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Are you holding your content marketing to unrealistic standards? Success can mean wildly different things depending on your vertical. Let data be your guide: Fractl shares insights from an analysis of over 340 client campaigns.
Read the full article at: moz.com
Efficiency is a serious matter for SMB owners. If you’re running a small or medium-sized business, you know the conundrum all too well. How do you stay involved in the critical aspects of your business without working around the clock – or somehow making the day longer than a mere 24 hours? The right technology tools can make a big difference.
With these six super powers in their pockets, Insightly SMB customers can win the day, every day.
You can’t hit pause on the sales process just because you’re on the go. This feature allows Insightly mobile users to view, add, and edit information about leads. Once those leads are qualified, you can convert them into contacts or sales opportunities from your mobile device, as well.
Get all your events, tasks and due dates right in your mobile app. It’s easy to navigate the calendar from your iOS or Android device, add and search meetings, and see what you have on tap for the day or week ahead.
However your device manages widgets (either on the Home screen for Androids or in the Notification Center for you iOS folks), Insightly apps let you use widgets to get quick, easy access to your task list and an entryway to the Insightly app. Apple users can also complete tasks from the widget and use it to jump to their Contacts and Organizations screens.
Your mobile device has a great little microphone in it; use it to record and save audio files to your notes. The recording option lets you capture up to an hour of a meeting, interview or other event and store it for easy access later.
Business cards are still a thing, but storing them on a desktop Rolodex no longer makes much sense when all of your critical customer and prospect information is filed and organized digitally. Bridge the gap between the past and the present by scanning cards directly into Insightly through this feature in our app. Add a new contact or lead, then take a photo of that person’s business card. The app will transcribe the contact information for you.
Speaking of business card scanning, we’ve made that feature even more attractive with mobile tagging. Insightly users can add tags from the business card scanning feature or anywhere else in our apps to edit records and make them easier to sort and find.
All of these features are available for Insightly apps on iOS and Android devices.
At Insightly, we offer a CRM used by small and mid-sized businesses from a variety of verticals. Learn about all of Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial.
Join us on Thursday, October 20th, at 11:00 am, PST, for a LIVE Twitter Chat with entrepreneur and connector, John Rampton. John was recently named #3 on the list of Top 50 Online Influencers in the World by Entrepreneur Magazine.
During Thursday’s Twitter Chat, John will offer tips and advice about ways you can effectively and efficiently use networking to grow your brand. Join us LIVE on Twitter @ #LoveYourCRM!
At Insightly, we offer a CRM used by small and mid-sized businesses from a variety of verticals. Learn about all of Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial.
Welcome to Turn It Up Tuesday, where we bring you 4 weekly tips—a tip on running your business, a tip on using Insightly CRM, a tip on improving your sales, and a tip on improving your life. Enjoy this week’s tips!
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Start Using Your Secret Insightly Mailbox |
| The Insightly mailbox address is one major reason why so many business owners rely on the CRM each day. Here’s how it can benefit your business.
When you sign up for Insightly, you’re assigned an email address (example@mailbox.insightly.ly), which is unique to your account.
Each time a message is sent to your mailbox, Insightly does some awesome stuff behind the scenes. Your message is first scanned for matching records (such as domains and emails). If Insightly spots a match, the system links this message to the existing record. If, however, there is no match, Insightly does you a favor and creates a company and contact record on your behalf.
