was very helpful in the doing of the Apps Script in creating all of the Apps Script that he wanted.
00:32 So it really is an automated really professionally done spreadsheet software that actually let me tell you sort of in his own story how this works instead of my own.
00:46 Essentially Stuart figured out by doing tutorials for small businesses that the questions he was getting a lot of times centered around CRM's relationships that his businesses have with their customers.
01:03 And what he realized is he was promoting HubSpot. Uh and I think he also promoted Monday dot com as well.
01:12 And these are rather pricey pieces of software to do something that a Google sheet could do. So only if a Google sheet sort of had some automations inside of it.
01:25 And so we joined together, collaborated and figured out how to do all of the stuff he wanted to do. Uh it is literally meant to be a cost effective tool for those businesses who are like, hey I already used Google sheets for x, y, and z for my uh my contacts, all of my tasks are in there.
01:44 All the stuff I'm working on is in there but maybe spread across many sheets. He made it all very intuitive on how to work with in the sheet and how to move things around.
01:54 He also wrote mail templates so this was really cool and I think one of the coolest parts of this sheet that I helped him make but he did himself as he wrote email templates that help move customer users along a pipeline and help you interact with customers.
02:12 But what you are able to do is you keep all of your contacts in one sheet and then select which ones you want to send this particular email to.
02:18 The emails are already written in a sheet. You can edit them a little bit and they're personalized. So you can put someone's name in there, the business they're working with.
02:28 A lot of cool stuff. So he personalized these emails while we did with AppScript. He created these about a dozen I think.
02:36 I think he's adding more all the time about a dozen. Uh written emails so like follow-ups, customer questions, umm how to move them along the pipeline kind of thing.
02:49 Umm and he's promoting this very much as an affordable but functional CRM because this is what he had in mind.
02:58 Uh from the get go he was like I need it to do all of these things that a professional CRM is gonna do that is sort of the lowest level that a professional CRM does but it costs you 50 dollars per month per user at some point.
03:14 Um like hub spotting and uh monday dot com can get very expensive. I need these minimum things to do and what we found this is very surprising by building it what we found is that surprisingly google sheets can in can and does interact with things that seem very disjointed when you use hub spot or when
03:40 you use monday dot com create a form or create taskless. Google sheets and the abstract rewrote in when you create a task that has a deadline it automatically adds it to your google calendar.
03:55 So no longer do you have to have like a task list and a calendar separate. they are. literally connected here and this is one of the coolest things about google sheets is that you have the entire google workspace availability that's already connected in these interesting ways.
04:10 um and i showed him early on like here's how you can send an email it's super easy and if you're a member of better sheets.co you can see i i do this all the time i show you how to send emails from google sheets with a few lines of app script very very simple but what we did with store in uh sheetify
04:27 was we made it very intuitive for you to send an email. Thank you. From the contact list so if i show you how to create emails and send them from google sheets it's very based on like having the email written having them in the cells here but what he does is he has the emails uh already written and through
04:50 coding we know where they are and what information we need so you just select the contact like literally just with your mouse click on it uh not double click not a double any more clicks you don't have to select the entire row just select the contact and it will know what row you're on and then send
05:08 that person the email that you select them to get really really cool. Um. It's very intuitive of the way that Stuart built this and made it very easy for users to add tasks when you set a calendar date you can set times you can set who needs to do this task again.
05:26 A very intuitive way to do this in sheets where we just select the task name and then add it to tasks and it's super easy.
05:35 We did a lot of work on the back end to make that easy for the user and what Stewart relies on are these video tutorials.
05:43 So this is something that is very unique to Stewart. Maybe not to you as a spreadsheet seller if you're selling spreadsheets if you're an accountant, if you're a teacher.
05:52 May not be used to being in front of the camera, Stewart is. And so he's able to make a bunch of videos on how to use this.
05:57 And so we made this very intuitive and very simple to do it use. But you just have to know to select this and then click the button.
06:03 So he relied on his tutorials and video tutorials specifically. To get that information across. Umm. What I really think is unintuitive about this page is that it is spreadsheets all over.
