Month: March 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 CRM, a tip on running your business, and a tip on improving your life. April 15 is tax day here in the U.S., so today’s tips focus on keeping your accounting in order to make tax time less stressful. Enjoy!

Connect Insightly to QuickBooks Online

Wouldn’t it be great to view your customers’ payments and invoices right in their CRM records? If you’re using QuickBooks Online (QBO) and subscribe to an Insightly paid plan, you can connect the two to do just that. By activating the Insightly-QBO integration, you’ll see the current payment status and balance for each record you link to a QBO record. Any user who can view the record will also see the QuickBooks icon and be able to see that information. And if you need to take action in QBO, you can jump right over with a click or two if you have a QuickBooks login. Easy information, easy access!

Keep Good Records to Make Tax Time Easier

Tax preparation is an often-procrastinated task. As with most large and looming duties, it can be managed more effectively if you keep good records throughout the year. Talk with your accountant or a tax advisor about what you need to keep and file those items away as they happen. Starting a filing system for receipts can seem like a huge task, but there are many apps and online options to help, and the time you put into it will pay off in reduced stress and easier management at tax time.

Tax Day, Don’t Delay!

There are millions of Americans who pay penalties and interest for late tax filings every year. Since tax day comes around regularly, that says a lot about the human tendency toward procrastination. If you can, bite the bullet and be ready to file on tax day, otherwise you’re delaying your payments and making that intimidating bill even more costly. Your local and national government is likely to have plenty of information available online and might even be able to answer questions to diminish your anxiety about the whole process. If you’re still having trouble with it all, look into other resources like local organizations or friends and family who can guide you. Need some motivation? Think about the relief you’ll feel when it’s done and behind 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.

And if you haven’t tried the best CRM around, check out Insightly’s features and sign up for a free trial.

About the author: Tony Roma is Insightly’s Content Manager. He’s been helping businesses implement software solutions and improve their work processes for over ten years.

Image courtesy of hywards at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

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 phone tips!

	Optimize Contact Numbers for Your Mobile Phone
	If you’re using either of Insightly’s mobile apps for Android or iOS, you can include dialing codes when you enter a phone number in Insightly and make dialing easier from your mobile phone. For example, phone numbers with extensions or phone trees will require a pause between the dialed phone number and the option number or telephone extension. Most mobile phones allow you to include a comma (,) to allow for a 2-3 second pause and a semicolon (;) to wait for your okay to continue.   When entering the phone number into Insightly, you can include these characters directly in the phone number string (for example, “1-800-555-7662,101”). Anytime you dial a contact from one of our mobile apps, the pause and extension will then be dialed for you with no additional steps required!
	Common Sense Phone Etiquette is Good for Business
	Communicating with your prospects or customers over the telephone always requires knowledge about your products or services to effectively make a sale or resolve a problem. But the way you communicate is just as important as the information you’re sharing. Your greeting influences your initial impression, so err on the side of formality as you identify yourself and your business. Smile while you’re on a call to help you maintain a friendly tone—you can even install a small mirror on your desk as a reminder. Phone calls are like any other conversation, so listening carefully will go a long way toward understanding the customer’s needs and addressing them properly. Keeping these basic practices in mind will help your customers feel welcome and respected.
	Protect Your Smartphone
	Today’s $600 smartphones hold exponentially more information than a computer from the 1970’s that cost $2,638. With all the apps, contacts, and communications available, the data on your phone is certainly more valuable, too, so it’s important to protect it from unauthorized access. Setting up a PIN or password is a simple step that will help keep your personal information safe. When you change phones or upgrade, restoring the factory settings on your old phone will wipe out your own information before you sell it or trade it in. The FCC Smartphone Security Checker can provide you with specific steps to secure your brand of phone as well as other links to help you better understand mobile security.

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.

And if you haven’t tried the best CRM around, check out Insightly’s features and sign up for a free trial.

