How to use Claude as your CRM: From Spreadsheet to Sales Pipeline in 5 Minutes
Use Claude as your CRM. Ask it to create a deal, upload your sales spreadsheet, and get a real pipeline in Sanka — all in 5 minutes.
In this article we'll show you the exact steps to use Claude as your CRM — ask Claude to create a deal, upload your sales spreadsheet, and end up with a real pipeline in Sanka. This guide assumes you already have the Sanka connector enabled in Claude. If you haven't connected yet, open Claude → Settings → Connectors → find Sanka → click Connect, then come back.
What you'll do
- Ask Claude to create one deal in Sanka — just to prove the pipe is live
- Drop your spreadsheet into Claude and say "import the rest"
- Open Sanka and see your deals on a real Kanban board
- Manage everything from here by talking to Claude
Option A: Use the Claude connector
1. Create your first deal by asking
Open a new Claude chat and paste:"Create a deal in Sanka for Acme Robotics. Amount $52,000, stage Negotiation, expected close May 15. Contact: Sarah Chen, sarah@acme-robotics.com."Claude uses the Sanka connector to create the deal, create the contact, and hand you back a deal ID. That is your first CRM write — the same sentence you'd type into a spreadsheet, except now it lives in a place with an audit trail, amount rollups, and a real schema.
2. Upload your spreadsheet to materialize the rest
Drag your deal tracker — CSV or Excel — into the same Claude chat and say:"Import the rest of these deals into Sanka. Match the columns, create any missing contacts, and skip any row with a missing company name."Claude reads the file, maps the columns (Company → Company, Value → Amount, Stage → Pipeline stage), creates the deals and contacts in Sanka, and summarizes what it did:
- 8 deals created
- 8 contacts created and linked
- 1 row skipped (missing company — flagged for your review)
3. Open Sanka — there is your pipeline
Switch to the Sanka app. Your deals are now on a Kanban board, grouped by stage, totals rolling up automatically. Contacts linked. Companies auto-created. This is the first time your pipeline has existed somewhere other than your own head.
4. From here, just keep talking
"What's closing this month?" → Claude filters Sanka and answers in the chat. "Draft a follow-up for Acme Robotics — they've been quiet for four days." → Pulls the deal context and writes the email. "Create a quote for Pioneer Labs: 14 seats at $199/mo, 12-month term." → Quote created and ready to send. "Move anything older than 30 days with no activity to Lost." → Bulk update, no row-by-row clicks.The CRM doesn't have an interface to learn. It has an interface to talk to.
Option B: Prefer ChatGPT? Use the Sanka Custom GPT
The same flow works inside ChatGPT. Open the Sanka Custom GPT, authorize Sanka once, and paste the same prompts. The Custom GPT calls the same tools the Claude connector uses — pick whichever assistant you already live in. See Getting Started for the GPT link.Why this matters
In consulting and SaaS work across more than a thousand companies, I've seen the same pattern: founders don't stop using spreadsheets because they learn to love a CRM — they stop because something becomes less friction than the spreadsheet. For an AI-native founder, that something is finally their own assistant.What changes once it's in Sanka
| Metric | Before (Google Sheet) | After (Claude + Sanka) |
|---|---|---|
| Answer "what's closing this month?" | 10–15 min of filter math | One sentence to Claude |
| Time to a real pipeline view | Never — you rebuild it | 5 min — one upload |
| Contact lookup across email, sheet, and notes | 3 tabs, 2 apps | One question |
| Onboarding a new hire to the pipeline | Re-teach the sheet | None — they just talk |
| Price of the CRM you'd actually keep using | $45–75/seat/mo (HubSpot, Salesforce) | $49/seat/mo (Sanka) |
Next steps
- CRM agent product page — what Sanka does inside Claude
- Auto-score every deal in your pipeline — the next thing to do once your pipeline lives in Sanka
- AI adoption enablement — broader context on Sanka + AI
- Getting Started — install the Claude connector or the Custom GPT
