Month: January 2015

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

Welcome to Turn It Up Tuesday, where we bring you 3 weekly tips—a tip on using Insightly, a tip on running your business, and a tip on improving your life. Enjoy this week’s tips!

Connect Other Apps to Insightly

Computer software has completely changed how we work, and online applications have made our lives even easier with powerful features that can be accessed from any internet connection. If you’re using Insightly to manage your contacts, sales pipelines, and project tasks, it’s likely you’re also using other applications to manage aspects of your business. That doesn’t mean you need to jump from browser tab to browser tab when you want to check the status of an invoice or add a contact to a marketing mailing list. With integrations, you can often bring information and actions together in one app or another. For example, on paid accounts, Insightly offers an integration with QuickBooks Online to display invoice and payment information directly in your contact record. As Insightly becomes even more popular, other vendors have started building their own integrations using Insightly’s open API to accommodate their customers’ needs. Zapier’s entire focus is on connecting apps like Insightly to other applications. From PandaDoc for document signing and management to TimeCamp for time tracking, we’ve listed them all on our integrations page. Take a look and see if you can connect your other apps or discover new ones to turn up the dial on your productivity! User Insightly’s QuickBooks Online integration to view invoices and payments.

Strategic Partnerships Can Reach New Customers

There’s power in community, so partnering with other businesses in your industry or related industries can result in increased business for all parties and higher satisfaction for your customers. A florist who works with the antique shop down the street to display sample arrangements in their vases will help lead customers from one business to another while increasing local awareness and opportunity. An online accounting service could partner with computer consultants to manage the technical side of hardware and software installation, getting customers up and running with fewer hurdles. Think about ways of cross-promoting services while serving your customers’ needs. Use Alignable to check out if other local businesses have ideas. Research the reputation of compatible businesses, reach out to them to explain the benefits and goals of a partnership, and be frank about the hurdles you might face. Working together, you can increase your customer base and enhance your customers’ trust in you—a surefire way to keep business growing.

Find Your Communities

It’s a common complaint that technology is keeping people apart as our eyes gaze down at our phones and screens. While some parts of the world are indeed more neighborly and less technology-focused than others, the fact is that communities are all around us, and there are more and more ways to create and connect to them—both online and offline. Sites like Meetup allow you to find and start groups to meet people with shared interests, from dancing to welding to crocheting. And others, like Reddit and Pinterest, are online communities that help you share advice and information to help solve problems and offer support. If you want to volunteer locally, VolunteerMatch and individual charities have sites where you can sign up, get involved, and meet new people. Of course, lifting our eyes from our screens at the local coffee shop or library, we are bound to find something interesting on the good, old-fashioned bulletin board or a poster on the window. Building a local network helps you make new friends and bring your community closer together, a good thing for you and for everyone around you.

Send Us Your Tips

Would you like to share your tips with other Insightly customers? Send them to us!
If we use one in our weekly feature we’ll send you a $10 Amazon Gift Card!

Contact us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or send us an email.

If you haven’t tried the best CRM around, sign up for Insightly’s 14-day free trial for our premium plan or try our free account for the basics.

You would think the customer would be your best friend for project engagement, right? After all, they want what you want: Success. They want roadblocks cleared for your delivery team. They want dead-on correct requirements. They want to give us as much money as is needed to get it done. Well, maybe not that last one. But they do want us to succeed.

Pleasing the customer is huge; it’s one of the main success determiners in the project management world, and definitely a key to success for small businesses and individual consultants. You can’t afford to offend customers, you can’t afford to lose customers—you can’t afford to drive them away at all. But do they always know what’s best for the project? Should you do whatever they want you to do? Should you act on everything they say or ask for? You may have to say no to that. Let’s explore this concept further and figure out why.

It Starts with a Perceived Issue, Need, or Problem

The customer may already be on your radar and in your customer relationship management (CRM) system as a previous contact. Or they may come to you from nowhere through an Internet search or a recommendation about our services. Either way, they have become your client—either your consulting client or your organization’s client—because they have a need or a problem that needs to be resolved.

However, they may not have done the up-front preparation and digging to really know what their problem is, so they come with a perceived solution that they want implemented rather than letting the consultant figure out what the real solution should be. So should small business consultants always do what the customer wants? Maybe not, and sometimes that can cause some early customer friction. Be careful, but be firm.

