Why a spreadsheet is enough at the start
A funnel is simply the path a customer takes from the first message to payment, split into stages. Once every enquiry sits in its own row and is tied to a stage, you get real numbers: how many people reached a quote, how many paid, where conversations went quiet. Without them, ad spend gets judged by feel: "we get plenty of leads, but sales are slow."
A sheet works while volumes are modest, one or two people handle sales and deals close quickly. Think of a beauty salon in Tashkent, a small online shop taking orders in Telegram, a renovation studio or a private clinic. There is a hidden benefit too: keeping the sheet forces you to understand your own process, and that makes a later CRM setup much easier.
What to record in each row
The rule is one row per enquiry. If a customer comes back with a new request, add a new row instead of editing the old one. A minimal set of columns:
- Date of enquiry
- Name and contact: phone number or Telegram username
- Source: Instagram ads, Google, OLX, Uzum, referral, inbound call
- Product or service of interest, and the responsible manager
- Current stage
- Next action and its date
- Deal amount in soum, reason for loss and a comment
Define stages clearly
A stage should describe an action, not a manager's impression. "Client seems interested" is a mood; "proposal sent" is a stage. For a service business, this chain works well:
- New enquiry
- Contacted, need clarified
- Proposal sent
- Consultation or meeting
- Terms being agreed
- Paid (Click, Payme or bank transfer)
- Lost
Lock the lists with dropdowns
Turn the Stage, Source and Reason for loss columns into dropdown lists with data validation. If one manager types "insta", another "Instagram" and a third "ad in insta", you cannot group sources. A shop with fast sales will have fewer stages; a B2B company with long deals will have more.
How to calculate conversion in a sales funnel spreadsheet
On a separate sheet, build a summary: one line per stage and next to it the number of enquiries that reached that stage during the period. Use COUNTIF or COUNTIFS. One detail matters: count everyone who reached the stage or moved past it, not only those sitting there today, otherwise early stages look artificially small. Stage-to-stage conversion is the count at a stage divided by the count at the previous one.
Reading the result is straightforward. Many enquiries but few reaching a proposal point to a first-contact problem: slow replies, or no questions about the customer's task. Plenty of proposals but few payments means looking at price, terms and how you explain value.
If you also log the date each deal entered every stage, you can see where deals stall. A long wait for a reply often sends the customer to whoever answered first.
Compare lead sources before moving ad budget
Repeat the calculation separately for paid social, your Telegram channel, OLX and referrals. A common finding is that one channel brings a stream of enquiries with almost no payments, while another brings fewer but buying customers. That knowledge, not the number of chats, tells you where the budget should go. A pivot table makes it easy to slice results by month, manager and source without rebuilding formulas.
The sheet is only as good as the habits behind it. Agree on these with the whole team:
- Log an enquiry on the day it arrives
- Update the stage right after each contact
- Never leave the next action and its date empty
- Always state the reason when a deal is lost
- Do not delete lost deals, they teach the most
- Every manager uses the sheet, not just some of them
Access, control and when to move to a CRM
Use conditional formatting to turn rows red when the next-action date has passed, and review them every morning, or at least weekly. These are customers someone forgot. To avoid duplicates, write phone numbers in one +998 format and search before adding a new row. In a cloud sheet, limit permissions: managers edit their own rows, the owner sees everything, and a file full of customer phones should never be open to anyone with the link.
When the sheet slows down, managers step on each other, or you need reminders, call and chat history and integration with your website and Telegram, it is time for a CRM. The stages, sources and rules you refined will carry over almost unchanged. The step after that is end-to-end analytics, which ties ad spend to real payments. If you want to set that up, markdev builds end-to-end analytics and reporting for businesses in Uzbekistan, and you are welcome to discuss your task and start from the data already in your sheet.
FAQ
Can I run a sales funnel in Google Sheets for free?
Yes. For a small flow of enquiries a free cloud spreadsheet is enough. What matters is consistent stages, dropdown lists and discipline in filling it in.
How many stages should a funnel have?
As many as your customer actually goes through. Fast retail sales may need three or four; complex B2B deals need more. Each stage should be a concrete action.
Which formulas do I need for conversion?
COUNTIF and COUNTIFS are usually enough to count enquiries by stage and source, then you divide one count by the previous one. A pivot table helps with monthly and per-manager views.
When should I switch from a spreadsheet to a CRM?
When the file gets slow, managers overwrite each other, you need reminders, chat and call history, website or messenger integration, or errors start causing lost data.
Let’s look at your task for free
Leave your contact — in a 15-minute call we’ll show where leads get lost and what to fix first.