Watch your customer relationships thrive with Asana’s dynamic capabilities and revolutionize your business.

Looking to turn those casual customers into lifelong fans, but not yet ready to commit to a full CRM solution?

Today we’re about to unveil a dynamite approach that might just blow your mind — Asana as a full-throttle Customer Relationship Management tool!

In the following sections, we will guide you through the various steps involved in using Asana as a CRM, so you can save up and use the same tool you’re already used to.

1. What is Asana

2. Is Asana a CRM

3. What can you do with Asana as a CRM

4. How to use Asana as a CRM

5. How to create a sales CRM workflow using Asana

6. How to customize Asana tasks for effective lead management

7. How to create Lead Templates for your team in Asana

8. What is a Ssbtask in Asana

9. How to use the template in Asana

10. Common Issues and Limitations of Asana as a CRM

Keep reading to find out how to leverage Asana’s magic and conquer both your task list and customer relationships with the same tool.

1. What is Asana?

Asana is a robust task management application that provides an indispensable solution for teams, modern businesses, and individuals seeking flexible ways to manage their projects and operations in a more organized and efficient way.

2. Is Asana a CRM?

Although it is not primarily a CRM, Asana can be used as a lightweight CRM when advanced customer relationship management features are not required.

3. What can you do with Asana as a CRM?

The primary function of a CRM is to provide users with a complete picture of customers’ journeys with their organization.

Asana provides a central platform to create a CRM-like environment where you can track the complete journey of a lead or customer and ensure that everyone involved in the process is regularly updated.

Overall, using Asana as a lightweight CRM provides you with a 360-degree view of your customer’s lifecycle and helps you and your team deliver better customer experiences.

4. How to use Asana as a CRM

Tasks and projects in Asana can be used to create dedicated customer lifecycle threads to track their complete journey with your organization transparently.

You can also use Asana’s boards and task list views to track the complete workflow of your sales or customer service procedures.

Asana also offers several account management and pre/post-sales workflow templates that can help you set up your initial CRM workflow.

Alternatively, you could start from scratch and create a workflow that suits your specific business needs.

5. How to create a sales CRM workflow using Asana

In order to create a simplified sales CRM workflow using Asana, here’s what you need to do:

1. Sign in to your Asana account.

2. Click the ‘+’ icon on your dashboard and select ‘Create Project’.

3. Choose ‘Use a template’ and select ‘Asana curated’ from the Type menu.

4. Select the ‘Sales Pipeline template’ from the list of sales templates and click ‘Use template’.

5. Name your project and click ‘Create project’ to import the template to your Asana account.

6. Delete all the sample tasks except for one, which we’ll use for customization.

7. Rename the workflow sections to match your sales process.

8. Add new sections if needed by clicking the ‘Add section’ link at the bottom of your list.

9. Switch to the Board view to better visualize your sales workflow (remember, you can always switch between views if you want).

*Congratulations! You have successfully created a sales CRM workflow using Asana.

In the next sections, we’ll show you how to customize Asana tasks to gather the necessary lead information for your sales and services teams, how to create templates in Asana, and how to use these templates to manage your CRM workflow.

6. How to customize Asana tasks for effective lead management

Congratulations on setting up your sales CRM workflow in Asana! Now, it’s time to focus on gathering and managing your leads’ information.

To achieve this, we recommend using Asana tasks and subtasks.

Luckily, Asana’s Sales Pipeline template already includes a sample task that utilizes custom fields. If you have Asana’s Premium plan or higher, you can add or remove custom fields as needed. Otherwise, you can work with the fields available in your template.

Here’s how you can use Asana tasks for lead management:

1. Open your Asana CRM project.

2. Click on the sample task in your project template to access its details page. In the details area, you’ll see the fields you can use to manage lead information (Assignee, Due Date, Lead Value, Priority, Account Name, Next Steps, and so on). If you need additional fields, you can add them using custom fields.

