Month: July 2015

I have a client that is a long-time maker and distributor of delicatessen meats: pastrami, salami, bologna, roast beef, etc. A few years ago they came to me with a problem. And no, it had nothing to do with curing, salting or nitrates. Their problem was that they had invested a lot of money in a CRM system for their 25+ person sales staff and many weren’t using it.

Big surprise, right? The company sells deli meats, for God’s sake. They’re not exactly a Silicon Valley darling. It’s an old-school company with (literally) old-school salesmen. Yes, men. All of the salesmen are men. With bellies. And bald spots. Many are over 50. These are men that play poker, drive Chevrolets, smoke cigars and sell deli meats to customers that have known them for years. They are excellent at their jobs, but quite a few of them are having a hard time using the CRM system. So what do you do? How do you get these guys to use the system? The problem wasn’t as hard as you might think. We just focused on three things:

1. Compromise. We recognized that many of these guys have been selling meats for years and have been doing so successfully without a CRM system. We had to accept that some of them are so good they could sell a pound of salami to a vegetarian. At the same time, we needed the sales guys to agree (which they did) that a CRM system is not about them, it’s about the company. In 2015, most good companies with good sales organizations have systems in place to track activities, pipelines and opportunities. Together, we all agreed that a CRM system, even if used minimally, will improve a salesperson’s productivity, add value to the company and provide necessary data for their sales managers to better do their jobs.
2. Divide. Take a look at your sales group and I’ll bet you’ll be able to divide them into three camps. The first group, which will be about 20% of them, are the power users. These are the people that get the system, understand the system, love the system and will take off as soon as you throw them the ball. So throw them the ball—provide minimal training and let them do their thing. The second group, which will make up about 60% of your users, will be the ones who will get proficient with just a little TLC. They’re up for the task but they need a little extra help and nudge now and again to see them through the change. They’ll get there. And that leaves the rest. The final 20%. These are the guys in the Chevys. They don’t want any part of the system. They find it difficult turning on their TVs at home. They’re good salespeople, but not good technically. These are the guys you want to focus on. And so, those were the guys that we mostly focused on.
3. Accommodate. To win, we all had to agree to accommodate and respect each other. At the deli-meat company guess what we did to accommodate the old guard? We set up a voicemail. We told the guys that when they were finished with a sales call to call the number and leave a message with who they met, what they discussed and what the next action is. We hired a high school kid at $8 an hour to check the voicemail every night and key in the data (remember, it’s the cloud and access is available anywhere). What happened? The sales guys did what they did best: they sold meats. They made a quick phone call to update their status. And management got what they needed: information. For the 20% of salespeople who aren’t getting it (and you know who they are), create a specific plan for helping them do the bare minimum so that data can get into the system. Maybe one guy is good with an iPad. Maybe another needs a simpler screen for data entry. Maybe leaving a voicemail is all that’s needed. Focus on those guys, because a CRM system is dependent on everyone doing the minimum data entry necessary to make the database accurate and complete.

We succeeded at the deli company. Usage went up. Acceptance went up. The database became a valuable asset. The CRM system because a critical tool. This wasn’t easy. As important as they are, CRM systems are not doing mission critical things like generating invoices or recording payments, so people don’t feel the same kind of urgency to use them. But we learned that, if adopted as culture, good CRM systems help to increase both sales and productivity and create more value in a business. And if you haven’t learned as much by reading this, at least I’ve put you in the mood for a good Pastrami on rye, right?
 

At Insightly, we have a CRM for all kinds of businesses and all kinds of users. 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

Image courtesy of Mister GC at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

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

Provide Self-Service Options to Customers

A survey by Forrester Research found that the percentage of online customers using self-service channels rose from 67% in 2012 to 76% in 2014. This number has increased above the 73% who reported contacting a company by phone when they needed help. It’s clear that there will always be customers who would like to figure things out on their own, so providing some form of documentation is a great way to serve them and save you time. Think about the most common questions you get asked about your products or services and create a list of answers to include on your website, in your packaging, or in brochures. There will be customers who prefer to give you a ring and speak to a person, but providing clear, well-written resources that answer common questions for the “do-it-yourselfers” will reduce your incoming calls and emails. With more of your time free, you’ll be able to respond more quickly to phone calls and emails or take care of other priorities altogether. It’s better for your customers and better for your business.