As you can imagine, this is extremely beneficial for the time-crunched entrepreneur. As new leads request information, alerts can be forwarded from any web-enabled device. Now, instead of waiting to get back to the office (or forgetting altogether), you can make sure every new opportunity is captured. Insightly offers additional functionality for project and opportunity emails. Rather than sending your correspondence to the general Insightly address, you can actually grab opportunity-specific (or project-specific) email addresses. This can be especially helpful, as projects and opportunities are likely the topic of most emails. Emails, invoices, quotes, drawings, and other important files are now in the right place from the get-go – instead of trying to piece things together after-the-fact. |
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Schedule Time for Goal Setting |
It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day aspects of running your business. Client requests, task lists, emails, voicemails, and meetings consume every moment of your day (and sanity). When the day is over, the last thing you want to do is think about the big picture. Unfortunately, if you overlook the big picture, you’ll never grow your business to its fullest potential. What are you to do? Start by finding some quiet time to ask yourself these questions:
To hold yourself accountable, schedule a recurring calendar event to review ongoing progress. It may be wise to start with a monthly frequency (you can always adjust later). Also, use the calendar invite to define an agenda for your session. Instead of reinventing the wheel each time, your calendar reminder can include links to your goal tracking documentation and notes from previous sessions. One final thought – try to pick a time and day of the week in which your brain is most able to think strategically about your business. Monday morning at 8 am is probably not the best choice for most business owners. You roll out of bed, and the first thing you look at is your smartphone. You have thirty new emails since you went to sleep – and that was only six hours ago. Another day has begun, and you’re already knee-deep into it before your feet hit the floor.
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Layer on the Stress |
Speaking of Monday mornings, a new workweek brings on its own set of challenges. While you were relaxing (or at least trying to) over the weekend, some of your colleagues were staying busy. As a result, dozens of new emails and unread instant message threads have arrived to overwhelm you. Instead of stretching yourself thin on Monday, try layering on the stress. Break the first few hours of the workweek down into more manageable bites by: Making Time for Yourself Before Work – Few things are more challenging than jumping out of a peaceful weekend and directly into a work crisis. You’ve already been off the clock for more than 48 hours. What’s another hour? Ease into the day with some exercise, prayer or meditation, and reflection on the wonderful weekend. Taking a One-at-a-Time Approach – Most professionals have multiple accounts to check each day. Why not start with the least stressful one? By the time you check your most stress-inducing account, your brain will be more apt to handle anything that lurks (hopefully nothing too awful awaits your attention
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Are Co-Workers Holding Back Your Sales Success? |
What’s stopping you from closing more deals? Our friend Adam Honig, over at the Spiro blog, asserts there are at least ten things that commonly get in the way of salespeople. While most sales professionals can probably relate to all ten issues, it’s noteworthy that “co-workers” are mentioned at the top of the list. In the article, Adam points out, “Salespeople are a talkative bunch, and a sales floor is usually a really fun place to work. But those same benefits can cost you money when you spend more time goofing around or catching up more than you do selling.” Stop and think about your average day. Time spent on office parties, water cooler chatter, coffee breaks, and the occasional cubicle drop-in can add up quickly. It’s certainly important to be personable and show your colleagues the respect they deserve. It’s equally important, however, to avoid letting non-work stuff creep into your most productive hours. To prevent co-workers from getting in your way, start paying closer attention to the amount of non-sales time you engage in each week. Sure, we all need breaks to stay fresh, but perhaps your time could be further optimized. You’ll never know unless you start tracking it.
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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: Matt Keener is a marketing consultant and President of Keener Marketing Solutions, LLC. Matt specializes in content marketing and strategic planning, having helped numerous Saas (software as a service) companies and other small businesses worldwide. Read more of Matt’s work, check out his book, or connect with him onLinkedin.
There’s a two-letter word that stings even the most seasoned professional’s ears. That word is, of course: no.
Your great ideas are dashed once again. If only the client would listen to you!
The good news is that the client still appreciates your opinion. Nothing has really changed; you’re continuing to serve his needs as you always have. The bad news is that you still think this idea could be a game-changer. What are you to do?
In this post, I’ll share seven steps for dealing with rejection from your customers.
After the dust of rejection settles, it’s wise to re-evaluate and determine what exactly went wrong. Even if you think the window of opportunity has completely closed, doing a self-examination can be useful for personal growth.
I often ask myself the following questions when doing a retrospective:
Was my performance to blame?
We’re often our own worst critics. Try to avoid being too harsh on yourself, and instead evaluate the situation objectively. Did you pitch the idea at the wrong time? Did you seem rushed or uncertain? Were there questions that you could not answer? Were you in a bad mood or forgot to drink enough coffee?
Did my proposal have issues?
If you prepared a formal proposal, allow a few days to pass and review it once again with a fresh set of eyes. Were the graphics confusing? Did you make an obvious error or oversight? Was the presentation too vague or overly complex? Did the client flip to the back and peek at the proposed cost (before you had a chance to finish your presentation)?