About the author: Tony Roma is Insightly’s Content Manager. He’s been helping businesses implement software solutions and improve their work processes for over ten years.

Image courtesy of imagerymajestic at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

The best online CRM has the best customers in the business and we want to help you connect!
Twitter chats provide a forum to both follow and participate in a question-and-answer session on Twitter, and Insightly’s first #LoveYourCRM Twitter chat will take place on Wednesday, April 1, 2015 at noon, eastern time. (Nope, this is not an April Fools’ Day joke!)

With the #LoveYourCRM chat, Insightly will bring together business owners to share success stories, best practices, and tips for using CRM. The focus will be on the creative and innovative ways that companies are using CRM to improve productivity and efficiency across the organization. Each month, we’ll feature a different guest to share his or her story and then everyone else is invited to share ideas and ask questions.

Our first chat will be with marketing expert and CEO of Flight Media Joshua Coffy, and will focus on how he has implemented CRM to improve organization and significantly increase revenue.

If you can make it, we’d love to see you participate in our CRM Twitter chat and hear your feedback afterwards. With your contribution, we can make this an informative and valuable experience for all participants!

To learn more about how to join a Twitter chat, see Janet Fouts’ great article, How to Participate in a Tweet Chat.

Excellent customer relationship management (CRM) has always been important, but it has gotten even more so over the past few years. Today, your customers have many choices of goods and service providers, and many avenues for finding and spreading information about your products and your company (for example, social media). CRM is a growing industry, especially as more tech companies are getting into the game and producing more sophisticated CRM software products with an ever-growing list of functions and features.

But as the field expands and more tools become available, too many businesses are focusing so narrowly on the management aspect that they are losing track of what is at the heart of customer relationship management: relationships with customers. The secret to excellent CRM is really just excellent customer relationships. CRM software can automate and streamline the management part of the process so that you and your employees can concentrate on what’s really important.

Here are 10 tips for how to use CRM software to build and improve customer relationships. Sign up for a free 14-day trial of Insightly to put these tips into action.

