Month: July 2015

Insightly Support officially turns two months old on July 13th! To celebrate, we’re giving away an official Insightly T-shirt, a $25 Amazon gift card, and a San Francisco treat to the customer who has the greatest number of helpful contributions to the Insightly Community at the end of July.

Now is the time to participate if you’re new to our community. Start sharing your Insightly knowledge if you’re a seasoned user!

The winner will be determined by the number of their posts and comments. A post can be a question, a tip, product feedback or a feature request. A comment can be useful input to a conversation or a simple “thank you” acknowledging someone’s help.

Here’s how to enter:

1. Go to Insightly Support and click on Ask a Question.
2. Now that you’re in the community, you can create a new post by clicking the + New Post button. Or, click on an existing post and add your comment. Note: Here’s where you’ll be prompted to sign in, if you haven’t already. If this is your first time using Insightly Support you’ll need to create a login using the same email address you use to sign in to Insightly.
3. If you’re writing a post, add a title and details. Choose the appropriate topic from the drop down.
4. If you’re writing a comment, go to the comment box below the last comment made.
5. Click “Submit” and you’re done!

Enter your posts and comments by 11:59 p.m. PST on Friday, July 31, 2015 to qualify for the giveaway. Only helpful posts and comments will count towards your total and please abide by our Community Guidelines when posting. Winners will be selected on Monday, August 3, 2015 and notified by email.

If you haven’t already participated in the community, this quick tutorial will show you how easy it is.

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 Your Sales Pipeline Flowing

Sales are the lifeblood of business. Make sure you keep them coming by getting your leads off to the right start. Building a sales pipeline is about finding leads and winnowing them down to hot prospects who are likely to become customers. For the very top of the sales funnel, get out there and meet people at events attended by potential customers. Be active on social media and on sites where they hang out. Have a form on your own website where visitors can send you their information (more on this below). Get leads into the funnel. At the same time, you’ll always be narrowing down your list of sales leads to hot prospects. Ask the right questions right from the beginning to determine if you’ve got a qualified lead. Once you know someone is a prospect, pick up the phone and follow up. Cold calling can be difficult for many people, but email just doesn’t have the power of a good phone call. By communicating with your leads and following up until you know where things stand, you’ll continue to bring in the sales and grow your business.

Add a Webform to Your Site

If someone is visiting your website and is interested in your business, make it easy for them to request a follow-up call with a webform. Insightly’s Web to Lead and Web to Contact features give you the ability to create a simple HTML form which you can copy-and-paste onto your site. With the form on your business’ web page, your visitors can submit their contact information, and the form will pass it through to Insightly and into your workflow. New leads or contacts are created instantly and are automatically tagged as “Web Leads” or “Web Contacts.” With the data entry and tagging done for you, you can create saved custom filters to see all your new leads and work through your sales process right from Insightly!

Start a Conversation with Someone New

Friendships are important, yet it’s not uncommon for our social circles to shrink as we get older. This isn’t too surprising as the responsibilities of adulthood take up more of our time. Nevertheless, it’s important to continue cultivating new friendships, which are an important factor in maintaining a higher quality of life. Many of us, especially introverts, aren’t very enthused about the idea of talking to random strangers, yet we’ve all recognized the benefits of a new connection at one time or another. There are no shortage of ways to start a conversation and the key to the most successful ones is to ask open-ended questions that will get someone talking. “What do you do for a living?” or “How about this weather?” are the kind of small talk that won’t provoke interesting answers or provide insights about someone. Ask them about things that matter: their opinions, hobbies, families, pets. Asking for help is another way to have someone engage in conversation. No matter which approach you take, remember that a conversation is a two-way street, so make sure you’re listening and responding through reactions or follow-up questions. You never know where a conversation will lead, and you’ll never know if that stranger will become a friend unless you engage them.

 

Start a conversation with Insightly and discover a CRM that will help you manage your To Do lists and your leads. Check out our 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 vectorolie at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Life is easier with the help and interaction of others. Sure, there are times when people drive us crazy. However, those are also the times we need someone to talk to. As we go through our career and life, we meet other people who can be helpful or whom we can recommend, and they usually give us business cards.

