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

Changing a Responsible User for Multiple Leads, Opportunities, or Projects

If you need to re-assign a lead, opportunity, or project to another Insightly user, you can do this with the Change Responsible User selection in the bulk editing options. From the Leads, Opportunities, or Projects page, select your group of records using the Filter list, which includes a custom filter option. Once you’ve filtered the proper group of records: Click the checkbox in the header row above the records. This will select all visible records. Click the More button and select Change Responsible User to perform the maintenance on all the selected records.     A dropdown will then appear with a list of your Insightly users to select from. Choose the new responsible user and all selected items will be transferred.   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.

Social Media Scrub

Working social media channels can be a huge plus for growing your business and your brand identity. It can also be very helpful as a means to continue connecting with your customers in a way previous generations of entrepreneurs were never able to. But what about your own, personal footprint on social media? For that matter, what about the presence of a friend or family member who may have passed away? For a variety of reasons, you might want to “go off the grid” and extract your presence from the social media world. The big question is… can you make it happen?   After conducting a bit of research, you’ll find that the answers and options vary when it comes to completely eliminating your social/digital footprint. For example, Facebook will automatically reactivate your account (even after you deactivate it) if you sign into your account at a later date. According to an article on Gizmodo, other networking sites such as LinkedIn and Twitter make it fairly easy to “disappear.” If you want some assistance,  sites such as knowem, accountkiller, and godelete.com will step you through the process.

A Small Time Investment Can Yield Big Savings

Negotiating can strike fear into the hearts of many. But it can be easier than you think if you invest a little bit of time to do your homework and go to the negotiating table prepared. For example, did you know you can negotiate interest rate terms on a credit card?  CreditCards.com research released in September 2014 shows that while relatively few ask, two out of three cardholders who ask for a lower rate get it Here are a few more tips to get you ready to tip the scales in your favorTransfer debt: A balance transfer will save you money on interest. A balance transfer is when you move debt from one credit card with high interest to another one that’s offering a low-interest special for new customers. Some deals offer 12 months (or longer) with 0 percent APR. To make the most of a balance transfer, make sure you can pay off your entire balance during the intro period before interest kicks in. Be strategic: You and your team should have already explored all of the possible outcomes and how each aligns with your overall strategic plan. Knowing ahead of time what’s genuinely essential and what’s not provides clarity and focus. It also helps you determine where to adopt a “line in the sand” response and where flexibility is indicated. Renegotiate every contact on a yearly basis: Every contract eventually comes to an end. This can work in your favor, since suppliers understand that you’re not likely to renew a contract if their demands are too burdensome for your business. Look for opportunities to negotiate volume discounts: You should have a pretty clear idea of how much is regularly spent with current vendors, and what competing vendors might charge for the same types of products or services. Armed with this information, it’s a good idea to look at aggregating purchases to achieve savings in volume.

Send Us Your Tips

Would you like to share your tips with other 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.

And if you haven’t tried the best CRM around, check out Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial right now.

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

If you’re a marketing consultant like me, you have probably helped countless clients implement (or at least optimize) their CRM systems. In fact, you’re likely a strong advocate for the value of a well-structured CRM.

But have you ever stopped to consider if a CRM can improve your own business?

If your clients are realizing value, then it stands to reason that you could, too. In this series, I’ll share my tips for doing exactly that.

Visualize a Successful Outcome

Let’s start by examining the reasons why you haven’t already implemented a CRM system. Perhaps you’re too busy with client work. Perhaps you’re simply uncertain if the long-term value will outweigh the short-term investment of your time. Understandably, marketers tend to gravitate toward activities that generate the greatest impact for the fewest inputs. Therefore, if you are considering the adoption of a CRM, you’ll want to get buy-in (from yourself) before proceeding.

Before doing any setup or technical work, visualize some successful outcomes. In my experience, a CRM can be especially helpful for consultants who wish to:

• Track word-of-mouth referral relationships
• Streamline the production and profitability of services
• Store and organize new service ideas, which would otherwise be forgotten
• Hold themselves accountable to quarterly or annual revenue projections
• Identify upsell, cross-sell, and affiliate commission opportunities with existing clients
• Build scalability for long-term growth

So, how can you structure your CRM to achieve these goals? Let’s start by identifying your pipelines and stages.

