Month: June 2015

It takes a lot more to manage collaborative teams than just telling everyone to work together. Even requiring regular updates isn’t enough to keep everyone on task in a combined effort. Customer Relationship Management software gives you tools to better manage group efforts and to maximize efficiency.

Make a Plan Everyone Can Follow

One of the most important ways a project manager can facilitate collaboration is to make sure expectations are crystal clear. Insightly’s integrated project management makes it easy with a comprehensive pipeline feature. A pipeline is a step-by-step path from start to finish for a project or opportunity. Once you’ve created a pipeline, your Insightly users see the project path as a graphical representation, including completed steps. Each step can have tasks attached and due dates assigned. Pipelines present a simple overview of project status. Everyone on your team will see what’s done, what’s in progress, and what’s left to do.

Link Carefully

It’s important to assign responsible parties to projects in a CRM so they are notified of updates. Related contacts and organizations can be linked to projects, but be wary of doing so unless it’s necessary. It can quickly become confusing for employees to see people linked to projects they aren’t working on. To make the most effective use of linking, consider tasking one person per project to locate and link only the groups and individuals who are collaborating on the project. Encourage all employees to use tags to simplify sorting.

Use One Calendar

Do you have one calendar in your project management program and different calendars for other appointments? Insightly calendar is now expanded to include synchronization with Google Calendar and Microsoft Exchange. The days of double-booking meetings are gone. For your teams, this means everyone can work on the same timeline without stepping on each other’s toes. Is your sales team awaiting leads from the marketing group? They can check into the Insightly calendar events, see exactly what day marketing will be sending leads along, and create their schedule based on that date. Employees can also sync their own calendars to pull everything into their Insightly calendar page for quick reference.

Automate Repetitive Processes

Your teams could be spending more of their time working toward a common goal if you free up some of their time. Automating repetitive tasks is one of the best ways to do so. In Insightly, automating repetitive tasks by creating activity sets is easy. Activity sets are groups of tasks and calendar events, each with its own customizable due date. They can be associated with steps in a pipeline or opportunities, and even applied to leads, contacts, organizations, opportunities, and projects. Once you create an activity set, you can apply it anywhere it’s needed.

Upload Pertinent Documents

Rather than expecting your teams to dig around other websites, apps or (gasp) email each other project-specific files, make sure they’re all accessible directly from your CRM. In Insightly, users can link files from Dropbox, Box, and Google Drive, or drag-and-drop them right onto a Files tab. Files can be attached to leads, contacts, organizations, projects, opportunities, and task comments. Once the documents are in the right location, your Insightly users can access them whenever they need to.

When you leverage the best tools to manage collaborative teams, you empower your people to work together toward common goals. Even better, you and your team will all be helping your business function better as a whole.
 

Insightly CRM includes all the tools your team needs to improve collaboration and get more done effectively. Try out all of Insightly’s features by signing up for a 14-day free trial.

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 to improve your life. Enjoy this week’s tips!

Create an Activity Set for Batches of Tasks and Events

If you have a batch of tasks or events that you repeat regularly, you can save loads of data entry time in Insightly by creating an activity set that will do that work for you. For example, if you have a subscription-based service you might have tasks like sending new subscribers a thank-you email on the day they sign up, making a call to check in after 5 days, and having a chocolate to celebrate after their first month. (If you don’t celebrate with chocolate, I highly recommend it.) Or if you’re managing new hires in Insightly, you can have tasks prompting the IT team to set up a computer two days before someone starts, scheduling a tour of your office on their first day, leaving a welcome chocolate on their desk, and completing tax paperwork within five days. Think of activity sets as a common checklist of tasks and events that you perform every time a certain action happens. You can manually apply activity sets directly to a record, include them in a pipeline stage, give them start and end dates, and have them assigned to a specific person or a team. Take a look at our Automating Workflows video for a great overview of this feature that will save you time and prevent things from falling between the cracks.