Use Our Support and Community Pages to Learn about Insightly

Our own product documentation hub, Insightly Support, is the place to go when you’re looking for answers about Insightly’s features and functionality. With searchable articles and video tutorials, you can find information on everything from importing records to installing the Insightly Sidebar for Gmail. But there’s more to our support site than the articles we provide, there is also the Community where customers share their own tips and best practices for using Insightly based on their own experiences. The flexibility of Insightly is apparent in the many ways customers are using our CRM, so take a look and contribute your own ideas and suggestions. Sharing information with our customers is better for everyone.

Read the Directions

It doesn’t matter if you’re a do-it-yourself type or not, every time you use a new product, it probably includes instructions that you really should read. Some of us prefer to wing it, and others don’t like the idea of reading through all the warnings and legalese before getting to the sections that matter, but there can be guidance in those words that can save you time, money, and lots of frustration. If there are no instructions included and something doesn’t make sense to you, you can check the company’s website or do an internet search using product-specific terms like make and model. You’ll often find other customers who have faced the same hurdles or confusion and share their knowledge for the benefit of others—but beware answers that include phrases like “you can try…” or “I think you can do it this way,” since these might be no better than your own guesses. For electronics, like a smartphone or a laptop, you’ll often find manuals and tips articles online. Learning the ins and outs of these devices is guaranteed to make them easier to use and uncover features you might have missed, otherwise. So, whether you’re making a quilt or using a new electronic device, read the directions and make your life easier.

 

Check out Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page
or sign up for a free trial of the best CRM around.

 

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’s been helping businesses implement software solutions for over ten years.

Image courtesy of Mister GC at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

You may already know that companies who implement a CRM increase sales conversion rates and customer retention, increase customer satisfaction by 66%, and reduce marketing and sales costs by 23%. But did you know businesses who use their CRM on mobile devices take everything to a higher level?

Having their CRM at hand wherever they go, your sales team will see increased efficiency, be more likely to hit their quotas, and see an average productivity gain of 14.6%. It just make sense that your mobile sales teams will be more effective with a mobile CRM. See our infographic to learn all about the benefits.
 

 

Don’t have an Insightly account? Check out our features and plans and sign up for a free trial.
Then get our mobile apps and take your business to new heights!

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

	Keep a Personal Connection with Customers
	When Office 365 and Insightly customer Optimize Social Media recently spoke with Microsoft, their Senior Marketing Account Executive, Jordan Goggin, highlighted the practice of engaging with their customers based on information like clients’ favorite sports teams. It’s a common method to categorize your customers by their purchase decisions or the services you’ve provided based on your industry: financial advisors have a investment categories, tire shops have preferred performance ratings, everyone has budgets. Adding a personal note to your records as you get to know a customer will ensure that you can follow up with them on a special day or after their team’s big win, making the customer relationship more memorable the next time they or a friend are in need of your services.
	Use Tags to Track Contacts’ Preferences
	As your customer base grows, it can be harder to maintain that fun and personal level of connection, so keeping good track of personal preferences is important. Insightly’s tagging feature is a quick way to add a tag to your contacts or leads in order to group them and filter a list when you want to narrow things down. Do you service a specific market and find many of your customers have a favorite local sports team? Maybe “Ohio State Fans” is a tag you’d like to add. After a big bowl win, you can then bring up the list to send out a celebratory email. Do you sell baked goods by mail? Tagging your customers with dietary restrictions will help you focus marketing emails for new gluten-free or dairy-free products. Because tags can be created on the fly, they’re only limited by your needs and your creativity.

Group Your Kitchen Items for Easy Access

You don’t need a fancy kitchen with lots of doodads to reorganize your tools and supplies and make meal preparation more efficient. Although there can be many more steps to a kitchen organization project, grouping similar items and placing them in locations that make sense will make your day-to-day cooking faster, with no fumbling around to find the canned tuna or the vegetable peeler when you need them. Thinking about what you use and how you use it will help you come up with a sensible plan. Things you use more often should be up front and center, while the occasional culinary gadget can be at the back of the cabinet. Maybe you’ll place all your plates and cups in one area below the counter, but keep your coffee mugs right at hand because your morning routine demands it. Setting aside some time for this kind of project may seem overwhelming, but the time you’ll save every time you’re ready to cook will make the investment pay off.

 

Keep track of your customer details and group them accordingly in Insightly CRM. Check out Insightly’s features and 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’s been helping businesses implement software solutions for over ten years.

Image courtesy of nonicknamephoto at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

If you’re a cloud solution provider working on improving your business, or an ISV looking to expand your reach, you should check out the 2015 Partnering in the Cloud Survey from the Cloud Technology Alliance. This survey of 87 resellers and ISVs provides insights into how solution providers select vendor partnerships and take cloud solutions through both the Google and Microsoft channels.