06:17 Again I have said before in videos prior when you're selling a spreadsheet don't sell the spreadsheet spells. Sell the solution to your problem that happens to be a spreadsheet.
06:26 I think he does that very much so but it's very already used Google Sheets. They know the power of Google Sheets and they haven't done it yet.
06:42 They haven't automated their emails. They haven't automated their taskless. They know okay I use a Google Sheets but then when I have this task to do I go and add it to Google Tasks.
06:51 He was very clear when we were building this like They're already using Google Tasks. Calendar. They're already using Google Forms.
06:58 We just need to bring all of these things together into one place that they can intuitively do this without having to copy paste a bunch of stuff.
07:05 Literally all of the Google tasks we create on one click gets information from the sheet itself. So we made it very, very intuitive and work within the lines that small businesses are already using Google sheets.
07:20 He was very keen on this and I have to say also there were two phases. One, we built it and released it and so it released it.
07:28 and second from that release and people using it we've made a ton of upgrades and changes and separation of certain things that oh someone uses this but not this but someone uses both of these same time.
07:44 It's time very very interesting how he did that and I think that's something to learn from this kind of thing is you don't have to make it a complete product that has every single hundred percent of everything you possibly could have then launch it and then leave it.
07:58 What you can do is have the minute minimum viable product make a sheet that is essentially what you want to build it is done the essential parts are done and anything that you are fuzzy about instead of asking water to users go and sell it now ask the buyers did you want this?
08:16 Do you want this? How are you using it? Umm I have a few friends who produce their own software it's a Mac uh based software and it's not web based and what they do is they actually get on a zoom call have someone share their screen and watch the them uh use their product on the very first time so they
08:35 can figure out where they need to do onboarding cues and stuff and this is very very cool. I would highly recommend that if you ever sell a spreadsheet to watch people using it.
08:48 Uh if you create a website you can use in hot drawer and there's a lot of stuff you can see.
08:53 You can record people using it but you can't record people using a Google sheet. So gotta get them on a zoom call, watch them use it.
08:59 Don't say anything just to observe and I know that can be very difficult to observe someone. I'm using your tool and you're like I just click over here.
09:07 Umm. What was really cool is it has just a lot of stuff and it's only one time payment. There is no subscription to this.
09:15 This is a very clear business model that Stewart was intending to do and I don't know if you're intending to do this as well if you're selling spreadsheets yourself.
09:24 But I would highly recommend making the idea that it is one time payment front and center and very clear when we're buying software these days.
09:34 It's very much about like $9. There's a month, $5 a month. But these things add up $5 a month is $60 a year.
09:41 So if you sell a template for $50 they can use that for 5 to 10 years and be saving hundreds of dollars even though it sounds oh I'll just buy the software for 5 bucks a month.
09:52 No, this one time payment could be a very big asset to you. Um and he has reasons to choose CRM here on the landing page.
10:04 This landing page is very long and that's what I would also recommend if you're selling a spreadsheet. It's don't say here's a spreadsheet.
10:10 Here's what it does and done. Go through a lot of the steps here. Um, sheet of high CRM if you want to check it out yourself.
10:17 You frequently ask questions. This is a good one. Is it just a Google sheets template? It's just Google sheets. I can make that myself, right?
10:25 No, it is very, oh my god. This took so many hours and I mean I had to learn. I've been doing Apps Script automation for 10 years and I had to learn new stuff to make this possible.
10:38 It was very interesting. We had to work with Google tasks which I never worked with before and it was very weird little setup.
10:45 Um if you do want to create this yourself and work with Google forms, oh that was an interesting part. Is on another product I've been helping with recently.
10:56 Thank you. Google forms in the same sheet is actually pretty hard to deal with on an automatic in the app script side.
11:02 Umm, Stewart isn't doing that. We're doing one, uhh, a one form to one spreadsheet. But I have to say, oh my god, it was very difficult to manage multiple f- forms in one spreadsheet.
11:13 But we did it in the other project. Umm, creating the dashboard is very difficult. I think some very simple mistakes we can make is uhh.
11:26 When you create a dashboard on your sheet that you're about to- sell. We want to a lot of times do the math and do all of the formulas in the dashboard itself.
