A media group replaced
four spreadsheets with one Bigin pipeline
Use case
A business development team at a large media group manages advertising and subscription sales across multiple segments. With 17 sales representatives working independently, the team had no shared system. Each rep maintained their own Excel sheet in their own format, leads captured through website inquiries often went untracked, and follow-ups were managed by memory rather than by process.
As the team grew, the cracks widened. Revenue reporting required manual effort every week. When a rep was unavailable, deals stalled because no one else had visibility into their pipeline. Collaboration between segments broke down entirely.
The team decided it was time to move to a proper CRM— their first—and evaluated their options, with a focus on ease of adoption and practical fit for a mid-size sales team.
Requirements
The team needed a CRM that could centralize their operations without introducing complexity that would slow adoption. Their core requirements were:
- Replace individual Excel sheets with a single shared system.
- Give leadership real-time visibility into pipeline and revenue.
- Enforce consistent data standards across the sales team.
- Automatically capture leads from the company website.
- Connect social media channel (LinkedIn) to the CRM.
- Automate stage transitions and manager notifications.
- Maintain full deal history even when a rep is unavailable.
- Support future growth without requiring an expensive enterprise platform.
The team adopted Bigin as their first CRM, signing up after a single product demo without running a trial—confident the platform matched their needs immediately.
Solution
Here's how they built their sales operation on Bigin
One centralized pipeline:
All deal data, customer history, and activity logs have moved into a single shared pipeline. Every team member works from the same source of truth, eliminating the version conflicts and data gaps caused by having separate spreadsheets.
Mandatory fields for data discipline
Bigin's mandatory field configuration enforced a consistent data standard across all 17 reps. Incomplete or non-uniform records—a persistent problem in their Excel workflow—were eliminated from day one.
Automated website lead capture
A Bigin form automatically adds every website inquiry as a contact in the CRM. In a single month, the team captured 113 leads this way.
LinkedIn integration
Social outreach is connected to Bigin via LinkedIn Lead Ads, so leads from outreach campaigns arrive in the CRM automatically. This was rolled out as part of the team's deeper adoption push in their third year.
Stage-based automations
When a deal advances to a new stage, the team manager is automatically notified. This eliminates the need for manual status updates and weekly check-in calls, helping leadership stay informed without additional overhead.
Marketing dashboards
The marketing team built a custom dashboard that tracks lead sources, qualification rates, and conversion performance—which gives them a clear view of marketing efficiency that was impossible to obtain from spreadsheets.
Connected records and sub-pipelines
The team is now configuring sub-pipelines to separate pre-sales, delivery, and operations workflows. Bigin's Connected Records feature automates the cloning of a deal into the next team's pipeline when a defined stage is reached.
Full pipeline accountability
All deal history stays visible in Bigin regardless of who's available. When a rep is on leave, any team member can pick up where the conversation left off so that no follow-ups fall through the cracks.
A word from the customer:
"We would recommend Bigin to any growing team that needs structure without complexity. It grows with you."
Results
After three years on Bigin, the team has moved every part of their sales operation onto a single connected platform and continues to find new capabilities to adopt.
- All customer data is consolidated into one CRM, replacing four separate Excel sheets.
- 113 website leads were captured automatically in a single month via the form integration.
- Leadership gains real-time revenue visibility by pipeline—no manual reporting required.
- Mandatory fields enforce consistent data standards across the entire sales team.
- Stage-triggered automations replace manual status updates and manager check-in calls.
- LinkedIn leads flow into the CRM automatically, connecting social selling to the pipeline.
- Full deal history remains accessible when any team member is unavailable.
- Custom dashboards give the marketing team first-ever visibility into lead source performance.
- Sub-pipelines and Connected Records now extend Bigin into delivery and operations workflows.
Today, the team manages its entire sales operation—from first web inquiry to closed deal—from a single platform, and with the structure and automation that growing teams need—but without the cost and complexity of an enterprise CRM.
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