Author: user

If you’re considering using Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software in your organization, you may be wondering how it could really benefit you. When looking at a list of features, you might be concerned about whether implementing a new system will be worthwhile.

Are the features useful for a creative organization or are they geared toward some other kind of industry? You may be surprised to learn just how much a great CRM can impact your business.

Make Meaningful Connections with Your Customers

CRM isn’t just the digital version of a Rolodex^®. You can use several tools to target contact information in ways that will help you personalize your communication. Whether you want to segment emails in a novel way, give your salespeople personal information about leads before they reach out, or ensure current customers are rewarded for their loyalty, a great CRM can help.

Jot important notes and comments about your contacts and link them together or use an integrated app, such as Evernote, to collect important information about a client.

Know Where Your Customers Are

It would be next to impossible to find your customers on all social media networks without help. That’s where Insightly social CRM saves the day. All you need to know is your contact’s email address, Twitter ID, or LinkedIn address. The software will find their profiles on social media channels and add links to social media profiles to their contact records.

When you know where your customers are active, you can target social media campaigns more accurately. Social media can help you segment your contacts by their interests, rather than by less personal metrics, such as gender or age.

Keep Your Team Moving Forward Together
Have you ever had trouble getting your creative team to make progress on a collaborative project? Insightly helps you manage collaborative teams in ways that will get your team working together and keep it that way. You can create a pipeline that gives everyone a clear map of the project from start to finish. Attach tasks to pipeline steps, set task due dates, and link responsible parties to ensure each step is completed on time, by the right people. You can even set email reminders for each task.

Identify Your Clients’ Needs

Let the data in your Insightly Reports show you what your customers need. You’ll be able to see important data, including reasons for losing an opportunity, opportunities by responsible user, and funnel analysis. Reports give you a snapshot of what is working for which clients and which team members. You can look at opportunities by organization or designate a custom field to further narrow the scope of your reports and plan your course of action.

Avoid Radio Silence

Letting communication lapse with your clients can cause you to lose you sales or damage your reputation. Use email reminders for tasks to prevent this embarrassing faux pas. You can create reminders for individual tasks, groups of tasks, or those attached to a pipeline step. While reminders must be set up by the responsible user, you can set up notifications that show you when any task has been completed.

Get Paid On Time

Insightly integrates with QuickBooks Online (QBO) and Xero so you can keep track of your invoices and customer communications. With these two accounting options not only will you be able to see current invoices, but also client history.

With Xero, your invoices and bills live in Xero while your prospect, customer, and partner information lives in Insightly. With the Insightly Xero integration, you get a complete picture of your business from early prospect communications, through the sales process to invoicing and payments. You can also create Xero invoices directly in Insightly.

With QBO you can track who’s paid in full and who’s frequently late. Plus, you’ll save loads of time and avoid mistakes by eliminating duplicated entries. Data copies both ways between Insightly and QBO, so none of your changes get lost between them. Once you log into Intuit in Insightly settings, a little QBO icon will appear by each of your main records, contacts, and organizations.

Keep Past Projects at Your Fingertips

It is vitally important for your creative team to be able to look at past projects for specific clients, especially if you have new people. Using CRM with project management lets your team not only see the timeline from past projects, but pertinent documents, responsible users, and any attached notes. Get everyone up to speed so you can discuss what worked well in the past and what should be handled differently. Strengthen future communication on projects by learning from your past.

Creative organizations often have concerns about implementing a CRM. Truth is, the learning curve and time involved are minimal compared to the rewards your business will reap.

 

At Insightly, we have a CRM for all kinds of businesses and all kinds of users. 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 running your business, a tip on using Insightly CRM, and a tip on improving your life. Enjoy this week’s tips!