Use Automation to Lighten Your Workload

It’s impossible to run a business without at least a few different software applications. If you find yourself copying information from one app to another or often switching between apps in your day-to-day work, automation software can free up your time from many manual activities while keeping everything in sync. Tools like Zapier, FlowXO, IFTTT, and Podbox can be set up as bridges between applications to update one app based on a change in another. These services have a ton of options and work by having you set up a trigger in one app that creates an action in another app. Many applications also include integrations—connections to other software—built right in. You can set up integrations to enter, update, or view information and schedule activities in another app without moving from the app you’re already working in. Check the available integrations for any apps you’re currently using and you’ll likely find ways to connect your accounting software, CRM, file storage, and note-taking apps all together. Some examples: Send a welcome email from your marketing software when someone signs up for your service. View Quickbooks Online invoices and payments directly in Insightly. Automatically create a Tweet to promote a new blog entry on WordPress. Import or sync payments from Square right into Quickbooks or Xero. From social media updates to financial transactions, the list of possibilities seems endless, and you can get very creative and have multiple apps work together. Look into the connections available for the apps you’re already using and have a computer do some of your work for you!

Schedule Time for Summer Activities

Once you have apps taking care of your work for you, you’re going to have more free time to plan some time off. Summer is probably the most opportune time to get outdoors and work on long-procrastinated health goals. That doesn’t mean you have to go mountain climbing or hang gliding, but better weather can help motivate you and make it easier to get started on less lofty goals. Hiking is an activity that allows you to get healthier without the physical stresses that more intense exercises may cause. Nature hikes in the countryside or walking tours in the city are great places to take a short hike, and the sights of either option will make you, friends, and kids happy to be out and about. While you burn calories, you’ll get the benefits of fresh air and a good cardio workout that’s easier on the knees. Swimming, playing catch, and going for a bike ride are just some of the ideas that can get you moving when the weather is warm. So, put on your sunblock and a hat, make a plan to get outside, and enjoy!

 

Insightly’s features help you manage your workload so that you can better manage your life.
Check out our CRM’s plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial right now.

 

Send Us Your Tips

Would you like to share your tips with 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.

 
About the author: Tony Roma is Insightly’s Content Manager. He enjoys helping businesses improve their work processes almost as much as he enjoys chocolate.

When it comes to B2B organizations, customer experience is just as important as it is to B2C companies, possibly more so. Yet, many B2B organizations and marketers forget customer experience can affect their business long after the completion of a sale. A B2B organization also needs to convince not just one person, but multiple people within the business that its solution is the best option. Implementing a customer management strategy can help B2B organizations build solid customer relationships with individuals and the business as a whole to pave the way for long term success.

It’s Business 101—or at least should be—that in order to expand, you need to keep existing customers happy while identifying new prospects. With a CRM and customer management strategy, B2B organizations can get to know more about the decision makers and influencers within each organization they’re targeting, and can use that information to address prospects’ specific needs and build relationships that help to prevent dissatisfaction and potential revenue loss. Make your CRM work harder for your B2B with these tips for improving customer experience.

Be consistent.

Customer experience needs to be consistent at every touchpoint and across the entire organization. CRM will give every employee access to the most up to date customer information so customers never need to give the same information more than once.

Measure every touchpoint.

B2B organizations continue to interact with customers in multiple ways post-sale. Such touchpoints include call center interactions, email newsletters and social media. Examine and measure the sentiment at each touchpoint and adjust as needed to maintain happy and loyal customers.

Make it personal.

Today’s customer demands more personalized experiences in every interaction with an organization. By inputting not only relevant business information that will help to close a deal into your CRM, but also personal details that humanize your target, you can deliver a more personalized experience. This connection will set your business apart and could be the key ingredient that turns a new prospect into a loyal customer.

Customer relationships require work but they’re one of the most important things your business needs in order to be successful. Interacting with customers should go beyond just a transaction, and businesses—both B2B and B2C—need to make customer satisfaction and experience a priority. Using a CRM to execute a customer management strategy is one of the easiest ways to bring that personal touch to every interaction.
 