11:33 What I would recommend and what we did with umm, sheetify is separate the data and the dashboard. So the dashboard is just a visual representation of the data.
11:40 And we did all the number crunching and all the formulas on another tab. That's- a very unintuitive thing to know umm if you aren't selling the spreadsheet.
11:49 If you're just sort of using the spreadsheet itself and making a dashboard for yourself you're usually just going to put the formulas in the dashboard.
11:56 But this helps it make it a little more professional and it helped us when we need to move around stuff on the dashboard that we weren't moving formulas around we were just moving references.
12:06 That's it. One thing that Stewart did that I would not recommend you do is that Stewart created a 30 minute tutorial on how to use sheet ify.
12:16 Uh, this is also part of Stewart's uh YouTube channel so that makes it a little different than maybe you're doing.
12:25 But if you are creating tutorials on how to use your spreadsheet I would make them two to three minute videos maximum try.
12:32 Uh, to add a little bit more troubleshooting kind of videos if you need to go longer. But give them chunks and uhm titles that are easy to find especially if you're going to put those videos not on YouTube but on gumroad or upload it to something like Udemy.
12:45 You want it under five minutes each video you don't want to make a 30 minute video and it's very difficult to make a 30 minute video umm with to remember all of the stuff you need to do.
12:56 Um, but yeah that's one thing that Stuart did which is cool which is on his YouTube channel but again I would not recommend that I would recommend showing parts of the sheet.
13:04 In like two to three minute chunks put that on gum road when you sell the sheets that people have access to it or put it on unlisted YouTube channel totally fine.
13:12 Um. Yeah. Cheetify. Cheetify CRM. I think it's absolutely cool. I hope you learned a little bit about this and check out the webpage if you have any more questions about it.
13:22 Umm. I'm happy to answer them uh about the functions of the sheet. Stewart uh we may be doing an interview you might see an interview soon with him.
Courses
Selling Spreadsheets Course Introduction
SECTION 1 - You Are The Sheet
Coupon Code Maker Updates February 2024 - New Dashboard
How to Make Good Looking Spreadsheets
Curate Google Sheets Easily - Automatic Bookmarklet Maker
Explore Your Spreadsheet Selling Options
What you know matters
Who you are matters
How you think matters
Why you think it matters, matters
Surprising Things about Selling Spreadsheets
SECTION 2 - Your Spreadsheet Blueprint
Easiest Sheet Ever to Sell
Problems Everywhere, and the Spreadsheets that Solve Them
The #1 Mistake Spreadsheet Sellers Make and how to Save People Time
Customer’s Context Is King
The Two T’s: Turn Templates into Tools
Create a Branded Lead Magnet from Qualitative Data
Tracker Tactics
SECTION 3 - How to Make a Spreadsheet
Ask Questions
Quality Curation
Fabulous Filters
Wield Wizardry
Automatic Calculations
Automate Emails
You Must Double Duplicate (If you're selling a sheet you use)
Different Kinds of Automation
How do I prevent people from sharing my spreadsheets by making a copy?
SECTION 4 - Spreadsheet Sales Mastery
Write The Sales Page
The Strangest Secret to Selling a Spreadsheet
The F Word
Reciprocity Rules
Pricing Strategies for Spreadsheets
Upselling and Cross-Selling Techniques
Avoid A Multi-Tier Approach
SECTION 5 - Marketing Mastery
Where to Sell Spreadsheets - Marketplace Marketing
Customer Service is Marketing
Six Figure Secrets
How to Sell Spreadsheets on AppSumo Marketplace
Protect Your Spreadsheet IP
Lock Your Sheets with OnlySheets
Weird Idea: Find a Great Sheet Domain Name
A Few New Spreadsheet Business Ideas
SECTION 6 - Spreadsheet Breakdowns
Maximize Spreadsheet Sales to Startups
A Spreadsheet CRM: Automation at work
How to Make Better Lead Magnets
How to Turn a Simple List into an Epic Lead Magnet
The Art of the Sell: Breaking down a Free Title Generator
How to Make an AI Integrated Freebie Spreadsheet