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Turn It Up Tuesday: Tips from Insightly to Take Your Business to 11

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!

	A Plethora of Information Available in the Insightly Help Center
	Did you know there are 4 ways to find answers in the Insightly Help Center? Read our help articles. Our official help articles are a great reference when you need an answer immediately. Use the search bar and we’ll suggest matching articles as you type or click the Help Articles link from the home page to access our entire library. Watch how-to videos and webinars. Click the Videos & Webinars link on the home page to view our short instructional videos or take a webinar tour through Insightly. If you’re on a paid Insightly plan, when you’ve logged in you’ll see a list of live webinars on this page that you can attend. Ask a question in the Community. Insightly team members and Insightly Heroes are in our Community to answer your questions and share their tips and best practices. Click the Community Discussions link on the home page and join the conversation! You can ask a question by clicking the +New post button* or use the search bar to find answers in existing Community posts. *Sign in note: You’ll need to sign in or create a Help Center account to post a question or leave a comment. If you’ve never opened up a Help Center account please use the same login email you currently use to log in to Insightly. If you’ve forgotten your password click the reset password in the Sign In page.   This week’s tip was provided by Brenda Law. Brenda is Insightly’s Community Manager. She has more than a decade of experience building engaging online communities and product awareness programs at companies like Yahoo and Netflix.
	To save time when you have to hit the the ground running for a last minute business trip, I keep a suitcase partially packed – with a full toiletries kit, snacks, notebook, pens and business cards always. When you back from one trip,  repack the basics – pajamas, under-things, shoes. Then, you just have to top it off with some business clothes and you’re out the door every time.
	Awesome Apps for Daily Communication
	Time saving tips are essential for every business owner. Here are a few awesome apps that will help streamline your daily communications: Addappt. This app gives your business associates — and friends and family, of course — the ability to update their contact information in your address book, provided they also use Addappt. You can also organize contacts into groups and send messages via the app, which is free for both iOS and Android users. Fuze. Fuze is a videoconferencing app that hosts online meetings for all devices and operating systems, including new versions for iPads and tablets, such as the Samsung Galaxy. It offers high-definition video and crisp audio, and it’s easy to set up and free to download. Small-business owners can contact the company for custom pricing. Pushover. This app is a game-changer for well-connected small-business owners with more than one phone or device. It sends push messages to any smartphone and organizes messages and notifications from your devices in one common space. You can send 7,500 messages each month and receive an unlimited amount of notifications on Androids, iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches and all desktops. It comes with a free seven-day trial, then requires a one-time $4.99 purchase. Discover more about awesome apps that will make your work week run smoothly.
	Say What?! You Didn’t Close the Sale! – Find Out Why
	There are no salespeople who have a 100% close rate. None. But there are also deals that salespeople lose that they shouldn’t. The best salespeople know how to learn from their mistakes and adjust accordingly, while everyone else keeps doing the same thing while hoping something breaks their way. You didn’t follow up (enough) It takes between 8 and 12 contact to close a deal, but most salespeople only follow up once or twice before moving on. Whether it’s because of time constraints, or laziness, lots of deals that could be closed are getting left on the table. Spiro can help you follow up by letting you know which actions to take that are most likely to result in a closed deal, so make follow-up a top priority. You tried selling to the wrong person Not all prospects are created equal, but you wouldn’t know that if you polled a bunch of salespeople. There’s selling to the wrong person because they’re not the decision maker, whether it’s a husband without his wife, or the wrong executive at a large firm. Then there’s selling to someone who isn’t even in the market for your product. All of this can be avoided by qualifying the prospect with the right questions up front, rather than just crossing your fingers and hoping for things to work out. You made it about you This might be one of toughest mental shifts for salespeople to make, but when you’re talking to a prospect, you need to remember that it’s all about them, and not about you. Your goal should be to find out what they want, what makes them tick, and how you can solve their problem. Who you are and what you can do for them only comes secondary to who they are and what problems they have. Remember that the next time you pitch a prospect and you’ll get much better results.  Read more insights about why you may have lost the deal on the Spiro blog.

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: Marta Bright is Insightly’s Content Marketing Manager. She’s been writing about the “business of technology” in the Silicon Valley for more than a decade.

CRM is expensive, complicated, and incompatible with your existing software… right?

Recently, Insightly, in conjunction with research consultancy Bredin, surveyed 312 business owners each with under 500 employees and spanning a variety of industries. The idea was to find out what their concerns and fears were in relation to software, particularly CRM software. The results weren’t surprising, showing that there’s still a lot of confusion over the complexity and concerns over the cost of today’s CRM tools – plus a considerable amount of anxiety surrounding the implementation of new software altogether.

These myths can easily get in the way of what, for most companies, is a solid business decision. As such, we’ve tabulated and digested these concerns to uncover the five biggest myths surrounding CRM. Here are their concerns… and the facts.

Myth #1: CRM Is Too Expensive

Undoubtedly the biggest myth surrounding CRM relates to cost. In the survey, 76 percent of respondents named up-front cost as their most pressing concern when adopting new software, far and away the biggest concern cited. Further, 38 percent cited maintenance costs as another key concern, the second highest ranking issue in the survey.

Software can be expensive, but it doesn’t have to be, and the trend of complex, million-dollar installations from the 1990s and 2000s has given way to a new business model that prioritizes simple installations at a much lower cost. Technologies like CRM, once seen as too pricey for all but very large companies, are now readily accessible by any organization, even self-employed workers with no employees.

In fact, Insightly offers some plans for very small organizations that are completely free. Even its upgraded plans mostly run less than $50 a month per user, and Insightly, like most software companies today, offers a free trial so users can determine whether the software is right for them. Aside from the price of the subscription, there aren’t any hidden costs because the software is cloud-based, so users don’t have to worry about pricey consultants, programmers, or other service providers when installing the system.

