Are You Driving (or grinding) the Wheels of Automation?

Convert Opportunities to Projects

Doing so can be especially handy when your company wins a deal that requires post-sale coordination. For example, let’s assume you own a growing consulting firm that serves the technology sector. Your sales pipeline is primarily focused on winning initial consults, each of which is unique to the given client. Once the ink dries on the contract, your team moves into hyper speed to deliver on your promises.

In this example, it may be helpful to convert the original opportunity into an Insightly project. From the opportunity’s “actions” dropdown, simply click on “convert to project” and follow the prompts.

Now, all of the sales information that you worked so hard to collect is conveniently accessible from the newly created project. As your team works through milestones or project pipelines, they can see the whole story without aimlessly searching through archived records. Insightly achieves this by:

• Automatically linking the opportunity to the project
• Linking existing contacts and other records
• Giving you the option to copy files, notes, and emails
• Pushing custom field data to the project

Stop reinventing the wheel. Keep your team organized by letting Insightly do the administrative work. Convert your first opportunity to a project today.

Engage New Customers With Marketing Automation

In addition to aligning your human capital with customer needs, it’s also wise to leverage your IT resources accordingly.

With the advent of marketing automation, your company can easily (and affordably) engage new customers through email. Unlike traditional email marketing, which requires your staff to remember to do something, marketing automation allows you to build rule-based campaigns. As new customers meet certain criteria in your CRM, they can be added to a nurture sequence that automatically emails them important information.

A car dealership, for example, might use marketing automation to pass along important warranty and service information. After a customer drives a new vehicle off the lot, he or she could be added to a personalized campaign that looks like this:

• 24 hours later: Send a congratulatory email, “Congratulations on Your New {Vehicle Name}
• 1 week later: Send a reminder email, “{Name}, Be Sure to Call Your Insurance Company”
• 2 weeks later: Send an informative email, “Owner’s Manual for Your {Vehicle Name}”
• 3 weeks later: Send an informative email, “Your Warranty for {Vehicle Name}”
• 4 months later: Send a reminder email, “Schedule Your First Routine Maintenance”

Just think about the cost to manually send each of these customer emails. Now, consider the cost savings by automating the entire process.

How can your company leverage the power of marketing automation? To get started, think like a new customer (or prospective one), evaluate what information could be helpful, and then implement a plan to communicate in a more automated way.

Don’t Be Shy About Unsubscribing

Speaking of marketing automation, you’re probably on a few email lists yourself. Some lists you may have subscribed to, while others you can’t recall for sure. Needless to say, your inbox is overflowing. Perhaps it’s time you hit the “unsubscribe” button.

Some people are hesitant to unsubscribe, as they’re worried it might get the sender in trouble. Actually, the unsubscribe button is there as a courtesy to you, the recipient. Senders realize that you’re not a static entity, and their messages may not always appeal to you. Marketers operating in good faith would prefer that you unsubscribe now, rather than continuing to receive content you’re not interested in.

From a practical standpoint, each unwanted email consumes a fraction of your day. Even if you never click on most messages in your inbox, you still have to delete them. The simple act of deleting an email takes at least a second or two. Now, multiply this by the dozens of other unwanted messages that you receive. Over the course of a year, the simple act of deleting emails can turn into hours of time – time that you could be doing something more productive.

So, before you delete another unwanted message, consider a better option – click unsubscribe once, and you’ll instantly get seconds of your life back!

Develop a Post-Sale Servicing Strategy

As your deal flow increases, it becomes easier to identify product (or service) delivery bottlenecks. Without the right approach, your sales team’s actions can actually accelerate the problems you seek to correct.

Strategic organizations are very definitive about how and when sales representatives are involved in the customer lifecycle. Should a sales rep be the point person for receiving customer service issues? How are reorders to be processed? Should the sales team prepare quotes, or should that be done from a central office?

While there’s no magic answer to questions like these, it may be a worthwhile exercise to at least consider limiting your sales department’s involvement for certain customer activities. Of course, with any business decision, there are tradeoffs to change. These might include:

Pros of Limiting Sales Team Involvement:

• Sales reps can stay more focused on closing new deals
• Customer acquisition and fulfillment costs are easier to quantify
• Post-sale customer inquiries are less likely to get lost

Cons of Limiting Sales Team Involvement:

• Your customer support department will need to pick up the slack, which has a tangible cost (salaries, benefits, etc.)
• Sales reps may become less informed about customer issues
• Upsell opportunities might be overlooked

Whether you decide to keep your sales team focused on the entire customer lifecycle or shake things up, it’s important to develop a plan and measure success. The ultimate goal is to create happier customers, which results in more predictable sales revenue for your company.