user's Blog!

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!

Use Insightly Tasks with a Productivity System

There are plenty of apps built to guide you through various productivity methods. But if you’re already using Insightly to manage your work, maybe you can use the features around Insightly tasks to manage your productivity system. On the Insightly Tasks tab, your tasks are grouped by due date in sections like Overdue, Today, This Week, or Next Week. Within those sections, tasks are sorted in descending order of priority (High, Normal, and Low), then in ascending order by due date. Also, you can use the Category and View selections above the task list to filter by those options. Insightly tasks that include due dates also appear on your Insightly calendar, which you can sync to Google Calendar and Exchange Calendar with a paid Insightly plan. Understanding how Insightly tasks work, you can get creative and use them to manage your goals through your favorite productivity system. Some possibilities include: Don’t Break the Chain – Use Insightly’s calendar and completed tasks to monitor your chain of tasks and progress toward goals. Pomodoro – Create a Pomodoro category and use Insightly tasks to mark out your 25-minute work periods and breaks as you complete them. Getting Things Done – Use Insightly tasks to capture all the to-do’s and projects at hand. As you review the list, delete, take action, or organize the tasks. Use this list for your weekly review. 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – Rank your urgent and non-urgent tasks on the Tasks tab with due dates and your important vs. non-important items with task priorities. These are just a few examples of how Insightly can help you implement a system to boost your productivity.

No Productivity System? Try One Out.

If you haven’t tried a productivity system to help you accomplish more every day and week and year, why not give one a try? There are people who will say Getting Things Done is the best thing in the world, and others who will tell you that the Pomodoro technique drastically cut back their “work” time. The truth is that any single system might not be the perfect fit for you. But if you learn even one trick that helps you get a little more done, it will certainly be worth looking into. Who wouldn’t want to save time and be more productive?

Your #1 Task: Get Enough Sleep

“Frère Jacques, Frère Jacques, Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous?” —French Lullaby   Brother John may have been sleeping through morning bells because he had been up a little late the night before, and now millions of children have heard all about it. We don’t know how much the poor guy got done the next day, but he probably wasn’t doing very well. Adults who don’t get enough sleep over many nights “don’t perform as well on complex mental tasks as do people who get closer to seven hours of sleep a night.” Signs that you’re not getting enough sleep include moodiness and drowsiness—and your face can start showing the effects, too. Since there are negative health effects from lack of sleep, make getting enough of it a priority. Exercising during the day makes a difference, and sticking to a sleep schedule in a properly prepared room are among the many changes that will help. If you feel like you’re too stressed or have too much to do to get to sleep at a decent hour, you’re fooling yourself: With more sleep, you’ll feel less stress and get more done during the day.

Send Us Your Tips

Would you like to share your tips with other Insightly blog readers? 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: Tony Roma is Insightly’s Content Manager. He’s been helping businesses implement software solutions and improve their work processes for over ten years.

Image courtesy of Prakairoj at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Insightly recently gave GetApp a tour through our CRM and they have the videos to prove it! GetApp is the #1 independent Cloud Apps Marketplace that helps businesses to find and compare B2B apps with informative reviews and information like GetGuides.

The 18 videos in the Insightly GetGuide will help you understand Insightly in a new way by walking you through everything from the basics of CRM and our customers to our features and integrations with other apps. Take a tour through Insightly with GetApp and view the videos, today.

My company sells customer relationship software. We also do other technology consulting work. Our more than 600 clients sell cars, construction projects, legal services, pipes, paper, film, and 401K plans. You name it, they sell it. We all get sales leads. And we all, to some degree, use the lead management functionality in our CRM programs. But these are just databases. And the data is only as good as the people putting it in.