Can you calculate a return on investment (ROI) of CRM? One research group did and found that users generated an additional $5.60 per $1 invested in CRM tools, measured through its impact on increased sales and heightened productivity of the sales team. Not every CRM implementation will generate such high returns, but if CRM software is installed with thought and foresight about what the business wants to get out of the system, the chances for a higher ROI are all the greater.

Myth #2: CRM Won’t Work with My Existing Systems

Compatibility is another key concern that survey respondents cited, with 32 percent saying they were concerned that new software wouldn’t work with existing systems or applications.

Again, the cloud has become the great equalizer when it comes to compatibility, and vendors continue to make it easy to integrate systems, including CRM, with other software you already use. For example, Insightly works with Google Apps, Microsoft Office 365, QuickBooks Online, Xero, Dropbox, Box, MailChimp, Evernote, and more. (You can find the complete list on Insightly’s website.)

What does integration mean? With QuickBooks Online or Xero accounting integration, users can drill down on a customer to see their payment history without having to leave Insightly and jump over to an accounting application. Accounting and sales information is automatically synced with the Insightly interface, so users are freed from having to enter the same information twice. Want to create a new invoice for a customer? You can do it directly through Insightly instead of having to switch to your accounting app.

Ultimately, a well-implemented CRM system will save time through its integration hooks, not just integrating with your existing software but enhancing the way both systems operate.

Myth #3: CRM Will Take Too Long to Set Up and Be Too Complex

Implementation time was mentioned by 17 percent of survey respondents as a top concern when adopting new software, and you can hardly blame them. For professionals who worked in the client-server days of computing, implementing a new software package was a lengthy activity fraught with risk. “Failed software implementations” were so common that the term “failed software implementation” actually came into existence. The reasons for these failures are many, but in many cases, large-scale software rollouts at the time were so drawn-out that by the time the software implementation was actually completed, it was already out of date.

Once again, the cloud has come to the rescue and makes this fear almost completely irrelevant today. Working through a standard web browser, there’s no need to install any software to get a modern CRM system up and running. Users simply point their browser to the new system, set up logins, and get to work. The effort of populating the CRM database can typically be handled by a data import system (Insightly supports five data migration tools), and any software integrations (like the accounting example mentioned above) can be handled with plug-ins.

For larger or more complex installations, help is readily available. Insightly offers private training sessions and an in-depth onboarding experience that can help users less familiar with web-based software get more comfortable with the software, fast. If there are hiccups in implementation or a difficult environment that requires extra training, those resources are available to get your business up and running quickly. (More on this in Myth #4.)

Myth #4: Employees Will Be Too Resistant to CRM

This is another major myth, but this one has more than a little truth surrounding it. Employees are resistant to many things. Change the office layout and they will resist. Change the dress code and they will resist. And, of course, implement a new software package and they will resist. In corporate America (and beyond), it’s all too easy to become complacent, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise as to why. It’s simply easier to do things “the old way” rather than adapt to something new. Learning a new skill or a new software package is hard and takes time – and it detracts from doing your day-to-day job. For many workers, the prospect of implementing a new software package means, at least at first, that they’ll be spending more time at the office.

Survey respondents recognize that training isn’t always easy, with 11 percent citing training as a key concern with software implementation. That really only gets to a part of the issue though, as it’s resistance to the software, not just training people how to use it, that can be the more difficult challenge.

CRM is a special case, because the employees that are tasked the most to work with it – salespeople – can be some of the most stubborn of all in their resistance to change. Salespeople are often creatures of habit and ritual, workers who have figured out “what works” and may have the track record to prove it. CRM can often be seen by salespeople as a hindrance to getting their job done, a hurdle that actively harms their career because it limits their ability to call prospects and results in having to give away their client database, something they may consider (accurately or not) private in nature.

Overcoming this resistance can be so difficult that I wrote an entire blog post about the subject of buy-in last year. You can read those lessons at the previous link, but the insights include involving employees early on in the process, before you ever select a CRM product; ensuring the early days of implementation don’t involve adding to each worker’s task list; and simply making use of the CRM tool a mandatory part of every user’s job.

Ultimately, the training process may prove to be a difficult one, but it is not insurmountable.

Myth #5: CRM Is Only for Giant Enterprises

In a separate question, business owners were asked whether they understood the business challenges that CRM addresses and whether they understood the benefits that CRM offered. On both questions, less than 40 percent of respondents answered affirmatively, indicating that there is both considerable confusion and apathy about the value of CRM.

Much of this stems from CRM’s reputation as a “big business” tool, and again, it is hard to blame business owners for that mentality, because that is where CRM originated. No small business could afford the complexity of a CRM tool 20 years ago; in the small business world, CRM was just another, somewhat informal part of the job of the sales force.

CRM has of course changed in the intervening years, but in many cases the mindset hasn’t. And that’s a mistake, because CRM today has myriad benefits for businesses of any size (extending beyond the ROI benefits outlined in Myth #1).

It’s a common misconception that CRM is only valuable in “big data” environments where thousands or millions of customers are involved. Small businesses can find value in CRM in myriad ways, ranging from simplifying and automating their customer communications systems to understanding how and from where sales are generated. And that makes sense: Every business, large or small, should have a solid understanding of their customer base, who they are, what they’re buying, and other essential customer behaviors.

In fact, it’s through this very understanding that companies grow from small businesses into large ones.

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: Christopher Null is an award-winning business and technology journalist. His work frequently appears on Wired, PC World, and TechBeacon. Follow him on Twitter @christophernull.