What exactly did the client hear?
Most proposals (if implemented) come with a tangible cost. Even the most value-focused client occasionally has an issue seeing past the upfront investment in a program. If you think this is the case, what could you have done differently to gain buy-in? Was the payback period too long or difficult to quantify?
Is there still hope?
With all of this information in mind, you should then go into your CRM and update the opportunity record. If there is no hope of resurrecting the opportunity, mark it as closed (lost) and indicate a reason. However, if you’re not giving up, leave it open, add some notes, and assign yourself a task to take additional action (see the next steps).
Regardless of what went wrong, you’ll most likely need to do some additional homework before adjusting your pitch. Put yourself in the shoes of the client for a moment. If you were the customer and rejected a pitch, what would cause you to reconsider? What challenges do you currently face that this would either solve or greatly improve?
Customers usually become open minded when they are convinced that a project will help:
If you hope to reposition your idea to the client, you’ll need to identify data that proves (beyond a doubt) that one or more of these is true. For example, as a marketing consultant, I routinely pitch clients on paid advertising campaigns. I always ask the media agency to provide plenty of historical open, click, and conversion data. With this information in hand, I can make a very strong case for several of the aforementioned bullet points.
Customer success stories can also serve as invaluable resources. Naturally, depending on your client relationships, you may want to redact sensitive information. Even without private information, you can speak generally to the issue that was solved through the solution you proposed. Most customers don’t like being guinea pigs; therefore, letting another one of your clients fill that role can make it easier for the risk-averse to trust your judgment (once it works).
You’re now armed with additional research, and you’ve received a task email reminder from Insightly. It’s the moment of truth: time to adjust your pitch.
You now have a decision to make. Given what you know, is this really worth keeping alive? Do you still believe in the value of the project? If the answer is no, your time is obviously too valuable to waste. However, if you’re still a believer, you have work to do.
Before you spend a lot of time on recrafting your pitch, decide which elements need the most attention. Remember, your goal is to sell the client with the least amount of effort. Starting over from scratch is rarely necessary.
If, on the original approach, you had created a formal presentation, consider duplicating the slides into a fresh version. Look for ways to reuse as much of the existing content while simultaneously adding in supporting research and findings from your retrospective. Try to think like your client. If you were the client, what would be your objections to the updated proposal? What parts still raise doubt? What can you do to simplify the value proposition even further?
On the other hand, if your original proposal was casual in nature, perhaps a more visual approach is what you need. This, of course, hinges upon your relationship with the customer. Preparing a presentation deck is one possible route, but you also run the risk of appearing too salesy. Another approach, which can oftentimes be more effective, involves using screen sharing tools to demonstrate your ideas. Sharing your screen is a non-threatening way to pitch clients, especially when it comes to gaining buy-in for new software, processes, or graphical projects.
You’ve adjusted your pitch and feel confident in the revised value proposition. Now it’s time to circle back to the client. But when?
Clients’ needs and perspectives are constantly evolving. That’s good for you, especially when selling ideas or revisiting old ones. After some time has passed, you may get lucky and realize that the customer has totally forgotten about his original rejection of your idea. You must be ready to capitalize on this type of opportunity.
Or, it’s quite possible that bad timing was the sole reason you lost the deal in the first place. Perhaps you accidentally pitched the customer on the same day his dog died. Maybe he had to fire a long-time employee before meeting with you. The second time around, try to be especially strategic with your timing.
Here are a few approaches I’ve used in the past.
Taking the “Wait-and-See” Approach
The nature of urgency will dictate whether or not you can take this approach. This strategy involves waiting for the customer to express the correct buying signals. When the customer expresses frustration with existing processes, you need to be ready to succinctly resurrect your pitch. A casual, yet confident demeanor can be quite compelling. Obviously, a formal proposal does not make sense for this approach. You just need to be prepared to sell the idea on the fly.
Adding to an Existing Agenda
Do you have regularly scheduled meetings with customers? If so, you might consider weaving your proposal into a future conversation. If you are in charge of setting the agenda, this might be an “optional” item you choose to discuss only when you sense the mood is right.