I often see a mini-tower of business cards on people’s desks. (No, the business card isn’t going away.) Personally, I like them. When I see the name on a card, I can remember the conversation or the situation where we saw each other. Keeping track of those contacts can feel like a part-time job. I often hear: “I don’t have time for it!” I get it.

So try spending 15 minutes at a time on managing your contacts’ cards and go for progress, not perfection. I’m going to share some ways I manage my business cards and use Insightly to stay connected. (Tip: I often work on my database when I’m watching a silly TV show.)

1. Ziploc bags
   • Place the cards you get at events in a Ziploc bag.
   • Write the date of the event and the name of the event on the bag.
2. The 5-minute sort
   Just sort. Don’t get into action mode, yet. Organize the cards you receive into categories:
   • A = Action. You owe them something: an introduction, the name of a restaurant, a referral. This action can get done and it’s over. One of my favorite reasons to do this is that I’ll get on their radar, but I’m not asking for anything. Yet! 🙂
   • B = Schedule a call or coffee. There was enough of a connection that you’d like to continue the conversation. In general, I suggest a 10-minute call (people are more likely to say yes to that.)
   • C = Who knows? I used to think the folks in this category were less worthwhile to follow up with. I now know that they are most likely an introvert and just think a bit more before they take action.
3. LinkedIn invitations
   I used to be quite strict about who I connected with on LinkedIn. Now, I find it’s simply a great way to keep track of current information. My suggestion is that you write a customized LinkedIn invitation (this is difficult to do on your phone, so wait until you’re at a computer). Here’s an example:

   (Their name),

   I enjoyed our conversation at ________ (fill in the name of the event). I look forward to crossing paths again.

   Best, (your name)
    

4. Insightly’s business card scanner
   If you’re a paid user of Insightly, I encourage you to use their business card scanner on the iOS or Android app. This makes inputting data into the Insightly CRM fast and easy.
5. Reminders
   Add a task to remind you to check in after you make an introduction or have a coffee. Just meeting someone isn’t enough. You need to stay in touch.
6. Then what?
   I put the Ziploc in a shoebox and that becomes a tickler file as well. I know, it sounds old-fashioned; however, I find the tactile experience with business cards is still useful. I create a task with Insightly to check on people every few months.

Staying visible is key to your success. Make it easy!

 

The business card scanner on Insightly’s mobile apps will help you manage your contacts using Diane’s tips. Take your business card management to the next level and check out our pricing page or sign up for a free trial right now.

 

About the Author: Diane Darling knows the value of relationships and how to build them. The author of McGraw-Hill’s definitive book on networking, The Networking Survival Guide. Diane speaks and trains thousands of people each year on ways to build relationships, leading to opportunities and growth.

Hubstaff is a time-tracking application that allows businesses to track the work of teams and individual team members, get better visibility into workflows, and report on the progress of their tasks and business goals. By extending its functionality with an integration to Insightly, Hubstaff has proven valuable to Insightly customers in need of time-tracking functions. Hubstaff recently spoke with one of those customers, Amanda Ray, the social media and sales manager of VideoMedicine.

VideoMedicine is a telemedicine platform that connects patients to doctors all over the world, with the primary goal of increasing access to healthcare. As a rapidly growing company, they were in need of software that would help them manage projects and track the time spent on tasks.

VideoMedicine started using Insightly for managing, organizing, and assigning tasks. By utilizing Hubstaff’s Insightly integration to connect the two applications together, the company was able to improve productivity while saving time and saving money. “With this integration, you gain not only valuable time management tracking, but also the ability to organize and assign tasks internally,” Amanda says.

After realizing the benefits of using Insightly and Hubstaff to track where time—and money—is spent, Amanda concludes that “there is no better way to streamline productivity.”

We’re always happy to see Insightly customers finding their way to success by improving efficiency and productivity. It’s even more gratifying to see that progress for a company that’s doing such important work.

Read Hubstaff’s full case study for all the details:
Case Study: How VideoMedicine manages their global network of doctors

 

Learn more about the Hubstaff-Insightly integration.
And if this is the time-tracking and CRM connection you’ve been waiting for, sign up for a free Insightly trial.

 
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 Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.