Approach the Project in an Analytic Manner

While there is an issue that likely needs to be resolved, you won’t be certain right away what that issue is and the customer may not have all the requirements figured out coming into the engagement. No matter how hard the customer tries to convince you that they know all about what they need, keep digging to make sure this is true.

Remember, You are the Expert

You, your team, your organization—you are the experts. That’s why the customer came to you, so it’s more than okay to put the brakes on at the beginning of the project and work through additional planning and investigation. You may get pushback from the customer if they think that’s just a drain on their funds, and they are entitled to that thought. You must step back and explain to them that your mission isn’t necessarily to deliver what they tell you to deliver, it’s to deliver the right solution to their problem. In a perfect world, those two would align but we don’t live in a perfect world. If your project view differs greatly from your customer’s project view, remind them that you are the expert and it’s your job to ask questions and to find out what the real need is and what the real solution needs to be.

Is the Customer Really in the Way?

It all depends on the project, the customer, and how well the project manager or consultant is able to manage the customer. A good project manager keeps them engaged, working on tasks, and participating every step of the way. This can keep the customer from getting in the way of success and allows them to be a valuable contributor on the team. Use the customer and all of their expertise to fully define requirements, truly pinpoint the problem, identify all the risks, and help you manage the solution to a successful ending. If your customer initially wants to run the project, you’ll need to set expectations about your leadership role and communication processes early on. By doing this, you will instill confidence in the customer and stop many of these potential problems from ever happening. While you won’t encounter these problems with most customers, you’ll still have to watch for the overbearing client who wants to tell you what to do throughout the project.

Try Insightly – CRM & Project Management! Sign up for a free account or a 14-day trial of our premium plan.

Customer relationship management is key for small businesses to thrive. Every small business owner should look into online CRM as an affordable and easy-to-use option that will help you grow your business and develop stronger ties with your customers.

When implementing an online CRM, businesses drive down sales costs by 23% and get a return of $8.71 for every $1 spent on average—not a bad way to reduce expenses and boost income! That kind of ROI comes from increasing collaboration, having customer information readily available at your desk and on mobile devices, and making it easier to connect to your customers on social media.

If you’re running a small business, ask yourself the questions below and let the numbers guide you. If your goal is to grow and thrive, chances are you want to shop for an online CRM.

Insightly CRM includes intuitive and easy-to-use features to help you grow your business:

• A cloud-based service that’s accessible from your web browser to your iOS or Android device.
• Social network information based on your contacts’ email addresses.
• Integrations with many popular online business tools, including QuickBooks, Google Apps, and MailChimp.

See the full list of features on our pricing page, and sign up for a free Insightly account or try a 14-day trial of our paid plans.

With so much opportunity for growth, it would be a shame to pass up on a way to make every workday easier.

Tips from Insightly to Take Your Business to 11

Welcome to Turn It Up Tuesday, where we bring you 3 weekly tips—a tip on using Insightly, a tip on running your business, and a tip on improving your life. Enjoy this week’s tips!

Find Answers at Insightly Help and Insightly Resources

Are you the do-it-yourself type? Customers who like to dive in and figure out how things work are quick to set up Insightly and start adding records thanks to Insightly’s ease of use. That’s why Insightly has a self-service model that offers many options to learn how to use Insightly CRM more effectively. A good method to answer questions and learn about Insightly is to open one browser window to view information from the following links while working in Insightly in another browser window. Insightly Resources includes the links below and more, so it’s a great place to select from your favorite kind of documentation and video options to learn about CRM and Insightly. If you’re interested in tutorials, Insightly University has got you covered. From a general overview to record links to managing projects, you’ll find step-by-step video guides to walk you through Insightly. Our Help pages include articles to answer hundreds of questions. With a quick search, you’ll always find answers. And to stay up to date on new product developments, click the Product News section right here on our blog! Update (6/23/2015): Insightly has a brand-new place for support articles, videos, an Insightly user community, and product feature requests! Check out Insightly Support to get all the information you need to make the most out of your CRM!

Offer the Right Support for Your Customers

There are a wide variety of customers you will encounter as your business grows. Offering a matching variety of service options to capture their attention will help you earn and keep more business. An internet presence is essential for customers to find you in the digital age, but your type of business and the types of customers you attract will define how you offer continuing support and service. If you understand your customer demographics and psychographics, you can determine the best way to present them with information about how you can help them, how they can help themselves, and how you can support them. If your business is phone-based, for example, you will likely want to expand your phone support hours as your business grows. If your customers prefer email options to contact you whenever they have time, be sure to set up an auto-reply message to let them know when you’ll get back to them. Make the options clear and set expectations up-front—clear communication and lots of options are key.

