How to Tell If Your Leads Are Qualified (Without Fancy Software)

Marketers dream of a world where every business uses a CRM.

Then they wake up and go to work.

The benefits of CRMs are clear: you can see where leads come from and why they close. You can pull all the metrics you need, no manual tallying required.

It sounds nice, but businesses resist CRMs for a lot of reasons. Could be price, could be the tech itself, or it could be the fact that it’s just one more thing to manage.

The good news? For small- and mid-sized businesses, structure beats software every time.

One of my clients tracks leads with a simple spreadsheet: Spam, Bad, OK, Good, Great. That’s it.

After implementing this in 2024, they grew qualified leads by 50% in a year.

With a good system, a spreadsheet or Notion board or even paper notes can help you separate high-value prospects from tire-kickers.

In this post, I’m going to talk about how you can qualify leads, both in terms of strategy and tools. That way, you can prioritize the right leads and close more deals, without having to rely on software your team or client doesn’t want to use.

Time and money are limited, and this is as true for sales staff as it is for marketers. They’re not going to want to spend an hour on every prospect who “just wants info” or “isn’t ready to buy.” They rightly want to focus on folks who are ready to sign.

Qualifying leads helps you find out who’s ready to sign and who’s not. And that will save you time, money, and effort.

But even if money and time aren’t immediate concerns, it’s worth qualifying leads anyway. If you don’t have a good system for this, it can be hard to know who to follow up with and when. This is one of the key problems that every CRM seeks to address.

The alternative leaves sales staff to their own devices. Different folks will build their own little CRMs out of spreadsheets, their email inbox, or good old-fashioned sticky notes on the monitor!

This can cause good prospects to fall through the cracks and low-quality ones to eat up too much attention. But even saying that, I’d wager that marketing staff can benefit even more from lead qualification.

It can already be difficult to know which marketing campaigns are leading to leads. But it’s harder still to know which ones are leading to good leads unless you have a clear ranking system for them.

If you have a client that doesn’t want to touch a CRM, they can still qualify leads and help you direct your marketing efforts. You just need a system that’s really straightforward to use and not a pain in the neck.

Now let’s talk about some simple lead qualification methods that work for small- and mid-sized businesses.

You don’t need automation to start qualifying leads. But you will need discipline and a repeatable system.

Bearing that in mind, here are some methods you can use to qualify leads manually:

A well-structured spreadsheet can handle a surprising amount of lead management. Create columns for name, contact info, source, date, status (e.g., New, Contacted, Qualified), and notes. Add extra fields for budget, timeline, and product interest if relevant.

In about two hours, you can build a mini-CRM complete with reporting. You can even color-code rows or add filters to highlight hot leads.

Free templates are available online if you don’t want to start from scratch. Here’s one you can copy.

You don’t need expensive software. Sheets, Trello, or Notion can all work.

For example, you could assign 0–2 points for each criterion:

Leads that score 6 or more out of 8 are top priority. Customize this as much as you like to match your client's sales process. You can also add extra criteria like "fit with ideal customer profile" or "previous engagement" if you want more nuance.

But in my opinion, it’s always best to start simple with things like this because consistent tracking is going to help you more than perfect data.

Many small businesses get leads by phone. You can use a standard intake form—paper or digital—to log calls consistently.

If possible, use call tracking tools like Google Voice or CallRail to track sources and follow-ups. You can pair this with a shared Google Sheet with timestamps and notes, and you’ll see that it can make a big difference.

For best results, Ask the same qualifying questions every time (budget, timeline, decision-maker).

Lead qualification can be as simple as categorizing each leads as “Spam”, “Bad”, “OK”, “Good”, and “Great.” But if you want to get a bit more specific, here are two simple frameworks you can apply.

This classic framework asks four questions:

Score each element and use it to prioritize. You can assign 0–2 points per factor and prioritize leads that score at least 6/8.

I love simplicity and clarity of BANT. Pop it on your spreadsheet or intake form, and you’ll create a treasure trove of good lead qualification data in no time.

CHAMP flips BANT by putting the prospect’s challenge first. With this framework, you first ask: “what’s the pain point?” Then you assess authority, money, and whether solving the problem is a priority.

