Category: CRM Blog Posts

We all know how difficult it can be to keep your team focused and on target. A modern office comes complete with distractions galore, most often in the form of texts, phone calls, email, social media and those unavoidable and all important personal lives.

Even when people are getting on with their work, time is wasted on inefficient storage methods, searching through paper clutter, on finding information that should be readily available, and on meetings that drag on and make people want to fall asleep. We’ve all done it, right?

So how do you go about organizing your team and keeping them on task?

1. Streamline inboxes.
Studies show we spend 6.3 hours a day reading emails. Cut down on wasted time by sending fewer emails, keeping them short and to the point, and marking priority messages. For maximum efficiency, put the bulk of the message in the subject line and the first line of the email:

Subject: Reminder – Client meeting XYZ Company 3PM conference room
1st line: Please set up presentation by 2:30 and be prepared to discuss ideas.

Using the subject and first lines allows recipients to see all the necessary info at a glance, without opening the email. It also make emails easier to search at a later date.

2. Organize supplies, documents, and tools.
Just as businesses typically organize a supply closet, you can organize your online repository. Set up a dashboard for the apps and programs your team needs, and centralize your communications in your CRM. With all the information they need in one place, your team will save time and avoid frustration.

3. Allow autonomy and collaboration
The younger your team, the more they will appreciate collaboration. Millennials grew up in a crowdsourcing world and are comfortable in teams. However, every human needs the freedom to make decisions, offer opinions, and know their input is valued. Encouraging input from your team builds a collaborative atmosphere that keeps your team motivated and organized.

4. Go paperless.
You may still be using physical paper for orders, contracts, and other things that require a signature – but why? Storage boxes and filing cabinets fill up a ton of floor space better used for other purposes. Scan those old physical copies, move to a digital signing process, and get rid of paper for good. Not only does it take up space, it’s a waste of time when you need to find (and then refile) paper.

Files accessible online makes information available to everyone with access, whenever they need it, wherever they are. Documents can be attached to contact records in real time, so everyone is updated at all times.

5. Set subtasks.
Breaking large projects down into smaller tasks to be done in order is the heart of project management. Automatic reminders keep each subtask prioritized, reduces procrastination and helps to avoid your team from becoming overwhelmed with the enormity of the task. With efficient project management, you can easily recognize each step, when it has been completed, and what the next step is. It can help to avoid missing vital steps and keep the job moving forward without scope creep.

For both teams and individuals, organization is the answer to efficiency. These tips will help you keep your team organized and moving in the right direction.

At a young age, you learn how to speak. Words become the basis for how you relay your needs, feelings, and ideas. You become proficient at putting together coherent sentences; stringing these sentences together helps you articulate complete thoughts and opinions. Eventually, you engage in conversations, debates, and discussions. In short, you master the art of communication through the spoken word.

However, a chasm exists between the ability to communicate and the aptitude to be an effective communicator. That gap is explained by one simple concept: articulating yourself is not the same as being heard and understood.

Effective communication is the ability to deliver a message in such a way that the listener has a clear comprehension of the exact meaning you intend to convey.

While this concept may seem simple at face value, the effort, time, and practice required to develop that skill set is frequently overlooked. Too often, communications are misheard or go unheard altogether. Sometimes, the target of the message has stopped listening. Other times, imprecise language creates holes in the listener’s understanding, and contradictory messages leave the listener confused.

To illuminate the path towards effective communication, we’ll look first at communication tactics and then move into the process of approaching and engaging your target listener. The goal is to arm you with knowledge so you can get out there and practice. No one becomes an effective communicator overnight, but the only way to improve is to learn what to do (and what not to do) and to find your own rhythm for starting conversations.

Of note: while the tactics below can be utilized for many different types of conversations, the context here is how to effectively communicate in person with potential customers—people whom you don’t currently have a dialogue but want to start a conversation with for the purposes of delivering your business message.

COMMUNICATION TACTICS

Mind the 7 C’s

Let’s start with the basics. When striking up a conversation with someone you don’t know, there are a cluster of “C” words—coined the 7 C’s—that serve as guidance, both for how to present yourself and for how to speak in order to ingratiate yourself to your audience or listener.

• Clear—Coherent, simple, and straightforward communication is essential.
• Consistent—Unchanging and stable messages illustrate reliability.
• Credible—Speaking the unequivocal truth helps you gain and keep trust.
• Confident—Self-assured composure boosts people’s impression of you.
• Civil—Being courteous goes a long way.
• Concise—Pick words to illustrate your point and drop anything superfluous.
• Compassionate—Empathy and compassion endear you to others.