There are leads and there leads. Your job as a sales and marketing person is to categorize those leads. Is this a good lead or lousy one? A big one or a small one? Worth pursuing or a time waster? Correctly quantifying the value of a lead as early as possible will ensure that you and your people are spending the right amount of time on it. I believe that there is no such thing as a bad lead. If someone has raised their hand and shown an interest in your products or services, it means that he’s a buyer… now or someday. The trick is determining where the money is now and what can wait. And it’s all about asking the lead a few questions. Three questions, actually.

Where are you in the process?
You will have a different conversation with a prospect who is at the very beginning of his search versus one who is further into it. If he’s at the beginning of the search, you are going to spend more time educating. You will need to be more patient. And, after laying all the groundwork and providing your excellent information, you may very well have your deal whisked out from under you by someone who comes in later on with a better deal. You should have good documentation, websites, and resources to share with the prospect so that he can do more research on his own at this early stage in advance of your getting more involved when he’s a less-ignorant buyer. And you’ll have to set your expectations that this deal may not close for a while (if at all) once this person starts getting more info that may put him off doing anything.

What do you think of our pricing?
This infers that you have shared your pricing with the prospect. You need to do this as early as possible. Some salespeople like to hold off on disclosing pricing while they “build value.” That was nice in 1970. Today, people want information now. Immediately. And this benefits you, too. If a prospect is blown out of the water by your pricing you want to know that sooner rather than later, right? There’s no sense in spending any more time with someone who can’t afford your products or services. At best, maybe you can direct them to another offering of yours or even make recommendations that will leave him feeling good about your conversation. Talk about money right away. Don’t beat around the bush.

Why?
That’s it. Just… why? Why is this guy talking to you instead of one of your competitors? Why is he interested in your products and service? You need to understand what’s behind his motive. You need to determine as early as possible his issues and most importantly whether your product or service is the right one to solve his problem. If it is (and he’s got budget, and he’s further along in the process) you’ve got a good, qualified lead. And now you’ve got some good information for your CRM’s lead management system that can be categorized for specific follow-ups and ongoing communications. It’s time to put your sales hat on and go!
 

Check out Insightly’s plans and features for managing your leads and converting them to opportunities.
Or jump right in and register for our free 14-day trial.

 
About the Author: Gene Marks is a small business owner, technology expert, author and columnist. He writes regularly for leading US media outlets such as The New York Times, Forbes, Inc. Magazine and Entrepreneur. He has authored five books on business management and appears regularly on Fox News, Fox Business, MSNBC and CNBC. Gene runs a ten-person CRM and technology consulting firm outside of Philadelphia. Learn more at genemarks.com
 

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

As our customers have grown, so have the features and focus of Insightly CRM. An article in Inc., CRM Enters the SMB Mainstream, talked to our customer NWT3K Outerwear, our vice president of marketing, and other experts about how Insightly is changing to meet the needs of small and mid-sized business. By offering more features at a price that more businesses can afford, Insightly has made the benefits of using a CRM more relevant to everyday business.

With the ability to track customer interactions, manage sales processes, and centralize customer information, Insightly is helping customers like NWT3K improve business across the board.

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!

Prevent Duplicate Entries

Insightly customers have asked us for duplicate checking features, which is a good idea that will move up our request list as it gets more votes. While we all wait for that to move up the priority list, an extra step can save you from creating duplicate items as you enter them or import them into Insightly. If you’re adding a new contact or some other item directly to Insightly, use our global search at the top of the page to perform a quick search for its name before you start adding it. Bonus tip: You can right-click any search results to open matching items in a new tab instead of navigating away from your current page. If it already exists, you can do a fast check of the record to see if it needs updating.   Insightly does perform duplicate checks when you’re importing organizations or contacts, but duplicates are only recognized if there’s a two-point match on the information you’re importing. Be sure you include as much information as you can in the import file, including names, phone numbers, and email addresses. This will help block duplicate records from being created in Insightly and keep your contact records clean.

