First of all, yes, I know Keap has a hundred reports (maybe more?) that can be exported as a spreadsheet, but this month’s play is different. It’s designed to continually populate a spreadsheet so that it’s always up-to-date, tracking anything you want without you having to run a report and then export it. Plus, since the information will exist in a Google Sheet, you can share the data with anyone you want without worrying if the recipient has a user license in your Keap app. Furthermore, you probably periodically delete cold and unsubscribed leads from your database to avoid paying for more contacts in your Keap account. When you delete those contacts, a lot of historical data goes with them, but if you’ve recorded historical data in a spreadsheet, you can always go back and use that data however you want. And this method does not require a connector app like Zapier.
In other words, this play saves you time and money while enabling your company’s spreadsheet wizard (you know who I’m talking about) to manipulate up-to-date data into customized reports and insights like only a truly magical spreadsheet wizard can.
Where can you learn tactics like this?
Before we get into use cases and instructions, I want to emphasize where I learned how to do this. It was at Keap’s annual user conference about 8 years ago. This year’s conference is called Let’s Grow Summit, just like last year, and it is the best place to learn and apply small business automation in your business. So if you find this play valuable, please recognize that you are receiving what I learned in just ten minutes of a three-day conference 8 years ago.
Do not miss Let’s Grow Summit this year! If you do, not only will you miss out on learning from two of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs, Shark Tank’s Robert Herjavek and Sabri Subi, but more importantly, your business will suffer and you won’t even know what you’re missing. Do not wait. Register now to avoid paying full price.
Use Cases
Now, back to the play of the month. The use cases for this play are endless. Consider some of the most important milestones in your customer journey. Moments like landing page and form submissions, pipeline stage changes, demos scheduled, demos completed, win and loss reasons, payments collected, support requests, cancellations, survey responses, and so many more. All of these moments can and should be powered by Keap, enabling you to have one source of truth for your business data.
Let’s consider a bunch of events you might want to record in a spreadsheet, as viewed through the lens of Small Business Automation (SBA).
Small Business Automation events you might want to record in a spreadsheet
Marketing Automation
Let’s make a list for this category because there are so many:
- Form and landing page submissions
- Webinar registrations
- Lead magnet downloads
- Web page visits
- Video views
- Email preference changes
- Trade show lead imports
Sales Automation
For this category, I’ll share a use case that proved extremely useful while building a business powered by Keap. We used the method I teach in the video below to record every time an opportunity moved into the “Demo Scheduled” or “Demo Completed” stage. The spreadsheet included a time and date stamp by default, and we also instructed Keap to send the contact owner (sales rep), high/low projected revenue, and other pertinent sales information. This spreadsheet became an invaluable diagnostic tool as it dynamically populated insightful reports built by our resident spreadsheet wizard. It also provided concrete data to inform management regarding compensation, recognition, training, or dismissal of sales reps. I’m thinking of one sales rep who was incredibly determined to hit his goals once his manager pointed out some troubling data that made his dismissal a likely eventuality. He worked harder than anyone and earned his place on the team and then some. It was incredibly gratifying, and we had all the historical data at our fingertips to reflect his growth to him and the rest of the company. It was the kind of experience you hope to have in a small business.
Aside from this example, obvious sales milestones like sales closed, renewals processed, upsells and cross-sells succeeded or failed, and many others merit consideration for recording and analyzing via spreadsheet.
Service Automation
Let’s make another list for this category:
- Purchase fulfillment
- Customer onboarding stage changes
- Automated gifts/cards sent
- Payments received
- Cancellation requests
- Survey invitations and responses
- Support requests
- Referral programs
Operations Automation
Operations Automation underlies all of the other areas of small business automation, so many of the above use cases could also be listed here. If we expanded each bullet list item to a full paragraph, we would find some of the same operations applications as we saw in the Sales Automation example. Namely, operations related to marketing, sales, and service, as well as employee management and every optimization decision made thanks to the important events you’ve recorded and analyzed via spreadsheet.
However, in addition to these, Keap can also power the following operations automation events that you might want to record in a spreadsheet:
- Employee onboarding and offboarding
- Peer recognition and award nomination programs
- Gathering feedback and suggestions from employees
- Internal information dissemination
Summary and instructions
Paradoxically, this method of moving data out of your Keap app can actually help you make the most of your software. By keeping a running log of important events in a Google Sheet, you can safely delete old contacts and avoid adding users, which means you’ll pay less for your Keap subscription without losing the decision-informing data you usually pull from Keap. Plus, sharing a Google sheet is so easy!
So how do you do it? Like this:
Action Items
- Choose one key event to record in a spreadsheet and follow the instructions in the video
- Register for Let’s Grow Summit
- Consider a Pro Services Membership to take your automation to the next level
- Prefer to DIY? Check out Keap Academy
