It’s no secret that Excel is an utterly ubiquitous piece of business software. But, the truth is that most of us are only using a tiny fraction of its features and capabilities.

In fact, there’s a good chance Excel is the most powerful, effective, and versatile sales tool installed on your computer right now. Its potential uses go far beyond the number-crunching it’s most often associated with.

Here’s a quick rundown of some Excel features that every sales manager should know about.

Scheduling Sales Follow Up

When you have a big sales team and a lot of clients to coordinate with, you need to get everybody on an organized, sensible schedule. This can make or break your ability to reach out to the right contacts at the right time. Excel has built-in features that can create easy-to-read, color-coded schedules—and automatically update them when needed.

Tracking Opportunity Status and Won/Lost

Excel can also be a great platform for tracking sales. You can make a log of every interaction with a lead. You can also record their progress along the conversion funnel, and plan future contacts.

Excel can be used to analyze sales trends and make predictions. An example is using regression analysis to estimate future sales numbers and set goals.

Calculating ROI Sales Outreach

One of the most helpful ways to use Excel in conjunction with sales tracking is in analyzing data to determine the return on investment of your sales and marketing efforts.

You can easily find out exactly how many sales you need to make, and at what price points, to break even or make a profit.

Storing Customer Data

While Excel might not be able to compete with a full-featured CRM platform, it can be an excellent way for small, growing businesses to store and organize contact information, notes, and other important customer data.