At Insightly, we offer a CRM used by small and mid-sized businesses to manage all their B2B and B2C customers. Learn about all of Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial.

For many years, my company implemented ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), or financial accounting systems. And in that world, it’s all about being vertical. That’s because when it comes to financial stuff (ordering, invoicing, purchasing, etc.) businesses do things differently depending on the industry that they’re in. Constructions firms have different needs than manufacturing companies. A company that sells inventory needs to be treated differently than a company that sells services. An accounting firm has different measures of profitability than a retail shop. In the end, it all flows down to the accounting records. But it’s important, particularly as a company grows, to find a financial system that is tailored to your industry.

That was in my ERP days. Now my firm focuses on implementing CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems, and that focus is completely different. When you’re implementing a CRM system, getting something that’s been tailored to your industry is just not that important. There are three reasons for this…

1. A CRM system is based around people, not things. You are not doing orders, time and billing, job costing, and invoicing through a CRM system. You are tracking people. Activities. Communications. Tickets. Marketing campaigns. Opportunities. These things are pretty much tracked the same way across all industries. Sure, there are some companies that are big and much more complex where a very specific, vertical system would be beneficial. But most of my clients are small/mid-market companies. The need for something so specialized is rare.

 

2. Most CRM systems can be easily customized to match an industry. Let’s face it, in the world of CRM 90% of what every company does is pretty much the same. You’re scheduling follow-ups, creating newsletters, managing your forecasts, updating contact information, sending emails. This type of functionality is included in just about every mainstream system nowadays. Need it to be more customized for your company or industry? I’m betting that adding some fields and revising a few of the out-of-the-box reports in your system will do the trick. Doing this is not only easy but much less expensive than investing in a more complex, vertical system. It’s just not necessary.

 

3. Finally, vertical CRM systems are niche players. There’s a certain percentage of companies that have CRM systems (let alone use them well) and an even smaller percentage when you start breaking it down by industry. So the players that have appeared to offer industry-specific solutions are doing so to a much smaller audience. They, in turn, are much smaller players. Sometimes this is good—you’ll get better service, more attention to detail and a potential community of people that really do what you do using the same the system. On the downside, you could be faced with relying on a system that needs updating, is not very well supported, or is made by a company in a more precarious financial situation than its larger, better financed competitors that offer more generalized CRM systems. You’re taking a risk by going there. It may be the right decision or it could be catastrophic if a company goes under.

That said, there are certain industries where vertical CRM systems are really, really good. Healthcare and financial services are two that come to mind. There are some excellent CRM systems specifically geared towards these industries. That’s because they not only have specific needs (HIPAA, integration with both internal and external services, more complex reporting) but also because they’re large and well-financed by big institutions that are willing to invest and get behind a more vertical solution. So if you’re in those industries, definitely take a look at what’s offered. But if you’re like everyone else—manufacturers, distributors, service providers, merchants—you’re probably fine with a general, mainstream CRM system for what you want to accomplish.
 

At Insightly, we offer a CRM used by small and mid-sized businesses from a huge variety of verticals. Learn about all of Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial.

 
About the Author: Gene Marks is a small business owner, technology expert, author and columnist. He writes regularly for leading US media outlets such as The New York Times, Forbes, Inc. Magazine and Entrepreneur. He has authored five books on business management and appears regularly on Fox News, Fox Business, MSNBC and CNBC. Gene runs a ten-person CRM and technology consulting firm outside of Philadelphia. Learn more at genemarks.com

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. With the opportunity for spring cleaning coming to a close, let’s clean up import files and your business’ online reputation. Enjoy this week’s tips!