3. To add a custom field, go to your main Kanban board view and click Customize. You’ll see a list of available fields. For a sales CRM, we recommend enabling the projects, tags, and dependencies fields by toggling the icons next to them.

4. To add a new field, click Add field at the top of the fields list. For example, you can add an email address field and choose Text as the field type to gather more specific information about each lead.

5. Click Create Field to add the new field to your task. Similarly, you can add a Phone Number field to your task list.

Your task structure is now ready to gather all the relevant lead information.

7. How to create Lead Templates for your team in Asana

In order to ensure the success of your CRM, it’s important to consistently gather all the necessary information about your leads and customers. One way to achieve this is by providing a template or framework for your team to collect lead information.

Here’s how you can create a lead template in Asana for your CRM users:

1. Start by clicking on your Asana sample task.

2. Rename the task as New Lead Template by editing its title.

3. Remove all the sample information from this task’s fields by clicking each field and pressing backspace.

4. Scroll down the details pane and click on Add subtask.

5. Think of the logical steps you need to follow to engage a lead. Start by adding a subtask for an initial call or email.

6. Press the enter key or click Add subtask to list more subtasks. Your task template is now ready.

7. Create a new section in your Asana board by clicking Add section.

8. Name the section Templates.

9. Drag and drop the template section to the start of your workflow.

10. Finally, drag and drop the template task you just created from the New Lead section to the Templates section.

There you go! You have successfully created a template that your team can use for logging critical information of every new lead.

8. What is a Subtask in Asana?

Subtasks are the** smaller elements or milestones** of a task. We’ll use subtasks to create a list of activities your team needs to perform for every new lead.

Asana also allows you to assign separate team members to every subtask, making it easier to manage your work.

9. How to Use the Template in Asana

Use the template task that you’ve previously created to optimize your CRM workflow and track leads more efficiently.

Here’s how your team can use it to log lead information and monitor its progress through your system:

1. Hover your mouse over the template task and click the menu icon. Select Duplicate Task to create a copy of the template.

2. Rename the task to your lead’s name and make sure to select all relevant fields, including Assignee and Collaborators.

3. Click Create New Task and drag it to the New Lead section.

4. Open the task details page and assign it to a team member using the Assignee field.

5. Enter the estimated value of the lead and its company name, contact person, designation, email address, and phone number.

6. Assign subtasks to different team members and set due dates for each.

7. Move the task card through your sales pipeline as the lead progresses.

8. When the lead converts into a customer, add your sales team lead and the customer onboarding manager as Collaborators to ensure a smooth handover.

9. Leave a message for collaborators to pick up the lead and add it to the onboarding CRM for further processing.

By following these steps, you can create a transparent and efficient sales CRM workflow in Asana.

And don’t forget, you can customize everything from the workflow section to task fields and templates to fit your specific needs.

10. Common Issues and Limitations of Asana as a CRM

Asana is a popular project management tool that can also be used as a lightweight CRM solution. However, it’s important to note that it’s not a dedicated CRM platform like Salesforce.

Here are some common problems you may encounter when using Asana as a CRM:

Limited Reporting and Analytics in Asana

While Asana does offer analytics and reports for projects and tasks, its reporting capabilities are limited when it comes to customer management.

For instance, you can view the overall lead value in the pipeline, but you can’t create forecasts based on lead behavior like you can with some dedicated CRMs.

No Dedicated Customer Data Interface in Asana

Asana allows you to manage lead data through tasks and custom fields, but its interface has several limitations since it’s not designed for lead gathering.

For example, you may need to use custom fields frequently to gather different information.

Additionally, custom fields are not available in all Asana plans, and you can’t link lead generation forms directly with other workflow stages like you can with Salesforce and other CRMs.

Complicated Lead Handover Process in Asana

Transferring a lead from one part of the process to another can be complicated in Asana.

In regular CRMs, the lead is assigned and transferred to the new section, but in Asana, the new section must create a duplicate task to move it to its workflow.

This not only requires additional manual work but can also result in data inaccuracies.

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