Identify Your Pipelines & Stages

Stop and think about the process you follow to win new business. Pull out a notebook and storyboard the flow from start to finish.

Whether you realize it or not, some of your business opportunities could likely be grouped together based on your prospecting approach. For example, I track the following pipelines:

• Hourly Engagements
• Fixed-Price Projects
• Commission (Affiliate)
• Other

Insightly makes it easy for me to build logical pipelines for my business. Although similar, I differentiate between “hourly” and “fixed-price” pipelines, because the stages are slightly different. If a new prospect requests a marketing plan, for example, this type of service is often provided on a fixed-price basis. It therefore makes sense to collect a deposit before officially marking the opportunity as won. By building deposit collection into my pipeline for fixed-price jobs, I reduce the likelihood of oversight.

Categorize Your Opportunities

In addition to pipelines, it also makes sense to categorize your opportunities. If you serve a wide variety of clients, you might use this field to indicate industry or niche. However, in my own business, I find it beneficial to specify the type of service. This may include:

• Consulting (Ongoing)
• Marketing Plan
• Blog Article
• Passive Income
• Other Services

Configuration is simple with Insightly. With a few clicks, you can create categories that meet your needs. The software is also quite flexible, allowing you to edit existing categories or add new ones in the future.

Building a Solid Foundation for Future Growth

With a tailored pipeline and categorization structure in place, you’re now on track to a CRM that adds value to your business. However, this can only be true if you commit to using the system. Before you move on to your next idea, set a weekly calendar reminder to start using your CRM. Get into the habit of making time each week for grooming your pipeline.

Also, stay tuned for the next post, in which I’ll offer marketers more tips for CRM success. I plan to share a few suggestions for optimizing contact and opportunity records to close more deals.

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.

Customer relationship management (CRM) has been growing steadily for years, and by next year, the industry is expected to hit $36.5 billion worldwide. If your business isn’t using it to build stronger customer relationships, you could be missing out. More than 80% of customers will research your business online before they make a purchase from you. CRM can help you convert those prospects into buyers, and those buyers into loyal customers.

Keep Your Company Organized

CRM provides a central point of information for everyone in your organization. Beyond customer contact information, CRM can integrate with a number of tools you’re already using, including: Google Apps, Dropbox, OneDrive, QuickBooks, MailChimp, Hubstaff, Zapier, Proposable, Wishpond, and more. Data from these applications is imported to save time and hassle of logging in and out of multiple accounts, and keeps data available at a glance.

Align Sales and Marketing Teams

With CRM, your marketing team can easily see where leads are coming from, so they know where to invest more time and money. Your sales team can see how many hot leads are in the system, and keep marketing updated on which leads are converting, and which ones aren’t. When the teams work together, operations becomes more efficient because everyone’s working from the same playbook.

If Susie in marketing has a lead for Robert in sales, Susie can make notes in the CRM, making it easier for Robert to follow up with the lead. Robert can also leave notes for Susie to provide information for use in additional marketing campaigns.

Personalize Your Marketing

Integrating CRM with your email marketing campaigns allows you to personalize your efforts. Not only can use you use the customer’s name in your emails, you can look at their past sales history and develop a special offer, unique to the customer or a segment of customers.

Using a contact’s name in your email subject line produces an average of 17% higher click-through rates. The majority of consumers (81%) say they’re likely to shop with companies that send emails tailored to them based on past purchases.

Struggling with getting all the data you need to personalize your campaigns? 67% of American adults say they’d provide basic information in exchange for better products and services. 35% of them are willing to provide demographic information, and 34% are willing to share contact information to get more personalized products and services, so all you have to do is ask. Beware, though, as the survey also showed only 16% of customers are willing to trade online privacy for a better customer experience.

Gain Insight for Research and Development

Over time, your CRM will collect customer interaction data that will allow you to see who your most loyal customers are and what they’re buying. When integrated with analytics and email marketing, you’ll also get insights about what could be making customers leave your website, causing them to delete your emails, or read them without clicking through to your website. Though it can be difficult to decipher all this information at first, reporting features simplify the process, so you can look at the patterns and see where to make adjustments.