Scheduling a Dedicated Meeting
Perhaps the riskiest (and perhaps most rewarding) approach, try to pick a day that you know the customer is usually in a good mood. For example, if you were trying to sell me an idea, Friday morning would be much better than Monday afternoon. Get to know your clients and schedule accordingly.
In most cases, your customer will remember that he passed on your original idea. Unless you handle the situation carefully, things can feel awkward for both parties. In extreme circumstances, the client may even think you’re questioning his prior judgment. It’s therefore important to mitigate these feelings from bubbling up.
Be prepared and have a plan. Unless the client has forgotten about your previous discussion, start the conversation by acknowledging the past. Pivot quickly to the heart of the discussion. You might considering saying:
Once you’ve successfully made the transition and are presenting your ideas, stay keenly aware of the client’s body language. You need to keep the customer engaged, so don’t be shy to pose questions if you start losing momentum. By asking relevant questions, you help the customer verbalize his problems and, hopefully, connect the dots to the solution you are proposing. The right questions can also reduce the awkwardness of a one-sided conversation.
Even when customers like your ideas, there can still be some resistance to commitment. How can you make your proposal so enticing that clients feel no risk in moving forward? Take a page out of the software industry’s playbook and offer a free trial of some sort. Nothing sells an idea better than results.
You might be uncertain how offering a trial could work in your niche. Use your creativity to explore this concept before fully dismissing it. For example, as a marketing consultant, I could make an offer more enticing in the following circumstances:
If you chose to extend a trial, be sure to make note of it in your CRM. If you’re using Insightly, consider adding detailed notes to the correct opportunity record. You may also want to adjust the projected revenue or close date, depending on what you offer.
When all else fails, you can always pitch the same great idea to your other customers. Just because one client says “no,” it doesn’t mean that your others will too.
Insightly users know that tags are extremely useful for organizing contacts and other records. Tags are also helpful for dealing with rejection. Depending on how you’ve structured your tags, it may be possible to quickly identify all of your customers who have similar needs.
For example, let’s assume you originally pitched your concept to a client in the insurance industry. After further thought, you realized the same idea would apply to any company that offers professional services. Luckily, for years you have been diligently tagging leads and contacts within Insightly. With a few clicks, you can instantly filter past and present customers in the services niche. Now, your idea can come to life – through more than one customer.
Of course, you’ll want to develop a similar plan for each client you intend to individually pitch. There’s nothing worse than a “canned” proposal that was obviously designed for a different audience.
If your idea has broad appeal, then a slightly different strategy would probably make sense. Figure out ways to “package” your concept, and evaluate the feasibility of bulk marketing tools for effectively communicating your vision. Just be sure that you can handle the influx of inquiries that may result from a mass communication strategy. You never want to offer a solution for which you don’t have the capacity.
Rejection is an Opportunity
Most rejection is not a dead-end; rather, in many cases, it is an opportunity to explore greater things. The next time a customer says that short, dreaded word (“no”), try to think of ways to convert it into an even better outcome. Use your creativity and knowledge to reshape how the customer understands your pitch. If that doesn’t work, shop your ideas to other clients who share the same needs. In time, you may find that an initial rejection has led to untold success for your business.
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.
Matt Keener is a marketing consultant and President of Keener Marketing Solutions, LLC. Matt specializes in content marketing and strategic planning, having helped numerous Saas (software as a service) companies and other small businesses worldwide. Read more of Matt’s work, check out his book, or connect with him on Linkedin.
From time to time, most small businesses run into cash flow problems.
There are a number of reasons as to why that happens, but here’s a major one: Lots of customers don’t pay their bills on time. In fact, according to our research, 64% of small businesses are affected by late payments. Since you can’t exactly settle your bills with unpaid invoices, many small businesses are forced to look outside their company walls to find funding.
In the past, small businesses that needed money would either take out loans (and incur the associated debt) or use factoring services or merchant cash advances (which result in a noticeable forfeiture of revenue) to get access to money.