 

	Print Ready
	Small Business Saturday has come and gone (and we hope it was a huge success for everyone), but the holiday season is just getting warmed up. If you are in need of some smart gift ideas for the small business owner in your life… or you would like to make a “happy holidays to me” purchase, these are some of the most innovative and affordable office gadgets we’ve seen. 3-D Printing for the Masses Let’s be honest, 3-D printing is really cool. Unless you’re up for the task of building your own printer from a kit, a 3-D printer has likely been a bit too pricey for your budget. Not any more! Touted as a product that delivers in a big way on both reliability and easy-to-use simplicity, the affordable (At US$399), Wi-Fi-enabled New Matter’s MOD-t is both eco-friendly and fully capable of producing things like card holders, wall mount clips, and book ends. Print Is Not Dead If you can wait until May 2016, you’ll be print ready anytime, anywhere (with a wireless connection, of course) with the ZutaLabs Pocket Printer. Able to deliver 1-page per minute (300 dpi) in black ink, this wireless printer has battery enough to print for one hour. If you pre-order you’ll get a break on the price–$199 versus $249.00.
	Checking for Duplicate Records
	Insightly checks for duplicate contacts and organizations when you enter them manually and when you import them. See Duplicate checks when importing for the methods used to prevent imported duplicates. When you manually enter a contact or organization, Insightly will check for duplicates after you’ve entered the full name of an organization or a contact. The system will search your existing records when you move your cursor to another field. If your company uses Leads, the contact detection will also check if the new contact matches any leads. To compensate for spelling variations or data entry errors, Insightly looks for names that sound like the name you’ve entered and will display up to 5 possible duplicates. If you see a warning with the maximum 5 matches, check your contacts or organizations to make sure there aren’t more. This week’s tip was provided by Tony Roma, Insightly’s Technical and UX Writer. He’s been helping businesses implement software solutions for over ten years.
	Power Up and Scan, Road Warrior
	Scanning If you deal with a lot of contracts and documents and want to store them electronically, scanning is a huge time saver. At US$90, the Canon CanoScan LiDE 220 rates as one of the “fastest, most accurate, and most intuitive flatbed scanner for everyday users,” by the guru product reviewers at Endgadget. Rating highly in areas such as crisp, clean scans and accurate text recognition, the 3.4 pound LiDE 220 won’t take up much space or break the bank. Going Solar If your business takes you on the road, keeping track of car chargers, adaptors, and cables is hard enough. Finding yourself with a dead battery and no ready source for charging can really ruin your day. Not so with the HELIOS SMART™ (US$119) which collects and stores energy from a built-in solar panel. Better still, it stores enough energy to fully charge your tablet or smart phone 3-times over. 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 Manager. She’s been writing about the “business of technology” in the Silicon Valley for more than a decade.

Do you worry whether your customers are really reading your emails? Are you reaching your audience and getting your messages read, or just filling up your customer’s spam folder?

It’s no secret email is key in connecting with your customers. It’s fast, easy, efficient and the best way to get a message out on a large scale, but many of us wonder how to write emails that really get read.

1. Is It Relevant?

Take a few moments before you send out an email to make sure you are sending something that is relevant to your customer—does it offer some important information? Is it promoting a special offer? Is it a chance to say something you haven’t already told them?

Customers are busy and have a limited amount of interest. Wasting their valuable time on generic, poorly crafted or boring emails now will ensure that they will ignore any important emails you send later. Instead, leverage your contact window by making certain the information you send is something your customer needs to know.

Take a few moments before to research your customer, find a mutual connection, a relevant interest, and relate your email to a current event, situation or important industry information. Every line of your email should have meaning, offer something to the customer or connect with them intellectually or emotionally.

2. Pay Attention to Your Subject Line

While you have to use subject lines that are relevant, and comply with anti-SPAM rules, you can still pick an intriguing and engaging topic. On their initial glance, customers will typically be able to view only your subject and opening line, so make them count!

Use industry-friendly language and give them a reason to open the email. Avoid the word “Don’t” (as in “Don’t miss this sale….”) and instead use positive, urgent and intriguing language, or be specific and cite a what, where or when in the subject line. Another tactic is to ask a question, which naturally makes the ready want to open the email to read the answer.

3. You Had Them at “Hello”

How many of your emails start out “My name is Joe Shmoe and I work for XYZ. I hope your week is going well. I wanted to reach out to you and tell you about this great deal we are offering…” blah blah blah? BORING!