Are all your customers clamoring for a similar feature? It may be time to add it to your product. Are they all gravitating toward a certain part of your product line? It may be time to cut your losses on low performing options and focus efforts into what’s already selling well.

Boost Profits

CRM boosts profits by reducing your sales and marketing expenses, saving you time on data entry and project management, and increasing conversion rates with tailored campaigns. Studies show that for every dollar you spend on CRM, you can expect an average of $8.71 in return. When you opt to use a CRM with mobile and social features, your sales reps may see an increase in productivity up to 26.4%.

Insightly is an excellent CRM no matter the size of your business. A TechValidate survey of users showed 67% of customers paid back their investment in our CRM within one to three months. Our features enable you to take control of your business to keep you organized and on track so you can spend more of your time focused on connecting with your customers.

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.

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

Using QuickBooks Online With Insightly

View information from the accounting program in Insightly Copy and link data between the two systems Create new QuickBooks Customers from Insightly The integration does not provide a sync between the two systems. Insightly administrators with an Intuit login can set up the integration by following the directions at Connecting Insightly to QuickBooks Online. Once the integration is installed, the QuickBooks icon and subtab will appear on each of your main records.     QuickBooks can be linked to organizations, contacts, opportunities, and projects.   Organizations and contacts Select a contact or organization in Insightly and click the QuickBooks icon. The system will automatically search through your QuickBooks Online records for a matching organization name for organizations, and contact name or email address for contacts. If Insightly doesn’t find a match in QuickBooks, type a name in the search box and click Search. If a matching customer is not found in QuickBooks, you can create one without leaving the Insightly page by clicking New Customer. This function doesn’t add Vendors, only Customers.   When a match is found, click the Add Link button to link the record and show the available information in Insightly. Insightly will display an overview from QuickBooks, including contact information and a financial summary. From the Actions menu in the subtab you can: Unlink the current record to remove the accounting information from this Insightly record. Copy basic information (addresses, phone/fax numbers, email addresses, and website addresses) from one system to the other. View the linked QuickBooks item in a new tab. Below the overview, Insightly will list estimates, invoices, and payments. Select an option from the Show list to filter the displayed items. When a match is found, click the Add Link button to link the record and show the available information in Insightly.     Learn more about using QBO with Insightly.     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.

Minds Helping Minds

We all need a bit of advice or a helping hand from time to time. Fortunately, there are some great resources available to the entrepreneur community. For little or no money at all, you can tap into the wisdom of those who have “been there and done that,” in a wide variety of industries (and geographies). The USA The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) is an independent agency of the federal government to aid, counsel, assist and protect the interests of small business concern. The agency delivers its services to people throughout the United States, Puerto Rico, the U. S. Virgin Islands and Guam. The United Kingdom SmallBusiness.co.uk provides resources, products and services for small business owners and start-ups. They offer free online advice in the form of news articles, guides, tips and features that can point you in the right direction to start and run your own small business.   New Zealand Business Mentors New Zealand Limited is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to supporting the success and growth of small businesses through the knowledge and experience of our their nearly 20000 volunteer mentors. Australia Australia’s SBMS Experienced Business Mentors are part of the Small Business Mentoring Service. SBMS is an incorporated not-for-profit association. The organization provides access to 130 Mentors, both male and female, who have the skill and experience to help small businesses.

Wheel House

The long days of summer are just around the corner. If bike riding is one of your go-to choices for outdoor activities, but you’re schedule makes it hard to carve out the daytime hours to enjoy the scenery, IMAXShift promises an indoor cycling experience that, “Will transport your mind and transform your body.”     Now there’s a promise! Tapping into the famous IMAX movie theater experience, the kick-off event is taking place on April 25th at the flagship cycling theater in Brooklyn, New York. Each ride costs $US 31.00, so it’s not for the fain of pocketbook. If this surround-sound experience really kicks off, who knows… it could become part of your routine.

Send Us Your Tips

Would you like to share your tips with other 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.

And if you haven’t tried the best CRM around, check out Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial right now.