A Little Spreadsheet Clean-Up Will Make Importing Easier

It’s common to import lists of contacts to your CRM and other systems using spreadsheets or CSV files. If you’ve been maintaining your contacts in a spreadsheet, you’ll need to make sure the information is organized in a way that Insightly will be able to read it when you perform the import. Each row (reading left to right) must represent the information for a single contact, and each column (reading top to bottom) must represent one field—like first name, last name, phone number, and so on. Your columns for fields with special formats, like dates or numbers, must match the format in Insightly; for example, a date field must be formatted as a date (“09/15/2015”) and not some other value (“Next Monday”). If you’ve had your own system for keeping track of contacts in a spreadsheet, the best method to organize it properly is by copying and pasting into a new file. Insightly’s Customer Success team has put together some sample files you can download that will make the process easier. We’ve also got a support article on importing with more helpful links and details.

Respond to Your Online Reviews for a Good Reputation

Last week, I wrote about the importance of keeping your online listings up to date in order to attract new business. Keeping track of customer feedback and responding appropriately is the next major piece of projecting an online presence that will keep them coming in the door. With the majority of consumers turning to online reviews, make sure you’re actively reading and responding to customer feedback on Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, and any other site where your business is active. You’ll learn about your customers and their preferences from both good and bad reviews, and the interaction will only add to your business knowledge and ideas. In that way, it’s a whole new kind of market research for you to tap. When a comment or review is positive, thank the client for the praise and tell them you’re looking forward to serving them again. Negative feedback can be trickier, but always keep your response brief and appropriate. If there’s an issue that needs further discussion or seems to be a bit heated, take it offline and try to make things right; misunderstandings or mistakes are better resolved away from a public forum. By keeping your online reputation clean, you’re keeping your door open to new business.

Time is Running Out for Spring Cleaning!

Summer is fast approaching here in the U.S., and spring is that wet-to-sunny transition that many see as a signal to clean the house, top to bottom. Even if you keep the house tidy regularly, this is a good time of year to really look around and see what might need an occasional scrubbing. Bedding like mattress pads and pillows deserve a thorough cleaning to get the dust mites that escape your regular laundry habits. The carpets might have some stains that you’ve become used to looking at, so get them deep cleaned and slide the furniture over to make sure you’re getting the normally-untouched spots. As with any major project, pick a few smaller tasks and get them done well. Then throw open the windows and take in the scent of fresh air and a clean place.

 

Your CRM should be able to keep information from your customer’s reviews to your tasks lists—even household chores. If you haven’t tried the best CRM around, check out Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial 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.

 
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 stockimages at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Insightly is proud to sponsor a FREE business webinar on the key factors of using CRM in your business!

Join us on Thursday, June 18 from 11 AM to 12 PM Pacific Time.
Everyone is welcome to register for this event.

Gene Marks—speaker, author, columnist, and small business owner—has offered great business advice to our readers here at the Insightly blog, and now he’s hosting a webinar to fill you in on the important aspects of CRM implementation.

Gene will discuss the key factors for CRM success, including:

• Getting buy-in from your team.
• Reports that every business should focus on.
• How to achieve significant ROI in your CRM investment.

Gene is a frequent guest on Fox News, Fox Business, MSNBC, and CNBC, and he writes weekly for The New York Times with a focus on issues affecting the small business community. Gene also runs a ten-person CRM and technology consulting firm outside of Philadelphia. Learn more at genemarks.com.

Register for our free June 18th webinar and learn important lessons to help you get the best ROI on your CRM investment.

In today’s marketplace, lead generation is a key part of the operation for any well-calibrated sales organization. Luckily, there are more ways than ever to generate those much needed leads, including traditional ways, such as:

• Customer referrals
• Trade shows and conferences
• Cross-promotions and sponsorships
• Advertising in traditional media: print, trade association publications, radio, and TV
• Email newsletters

There are more modern ways as well, like:

• Social media (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
• Paid online advertisements
• SEO (search engine optimization)
• Website optimization, such as live chat and contact forms

It’s great that we have all these ways of generating leads at our disposal—until you consider the sad reality of the disproportionately small amount of time and effort that’s put into following up with them. That means prospects drop off into the ether. A number of factors can account for lackluster follow-up among sales organizations.

Check Your Pockets!