Four of those traits—credible, confident, civil, and compassionate—speak to the person delivering the message. After all, who doesn’t want to communicate with an authentic, humble person who focuses on the feelings of others while illustrating confidence and speaking the truth?

The other three qualities—clear, consistent, and concise—describe how to make your message understandable and digestible. Simplicity is always appreciated for clarity and encourages engagement—the whole goal of the communication.

Beware of your (unintentional) language

What language do you speak without saying a word?

Body language is one of the most overlooked—and primal—ways that we communicate with each other.

You often sense or inherently notice when someone looks open and friendly, closed and uptight, or tense and jittery. Sometimes the signs are more obvious than other times, but we often struggle to recognize the same body language in ourselves. Unfortunately, some of the very things you might be feeling (discomfort, nervousness) are probably written all over your face and in your stance.

The data backs up the assertion that verbal messages are interpreted by people based on three things:

• 55% is based on facial expressions and body language
• 37% on tone of voice
• 8% on words

Read that again: only 8% of the verbal messages people hear are the actual words we use.

When broken out by gender, women give even more weight to facial expressions and body language and even less to words.

Utilize positive body language

Not surprisingly, employing physical methods to portray yourself as confident in what you have to say will go a long way towards helping you to communicate effectively.

These five techniques yield delightful results:

• Eye contact creates an instant connection between people. It’s much easier to garner attention, keep them listening, and convince them of your message if you’re holding their gaze.

• Uncross your arms. Human instinct tells us to protect or comfort ourselves when insecurity strikes, which is actualized in arms being crossed over one’s chest. That exact behavior perpetuates the problem because it’s off-putting to the person you’re trying to engage.

• Smile and the world will smile with you. That oft-used phrase is never more true than when approaching someone new. Smiling is infectious in all the right ways: it triggers a positive response from the person you’re hoping to engage, and as a bonus, it naturally helps you feel better, too.

• Pay attention to feet. Point yours at the person you’re speaking with and make sure the other person is doing the same to you. If his or her lower body starts to point away from you, an escape from the conversation is about to occur. You have mere moments in which to save the interaction.

Mirror (healthy) body language of the person you’re speaking with as a way to indicate that you are similar to each other and understand what that person is thinking of feeling. Be subtle and sincere in your movements.

On a final note: in our mobile society, the biggest body language no-no is looking down at your hands—not because you’re fidgeting with them (although that’s also not ideal), but because you’re looking at your phone. Unless it’s a dire emergency, never pull out your phone to check email or text messages in the midst of communicating with someone new. The only reason to take out that device is to input the contact information of the person standing in front of you.

Use only the good words

Since words are being heard at a much lower rate than we’d hope (8% or less), you’d be well served to pick the good ones.

Use positive key words that make your point and use them often. Repetition is great for planting the seed. That word or phrase will subconsciously become associated with you or with what you’re trying to sell (ideally, both).

On the other hand, whether you’re, like, valley girl material or not the, um, you know, ah, most articulate person in the world, you’re much better off adding pauses or brief moments of silence to your repertoire than resorting to filler words.

While discussing words to remove, this sentence illustrates two overused words that cripple the speaker every time: “I just want literally five minutes of your time.”

The word “just” make you sound weak and as if you believe you’re imposing on the person. That’s not the confident first impression you want to make. And please don’t get me started on the word “literally,” which has been bastardized beyond recognition. Removing these words and others like them will elevate your speech and writing.

In the same vein, negative words like “never,” “can’t” and “no” should be avoided, especially in early conversations. Few people appreciate hearing pessimism from anyone, let alone someone they just met.

APPROACHING AND ENGAGING YOUR TARGET LISTENER

Know your audience

Now that you have tools for how to speak—both verbally and through positive body language—we can look at the best methods for establishing communication.

The most important thing you can do when approaching someone is to know who the person is. That doesn’t mean you need the person’s life story or to know favorite colors and hobbies (although some small details never hurt); the point is to understand why your message is important to that specific potential customer.

What does that mean you need to do? Think back to your days in school.

Yep, you need to do your homework.

• What are the daily challenges he or she faces?
• How can you help this person with something that is an urgent pain point?
• How do you solve the problems that keep him or her up at night?
• Why should he or she want to talk to you?
• What messages resonate best?

Part of understanding your audience is putting yourself in their shoes in order to empathize with the person and respond in a way that matches what they are communicating back to you. You are a source of information, but you should also be someone who can listen and adjust your message based on what you’re hearing.