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

Imagine you’re organizing a 90th birthday party for your beloved grandmother. You want to ensure a turnout befitting of this big milestone, so you and your cousin Amanda volunteer to collect invitee names and addresses from family members.

As emails, phone calls, and snail mail (yes, snail mail) lists come in from your aunts, uncles, cousins, and second cousins once removed, you use an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of all the information you’re receiving.

Since Amanda is also collecting invitees, you send her your full list when it’s ready. Being a diligent cousin, Amanda not only adds her information to your spreadsheet, but she also makes changes to the misspelled names and incorrect addresses that she notices.

Then, the inevitable happens: the stragglers start calling.

Can you add Mildred from next door? Did you know Candace and Howard moved last week? Can you make sure Stanley Wittmere isn’t on the list? (After that disagreement with Uncle Joe at the holiday party, chaos would surely ensue.)

You update your original Excel list with these changes and send the file to Amanda. She calls you immediately.

“What’s changed?” she asks.

“Oh, I corrected an address, added some names, and removed someone,” you reply.

“But I’ve already made changes to the other version you sent. What am I supposed to do now?” You hear her exasperation.

Two takeaways emerge from this story:

1. When one person owns a spreadsheet with knowledge that others need, a silo of information is created.
2. Once that spreadsheet is shared and utilized by more than one person, a new problem arises: versioning control.

This family-sharing scenario is a drop in the bucket in comparison to running a business where multiple people are talking to and acting on behalf of a customer. Is everyone working with the most accurate information at all times? How are account changes communicated across groups? How does information go from a sales person to customer support and up to the CEO?

While Excel can be used to keep lists, crunch numbers, create graphics, and run pivot tables for data comparison—functions it performs quite well—this tool was never intended to handle customer relations.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, on the other hand, are a reflection of their name. These database systems are specifically designed to complement the various activities needed for customer interactions, engagement, sales, support, and success.

If the prospect of an accidental invite arriving in Stanley Wittmere’s mailbox hasn’t convinced you yet, here are the top five reasons to utilize a CRM over spreadsheets.

• Central hub of information

Sharing information is critical to business operations. Silos of information cause loss—both in knowledge sharing and in bottom line profits—because they create gaps in your business that your customers feel.

Customers expect that speaking to one person in your company is the equivalent of speaking to everyone. Anyone who picks up the phone should know what they’ve purchased, what promises have been made, what communications have occurred, and what goals they want to achieve using your product or service.

The best way to achieve that expectation is to provide one place where accurate, up-to-date information is stored so that anyone in your organization can be empowered to handle a customer interaction.

CRMs accomplish that goal by providing a single source of real-time data about each customer. Changes are captured immediately so that there’s never a conflict or loss of information, thus enabling individualized service to be provided to the people who matter most: your customers.

• Standardization

As companies grow and change, institutional knowledge may get lost or overlooked if there isn’t a single system to capture information in a standard way.

If your sales team expands or accounts shift between salespeople due to new territories, how does that transfer of knowledge occur? If a manager wants insights into how his team is performing, both individually and at a group level, how can he quickly pull together comparable data?

CRMs provide consistency in the way information is captured and stored. Whenever someone calls a customer, sends out a marketing email or survey, or receives a customer inquiry, that conversation or interaction is recorded in a standard template, providing a clear path for anyone in the future to both access and contextualize the interaction.

• Communication

Effective businesses run on efficient communication, both internally and externally.

How unwieldy would it be if just one person—let alone ten, twenty, hundreds, or thousands of people—updated you every time a customer interaction happened? Add to that challenge all of the myriad methods for communicating (texts, emails, instant messages, social media messaging, phone calls), and the exchange of information becomes cumbersome and challenging to track.

The beauty of a CRM is the security everyone feels in knowing exactly what information has been communicated and exchanged with every customer. Having a reliable single source lets an entire organization—no matter how large or small—be consistent in external communications and messaging.

• Reporting

Besides more effectively serving and communicating with your customers, CRMs also allow for operational efficiency and reporting. The best way to understand key performance indicators and business operations is to use reporting tools that utilize standardized data and give you insights into the health of the business.