However, thanks to new innovative financial services, they now have other more attractive options. Instead of taking on unnecessary debt or foregoing a significant amount of income to get the funds they need to grow their companies, small business owners can make use of an invoice financing service like Fundbox.
Invoice financing allows you to advance payments on outstanding invoices. All you need is an account—which you can create in a few minutes. Once that’s done, you can pick and choose which unpaid invoices you want cleared. Your small business then has 12 weeks to repay that advance, plus a small, completely transparent fee.
Thanks to invoice financing, small businesses don’t have to wait around for late payments to finally come in before making moves to grow.
There’s no sense in forcing your business to sit on the sidelines waiting for customers to settle their invoices. Thanks to invoice financing services like Fundbox, you won’t have to.
Learn more about how you can use Fundbox to take your small business to the next level.
At Insightly, we offer a CRM used by small and mid-sized businesses from a variety of verticals. Learn about all of Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial.
Work in the manufacturing industry? Are you a systems integrator or manufacturer? You should be using Twitter. Here’s a list of people you should be following.
Read the full article at: www.matrixmarketinggroup.com
Realty professionals are masters of multitasking. On a given day, a realtor might manage multiple listings, start conversations with new clients, nurture ongoing interest from buyers, show properties and close deals. The realty industry is powered by loyal and trusting relationships, meaning a personal touch must be present in every one of those activities. When to-do lists become unwieldy and agencies scale, massive amounts of client information and context must be readily accessible and actionable to every member of a realty team.
It’s no surprise that some of the most successful realty firms use CRM to keep client details and project deadlines on track. Below are some examples of creative ways firms are leveraging CRM tools – and measuring ROI.
Keller Williams Realty: When Andrew Sutton became an individual agent with Keller Williams Realty, he needed to spend less time on administrative tasks and focus on building (and supporting) his client base. Insightly helped him manage every listing as an individual project, complete with assigned tasks, timelines and personalized notes. The mobile app gave him the freedom to close deals in line at the grocery store – while elevating his customer service abilities and growing his business.
Windmere Real Estate: Jeffrey Douglass, consultant for Windmere Signature Properties and broker and president of virtual brokerage RealtyV2.com, was managing multiple clients and brokerage listings while maintaining two blogs about the industry. He needed a CRM that he could customize, linking his ongoing contracts, projects, tasks and opportunities. He chose a solution that wouldn’t add unnecessary steps or complicate the process, and found it gave him the opportunity to centralize all operations relating to his business.
Ontario Property Pros: Although the Ontario Property Pros team had previously used a CRM tool designed for the real estate market, the solution couldn’t streamline client conversations – nor was it user friendly. Insightly’s activity sets and integration with Google Apps helped support the team’s existing work processes, while the MailChimp integration helped simplify customer newsletters. As a result, the team became more productive, increased staff accountability and eliminated the need for additional technology systems.
GreenSpot Real Estate: Independent Broker Micki McNie had previously used custom-built CRMs that created redundant work, as the solutions required her to import data twice – into the CRM, and into her email or calendar. Insightly’s compatibility with Google Apps cut down repetitive processes, while its Android app gave her the chance to work on the go. Reminders also helped her send personal emails throughout her relationship with each client, rather than the pre-scheduled template emails she had previously used.
Sign up for a free trial to learn how CRM can benefit your real estate business – or small team in any other industry.
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.
Welcome to Turn It Up Tuesday, where we bring you 4 weekly tips—a tip on running your business, a tip on using Insightly CRM, a tip on improving your sales, and a tip on improving your life. Enjoy this week’s tips!
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Pipelines Versus Milestones: When to Use What |
| Pipelines are useful when your workflow follows a sequential order. For example, you might use a pipeline to stay organized on that important eBook you’re developing. Your content must first be written before your graphic designer can work his magic.
Once the layout is complete, your editor does a final review before handing it off to your web team. Then, your social media manager shares the landing page and drives new leads. Each step is dependent upon the previous one getting done, which makes a pipeline the wise choice. Milestones offer a bit more flexibility, especially when tasks must be done concurrently. An advertising campaign might necessitate a milestone-based project. Banner graphics, radio scripts, press releases, and social media posts can be developed simultaneously – but still be neatly rolled up into a project-level view. For additional information about using Insightly pipelines and milestones, check out this in-depth summary.