Direct approach: Share your objective

Walking up to someone you don’t know to do a sales pitch can be daunting for even the most self-assured and practiced people. There’s a good explanation for this trepidation, as it turns out that most people don’t like to share their precious time with strangers without knowing why upfront.

In a business setting, both men and women want to understand three things before entering into a conversation:

• How painful the topic or conversation is going to be
• How long it will take
• What will be asked of them at the end of the conversation

The reason behind these three preemptive conversational needs is simple: there’s a strong desire to have an exit plan.

That’s right. As you’re trying to engage this person, he or she is strategizing about how to get away from you. That’s what’s proverbially known as “starting behind the eight ball.”

The best way to avoid this scenario is to begin the conversation by setting the stage. Make it clear exactly who you are, how much time you’ll need, and how you can help the person.

Essentially, you’re giving the recipient a clear understanding of the context and a taste of the content. After all, you know exactly why you want to engage with this person, so put their mind at ease and give them the same knowledge upfront. They’ll relax and focus on what you have to say, which is a win-win for both of you.

Understanding what the person’s most pressing concerns are and what matters to them is the goal of your conversation. Once you’ve laid the groundwork, ask open-ended questions to validate what you think about their need for your solution.

Indirect approach: Take the plunge

If your style is to approach, engage, and then maneuver your way into the business solution you want to pitch, here are some ideas on how to get started.

First, it’s always helpful to arm yourself with some conversation-starting questions that get dialogue flowing. As Jane Fonda famously opinioned, “It’s more important to be interested than to be interesting.”

At a most basic level, here’s the “one secret” you need to know: say something the person will be happy to hear.

Sounds easy enough, but how do you know what that “something” might be?

For icebreakers that aren’t simply introducing yourself by name and hoping for the best, a variety of conversation-starters can be used:

• Talk positively about something relevant to the social or work situation you’re currently in. Perhaps there was a speaker? Or a panel discussion or roundtable? You have common ground based on your environment and the fact you’re in the same physical space; use it.

• Keep current event topics top of mind. Bring them out as needed and ask for the person’s thoughts or opinions in order to start a dialogue.

• Give the person a compliment. Everyone likes to hear something nice, as long as it’s not too personal.

• Worst-case scenario, talk about something benign like the weather or the food. However, don’t stay in this small talk zone for too long. Use the time to figure out a better way to engage and converse.

You’ve done the hard part. You’ve walked up and started the conversation. Now take the next step and ask open-ended questions about what this person thinks about every day, what they do for fun, what interests they have, what languages they know, where they’ve lived… anything to get the person to open up and share.

Because, as you might guess, there’s a common human affliction you can use to your advantage: most people like to talk about themselves. Capitalize on it.

When you’re ready, broach the work subject and ask open-ended questions to ascertain what this person thinks about their job and their challenges on a daily basis. You’ll have created a natural opening for yourself to discuss what you do and how you might be able to help.

Listen, listen, and listen some more

Regardless of your direct or indirect approach, you need to make sure you do this one critical thing: you must listen.

The most integral characteristic of an effective communicator is the capacity to be a good listener. Nay, an excellent listener. An ancient quote by the Greek philosopher Epictitus illustrates the point perfectly:

“We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.”

What does that entail?

• Look the person in the eye.
• Don’t interrupt.
• Pay attention.

It’s always tempting to jump in with your ideas or to formulate your thoughts and responses before the person is finished speaking, but you may miss the real point of what they’re saying. Give yourself a moment to pause when the person is done talking, collect your thoughts, and then respond. The person will feel like you heard them and will be more open to whatever you’re about to say.

Trust me. I bring value.

What’s the real purpose of listening? Getting to know the person you’re talking to and making it obvious that you’re learning from what’s being said. Illustrating that the conversation and this person both matter to you. Building trust.

One TEDx speaker has gone so far as to call himself a “story whisperer” because he’s honed the art of listening, asking the right questions, and gaining people’s trust. People not only share their stories with him, but they know he understands them, and they trust him even more. The theory is that, by really listening, you create a space for deeper conversations and better solutions through connection.

Once you’ve started a dialogue, asked questions, listened, and built trust, you’re ready. You should know a lot about your potential customer and what their pain points or challenges are. Not only that, but you know how to speak to them in a way that will resonate. Your business value may have been a perfect match to begin with, but you now have developed the interpersonal communication to make sure that value is perfectly understood.

Learning how to be an effective communicator is a journey, not a destination. Even successful sales people, CEOs, leaders, and speakers spend hours honing their talents to make sure their exact and precise message is the one that the listener hears and remembers. The key is to learn the basics and then continue to practice the skills needed to achieve effective communication. Enjoy the journey.