Keep Your Email Marketing Lean and Clean

Email marketing is a great tool for reaching prospective clients and keeping current customers updated. It’s important to keep messages and contact lists under control to avoid breaking the many international SPAM laws and driving away customers. For people who sign up for information, you might want to consider whether single or double opt-in methods are best for your business (your email marketing software might already have double opt-in available to you). By keeping your contact lists lean and clean, you’ll avoid sending the same message twice, which can be a turn-off and prompt more unsubscribes.     Monitoring reader engagement with your email campaigns through the many statistics available to email marketers can also give you an idea how well things are performing and help you with planning future campaigns. Although Insightly isn’t a marketing platform, we do include email template statistics to help you understand how templates used in our CRM are working for you; email marketing platforms also include these metrics, like open rates and click rates. From initial sign-ups through customer interactions with your messaging, managing your email marketing through the entire cycle will help you get more for your effort.

Organize Your Mobile Address Book

As we save contact lists into our mobile phones and other devices, more and more of us don’t feel the need to remember phone numbers. But if it’s so easy to keep our contacts organized, why are there so many different apps to help us manage them on our Android and iOS devices? It turns out that no matter which devices we have or which apps we use, any information we want to keep track of requires some good, old-fashioned organizing and maintenance.   Before starting any process that could change or remove information, perform a backup for each of your devices, apps, and services; for example, you can usually export your contacts to a CSV file. If you have multiple address books in Gmail, Yahoo, and other programs, you should consider consolidating them into one (or two, if you want to keep a separate list for work contacts). Check for duplicates: If you have the same contact listed three times with different email addresses and phone numbers, merge them together using the available settings and remove any outdated information. There are different apps that can help you with this process, but you’ll spot things that computers and software just can’t. If a computer could do it all for you, you wouldn’t end up with a messy contact list in the first place.

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: Tony Roma is Insightly’s Content Manager. He’s been helping businesses implement software solutions and improve their work processes for over ten years.

Image courtesy of cuteimage at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

In this day and age, consumers are continuously bombarded with information and solicitations, and businesses choosing not to engage their customers (both existing and potential) can easily get lost in the shuffle. By now, you’re probably aware that the right CRM can do wonders for almost any small- or medium-sized business.
 
But you’re not just any small or medium business, are you? You understand that managing reputation is just as essential as managing relationships. Your brand’s got staying power and your business most certainly has what it takes to outshine the competition. You value your customers and you’ve got exactly what they need. So let’s show it. Because better customer service always wins out—even over price.
 

 
Keep Track of Interactions

Consumers are constantly connected nowadays, and it’s almost a crime not to use all the information they volunteer to create a customized experience for them. People want to feel like the decisions they make matter. Make customers feel special… because if they feel like just another number, they won’t be around for long. For example…
 
Let’s say you’re a consumer who’s expecting a new baby, and you’ve signed up for email newsletters to receive coupons and tips you can use through pregnancy, baby prep and beyond. The company asks for the baby’s due date and other info, and you oblige. But, six months after your baby arrives, instead of getting tips on solid foods and coupons for teething toys, you get content about pregnancy or how to cope during your first nights home with a newborn. You’ve even already purchased a crib from this company, but you’re still receiving email reminders to do so, with urgent exhortations to ‘Act Now!’
 
The company above didn’t note you’d already made that purchase and are in need of other (obvious) things. You’d probably unsubscribe and look elsewhere for what you need, since they’ve shown they don’t care about you as a consumer. You don’t want your customers feeling like that, do you? Good. Because it can be prevented.
 
Your CRM software should allow you to track customer interactions so you can review every touch point, every piece of communication sent out or received, and every purchase, making sure your interactions and content are relevant and timely. You may also want to employ a rapid response model so your customers know you’ve got their interests at heart.
 

Inspire Employee Engagement and Humanize Your Brand

One way to boost business is to create a relatable brand. You can do this by getting to the heart of what keeps your business going: Your employees. Who are they? What do they value?
 
