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

Welcome to Turn It Up Tuesday, where we bring you 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!

Improve Customer Intelligence with Custom Fields, Tags, and Linking

Have you ever been working on a deal and found you had a common connection with your prospective client? Insightly has a number of ways to capture information to bring these connections to light. Features like linking, tags, and custom fields can quickly present you with valuable intelligence and help you build rapport with someone on your very first call. With custom fields, for example, you can create a “Referred by” field to track high-level sources like “Customer,” “Website,” or “Spring Blossoms Email.” Tags can be used to label prospects in multiple ways according to their needs, interests, and previous purchases. And when you or someone in your company knows about a personal or business relationship that the prospect has with an existing customer or employee, linking is an important way of not only noting that relationship, but also creating a hyperlink to the other contact records right in your CRM. (Bonus Tip! Using custom filters, you can create lists of contacts or leads based on field and tag values to break down your call lists into more focused segments.) If you haven’t tried out some of these features, give it a go! You’re likely to find a way of improving your process and making more sales.

Reduce Acquisition Costs Through Customer Connections

Marketing, sales efforts, requirements analysis—every stage of acquiring a new customer costs money. Since you’ve already invested in your existing customers, and word of mouth is a powerful tool for growing your business, why not encourage them to help you in expanding your client base? A referral program is a great way to bring in more business while letting your customers feel they are an important part of your efforts. Make sure your customers understand what you’re looking for in new clients through discussions or promotional material, and then reward them when a referral pans out. Referral awards can be as simple as a thank-you card or a movie ticket and will help your customers feel even more appreciated.

Connect Your Dots to Find a Way Forward

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward you can only connect them looking backwards.” —Steve Jobs   If you’ve ever helped a child with their homework, you probably faced that moment when the kid felt frustrated and gave up, saying, “I can’t do it!” The best solution is often to encourage them to approach the problem from a different angle and help them follow their own way of thinking to get to—and understand—the answer. Like many childhood lessons, this one can serve us well as adults.   If you feel frustrated, blocked, or stuck in a rut, it’s a good idea to reflect on your past experiences to identify what drives you. Take some time to understand the motivations that will help you find your path to a more fulfilling career, better health, or hobbies that help you feel more satisfied. Having trouble staying in shape? You probably haven’t found the right exercise, yet. Can’t seem to finish that construction project? Maybe working on it for a half hour every afternoon will be just the right schedule to make progress. Figuring out how you work best and recognizing that failed attempts mean you haven’t given up can help you find the right course and move forward in life.

 
 

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 and spent a good deal of time helping his niece with her homework.

Ranking Based on 480+ in-depth reviews and user ratings

We are happy to announce that Insightly was named a top-rated CRM platform by enterprise and small business users on TrustRadius, a leading peer review site for business software. We are very grateful to our customers who took the time to submit their high reviews and provide their opinions on Insightly.

Reviewers pointed out that Insightly is affordable and is easy to set up and use. Insightly’s task management features, customization, and integrations with a variety of software are all listed as reasons to use our CRM.

We believe that the movement of Insightly into the enterprise-level ratings is an indication that our responsiveness to customers’ needs is helping us add all the right features at the right time, allowing our CRM to grow as our customers’ businesses do.

Insightly is one of the top 12 CRM platforms listed in TrustRadius’ Buyers Guide to CRM Software, an in-depth guide to help stakeholders understand the benefits of CRM and compare available products to make the right purchase decision for their business.

You can download a free copy of the report here:
https://www.trustradius.com/guides/crm

 

Insightly offers an easy 14-day free trial, so you can give our CRM a try.

 
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.

Meet Joe. The Best CRM Client Ever.

Every year, about five to ten times a year, I get the same call.

“Yeah,” the voice says to me on the phone. “I’m Joe. I’m a sales manager. And I need a CRM system.”

“OK,” I say. Time to ask some questions. Except before I do, Joe keeps going.

“I just switched jobs. At my last job I used a CRM system called XYZ. I understand you guys sell that, too. I’m not saying XYZ is the greatest, but I’m happy with it. So I want you to come out to my new place and set it up for me. I want it to look exactly like the system at my last job. I want you to teach my guys how to use it.”