At Insightly, we offer a CRM used by small and mid-sized businesses from a huge variety of verticals. Learn about 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 4 weekly tips—a tip on running your business, a tip on how to ramp up your sales efforts, a tip on using Insightly CRM, and a tip on improving your life. Enjoy this week’s tips!

	Creating Custom Fields in Insightly
	In addition to the standards fields, you are now able to create custom fields as an Insightly administrator to help you organize your CRM records. When your business has unique information that isn’t common to other businesses and doesn’t fit into Insightly’s standards fields, this feature enables you to enter and track that specific information. Some of the examples of custom fields include: Project Tracking Reference Numbers Dates like Birth Dates or Contract Renewal Dates   A project with custom fields grouped under “Project Information” and “Building Information.“ Custom fields can be used with leads, contacts, organizations, opportunities, projects and allows you to customize and adapt Insightly to better meet your business needs. Check out the Custom Fields Guide to find out more about this feature. 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.
	Stay Safe From E-Mail Viruses
	What could possibly be worse than getting your computer infected by malware and risk losing all your work? Unfortunately, this is a common problem that tech users have to face in today’s world. Although opening emails won’t cause you any harm according to Christ Hoffman, technology writer for HowToGeek, email attachments may contain malware and infect your computer. Luckily, there are easy but crucial steps you can take to prevent this nightmare from happening. Before you open the email attachment: Install quality anti-virus software and keep it updated.   Check if the email address is legit and if it corresponds with the email’s content (addresses that contain odd combinations of characters are a red flag!). Scan any email attachments with your anti-virus software. For Outlook users, disable image preview in your settings as incoming email using graphics code to enable virus’ execution can result in an automatic virus infection. Stay safe and don’t fall victim!
	Delete the Cookies When Booking Online
	The travel season has come and so has the insane demand for plane tickets. It might be very difficult to find a plane ticket at a decent price for when booking your holiday or a last-minute business trip, but there are a few tricks that can save you from having to purchase tickets at sky-high prices. Clear your web browser’s cookies and cache. What many people don’t realize when booking online tickets is that airline websites increase their ticket prices based off your search history and the amount of times you’ve visited the site. Accordingly, they will provide different deals depending on the user, so be sure to delete cookies to avoid this dynamic pricing. Find alternate airports. Smaller and less popular airports usually offer better fares than the bigger airports, because they work with cheaper airlines. They are also a huge time-saver as they can be quicker get in and out of, so make sure you compare different airports if you don’t mind settling with airlines of lesser quality. Avoid travelling in the weekends. It would make sense for you to start your travel plans on a weeked, but this is when airlines set their highest prices. People usually travel on the weekends (and even Friday!) after their work, so try booking your flight on a weekday If possible.
	Silence is an Answer, Too
	Sometimes silence is the best answer. When you are working in sales, you deal with objections from prospects all the time. But what is the best way to handle objections? Rashid Kotwal, Co-founder of Revealed Resources, suggests to always welcome objections and give people the time to think if they are doubting. He says “When you are selling, you ideally are giving someone things to consider. So give them time to consider them… The last thing you want to do is to interrupt that thought process.” If you enjoy the serenity of plant life and tranquility of fish gliding gently through the water, go Back To The Roots and procure a The Water Garden. Sized perfectly for a desktop or kitchen counter, The Water Garden sits atop a self-cleaning fish tank with a closed-loop system—the fish feed the plants and plants clean the water.

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.

For most small- and medium-sized business owners, you can’t expect customers to find you without some level of advertising. But ads can be extremely expensive, often with little in the way of results to show for it.

Today, SMBs are overwhelmingly focused on online ads rather than pricy print, television, or billboard media, but even online ad expenses can quickly spiral out of control if they’re not kept in check. We spoke to several online ad pros about how to squeeze every last penny out of those ad budget dollars. Here’s what we learned.

Set Up Ad Tracking First

Before you start tinkering with your ad strategy, it’s important to know where your money is going, by carefully tracking campaigns, keywords, prospects, and more. “It’s impossible to scale or optimize what you can’t see, so campaign tracking is crucial to stretching your ad budget,” says Meagan French, president of marketing consultancy Lotus Growth. “The easiest way to set up tracking is by creating goals in Google Analytics to track conversions… and it’s free.”

Google Analytics and other tracking systems can be complex to master, so it’s best to start slowly with some inexpensive test ads (start with $10 a day, for example) so you get comfortable with tracking and ensure you have everything set up properly before investing additional funds.