Chances are, your target market relates, so try letting them in. This is where effective storytelling comes into play. You need to be completely sure you know what your market values so your story doesn’t fall on deaf ears and cost you potential customers. If you still have any doubts, do some research (formal or otherwise) to figure out a direction. Just be honest and sincere–they’ll love you.
 

Get Social

People can tell the difference between a sales pitch and genuine interaction, so once you’ve humanized your brand, figure out the best social media platform for your customers and start engaging.
 
You may want to do this by sharing coupons or deals, posing questions or asking for opinions, sharing stories, or interact using with a mix of all of the above. Create a CRM strategy and guidelines to help you put some relevant content out on your socials. For example, Tuesday could be the day to push your special for the week, while Fridays feature a client or employee and Saturdays are for conducting contests or giveaways.
 
The right social media presence will garner trust, respect and brand loyalty, while a bad presence can simply lead to rejection. So don’t just start conversations—engage in them. It’ll remind your customers in a subtle way that you’re still there, and help you create repeat customers so you don’t have to spend all your time securing new ones. After all, it’s not only easier to keep current customers, it’s better for your bottom line, too.
 

Manage your Online Reputation

Engaging customers (and the general public) online can open the door to some negativity, so the trick is protecting your brand as if the company’s life depended on it–because it does–and remaining respected and likeable in your market and your field.
 
The same social media strategy you created earlier should now include a plan of action for unfavorable comments or unexpected jabs. You could have a rule about responding within, say, six hours to anyone who’s voiced a concern.
 
Customer had a negative experience? Acknowledge it, let them know you can be better than that, and then offer to prove it (mentions of compensation or the like should be done privately, of course). The key here is to not be too controlling or rigid.
 
The opinions, perceptions and experiences of the public are important, but always be sure to stand by what your brand is at its core. Taking into account what your public values and asking, “Is this how I want my business to be remembered?” may take some time, but it could help you avoid a social media fail. You can delete a tweet, comment or post, but once it’s on the Internet, it’s out there forever, so always operate in a way your customers and the general public will respect.
 
Using CRM to improve your customer service and create a solid brand really is worth the work involved. Show customers that your business is a solid one that’s there to grow with them as they grow, and roll with the same punches they do in this ever-changing digital world.

Try out Insightly CRM by signing up for a 14-day 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!

Set a Data Backup Schedule

Everyone makes mistakes, and you or your coworkers may sometimes delete or change something in your Insightly CRM in error. While Insightly makes backups of our entire system, there’s no way we can know if a change made by a user was intentional or not, so these incremental changes cannot be restored. (That’s why you’ll see a big, red “Are you sure you want to delete this?!” message.) Just like making scheduled backups of your computer’s files, regularly backing up your main Insightly records by exporting to CSV files helps protect you from losing information if someone makes a mistake. With a recent copy of your records at hand, you can restore information to your account through the import process. The export and import links are available in the right sidebar of each main Insightly tab. The export selections for contacts, opportunities, organizations, leads, and projects will email you a CSV file for each of those record types. The tasks page will email you the items you’ve selected from the View filter, so be sure you select All Tasks. Add a recurring item on your calendar to prompt you to perform the backups or set up a repeating task in Insightly with a reminder. Clicking through the export links only takes a minute or two, and you’ll find it time well spent if you ever need to fix an unintended deletion or edit.

Accept That Mistakes Will Happen

“It’s important to be willing to make mistakes. The worst thing that can happen is you become memorable.” –Sara Blakely In business, mistakes happen. Common mistakes when starting a business might be avoidable, but they’re “common” for many reasons. Some entrepreneurs ignore advice and charge forward, thinking, “That will never happen to us.” And some managers don’t know about the pitfalls that await them. While every business is different, knowing about the most common slip-ups can help you prevent them. Nonetheless, when you or your coworkers do make mistakes, accept they happened, learn from them, and help your staff learn—you’ll all be better for it. After all, you can’t go back in time. With this reality in mind, create back-up plans and safety nets to protect your business and your data. Work through any errors that do occur to determine their causes and how they might be prevented in the future. If you made the mistake, own up to it right away and share the results of your analysis with your entire team so that everyone can learn from it. If someone is making mistakes repeatedly or, even worse, making the same mistake over and over, then you’ll need to look into why this is happening. But being aware and accepting of the fact that mistakes will happen will help you go easier on yourself and your staff as you continually improve your processes. Any other way will just stifle your workplace and the flow of your business.