Make your intro quick, and meaningful, and make it all about the customer (not how you hope they are having a great week/day, etc.). They see the first line of the email before opening, so it will make or break the rest of the message.

Context, such as a mutual experience or acquaintance, can be very enticing. “Carol Smith, gave me your information…” or “Your presentation at the Atlanta Conference got me thinking…”

If you have a special offer get it right out there: “Free shipping this week” or “Last chance to shop the sale…” and if you can appeal to their emotional and human-interest side, it’s even better. Try to craft emails around relevant dates or important news, and make it your lead, “With 6 weeks until the primary elections…”

4. Make it Quick and Easy

Newsletters, posts and other informational emails should have bold, easy to identify headlines. Make your email scannable, keep paragraphs short, and make it easy for customers to get the gist of the message at first glance.

If you have more to say, want to offer a link, or get customers to read further, embed the link and monitor your click-through rate with analytics. This is a great way to drive further traffic to your blog or website and engage customers.

5. Differentiate and A/B Test Your Emails

Don’t assume all of your customers are interested in the same thing. Segmenting your contacts by frequency, relevance, or average purchase can help you keep tailor your messages to reach the right audience. Emails are not a one-size-fits all endeavor. Even tailoring emails between two segments—customers who have purchased before and potential customers–can make a huge difference!

Similarly, when you try something new, A/B test it to see the effect on your customers and when you find something that works, stick with it. Do your customers prefer emails with strong visuals or more text? Do they click on links embedded in the text? Do they prefer emails that start with a call to action, or are they drawn to an intriguing subject line?

Testing your emails and tailoring them to your audience is an effective way to reach a diverse population of customers. Insightly offers email templates that help you monitor statistics, and match your message to your customer. You can manage marketing campaigns through integration with MailChimp, or by using the mass email feature to send to Insightly contacts. Visit Insightly U for more details on managing email.

6. Make it Easy to Reply

Include your contact information with your email, and when possible, allow customers to reply (rather than sending from a donotreply@xyz.com address). This can make a huge difference when targeting impulsive customers. If a customer has to scroll down, pick up the phone or even click further than “reply”, chances are they won’t.

Include clear links to your website, and make sure they work. (Test everything!) If you end with a call to action, consider doing it with a question, rather than the typical: “Contact me to learn more…” Prompt a response by asking for an opinion or offering a digital asset: “May I send you a template of the product?” Or even asking for a face-to-face, if appropriate: “Can we meet next week for coffee?”

7. Proof Twice and Get a Second Opinion

Now, maybe every email doesn’t need a proofreader, but depending on the importance, it doesn’t hurt to get a second set of eyes on your email. If you’re setting up a template, sending out a mass message or working on an important contact, it can be hard to see the forest for the trees, and you’ll be amazed at what a second reader might find.

How many emails have you sent, only to re-read and cringe at a typo? Save yourself the embarrassment and give it a second proofread. Try reading backwards line by line to catch misspellings and skipped words, or walk away for a moment and come back.

Weed out clichés, rhetoric, and twenty-five cent words. This is not necessarily the time to break out the thesaurus and show off your vocabulary skills. Instead, keep your language simple, straightforward and genuine. Use industry terms as appropriate, but avoid jargon and alphabet soup that can alienate your customers.

Keep your messages clear, simple and focused. Add compelling and valuable information. Not only will your customers read your messages, but they will keep coming back for more.

 

At Insightly, we have a CRM for all kinds of businesses and all kinds of users. 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 running your business, a tip on using Insightly CRM, and a tip on improving your life. Enjoy this week’s tips!