For example, sales forecasting is much easier when you can quantify your customer acquisitions, analyze performance, identify successful sales tactics, and track progress. Adjustments can be made in real-time, and the results can be seen faster.

With a streamlined system and single source of uniform data provided by a CRM, you can run reports as often as you like to see what’s working and what needs improvement. Your business can better plan, optimize, and achieve targets.

• Growth and Scalability

If growth is the goal, the four core CRM capabilities above are your comrades in arms. The best way to achieve sustainable growth is to understand your business today and how to scale it for the future.

Are there trends within the sales cycle that best correlate to customer acquisition? Do you know what makes your customers successful? Where do you need more resources in order to grow and scale your organization?

Growth potential happens when you know what’s in your sales pipeline, how accurate your forecasting is, what markets are working for you, and what customers are happy, loyal, and buying additional products. The nuances of sales cycles and customer retention are tough to ascertain without these insights.

You can best project future opportunities and market needs by utilizing a CRM’s comprehensive set of standardized data and reports, which makes your business sustainable for years into the future.

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.

Annette DeNoyer is a strategic content marketing consultant with over eight years experience in a variety of technology roles, most notably in product management, product marketing, and content marketing. Her experiences at both tech startups and established organizations enable her to create effective messaging for young companies looking to attract attention and garner credibility, as well as for established companies developing strategic content for each sales stage in the Buyers Journey.

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!

	Remote, But Not Distant
	While not all jobs are suitable for telecommuting, before you turn and run hard and fast away from the idea, take a few moments to reflect on what it could mean for your bottom line in the long run. Fiction: If you let an employee work from home, he’s sure to slack all day and miss his deadlines, right? Fact: Studies have shown that a telecommuting staff is more productive than in-office workers. Chalk it up to not having chatty coworkers and more time to focus on work for just some of the reasons why they’re more productive.   Fiction: People don’t mind the commuter grind Fact: Without having to start their workday with a lengthy commute, crushed into a train car, smushed on a bus, or being jostled on a busy city sidewalk, telecommuters can start their workday earlier and dedicate more time to the job. Fiction: Daily distractions help productivity and a sense of well-being Fact: Remote workers often incorporate more physical exercise into their day than office workers. Why does this matter? Well, a healthy workforce means a more productive one, with fewer personal days taken off to go to doctors’ appointments.
	Changing Your Insightly URL
	Want to change your Insightly URL to something that is a better reflection of your company name? Your Insightly administrators can do that by clicking the profile icon and going to the System Settings > Insightly URL page.Note: If you are a Google Apps user on an Insightly for Google Apps account your Insightly URL will incorporate your domain name and cannot be changed.   The Insightly URL is the unique web address that users can use to log in and access Insightly. The last part of this address is always “.insight.ly” but you can change the first part of the web address to something your users will remember, if it has not already been reserved. Your users will then type in that URL to access Insightly. Examples might include: http://mycompany.insight.ly, http://myteam.insight.ly/, or http://myproject.insight.ly/.   Your Insightly URL must contain only the characters A-Z or a-z, the numbers 0-9, or the hyphen character. No spaces are allowed and it must include at least 5 characters.If you change your Insightly URL, be sure to share it with your users so they can continue to access Insightly.   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.
	Get Your Swag On…. Or Not
	We all love a bit of swag, right? For the uninitiated, swag are (for example) those free giveaways you get at trade shows or perhaps at a charity event such as a fun run. Yes and no. According to a study conducted by the PPAI, only 28% of recipients felt more positive after receiving a promotional product valued at under $5. About 40% of recipients felt more positive after receiving promotional product worth between $5 and $25. However, there is a noticeable increase (54%) in positive attitudes towards companies who give out swag worth more than $25. Note that the most popular swag items include ink pens and cotton t-shirts. To make things a bit confusing, a separate study conducging by Princeton Marketing revealed that 52% of trade who attendees are more inclined to enter an exhibit that provides some sort of giveaway. Last but not least, for your efforts at selecting the perfect bit of swag, not that the average amount of time a promotional item is kept around is 6 months.   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. Check out Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial of the best CRM around. About the author: Marta Bright is Insightly’s Content Manager. She’s been writing about the “business of technology” in the Silicon Valley for more than a decade.