Hone Your PPC Keyword Strategy

It can be tempting to throw money at the broad keywords that get the most search traffic, but that strategy often ends in an arms race of price escalation with other bidders. For example, Google AdWords’ “suggested bid” for the search term “baseball bats” runs $1.27 per click, while an ad for the more specific “8 year old baseball bats” would cost only $0.56. Traffic is much, much lower for the latter term, but it also represents a laser-focused customer who can be targeted with a very specific advertisement.

Wendi A. Henderhan, founder of bankruptcy-focused Henderhan Law Offices in Ohio, says this works across industries, saying, “Rather than bid on just ‘bankruptcy’ keywords from an online advertising perspective, we broke it down even further. I knew that Chapter 13 related bankruptcy keywords would generate more high quality leads for my firm. Even though the search volume isn’t as high as Chapter 7 keywords, I was willing to take quality over quantity. Additionally, rather than target the entire Columbus market, I geo-targeted specific zip codes so the advertisements would hit our ideal prospective customer.”

Another solid strategy to save money is to use highly specific keywords that won’t attract “casual” web browsers. Andrew Harrison of Zeus Legal Funding relates a story about using terms like “blue pencil severance lawyer” and “constructive discharge lawyer” in ads that were designed to target lawyers (rather than consumers). “These are terms that most lawyers understand, but most ordinary citizens who are searching for a lawyer wouldn’t know them,” he says.

Get Serious About Retargeting

Have you ever visited a website, then later that day seen an ad for that website somewhere else? If so, you’ve experienced retargeting, considered one of the most powerful online ad strategies available because it shows ads to people who have already visited your site. “While it’s great to be able to market to new people, marketing to people who already know about you but haven’t converted yet often returns a much higher ROI, and will help you maximize your small ad budget,” says John Turner, CEO of meditation website QuietKit.

Retargeting isn’t just effective, it’s also usually quite affordable. “Just by introducing retargeting as part of our strategy, I have been able to cut our customer acquisition cost by a third,” says Nenad Cuk, marketing manager of branding and design shop ThoughtLab. “We now have more people converting and a lower overall cost of advertising.”

Experiment Via A/B Testing

One of the keys to stretching your ad budget is to make sure your ads are working as effectively as possible. How do you do this? By testing different ads simultaneously to see which performs the best. “Test two different variations of copy, creative, or landing page and see which one has a higher click-through or conversion rate,” says French. “Then repeat, repeat, repeat. This will improve the quality of your ad campaigns, find messaging that resonates with your customers, and drive down advertising costs. We’ve improved our click-through rates on ads by 3x by testing different ad copy.”

In this extensive article, Optimizely offers much greater detail about how to put A/B testing to work for you.

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.

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 how to ramp up your sales efforts, a tip on using Insightly CRM, and a tip on improving your life. Enjoy this week’s tips!

	Add an Image to Your Email Signature
	Using the HTML editor for your custom email signature, you can insert an HTML tag and URL to display a picture at the bottom of your emails. To do that, you’ll need to save your file on an image hosting service or your own server and make it publicly accessible. You cannot upload an image directly to Insightly. To add an image to your signature:  From the profile icon menu, go to the User Settings > Email Signature page. Click the HTML icon above your signature  Enter the text for your new signature, using the options on the toolbar to format it. You can also include an image by using HTML tags pointing to a hosted image file. Position your cursor at the place in the HTML code where you would like your image to appear. Copy the URL for your image from your image hosting service or server. Enter the HTML img tag and paste the URL to your image within the tag.   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.
	New Collar Worker
	If the collar on a dress shirt or a blouse is looking a bit wrinkled–and you happen to have a flat iron–grab it and run it across the edges for a smooth, freshly ironed finish.
	Tip Yourself Generously
	Before you commit ask yourself, “Is this the business that we are in?” Get clarity on how you spend your time. Write a job description. Being the boss isn’t worth it if you don’t exploit the freedom it affords you. Stick a post it on your computer with your business goals and look at it daily. Be more than a widget. Show your clients why your work matters to you. Create accountability by finding a business buddy. Meet weekly. Celebrate your success. Even the small ones count.
	Set Goals
	Teach sales reps to spend five minutes every day prioritizing. “Without prioritization, it’s difficult to be efficient and productive, says Tom Hopkins, author of Selling for Dummies.   He suggests taking 5 minutes at the end of every day to sit down, assess and choose the 5 or 6 priorities for tomorrow so you can begin with clarity. Successful people don’t squander effort and energy on unimportant issues.”

Check out Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial of the best CRM around.

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.