Image courtesy of nokhoog_buchachon at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

The report will help you understand metrics and best practices to help you increase sales, better manage your portfolio, and select vendors and develop vendor relationships. With details about product category investment and profitability, the information contained in the report will be valuable to anyone who is reselling or deploying Google Apps for Work and Microsoft Office 365 integrated solutions. The survey responses paint a picture of the decision process and results that the participants have experienced and where they expect to be in the next year.

As part of the Cloud Technology Alliance, an organization of the top independent software vendors in the cloud office space, Insightly works hard to provide solutions that help small and mid-sized businesses grow and succeed. Our participation in the Office 365 Quickstart Bundle—along with Skykick, Smartsheet, Xero, and BetterCloud—is a good example of how ISVs can come together to provide resellers with an integrated cloud solution to drive sales through the Microsoft channel.

If you’re a cloud solution reseller, download the report to review the recommendations that will help your business grow.

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

Nothing makes less sense than the average marketing budget. It costs at least 6 times more to land a new sale than to sell to an existing customer who already knows and trusts you, which means your profit margin is way higher with customers already in the funnel. Most businesses should know this, and yet the average business spends only 12% of their marketing budget to romance repeat customers.

With all the data available today, there’s just no excuse for that. Is it possible they don’t know how to use their data? Or is using customer data just that inexpensive?

Advantages of Reaching Your Own Customer Base

Your customers already know you. They know you’ll deliver what you promised, and they like you enough to still be customers. You have an established trust relationship.

Your customers are your best cheerleaders. Word-of-mouth and online reviews are what’s driving purchase decisions, and it’s something your customers volunteer for. You don’t even have to ask. If they’re happy, they’ll tell their friends. It’s really that simple.

An old customer will spend more than a new one…and will keep spending. What’s more, if they are happy with your marketing and customer service, customers won’t leave even if your competitors pitch lower prices.

The Not-So-Secret Secret: Segmented Lists

When you delve into Insightly customer data, it’s easy to break out lists with specific characteristics. For example, you might want to find all customers who recently purchased a specific product and invite them to check out a related product.

Of course, not all businesses sell products. Service providers that specialize in a single or suite of products can segment by date and level of service to touch base on a schedule and ask if the customer is satisfied, send polls about how they can improve, or share news about coming features.

Making the Magic Happen

Enticing your existing customers is all about data-driven marketing. When you understand your data, you can tell them what they want to hear, offer quality information, and tap into what they really want.

Everything you need to know is in your Insightly CRM and its integrated apps. Gather information from invoicing, social media, email opens, click-through rates, and conversions. Your data can tell you which headlines and subject lines work best, and inspire you to narrow your target to send the most powerful emails to only a select list—full of people who are waiting to hear it.

The Adobe Digital Index Report shows how skewed marketing funnels really are. Key findings indicate that repeat customers in the U.S. represent only 8% of site traffic, but account for 40% of the revenue.

Which means businesses need to attract 5 to 7 new leads to equal the revenue of every existing customer. So why would any business spend so much of their marketing budget trying to attract new business while taking existing customers for granted?

Fix your funnel by diverting more of your marketing budget into your existing customer base. You won’t regret focusing on your biggest fans—the customers who already know and trust you.
 

Use your CRM to manage your funnel and keep existing customers coming back. Check out Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or jump in and sign up for a 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 running your business, a tip on using Insightly CRM, and a tip on improving your life. Enjoy this week’s tips!

	Hire the Right Person
	As your company grows and you see increased demands on your staff (maybe that’s just you, right now), you’ll start thinking about which areas of your business need more attention and hiring someone to cover those responsibilities. When you’ve posted a job listing and the resumes start rolling in, how do you narrow down your candidates? Looking at basic, required skills seems like a no-brainer, but judging a person’s personality traits and knowing if they’re a good fit for your company can be trickier and more important. As you start interviewing, start out skeptical of the candidate and of some your own assumptions; you may find that you’ll be able to provide minor skills training to make a good match a great employee for the job. If you’re expanding a team, evaluate what makes the good team members so good, as you may want candidates with similar qualities. During interviews, ask questions that give you an idea how the candidate would handle the duties and pain points of the position. Know what your company’s core values are, and pay attention to the values and personality that come across in your conversations. The person you hire should not only be able to get the job done, but also get along with everyone involved to reach your common goals. Image courtesy of stockimages at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.
	Take a Look at Your System Settings
	If you’ve been using Insightly, then you’ve probably already found the right people to be your administrators. Admins have the ability to customize Insightly for all of your users through the System Settings page, where they can do everything from creating new custom fields to disabling features your company doesn’t use. For example, if you don’t fine the Social Profiles or Leads features useful for your business, you can turn them off so they’re not in the way of your visual workflow. The System Settings page includes many functions and features that give you control over workflows, fields, and users. There are too many to list in a short tip, so check out your settings page and search Insightly Support for settings you’d like to learn more about.