This week’s tip was provided by Tony Roma. Tony is an Insightly product expert who has been helping businesses implement software solutions for over ten years. |
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Why You Need 10 Minutes of Quiet Time |
| You roll out of bed, and the first thing you look at is your smartphone. You have thirty new emails since you went to sleep – and that was only six hours ago. Another day has begun, and you’re already knee-deep into it before your feet hit the floor.
Finding quiet time is increasingly complicated in today’s fast-paced world. Social media, email, text messages, conference calls, voicemail, apps, and other distractions can consume every minute of our lives (if we allow them). While all of these gadgets and tools are extremely beneficial, it’s important to be proactive and not let them control you. You don’t want to get burnt out. As a first step, try scheduling ten minutes of daily “quiet time” for the rest of this week. Find a time that you can commit to, and even consider putting it on your calendar. During that quiet period, close your eyes and try to relax. Clear your mind of any thought that consumes you. In doing so, you’ll likely feel more relaxed and less stressed. Warning: if you have never tried to make quiet time, it’s going to be hard at first. Sitting still and doing nothing feels counter-productive, but it’s not. You deserve a few minutes of peace each day. |
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Stop Delegating from Your Inbox |
Your team is already overworked. Filling their inboxes with your random ideas only makes the situation worse. Instead, look for ways to create accountability through a more structured approach. Consider these six steps:
As your team becomes comfortable with this workflow, you may find that some tasks are actually recurring events. If so, consider configuring repeat tasks (learn how to do that with Insightly here). This will save you an added step of remembering to enter new tasks. You’ll also see an uptick in your staff’s productivity. |
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Always Be Simplifying Your Pitch |
| People won’t buy what they can’t understand.
If you regularly find yourself on the receiving end of confused looks, perhaps it’s time you simplify your pitch. To do this, consider the following suggestions. Understand Buyer Personas Before you can simplify your pitch, you must first have an in-depth understanding of your audience. It’s therefore no surprise why experienced sales professionals invest adequate time to understand the buyer personas for their product or service niches.
If you’ve never developed personas, it’s time you did so. The process can actually be kind of fun! Here are a few questions to ask yourself:
As you answer these questions, you may uncover multiple buyer personas. Keep in mind that personas may come from diverse backgrounds and perspectives, so understanding what makes them tick is important. Identify Common Pain Points With a firm understanding of buyer personas, it’s now time to start thinking like one. As great as your offering is, prospective customers mainly care about how it benefits them. Evaluate your product or service through the eyes of each persona. Specify how it helps to overcome specific challenges. Condense Your Pitch into a Headline For a moment, imagine that your local newspaper was willing to advertise your company on its front page. What should the headline say? Although this situation is unlikely, compressing your offering into five or so words is a worthwhile exercise. It forces you to be as concise as possible without under communicating your value proposition. (Each persona may require a slightly different headline.) Draft a few headlines and let them sit overnight. The next morning, while your mind is still fresh, read through them again and pick those that jump out to you. Again, you’ll probably want to do this through the eyes of a potential buyer. Once you’ve selected a compelling headline, you can then use it to craft longer messaging, such as an elevator pitch and email copy. From a sales perspective, the headline serves as a central theme for your ongoing communication efforts. Do Some Testing Now is the moment of truth. Seek opportunities to test your simplified messaging. As you speak with new customers, pay close attention to their reactions. It may also be wise to add notes in your CRM and occasionally review how clients are responding as a whole. If a certain message fails to resonate, continuously refine your approach until a noticeable improvement occurs.
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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: Matt Keener is a marketing consultant and President of Keener Marketing Solutions, LLC. Matt specializes in content marketing and strategic planning, having helped numerous Saas (software as a service) companies and other small businesses worldwide. Read more of Matt’s work, check out his book, or connect with him onLinkedin.