1. Track everything
   CRM software is commonly used to house contact information and to track contact history, sales history, and so on. But real customer relationships are based on more than just who bought what and when. Use your system to also track personal information about your customers, such as their birthdays, hobbies and interests, and so on—anything that might give you further insight into your customers as individuals. You can consider conducting an online survey to obtain information that falls outside of your sales process.
2. Identify your top customers
   All of your customers are important, and they all deserve excellent customer service. But remember the Pareto principle (aka the 80:20 rule): 80% of your profits come from 20% of your customers. CRM software provides analytical tools that can help you identify that vital 20%. It can also help you identify the 20% of customers who are taking up 80% of your agents’ time—they likely aren’t the same 20%! Using this information, you can better manage workflow and allocate resources to make sure that your top customers are getting the very best service from your organization.
3. Schedule regular customer contacts
   Use your CRM system to make sure no customers get left behind. As you no doubt know, keeping your existing customers is far more profitable over the long term than constantly having to search for new ones. Make your customers feel valued by scheduling regular contacts including thank-yous, service follow-ups, and other check-ins.
4. Contact customers using their preferred channels
   Some customers like email, others engage with your company primarily via Twitter, and still others prefer the good old fashioned phone call. Knowing how your customers prefer to interact, and respecting their preferences, makes them feel valued by your organization. Not only that, but many customers often ignore messages that don’t come in via their preferred channels.
5. Respond more quickly to customer questions and complaints
   These days, if it takes you longer than a few hours to acknowledge a customer’s question or complaint, chances are it’s too late—that customer has probably already posted something on Facebook, Twitter, or Yelp about your poor customer service. CRM software can help you monitor the social networks for problems. Since all of the customer’s data is housed within the software, it can also help you respond to that problem as fast as possible, which will leave your customers with a good impression. It doesn’t take very many bad reviews to irreparably damage your reputation. The flip side is that positive reviews and referrals can quickly bring you new customers.
6. Provide offsite access to customer information
   Your employees don’t interact with customers only when they’re sitting at their desk. They may also have contact with them during on-site sales pitches, at trade shows, and (for sales reps) even on their mobile phones during off-hours. In today’s instant gratification world, customers certainly don’t want to wait until your employees can get back to their computers to have their questions answered and issues resolved. CRM software that supports remote and mobile access puts relevant information at your employees’ fingertips so that customers always receive the same high-quality service, regardless of whether they are calling in to the help line or talking with your company’s representatives at an industry event.
7. Make sure your CRM system is fully integrated
   Most CRM software can be integrated with other data tracking systems, and they should be. Full integration allows each employee who deals with a specific account to have a complete picture of the customer and the customer’s history with the organization. For example, this knowledge can come in handy when identifying untapped sales opportunities and when dealing with questions and complaints—customers don’t want to have to explain their problem more than once.
8. Offer a more consistent, streamlined experience
   What is the typical process by which customers interact with your company? Do you have certain salespeople and customer service agents assigned to each account, or do your customer interactions operate on more of a first come, first serve basis? Customer relationships don’t move down a one-way street—many clients prefer to deal with the same employees each time because they feel those employees best understand their particular requirements. CRM software allows managers to delegate tasks and manage workflow in a way that provides customers with a more consistent, streamlined experience every time they contact the company.
9. Identify upselling opportunities
   The more you know about your current customers, the more you will be able to make recommendations about additional products and services to meet their needs. You might even help them identify needs they didn’t know they had and that your products can solve. CRM software gives you the ability not only to get to know your customers on a more personal level, but also to analyze their buying patterns so you can get the most benefit out of your sales opportunities with each and every customer.
10. Personalize your marketing campaigns
    One of the most powerful, and most underused, functions of CRM software is the ability to target marketing campaigns to specific customers. By combining data about customers’ purchases with information about the customers themselves, you can develop personalized marketing campaigns that have a much greater rate of return than campaigns that take a shotgun approach.

Insightly includes features to help you implement all of Sameer’s tips. Register for a 14-day free trial to see if it’s the right CRM software for you.

About the Author: Sameer Bhatia is founder & CEO of ProProfs, a leading provider of online learning tools for building, testing, and applying knowledge. ProProfs Knowledge Base Software is used to create highly-searchable online FAQ’s to improve customer service and reduce tickets. It helps centralize access to organizational files, documents and how-to articles ensuring they can be accessed across multiple devices and platforms.

Sameer founded ProProfs based on the vision that knowledge should be freely available to people from all walks of life. The site hosts 1,000,000+ pieces of content in 90+ languages, and is a leading platform for online training and assessment with the world’s largest library of professional tests & quizzes. He has a Master’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Southern California and is an ed-tech industry veteran. You can find him on Google+ & Twitter.

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 CRM, a tip on running your business, and a tip on improving your life. For this week’s tips, we pay tribute to some amazing women during Women’s History Month with quotes that will help you have a happier and more productive day.

Create Many Tasks in Fewer Steps

“In a world where there is so much to be done, I felt strongly impressed that there must be something for me to do.” Dorothea Dix took on an astounding number of tough tasks to improve society and raise awareness about the less fortunate. Your tasks might or might not be taking you toward such lofty goals, but keeping them in Insightly gives you an easy way to manage and monitor them. If you’ve got many tasks to enter, typing them into Insightly can be a task, in and of itself. Instead of entering so many tasks field-by-field, you can use a spreadsheet program to enter them, copy and paste them, or use calculations to more quickly create them in a file which can be saved in CSV format for importing to Insightly. With columns for task name, due date, responsible user, and other available fields, you can import them to create the Insightly task list in just a minute or two!

Don’t Let Obstacles Stop You.