Continue Your Education on the Internet

You’re always working hard and, hopefully, you’re taking time to pursue other interests and keep your mind in good shape. After all, you never know where you’ll find inspiration for a great business idea. Pursuing an education doesn’t always mean earning a degree, and today’s online options are far more accessible than the correspondence courses of the early 20th century. Sites like edX, Coursera, and Khan Academy are great paths to learn new skills and gain understanding through free coursework that you can view on your own time. If you’re just looking for a quick review on a topic, YouTube and Wikipedia are always great resources for a refresher, whether you want to improve your golf game, find out why your computer engineer keeps talking about snakes, or spackle that hole in the wall.

Send Us Your Tips

Would you like to share your tips with other Insightly customers? Send them to us!
If we use one in our weekly feature we’ll send you a $10 Amazon Gift Card!

Contact us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or send us an email.

If you haven’t tried the best CRM around, sign up for Insightly’s 14-day free trial for our premium plan or try our free account for the basics.

Tips from Insightly to Take Your Business to 11

Welcome to Turn It Up Tuesday, where we bring you 3 weekly tips—a tip on using Insightly, a tip on running your business, and a tip on improving your life. Enjoy this week’s tips!

Check Your Insightly Time Zone Setting

With its many customizable settings, Insightly allows you to set up your CRM to match your business needs and preferences. This flexibility allows Insightly administrators to create everything from teams to custom fields to categories, and each individual user has the ability to change preferences for visual theme, currency, time zone, and more. Search for these topics on our Help pages to guide you through the steps. Paul Betts, an Insightly customer in the U.K., recommends that everyone on your account check the time zone settings to make sure you’re all on the same page and schedule. This will make sure there’s no confusion when viewing another user’s events on the Insightly calendar. Paul will be receiving a $10 Amazon gift card for this tip! Use our links below to submit your own!

Make the Best Use of Your Work Time

If every minute of your day is packed with tasks, you may be missing some opportunities as you rush toward burnout. We all know we need an occasional vacation, but 20 minutes of planning time in the morning or the previous afternoon will help you make every day more productive and reduce the stress of unexpected interruptions. Use that time to schedule for last-minute changes and opportunities, figure out which tasks can be delegated, and prioritize your tasks. Ignore the email and the phone for a few minutes a day and translate those savings into greater production!

Assess Your Routines and Make More Time

Just as you’ll find pockets of time for higher work productivity through planning, you can make more time in your personal life by assessing your daily routines. With a small notebook at hand or in a mobile notes application, jot down your activities once or twice an hour for a few days. Think about the reasons for your actions and question if they make sense. Sometimes, long-standing assumptions that drive our habits are no longer valid as our lives and responsibilities change. Bringing this to light can be the first step toward meeting those goals we have neglected and setting new ones.

Send Us Your Tips

Would you like to share your tips with other Insightly customers? Send them to us!
If we use one in our weekly feature we’ll send you a $10 Amazon Gift Card!

Contact us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or send us an email.

If you haven’t tried Insightly to manage your tasks and your time, sign up for our 14-day free trial for our premium plan or try our free account for the basics. Compare the list of features and sign up on our pricing page.

Content marketing is a useful and successful way to reach people online, deliver your valuable message, gain new leads and convert more sales. Over sixty percent (60%) of consumers say that they feel better about a company that offers custom content and seventy-eight percent (78%) of them believe that those organizations are more interested in building relationships with them.

Image Source: ShutterStock.com

By repurposing existing content that was once a smashing success, you can breath new life into this valuable data and reach a whole new audience. These methods can retarget readers in a different way by reincarnating our information.

Here are a half-dozen ways to turn your content around:

Revamp, Reuse, and Repurpose

Sometimes all our content needs is a quick update, perhaps a title change or a few little tweaks and adjustments that will give it a fresh new appeal. A little rewording, changing some dates, updating a few statistics—these can all make some older content more relevant. Repurposing can be confused with republishing. Rather than simply reposting repetitive information, you can give it a newfangled edge with a more applicable rebirth.

Ask Questions, Get Answers, and Gain an Audience

If your content is informational, statistical, or analytical, your data will easily translate into a quiz. People love to interact online and, when posed with a question, many of them will happily chime in with their answers. Whether it is a true-or-false approach, multiple choice, or a blind question, you will provide your readers with valuable information in a fun and engaging way.