 

	Behavioral Interviewing
	You’ve heard it before. Screen well and hire smart. Easier said than done? Perhaps not. Getting from point A to point B when it comes to finding the right employees is within your reach if you apply good techniques. There are a variety of interview styles that have emerged in recent years, one of which is the behavioral interview. The benefit of using behavioral-interviewing is that allows you to tap into a candidate’s experiences and behaviors to determine their potential for success.   To set up a behavioral interview, you must first identify what job-related skills and abilities (e.g. critical thinking, self-confidence, teamwork, willingness to learn) will be important for success in your specific business environment. You then need to present a specific type of questions and statements to your candidates. Here are a few sample statements to help jump start your efforts in creating a behavioral interview: Give me a specific example of a time when you used good judgment and logic in solving a problem. Tell me about a time when you had to use your presentation skills to influence someone’s opinion. Please discuss an important written document you were required to complete.
	Changing Subscription Plans in Insightly
	Every Insightly account plan includes a limited number of users, custom fields, records, storage, and email templates, based on your subscription level. For example, trial accounts are set at the Professional plan level. If you want to change your subscription level you, please note that you must have administrator access. Click the profile icon and select Billing & Account > Billing Details. Click the Adjust Plan button. To change your current plan, click the link at the top of the page and click the Upgrade or Downgrade button below a plan name of your choice. Note: If you opt to downgrade and are over the limit for the lower plan, you will need to delete users, records, custom fields, or email templates to reach the lower plan limit.
	Mentoring Pays Dividends
	Did you know that at-risk youth who had a the benefit of a mentor taking them under their wing are 130% more likely to hold leadership positions? Perhaps even more remarkable is that strong work cultures that are supported by good mentoring enable companies to weather downturns much better. The experts at Psychcentral offer some great advice on how to prepare to be a great mentor to others, regardless of their age: Work on yourself—growth and change in your own life can have a very positive influence on others. Be Kind—demonstrate supportive, nonjudgmental attitudes and behaviors. Face reality—let go of ego and image. Be happy—accept life on life’s terms, even when it’s difficult. 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 Manager. She’s been writing about the “business of technology” in the Silicon Valley for more than a decade.

 

A lot of business owners don’t like numbers. Some are downright scared of them. This is the wrong attitude, says small-business strategist and Xero certified advisor Danetha Doe. “You should embrace numbers. They’re your best friend,” she says. “They tell you a story so you can make decisions—whether you can hire a new employee, expand to another location or take that vacation to Italy.”

Numbers have taken Danetha a long way, from NFL cheerleader to CEO of Danetha Doe Consulting and one of CPA Practice Advisor’s Top 40 Under 40 accounting professionals in 2015. Danetha advises other business owners to depend on the following five financial reports. They’re essential if you want to hear the story your own business is telling you.

The balance sheet

Your balance sheet indicates your financial position. It indicates your liabilities and assets. Your liabilities could be loans or other forms of debt. You need to keep track of them. You will also need this information when you apply for funding or when you need to show documentation to support your net worth as it relates to your business.

Your business also has assets, no matter how small it is. If you’re running a business online, your assets may consist of a laptop. If you have a product-based business, your assets may include a warehouse full of inventory. Your assets can also be intangible, intellectual property like trademarks and patented processes.

“Your balance sheet tells you how much your business is worth at any given time. You should review it at least once a year, because it’s very important to have an idea of your company’s worth for tax-filing purposes,” says Danetha.

The income statement

This is one of the most frequently used reports by business owners. While you might review your balance sheet once or twice a year, you should review your income statement often. Another difference: your balance sheet is a snapshot of a point in time, say July 1, 2016, while your income statement is a picture of a period of time, such as July 1, 2016-August 31, 2016.

Your income statement shows whether or not your business earned a profit during that period of time. It’s also known as a profit-and-loss statement. It’s calculated according to income earned minus expenses incurred.

“You should review this report at least once per quarter, ideally once per month,” advises Danetha. “It tells you how close you are to reaching your revenue goals and helps you keep tabs on expenses that may need to be reduced.”

The cash flow statement

You’ve no doubt heard the phrase “cash flow is king.” If you’ve been in operation long enough, you might also see cash flow as the pulse of your business.

“If it’s weak, you could be on edge of disaster,” says Danetha. “All business owners have known days when cash is just not available. It’s not a good feeling. But your cash flow statement will help you better plan for those times when cash is tight.”