“I never dwell on what happened. You can’t change it. Move forward.” Joan Rivers encountered many setbacks in her professional and personal life and continued to push through to success. In order to move your business forward, know where you’re headed and keep moving toward your goals. That doesn’t mean you need to stubbornly beat your head against a wall when something isn’t working; instead, try to have a sense of humor about the failures and flops and then find creative solutions around the roadblocks. This could mean finding another path, getting some help, or tweaking your goal a bit as you go along. As long as you’re moving toward a destination, you’re making progress!

Smile! It Can Make You Happier.

“If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love. Don’t be surly at home, then go out in the street and start grinning ‘Good morning’ at total strangers.” Maya Angelou knew where smiles count most, just as Joan Rivers made them count as often as possible. The act of smiling, even if forced, is known to improve mood and reduce stress levels as your brain reacts to the expression on your face. This could even set a chain reaction of events, since when your brain is in a positive state it “performs significantly better than at negative, neutral or stressed. Your intelligence rises, your creativity rises, your energy levels rise.” This video explains the idea and will likely put a smile on your face as it helps you accomplish a little more today.

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.

And if you haven’t tried the best CRM around, check out Insightly’s features and sign up for a free trial.

About the author: Tony Roma is Insightly’s Content Manager. He’s been helping businesses implement software solutions and improve their work processes for over ten years.

Investing in a CRM system is an essential part of growing any business, but many business owners tend to try and scale down their CRM to save money. If you look at buying a CRM system as making a one-time purchase that you have to log as a loss, then you’re looking at the entire idea of customer relationship management the wrong way. A good CRM is an investment that pays for itself over and over again by increasing profits and helping your company retain clients.

Information Is Power

When your sales professionals have a good CRM at their disposal, they are able to quickly access information that can close sales and generate profit. Sales professionals who are equipped with the right information can make fast decisions and deliver accurate sales information that will get your company in front of clients before the competition and grab a larger percentage of your market share. A good CRM will give you a 360-degree view of this information.

Choosing The Right CRM System Is Critical

The sales and marketing experts at the Marketing Donut speculate that a good CRM can pay for itself in higher profits over a 12-month period. The key is to know exactly what kind of information your sales and customer service teams need to make sales and retain customers before you invest in any software platform.

A business that is prepared is a business that maximizes all of its potential. If you want to get the highest return on a CRM investment, take the time to understand what your company needs and what CRM software can deliver.

Segmenting Customers Allows For More Effective Conversation

So how can a CRM help a company generate more profit? As an example, let’s look at a company that sells sporting goods to various retail outlets. If the company looked at all of its customers the same way, then it risks alienating its smaller retail customers when it puts together programs that favor retail outlets that generate a considerable amount of sales.

With a good CRM, the company can segment its customers into different groups and create marketing plans that would appeal directly to each group. This would allow each group to feel like they are getting treated with respect and strengthens the bond between the company and its customers.

Segmenting customers also makes it easier to talk to customers about new products and accessories. If there are certain customers that don’t want to carry a particular brand of sports shoe, then you can create a group of customers that separates those clients from the others and eliminates wasting your time talking about new products from that brand to those clients that are not interested.

Insightly includes many features to help you have the right information at your fingertips when you need it. Try out the 14-day free trial so that you can see what a good CRM system looks like and make an investment that will benefit your business for many years to come.

George N Root III is a professional freelance writer who has expertise in topics such as Internet marketing, business, advertising, and personal finance.

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 CRM, a tip on running your business, and a tip on improving your life. Enjoy this week’s tips!

Tidy Up Your CRM Data

Most customers take their CRM for an initial test drive by adding test contacts, tasks, and other records to get an understanding of how everything fits together. “After learning how to effectively use Insightly to meet the needs of your organization,” customer Clayton Dike suggests, “purge all the data used to ‘play around’ in Insightly.” This will clean up information that could throw off your opportunity or task activity reports. You can even use custom filters and bulk editing to help you zero in on specific records. It’s almost time for spring cleaning, after all!   As thanks for submitting this week’s Insightly tip, Clayton will be receiving a $10 Amazon gift card! Use our links below to submit your own suggestion.