Chintaro Software is an Australian based service that helps accommodation providers better manage their properties. The company’s software is used by more than 170 Australian and New Zealand housing providers for tenancy, property and financial management and stores data about tenants, properties, assets, inventories and work-orders, helping managers track communications, future upgrades, scheduling, inspections and maintenance, among other tasks. The company, which is family owned, also assists its clients with implementation, support, training and ongoing services to ensure that they’re making the best use of the technology.
But is Chintaro making the best use of its CRM technology? The company uses Insightly, which they implemented more than a year ago. And, based on my conversations with them, I think they’re using it pretty well. After migrating their data from an older system (a “big headache,” said Annie Reeves, one of the company’s owners) they adopted Insightly as their primary sales tool and rely on it to track leads and opportunities. With less than five users on the system, they were able to get it up and running fairly quickly and without much training or support. And the system has become a valuable resource for making sure that all potential sales are in the pipeline and monitored in detail. And it’s working. Nothing falls the cracks. All opportunities are pursued to their resolution, good or bad (less bad than good, thankfully).
But Insightly is not the only system that Chintaro uses. The company uses Xero for its accounting and Harvest for time tracking. And they use FreshDesk for all customer service and support activities. These systems, all excellent- but they operate independently of each other. So for now, things are OK. But as the company grows, this lack of integration will likely cause a loss of productivity and a higher frequency of errors. Like all of us, there are plenty of ways that the company could be using its technology better. But if I had one objective to fulfill there in the next 12-18 months, it would be integration. Why not take advantage of all the benefits that a cloud based application like Insightly can offer?
Here are four critical applications Chintaro should integrate with their Insightly system.
Help Desk.
As mentioned before Chintaro uses FreshDesk, which is an excellent cloud based help desk system. But because it’s not integrated with Insightly neither sales or service knows what each other is doing. And it would be awkward for a sales person to be discussing the benefits of an upgrade when there’s a big support issue happening at the same time. Chintaro should consider hiring a developer to use Insightly’s API (application programming interface) to, at the very least, display open and closed support tickets from FreshDesk inside of Insightly. And although it would painful to leave FreshDesk, great support applications like SupportBee not only provide powerful email and task tools for tracking all support issues, but also integrates with Insightly out of the box.
Time and Billing.
The company is also happily using a cloud based application called Harvest to track the time employees spend on projects. But, like FreshDesk, this critical system is not integrated with their CRM system so both sales and service people are in the dark as to the status of ongoing projects. Hiring a developer to integrate the two applications may also be a solution here. Another is to look hard at TimeCamp, an excellent time and project management application that is not only cloud based but, like SupportBee, integrates with Insightly out of the box. This way prospects that have been nurtured into customers through Insightly can now be carried forward towards implementation (and ultimately to support) with important data stored in one place for all in the company to see.
Proposals.
Annie admits that her sales team spends a significant amount of time generating proposals for prospective clients, mostly using Word and Excel documents. The entire process can be not only be made faster and more productive with an add-in tool like Proposable, but communications, tasks and other important activities can be tracked against each proposal and integrated with Insightly. Proposable creates very polished looking documents, syncs contacts back and forth with Insightly and automatically creates and tracks opportunities in the CRM system.
Marketing.
Annie’s company sends newsletters, but it’s not as consistent as she’d like it to be. My recommendation is to spend the time necessary to segregate her database into groups of people (customers, prospects, products owned and products of interest) and then create an ongoing schedule of newsletters and other communications to keep these groups up to date on important information that will help them with their businesses. This means sending out multiple bulk emails on a varied, but consistent schedule and then tracking the results to see what’s working and what’s not. The best way to do this is to integrate their Insightly system with a good email marketing application like MailChimp and then, most importantly, put someone (I suggest a local university student with a marketing interest) in charge of the process.
How to get this all done? People will be needed. Good Insightly developers and consultants can be found on LinkedIn and UpWork. Great integration and automation tools, like Automate.io, can help move data back and forth between Insightly and the applications noted above, as well as many others.
Great companies create processes and systems to increase their value. Different systems doing different things erodes value. By making Insightly its core database, Chintaro can then build out integrations to its other important systems and build a top flight technology infrastructure that will create value and position the company for future growth. It’s all about the missing links.
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About the Author: 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 Washington Post, 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
