What's in the Leads tab
Plus a Pipeline Summary tab that counts leads by status and totals pipeline value with formulas — no manual updating — and a How to use tab with quick instructions.
A spreadsheet is the right tool — until it isn't
Fine for a handful of leads a month
One person, a low volume of enquiries, and the discipline to update it — a spreadsheet handles that without any fuss.
Manual entry is what breaks first
Every lead has to be typed in by hand. Miss one from a form or a missed call and it just never exists in the sheet.
Phone leads are the ones that go missing
Across 1,145 real enquiries we've analysed, 52.7% came in as a phone tap, not a form. Nobody stops mid-call to open a spreadsheet — so that's the lead type most likely to just never make it into the sheet.
The Next Follow-up column exists for a reason backed by actual research, not just good practice: a 2007 study by InsideSales.com and MIT Sloan's Dr James Oldroyd found that contacting a lead within 5 minutes rather than 30 makes a business roughly 100x more likely to reach them. A later Harvard Business Review audit of 2,241 US companies (Oldroyd, McElheran & Elkington, 2011) found the average company still took 42 hours to respond. A spreadsheet won't speed that up on its own — but a follow-up date you actually look at gets you most of the way there.
Read the full guide: what is lead tracking? → · See the full 1,145-lead dataset →
Template, explained
Does this work in Google Sheets, or only Excel?
Both. It's a single .xlsx file — Excel and Numbers open it natively, and Google Sheets opens .xlsx files directly (File → Open, or just drag it into Google Drive) without any conversion step or lost formatting.
What's actually in it?
Three tabs: a Leads tab with dropdowns for Source and Status and a few sample rows to show the format, a Pipeline Summary tab that counts leads by status and totals pipeline value with formulas that update automatically, and a How to use tab with quick instructions.
Is this gated behind an email address?
No. It's a direct download, same as the rest of our free tools — no sign-up, no email capture.
Will this track where my leads came from?
No — the Source column is something you fill in yourself, based on what the lead tells you or where you think they came from. It won't catch a phone call your team forgot to log, or attribute a form fill back to the ad that actually drove it. This template assumes you already know the source; Lead Recorder is what fills that column in automatically.
How is this different from a CRM?
It isn't one — it's a spreadsheet. There's no automatic capture (you type every lead in by hand), no reminders, and no history of what happened on a call. It works fine for one or two people handling a handful of leads a month. Past that, the manual entry is usually what breaks first.
Can I add my own columns?
Yes — it's a normal spreadsheet, not a locked template. Add, remove or rename columns freely; just keep the Source and Status dropdown columns intact if you want the Pipeline Summary formulas to keep working.
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