Your cash flow statement tells you how much cash your business has left over after a specific period, usually over a year’s time. You may be thinking, “But doesn’t the income statement calculate this?” Yes, but sometimes the two numbers are different. Whereas your income statement reflects all income earned during a period, your cash flow statement shows when the cash was actually received. If you have a business that sends invoices and allows clients to pay within 90 days, the two reports could be vastly different.

Accounts receivable and payable

Your A/R report shows who owes you and when. Your A/P shows who you owe and when.

“You should review these reports every two weeks,” advises Danetha. “Your A/R will help you manage cash flow by alerting you to clients that are late. If they are, gently remind them. They’re in business too and may have forgotten. Although if they continue to pay late then you need to have a professional discussion with them and start charging late fees. Or let them go.”

Your A/P report will help you stay on top of your bill due dates and manage your cash. Having a bill sneak up on you, or forgetting about it and paying late, is not good. But you can avoid it by reviewing your A/P regularly.

The budget

Your budget is a guesstimate—because you can’t plan for everything. But your budget keeps track of unplanned spending and you can use this information to better prepare for next year.

“Consider your dream purchases as well, like a revamped website, a redecorated office or even a trip to a conference in Tahiti,” says Danetha. “Lay out your expenses month by month and use your budget as a guide for your decisions.”

Manage your finances well and you can afford to dream, instead of stare at the ceiling and worry. But if you do need help, there is an accountant prepared to assist you at any time. You can find one at Xero Certified Advisors.

 

At Insightly, we have a CRM for all kinds of businesses and all kinds of users. Learn about all of Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial.

 

Iris Yau is a down to earth kind of gal, boba milk tea lover and marketing guru at Xero. Xero is beautiful online accounting software for small businesses. Sign in any time, anywhere, from any device. You can link your Insightly account to Xero in your system settings.

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!

Image courtesy of Mister GC at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

	Speech (giving) Therapy
	Of all of the identified phobias, the fear of public speaking still tops the list with 3 out of 4 people (75%) suffering from speech anxiety. With some practice and persistence, you can create a greater sense of ease when addressing a crowd. Here are a few tips: Memorize concepts, not content. Avoid memorization. It tends to sound unnatural and over-rehearsed. Engage in conversation with audience members before your presentation. Meeting with the people you are going to be speaking to helps break the ice, gauge the degree of receptivity to humor, and it provides insights into the interests of the audience. Enhance your visuals and audio. Include a short, fun video to break up a slide deck. Shift your mindset to ease your nerves. Focusing on being helpful or in service of the audience, instead of on yourself, can help you to relax. Get interactive. As you plan your speech, think about where you can involve the audience.
	Connecting Contact Data Between Insightly and Xero
	Anytime after linking a customer in Insightly to a Xero contact you can merge Contact data in either direction. Select a contact or organization in Insightly and click the Xero subtab. The system will automatically search through your Xero contacts for a matching Xero contact name for Insightly organizations, and a full (not first or last) contact name or email address for Insightly contacts. If Insightly doesn’t find a match in Xero, type a name in the search box and click Search. If there is no matching Xero contact, you can create one in Xero without leaving the Insightly page by clickingNew Xero Contact. Creating a contact will copy Insightly data and create a link to the Xero contact. If you later want to remove the record, delete the contact from Xero and then delete it from Insightly.
	Holiday Stress Relief
	Running a business on top of the often self-imposed demands of the holiday season can be a recipe for trouble and unwanted and unnecessary stress. Whether it’s walking your dog, playing with the kids, or volunteering, spend time on things that bring you joy. Make a difference in the life of someone else. Simple tasks such as smiling at a stranger as you walk down the street, or taking a moment to stop and say hello to people during an elevator ride are gestures that can quickly boost your mood and your energy. Jot down positive events from the day and review them and/or simply share them with a friend or partner. The long term effects of practicing and reflecting on positive things can re-train you to be overall more optimistic. 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 Manager. She’s been writing about the “business of technology” in the Silicon Valley for more than a decade.