This helps avoid wasting time on leads who don’t want to move forward. But it also helps you collect more open-ended data about your leads, which can be good if you’re still trying to zero in on the right sales proposition.

You can run with either of these frameworks as a checklist, a scorecard, or a script. You can create a simple column in your spreadsheet for each component, or build a form that walks through these questions.

Now if you’re curious about the technical piece of this, I’d like to share a list of…

Just because you’re shying away from a CRM doesn’t mean you can’t use simpler tech to make your life easier. Here are few things I like to use:

Start with a pre-built lead tracking template in Google Sheets. These templates include standard columns like lead name, source, status, and follow-up date. They often have conditional formatting to highlight high-priority leads.

Here’s the template I linked above in the post again to help you get started.

Use tools like Google Forms, Jotform, or Typeform to capture lead information consistently. These forms can feed directly into your spreadsheet with Zapier. Alternatively, if you’re using WordPress, you can use plugins like Gravity Forms or QuForms to collect leads from the website.

Tools like Trello or Asana let you see leads by stage as if they were on a bulletin board. You can have columns for New Lead, Contacted, Qualified, Closed. Use cards for each lead and move them along as you progress.

Use CallRail to manage phone leads. These tools log call history, and some offer voicemail transcriptions. Track where calls come from and take notes in your lead tracker.

Here’s how this could work together:

This is just one possible combination, but it’s one that works well and is neither expensive nor complex to set up!

I’ve talked theory here, but let me give you a concrete example from my work.

I designed this system to give their sales and marketing teams clear visibility into lead quality without any unnecessary complexity.

In the example below, you can see we track lead name, expected deal value, country, source of lead, lead quality (Spam, Bad, OK, Good, Great), lead date, and comments.

Since this was initially created, we’ve added a few columns, but the basic structure is fundamentally the same. The sales staff add rows as they need to, and manually qualify leads.

If they want to add more info, that’s great. If not, it’s not required.

It’s a very simple build, but using nothing more than common formulas and charts, we’re able to track average lead quality and number of qualified leads coming in.

We can also track the quantity and quality of leads based on the source that sends them our way. We can track expected sales value per qualified lead for each particular source. And lastly, we can track the trajectory of qualified leads per week and month to see if it’s going up or down.

This was all set up in Google Sheets in less than a day. It doesn’t cost a dime in software fees.

This setup made millions, and it uses nothing more than a well-organized Google Sheet.

Reading this, I don’t want you to get the idea that I’m glorifying low-tech solutions. CRMs are great and they are absolutely worth the money.

So as you put in place temporary fixes and clever kludge, remember: you might eventually upgrade to Pipedrive, HubSpot, or Salesforce.

So start by keeping your data clean now. Use consistent column headings and drop-down menus. Make sure the data is regularly updated so that if it needs to get imported into a CRM later, it’s both easy to do and up-to-date.

When it's time to upgrade, don't go from zero to Salesforce overnight. Test free tools like HubSpot CRM or Zoho CRM. Import a handful of leads and explore basic features like contact history, task reminders, and email logging.

If you find yourself looking at CRMs in the future, you’ll also be glad if you took a moment to document your current qualification process. If you’ve been using BANT or CHAMP manually, you’ll want to make sure your CRM setup reflects that. Custom fields and workflows should mirror what’s already working.

With a gradual rollout, your team can adapt without too much hassle.

Remember: if you end up upgrading, your goal isn’t just to have a CRM. You’re really looking for a way to scale your existing system so it works when you have 1,000 leads instead of 10. This is a lot easier if you’re already thinking in terms of scalability even as you work in Sheets.

You don’t need fancy software to qualify leads effectively. You need structure, consistency, and a simple system that your team or client will use on a regular basis.

With tools like spreadsheets, online forms, and call logs—plus proven frameworks like BANT—you can quickly identify high-quality leads and focus your energy where it matters.

Manual lead tracking works best when you have a repeatable process. If you take the time to build up that process now, you’ll close more deals and run better marketing campaigns. But you’ll also be ready to scale when the time comes to adopt a CRM.

Until then, keep it simple and stay organized.

The right system will earn its keep, whether it’s built in Salesforce or Sheets.