Always Move Forward Through Mistakes… and Success

“If you’re not making mistakes, then you’re not doing anything.” -John Wooden When you make a mistake, it doesn’t mean it’s time to throw in the towel. The same is true when you reach a successful point in your life: Why rest on your laurels when you can continue to learn and grow? Life is about living and moving forward, not about staying still. Some mistakes can certainly be prevented, so heed advice, especially if you hear it repeated often. And when you do stumble, translate that experience into a learning opportunity. Step up, make changes, and work with others who can help you chart a new course. If you need assistance, try various ways to get the support you need and get the perspectives of others. Keep all you’ve learned in mind as you continue to move forward, because it’s easy to slip backward when you’re accomplishing something. Most of all, when you do make an error, give yourself a break. Every human being makes mistakes; it’s how we recover from them that makes the difference.

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: Tony Roma is Insightly’s Content Manager. He’s been helping businesses implement software solutions and improve their work processes for over ten years.

Image courtesy of Chris Sharp at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Welcome to Turn It Up Tuesday, where we bring you 3 weekly tips—a tip on using Insightly, a tip on running your business, and a tip on improving your life. Enjoy this week’s tips!

Keep Insightly at Hand with Our Android and iOS Apps

If you’ve ever thought, “I’ll add that to my CRM when I get back to the office,” you might want to download one of our mobile apps and have Insightly at hand whenever you need it. We have native apps for both iOS and Android devices, giving you access to your contacts, tasks, and all the other work you do in Insightly. We’ve even added a business card scanner for customers with paid plans, so you can snap a photo of a card someone hands you at a conference and have the new contact added to Insightly before you leave the next workshop. And if you’re on the road for site visits or customer check-ins, a mobile app is a great way to add a note or a photo and quickly review your client’s CRM information before you start a meeting!

Is Your Website Ready for Mobile?

Having a mobile-ready website has already been an important piece of any marketing strategy. This is even more true as customers increasingly use mobile browsers to view the web. With Google’s recent changes to website ranking, being mobile-ready is also a factor in how likely your site will appear in search results to prospective customers. It used to be that companies maintained two versions of their websites to cover their bases: one for desktop browsers and one for mobile devices. These days, responsive web design is the trend, letting you manage one site that adapts to both larger and smaller screens. If your site is not reflecting this current method, you may be missing business opportunities. Check your site with Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool, and then talk to a web developer or your website designer to make sure you’re keeping up with your mobile customers.

Stay Healthy and Stay Mobile

When young and healthy, most people don’t think about aging very much. At a certain point in life, aches and pains can start limiting our physical activity and reminding us that our bodies are getting older. No matter what your age, keep in mind that your years of activity—or lack thereof—have a profound impact on your future health.   The health of your bones and joints is often taken for granted until your movement is more limited and you start to experience a lower quality of life. Careful stretching, getting the appropriate rest between periods of exercise, and more low-impact activities are just a few of the ways you can take care of yourself. As you get older, managing your weight, continuing to exercise, and taking nutritional supplements can help you fight off and manage the inflammation that causes pain. At all stages in life, the basics to healthy living are the same, but keeping in mind the long-term impact of today’s activities can help you continue to be active for a long time to come. Someday, older you will thank younger you for doing it.

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 sign up for a free trial.

About the author: Tony Roma is Insightly’s Content Manager. He’s been helping businesses implement software solutions for over ten years.

Image courtesy of Nutdanai Apikhomboonwaroot at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.