December 2014 – Page 2

December 10, 2014

View an Organization’s Complete History (Related Items Included)

With Insightly’s linking feature, you can create relationships between different items to visualize and navigate important connections, from the organizations involved with a project, to the contacts connected to an organization. Since organizations tend to be the hub of these relationships, it makes sense that many Insightly customers have asked for a history of related items within each organization record. We’re happy to bring that to you in our latest update.

You can now view a complete history of the activities for an organization and its related contacts, projects, and opportunities. Previously, if you wanted to see this information, you would have to click through to each contact, opportunity, and project and view the history for each separately. Now, you can select the Show filter from an organization’s History subtab to select an inclusive history of activities from related records.

By default Insightly will show you the history for just the organization. The other options for the drop down are to show the history for the organization and all linked items, all linked contacts, all linked projects, and all linked opportunities.

This allows you to see everything that has happened around an organization in one view. You can quickly scan the history list and catch up on progress if you’ve been away from the office or if you’re about to make a phone call to a client. If you need more detail on a specific item, you can click through and drill into the details. (Tip: Hold down the CTRL key when you click a history item to open up that item in a separate tab.)

When you change the history drop down to show the history for the organization and linked items, Insightly displays the names of the linked items below the activity title. You can even hover your cursor over the name of a related record to view the details without clicking to open another page.

With one dropdown list, our product design team has added a simple feature that will save you a lot of clicks.

December 9, 2014

Tips on Tuesdays from Insightly!

We’re starting a weekly tradition at Insightly. It’s a new blog post to bring you 3 weekly tips—a tip on using Insightly, a tip on running your business, and a tip on improving your life. We hope you enjoy this new feature and find something helpful in the coming weeks and months.

We’ve come up with a couple of snappy titles for our tips and would love your help in choosing one. Please see the bottom of this blog post to help us choose between “Tri-tip Tuesday” and “Turn It Up Tuesday”!

Importing into Insightly

Did you know that we recently increased the number of records that you can import at one time? Now, users on a paid plan can import up to 10,000 records at a time, while free users can still upload up to 2,500 items per file. See our import articles for all the details about importing your contacts, organizations, projects, and opportunities to Insightly.

Small Business Finance

Speaking of numbers, is your business meeting your revenue goals? How does your cash flow look for next month? Are you monitoring your costs and expenses? Many small business owners rely on their accountants to manage these details, but it’s important that you take the time to understand your financials at both a macro and micro level. Make sure you have regular meetings with your accountant and find a good small business accounting book to help you add things up.

Safer Travels!

“The quickest way to double your money is to fold it in half and put it in your back pocket.”
— Will Rogers
Whether you are going across town to see a client or traveling across the globe, keep your money safe. Don’t stash all your money in one place. Keep smaller bills in your pocket for tipping and incidentals, place some money in your carry-on bag, and have some in a wallet. A good travel wallet that can be hidden under your clothes by attaching to a belt or a neck lanyard is recommended!

Send Us Your Tips!

Send us your own tips and if we use them in our weekly column we’ll send you a $10 Amazon Gift Card!
Contact us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or send us an email.

Update December 15, 2014

Thanks for Your Votes!

We narrowed down the names and graphics for our Tuesday tips feature and asked for your opinion, and we have a winner! By a narrow vote, the winner is:

Turn It Up Tuesday:
Tips from Insightly to
Take Your Business to 11

Thank you for all your votes!

December 9, 2014

Add a Note to Multiple Contacts and Organizations at Once

Insightly’s many bulk editing options help you get your work done faster by allowing you to update many records in fewer steps—much quicker than editing them one by one! We’ve added a new bulk edit option for contacts and organizations to make adding a single note to multiple records even easier.

To display the bulk editing buttons above your list of organizations or contacts, tick the boxes to the left of each item you would like to add the note to. Click the Add Note button to link the same note to all selected records.

A familiar dialogue will open allowing you to enter your note’s details, add file attachments, date the note, and adjust viewing permissions. After typing your information, just click the blue Add Note button to save the note and link it to the selected records.

The note will be linked to each item in the Links section of the note and of each record.

While the bulk edit options allow for mass maintenance of records, keep in mind that you can select single records, too. This can be very useful if you’d like to tag, link, or add notes to records directly from the list without opening the record and navigating from one page to another. With flexible options like these, your productivity will just keep improving!

December 8, 2014

4 Ways to Avoid “Monday Morning Quarterback Syndrome”

They say that hindsight is always 20/20, and football is no exception. It’s always easy to call out the ref or talk about how you would have made a better play. Like football, business offers many opportunities for us to say, “I could have done that, but I would have done it this way….”

Remember that old joke about how many project managers it takes to change a light bulb? All of them—one to change it and the rest to stand around and plan out how they could have done it better.

Take your plays beyond Monday morning quarterback syndrome, and make your game solid by using a few tools to really keep your head out of the playbook and on the field.

Avoid the Audible

In football the audible works because the QB audibly changes the play or disguises the call to confuse the defense. In business, you need to give your team clear concise direction, and avoid double speak or directions that can be confusing. Each task should have an outlined objective and directions that are easy to follow for all parties. It will save you from having to throw a hail mary in the final moments before a big deadline.

Use a Shotgun Formation

In a shotgun formation, the quarterback steps back behind the line of scrimmage in anticipation of the snap. This causes receivers to spray all around the field. In business, you can let your team know what you are planning ahead of time, and allow them to anticipate your move, and get into position. Giving instruction, and using tools to convey that instruction in an easy to follow manner can ensure everyone is ready to take the ball.