Mismanagement is often the culprit when it comes to lost leads. Consider this scenario: Business cards of various leads are collected at a trade show. But instead of being scanned and sent to the office, and then assigned based on territory, the business cards are stuffed into someone’s pants pocket and then dissolved into detergent oblivion when the same individual who collected them mismanages his or her laundry.

Ball? What Ball?

Sometimes lead-response mismanagement is at the heart of the problem: Roles in assigning incoming leads aren’t defined. This lack of delegation and the failure to assign lead-management roles results in missed opportunities when everyone drops the ball because no one even knew there was a ball to carry. Make sure you have answers to these questions:

• Who in your organization manages incoming leads?
• What systems are in place to assign leads within the organization?
• How are sales reps notified of new leads?
• What are the expected timelines and tasks once a lead is assigned to sales?

Phone-o-phobia

Fearing awkwardness or rejection, some sales reps may be reluctant to pick up the phone and call a lead, even though it’s part of the job. Instead they rely on electronic means of communication, like email, which is less than ideal for making those first few touch points with a prospect. If email is your convenient escape because you’re too timid to place a cold call, keep this in mind: Unless you’re pitching to vampires, no one’s going to bite you—and even a vampire can’t bite over the phone.

If you’re of the recent generation raised up on digital communications almost exclusively, you still need to use the phone. In sales, the fact remains that even the most well-crafted email doesn’t compare to the power of a well-executed phone call. So put on your garlic necklace and dial those digits. You’ll likely get a voicemail to begin with, anyway, but you’ll need to know what you’re going to say in your message so that you don’t trip over your words, and so that you leave a positive impression. Regardless of whether you’ll get voice mail or a live person on the line, make a short list of engaging talking points and have it in front of you. That will stoke the fires of your confidence and help you get your point across.

Good Kitty!

It’s the biggest mystery in sales why it is that prospects who need what a sales organization has to offer become elusive when it’s time to do business. Think of them as cats who come right up to you but then act like “What the heck are you doing trying to pet me?!”

Persistent sales reps know that it can take multiple attempts to finally reach someone on the phone. You need to keep at it and lure them with the right “ball of yarn” or “saucer of milk.” Put on the mouse ears or whatever it takes. We know how cagey prospects can be, so it’s another head scratcher why most reps give up doing the “here, kitty” thing after only an attempt or two.

From Cats to Soup? Just Stay With Us…

We’re going to serve this up to you again: Response time is key in connecting with a lead. Apologies for jumping from vampires to cats to food, but if a lead is hot soup, the longer you keep it off the burner, the colder it becomes. When you have a lead coming from an online source, such as your website, that response time is considerably shortened.

So when do you respond to web leads? The answer is ASAHP—as soon as humanly possible. Keep in mind, a customer that is submitting a contact form on your site is probably doing so on other competitor sites as well. Therefore, it’s ideal if within the first few minutes of getting a web lead you do the following:

• Introduce yourself
• Acknowledge receipt of the request
• Create an initial connection with the customer
• Information-gather about the prospect’s needs

But within this lead follow-up process, keep in mind what sort of request the prospect has made. For example, someone who downloaded a whitepaper from your website may not be waiting for your call. Give them a bit of time to absorb the content you provided them with, then give them a call. During the day. Because they don’t sleep during the day. Because they’re not actually cats. Or vampires. They’re not soup either, but they’re best served hot.
 

Insightly CRM has the tools you need to manage your leads and scan their business cards, too.
Learn about all of Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial and start improving your sales.

 
About the Author: Justin Zappulla is a Managing Partner at Janek Performance Group. He has worked hand-in-hand with a global clientele across a variety of industries and business segments including technology, finance, consumer goods, healthcare and manufacturing. With extensive sales performance management and training expertise, he works with hundreds of companies to develop and implement strategic sales performance solutions.

Justin has co-authored a book called Critical Selling: How Top Performers Accelerate the Sales Process and Close More Deals which is set to be released by Wiley Publishing in October, 2015.

Image courtesy of mrsiraphol at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.