Giving It New Life in Graphic Form

Infographics are a success way of condensing large amounts of data and statistics into a more easily digestible form and have been very popular for a few years. Transforming your information into a visually appealing graphic will draw much more attention than mere text alone. If you struggle with PhotoShop or other graphic programs, there are plenty of free and low cost services that can assist you with turning your text into an informative graphic.

Blog It and Hog It (the attention)

If you don’t already have a blog, or if your material wasn’t already in the popular blogging format, consider starting one or transforming your content into a blog. Blogging is an excellent way to get new readers and, more importantly, additional viewership in the form of repeat visitors. There are dozens of popular blogging platforms where you can transform your material and engage with your audience. From Blogger to WordPress, check into their different features, services, and functions to see which would best suit your information.

Image Source: ShutterStock.com

Light a Fire on Kindle

Self-publishing is taking off on Amazon, and with Kindle Direct Publishing you can turn a Word document into a book in very little time. Their free publishing tool is available to anyone online, and you can choose to give your book away or sell it and split the revenues with your host. You can get a free Kindle book that shows how easy it is to be a published author. This step-by-step guide will take you from preparing your text to reviewing your sales.

Slide It and Share It

For visual content or even statistical data and other information, these can be reborn on SlideShare. Once uploaded, these slide decks can be viewed on their site, embedded onto a website and viewed on most mobile devices.

Successful marketing strategies can include our previous content if we get creative and present our information in a new way. By recreating and repurposing our content we can see it in a whole new light—just as our readers will.

With Insightly, you can upload related content assets like files and graphics to a project to keep everything in one place. Include the URLs of published material in the project description and link contacts to projects they’ve participated in and you’ll stay on top of your marketing efforts! Try our full-featured 14-day trial or register for the free account.

About the Author: Dave Landry Jr. is an online business journalist and personal finance adviser living in Los Angeles, California. As a guest author, his writing often covers content and social media amplification, business communications, finance management, and online marketing. Connect with him on Twitter @davelandryjr.

Tips from Insightly to Take Your Business to 11

Welcome to Turn It Up Tuesday, where we bring you 3 weekly tips—a tip on using Insightly, a tip on running your business, and a tip on improving your life. Enjoy this week’s tips!

Organize Your Tasks with Categories

The Insightly Tasks tab already helps you keep your tasks in order by grouping them by the due date and priority you’ve set on each task, but did you know you can add color-coded categories to the mix to help you filter your list and focus on specific duties? If you’re a real estate professional preparing an open house, you probably have tasks to check in with a seller, prepare a sign-in sheet, and put out signs. If you use an “Open House” category for these tasks, you can select it from the Category dropdown to see a focused list of all the upcoming open houses. If you’re in construction, set up “Contractor” and “Inspection” categories. Running an IT business? How about “Equipment purchase” and “Scheduled visit”? Because you can set up your own categories, you can customize categories to fit your needs!

Sponsor an Organization for Good and for Marketing

Sponsoring an organization is a great way get involved with local, charitable, or national organizations while promoting your business. You can lend a hand to a group that reflects your own experiences, such as starting a small business, or you can choose an organization that reflects your broader interests, like animal rescue. When you look into a sponsorship, check for a good reputation and an audience that would be interested in your products or services. Ask if their own marketing will include your business name. Find out what kind of publicity they plan before and during their events. Local organizations are often inexpensive to sponsor and may give you a good return on your investment while connecting you to your community.

Repurpose and Get Things in Order

Organizing at home is often an endless struggle, but when you’re clearing out some clutter there may be a way to kill two birds with one stone by reusing things in novel ways. If you need a place to store your Christmas ornaments, use an apple container from the grocery store. Before you get rid of those old clothespins, you might want to think about the cords hanging under your desk. Adapting new uses for things you might otherwise throw out is not only a good way to recycle, it may be a great way to get things in order. A quick internet search could help you find new purpose for a shoe organizer as a place to hold office supplies or snacks or a winerack as a towel holder. You’ll start seeing new uses for items all around you!

Send Us Your Tips

Would you like to share your tips with other Insightly customers? Send them to us!
If we use one in our weekly feature we’ll send you a $10 Amazon Gift Card!

Contact us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or send us an email.

If you haven’t tried Insightly, your future CRM, sign up for our 14-day free trial for our premium plan or try our free account for the basics. Compare the list of features on our pricing page.