Using Insightly CRM with Project Management keeps your team and your customers on the same page of the playbook. Integrating features like Google Apps, Gmail, Evernote and DropBox, offering reminders and file uploads, and taking advantage of various contact options can really help keep track of things. Because in life, people might wear different hats – your lineman might also be your running back.

Lay Out your Gridiron

A football field is organized in straight lines, with clear markers indicating the yardage. In business, your field should be laid out in a methodical pattern as well. Setting up milestones, tracking points, and having a routine schedule can help keep you moving on the field and save you from going into overtime. That’s what effective project management is all about.

If things get discombobulated, don’t be afraid to call a timeout, huddle the team, and check where everyone is on the project. A good coach always knows where his team is, and what the standings are. He also knows how much time is left in the game, the best play to get to the end zone, and when to rely on your safety to stop a pass. Keep the other team (your competition) out of the red zone by making sure that your field is clear and you’re in position to score.

Know When to Bull Rush

There are times when deadlines call for some fancy footwork and for everyone on your team to saddle up and plow through an obstacle instead of trying an end run. When these moments arise, make sure you rally your troops by keeping up morale, and making sure everyone knows how key and appreciated they are. Keeping a team spirit in your office environment will make sure that even when you are facing the end of a season or a Super Bowl game, you can rely on everyone to be ready.

Make notes and track your team’s strengths and weaknesses. Be aware if one player is a stronger defensive linebacker and another player is a born quarterback. If someone is a stronger salesman, don’t put him in as your numbers guy, and don’t waste your organizational genius by putting her on the phones to tackle client problems.

By strategizing your players and keeping them in key positions, you can make sure that this is your best season and your team will come out on the winning end, whether it’s throwing around the pigskin or fulfilling a contract.

December 1, 2014

Partner Post: How to Make Your CRM Rollout a Success

Should your company be implementing a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system?

The knee-jerk answer is yes. One of the keys to improving performance is measuring performance. Without a CRM system, how can one measure sales performance? While the logic of having a CRM system is undeniable, purchasing a CRM system does not guarantee improved sales or that the system will even be used by salespeople or other people in the company.

To get advice on how to successfully roll out a CRM, I had a conversation with Gene Marks, New York Times columnist and small business owner. His business The Marks Group has helped over 600 companies roll out and manage their CRM platforms. Here are the three keys he gave that separate successful from unsuccessful CRM rollouts:

Key #1: Have a Clear Deliverable for the First 30 Days.

Gene told me he gets several phone calls a year from sales managers that go something like this:

“I just moved to a new company. I want you to set-up the same CRM system that I had at my old company. In 30 days, I want to be able to look the following reports: a lead pipeline report, a sales report, and a salesperson activity report.”

Following a call like this one, a CRM system rollout usually goes very well. The key is having a clear deliverable (typically generating specific reports) that can be provided to management within 30 days. Having this early milestone has several benefits. It shows immediate return on investment to managers and mobilizes them to get their team using the CRM system immediately.

Key #2: Have a Dedicated System Admin.

One stumbling block that can derail a smooth rollout is not having an administrator for the CRM system. In describing the perfect administrator, Gene offered up a well-known TV character – Pam from “The Office.” She is a no-nonsense personality who will aggressively push people to start using the CRM system. Also, she is not a sales manager or a “techie,” both of whom tend to be mistakes for picking a CRM administrator.

The first job of the administrator when rolling out a CRM system is to make sure that good data goes into the CRM system. The administrator is the person in charge of collecting the existing data from salespeople, managers, and accounting to populate the CRM system. While salespeople may have to add information into the system about their accounts, the less that they have to do, the more likely they will embrace using the system.

Key #3: Get Management Buy-In.

The last big key to success is management buy-in. By management, Gene is specifically talking about the organization’s sales leadership. Users will object to using a CRM system for a variety of reasons. They often feel that using the system takes too much time, or they are uncomfortable sharing information about clients or prospects. Without a manager standing firmly behind the rollout of the CRM system, these complaints can lead to slow adoption, negating the benefits of having a system.

Before I finish up reporting on my conversation with Gene Marks, I would like to suggest a couple of recent articles on CRM from Fit Small Business, the website for which I serve as publisher:

An Introduction To CRM For Small Businesses

How To Choose CRM Software For Your Business

Here are a few other thoughts from Gene which should also increase your chances of success.

Rollouts: If you can roll out the CRM system to a few people at a time, the process can go easier than a department-wide or firm-wide rollout.
Training: Training should be given on an individual and not group basis. Many users are going to have different needs. For example, some people will need information on using the CRM with a smartphone, while others will want to pull certain reports.
Data Import: Start by exporting data from the firms accounting system, which does not require work by the sales staff and generally already has up-to-date information on clients.
Security: Many clients bring up concerns about security, particularly when they are considering a cloud-based solution. However, Gene likes to ask if the company thinks that their defenses are better or worse than those of the well-known CRM companies that have invested millions in protecting data.
Hidden Costs: The main hidden cost (provided there is no “integration” project) is the time spent by the CRM administrator. This can range from a few hours to 3 days per week for Gene’s clients.

No matter what size your business, if you get these keys right, you should be well on your way to a successful CRM rollout.

About the Author – Marc Prosser is the co-founder and publisher of Fit Small Business, which provides “how to” guidance to small businesses on topics ranging from small business phone systems to getting press coverage.