What’s Your Job(s)?

While large corporations are doing away with outdated annual job reviews, it’s important to regularly take stock of the work you and your staff are doing. If you’re a busy solo entrepreneur, write down all the jobs you’re juggling in a ranked order. As your business grows, hire for the roles at the bottom of your list to free yourself from work that can easily be handled by someone else. If you have staff, sit down with them on a regular basis to perform the same assessment with their jobs. It’s easy to assign an extra duty here and there and forget how they add up, so your employees will appreciate the attention and you’ll gain a greater appreciation for their contributions to the success of the business.      by  kosmolaut

Update Your Look

How we look and what we wear can have a powerful effect on our confidence. Updating your wardrobe or changing your style doesn’t have to break the bank, and small changes can make a big difference in the way you see yourself. You can part your hair differently or get an entirely new hair style, shine your old shoes or start wearing something pointier, flatter, or in a new color. If you think you don’t have new ideas, go out and try on clothes at the local department store, including something you wouldn’t normally wear. Try adding a little color and pay attention to a good fit; you might even find a particular brand is a better fit for your body style. Most importantly, find new styles that you’re comfortable with—both in the way you look and the way you feel.

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.

And if you haven’t tried the best CRM around, check out Insightly’s features and sign up for a free trial.

About the author: Tony Roma is Insightly’s Content Manager. He’s been helping businesses implement software solutions and improve their work processes for over ten years.

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 CRM, a tip on running your business, and a tip on improving your life. Enjoy this week’s tips!

Get a 360-Degree View with Insightly Linking

Insightly’s linking feature is a powerful way of defining and visualizing the connections between your contacts and every other piece of information in your CRM. Do you want to note who is making decisions about a project’s requirements? See which company is involved? Contact someone in a related department? Check if there are related deals in progress? Each of these items can be linked together in the Links section, and tasks and emails can be linked to these items in similar ways.   You can create connections between people, companies, sales opportunities, and projects to define the relationships between any of these entities. To capture these affiliations and create links to an item in Insightly: open the record, scroll down to the Links section, and begin typing the name of a contact, organization, etc. to search for, and select the right match. Once that’s done, every connection is visible to your and your coworkers, and you’ll have a clear view of the connections and interactions that affect your business.

Ask for Another Opinion

When you’re focused, driven, and making your business grow, it becomes easy to think you’ve got all the answers. Rest assured that you don’t. Everyone will make mistakes that they can learn from, but many mistakes can be avoided or mitigated by getting the opinions of other professionals in areas outside of your expertise. Talking to an accountant, lawyer, or banker can help you fill knowledge gaps, spot market changes, and connect the dots between new and existing ideas. Businesspeople from completely different fields can offer a fresh perspective, and your own employees will always have insights to offer you. Considering the advice of others is key to expanding your view, so ask questions and listen up!

Travel to Stay Healthy and Young

“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.” ― Augustine of Hippo   Learning new languages and the history of new places are a couple of ways that travel expands your horizons, and a travel vacation brings about many health benefits. The Global Coalition on Aging analyzed existing research studies and surveyed adults in the U.S. to conclude that “as one travels, one will be healthier.” At least 60% of travelers reported getting more exercise when traveling than they do at home, and 89% are able to leave work stress behind after being on vacation for just a day or two. The responses indicate great physical and mental benefits and reflect the social and brain stimulation that can be achieved through traveling—benefits that are known to keep the mind healthy and reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s. In addition to stimulating the mind, people who travel annually have significantly lower risks of heart attacks and death from heart disease. Isn’t it about time to plan your next trip?

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.

And if you haven’t tried the best CRM around, check out Insightly’s features and sign up for a free trial.

About the author: Tony Roma is Insightly’s Content Manager. He’s been helping businesses implement software solutions and improve their work processes for over ten years.