Shop Around for the Right Deal

When you make a decision to buy a big-ticket item or a long-term service, there are many wise steps to take toward making the right purchase at the right price. So set your budget, decide which features you really need, and then get down to the comparison shopping. The internet provides you with an abundance of tools to shop around, whether it’s Yelp reviews of shops where you could make a purchase or Amazon reviews of different brands of a product. The Better Business Bureau—or your local version of it—is a good way to check on a company’s reputation. Talk to your family and friends about their experiences and opinions. Pay attention to the pros and cons you hear and read about, since another person’s priorities will not be the same as your own. Be smart about the whole process, too. You don’t want to invest too much time on research if it’s only going to save you a few dollars, but it can be worth it to prevent buyer’s remorse in the long run.

 

Check out Insightly’s features and 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’s been helping businesses implement software solutions for over ten years and writing for quite a bit longer.

If you’ve got a customer relationship management (CRM) system you’re probably using it mostly for sales and marketing. And that’s understandable because CRM systems have generally been sold as a sales and marketing tool. But you’re missing out. You’re missing out on maybe 50% of what a great CRM does. Because most CRM systems today have the capacity to track service activities. And the smart business owners I know are using their CRM systems as much for service as they are for sales. Why? Because keeping customers happy is the best way to grow sales. And to do this, they rely on these four customer service metrics.

Image courtesy of Ambro at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

1. Open Issues

   What are the issues? Where are the problems? No one likes to hear of these. But they’re critically important. You can’t ignore them. The smart managers I know seek out problems instead of pretending they don’t exist. To do this, they demand a report (sometimes daily, or at least a few times a week) of open issues. It’s easy to track problems in your CRM system. You can schedule and code a service issue as a simple open task. Or, depending on your system, you can create tickets, calls, incidents or issues as a separate thing to track. It doesn’t have to be complicated. But you do want to make sure you’re tracking a few key things: the customer (of course), the issue, who’s working on the issue, when it was opened, when it’s expected to be resolved, what tasks have been done and what tasks are scheduled. Maybe a customer is so significant that it requires the owner’s call. At the very least you won’t be embarrassed if you hear from a customer and you’re not even aware they’re having a problem. A problem could be an opportunity to sell them more services or products, or at the very least show them how important they are to you by giving them extra attention. You’ll never know this without an open issues report.
    

2. Closed Issues

   Sometimes issues are opened and closed and you might never hear about it. In many cases that’s a good thing because it’s important to get problems fixed as quickly as possible. But you still want to know. You want to understand what problems are occurring. And, every month or so, you want to ask for a Closed Issues report and look at the metrics there. Who was having the most issues? What type of product was generating the most problems? Is there a pattern? Could this lead to more problems at other customers? Knowing the problems you’ve had each month and the customers who had them will significantly help you improve your company’s quality and responsiveness.
    

3. Time To Resolve

   Some of my clients include this metric on the Closed Issues report mentioned above, while others like a separate report showing each issue and how long it took to resolve it. This is critical too, because no one likes to wait around for a problem to be fixed. This report is sometimes combined with an alert or workflow because although it’s important to know that a particular issue took a longer time than average to fix, it’s more important to get alerted while this is occurring in case you need to expedite or get involved. You may decide to have service level agreements for your customers, where those who desire can pay extra to be classified as “Gold” customers, entitled to additional and quicker support. If this is the case, it’s even more important to understand the time it takes to resolve product issues and to get alerted if these customers are involved.
    

4. Customers Without Contact

   This is a metric that I learned the hard way. I learned this when a good client of mine left us and went to another firm because he felt he was being ignored. It’s not enough today to just wait for a customer to call. Good companies stay proactively involved with their customers throughout the year. Customers that get ignored will tend to feel ignored and seek TLC from someone else. So configure your CRM system to either generate a report or send you an alert when a customer hasn’t had contact from your staff, either in the form of a phone call or appointment, after a certain period of time (I use 6 months). That way you can be certain that these customers without contact don’t fall through the cracks and potential revenue goes walking away.
    

See? Your CRM system isn’t just for sales and marketing. It’s for customer service too. And having a few key customer service metrics will enormously help you keep your customers happy. And, wait… isn’t that what sales and marketing is all about too?
 

Track your customer interactions with Insightly tasks and notes. 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