The problem was that simply logging new prospects and dates of tasks completed was not enough. With large numbers of prospects entered into the spreadsheet, it was difficult to see which prospects needed attention next, or what tasks needed to be done. And equally questions of how many prospects were active, dormant, and whether win/loss rates were sufficient wasn't clear.

In short, the spreadsheet wasn't really supporting and facilitating the pre-sales process as well as it might have done. The data was mostly there, but buried away.

I met with Lewis Visuals and discussed a number of recommendations about how to better organise and present the client information and status.

I decluttered the sheet displays by hiding information that was not relevant to the big picture view; did away with manual colour coding and replaced this with conditional formatting to draw the eye to highlight actions which needed attention

I built data entry forms to standardise and validate data entry, and to make it easy to both enter and display the status and history of a prospect.

With standardised and controlled values in many fields it also became possible to automatically calculate and display some simple business metrics, and to produce charts and graphs to help the MD to monitor, manage and improve her business.

I later added email automation to the workbook. With some modifications to the client form and a little software, I provided a single click action to send a given email and attachments to a client.