“OK,” I say. So far so good.

“Except there’s just one thing,” the guy says.

Uh-oh, I think. Here it comes.

“I need you to make sure you’ve set up three reports for me. I need these reports to do my job. You set up the system and set up the reports and teach my guys just to do the data entry and the rest will be up to me.”

“When can I start?” I say. I love my wife, but I want to kiss Joe.

Because I love Joe, too. I love when I get these calls. Joe, a sales manager, knows exactly what’s needed from a CRM system for it to be useful. He’s not a technical guy. But when I get calls like this I know from the start that he will be successful with his CRM system. That’s because he understands four core things about CRM systems.

For starters, CRM systems are nothing more than databases. With all due respect to the great CRM vendors and software out there, Joe knows this. The fact that these databases can now be hosted and maintained online only makes them that much more available and easier to use. But putting aside all of the buzzwords and features—opportunity management, campaigns, workflows, alerts, and social integration—in the end, the data is just stored in a database. Joe knows that he needs a good, reliable repository of data to run his organization and wants to be sure that it’s configured the right way and his people are trained to get the data in accurately.

He also knows the 20% rule. Joe is a sales manager. And like all workers in today’s organizations he uses software: word processing, spreadsheets, online applications. But he also knows that he doesn’t use all the capabilities of all the software applications available to him. Who does? The same goes for CRM applications. My best clients, like Joe, use maybe 20-30% of what their CRM applications do. There are entire areas that they don’t even touch. But that’s OK. No one has to be 100% good at everything. Joe and other sales managers like him focus on those aspects of the software that help their teams the most and don’t get caught up in features or functions that have no value for them.

He’s very direct: Use it or don’t work here. Joe and sales managers like him are brutally frank. He tells his team that the CRM is not about them. It’s his system. It’s the company’s system. He will do his best to employ experts (like me) to make it as user-friendly as possible and provide as much training as needed. “But in the end,” he says to them. “I need the information from this system to manage this group. I need it to do my job. And you’re going to have to get that data in there if you want to do your job.” No wimps here! That’s what it’s like to run a sales team in 2015. Good sales managers need data. They are sympathetic to their employees, but they don’t bow down to them.

Finally, it’s all about the reports. Joe wants his reports. He lives by his reports. He is a manager. And managers need accurate, complete reports to help them manage their teams, their organizations, and their businesses. A CRM system is completely useless unless good data is coming out of it, routinely, consistently, and accurately. Joe knows that to be a good manager, you have to be a data-driven manager. And that is the core function of his CRM system. What reports does he like the most? Stay tuned….

So thank God for Joe. He knows what he wants. He’s asked for very black-and-white deliverables. He’s all about the data, all about the reports. He values his CRM system as a tool to help him get his job done, not some miracle technology that will change his life. I wish every one of my CRM clients was as focused and pragmatic as he is.
 

Check out Insightly’s features for managing your sales process and collaborating with your team by registering for our 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 khunaspix at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

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. April 15 is tax day here in the U.S., so today’s tips focus on keeping your accounting in order to make tax time less stressful. Enjoy!

Connect Insightly to QuickBooks Online

Wouldn’t it be great to view your customers’ payments and invoices right in their CRM records? If you’re using QuickBooks Online (QBO) and subscribe to an Insightly paid plan, you can connect the two to do just that. By activating the Insightly-QBO integration, you’ll see the current payment status and balance for each record you link to a QBO record. Any user who can view the record will also see the QuickBooks icon and be able to see that information. And if you need to take action in QBO, you can jump right over with a click or two if you have a QuickBooks login. Easy information, easy access!

Keep Good Records to Make Tax Time Easier

Tax preparation is an often-procrastinated task. As with most large and looming duties, it can be managed more effectively if you keep good records throughout the year. Talk with your accountant or a tax advisor about what you need to keep and file those items away as they happen. Starting a filing system for receipts can seem like a huge task, but there are many apps and online options to help, and the time you put into it will pay off in reduced stress and easier management at tax time.

Tax Day, Don’t Delay!

There are millions of Americans who pay penalties and interest for late tax filings every year. Since tax day comes around regularly, that says a lot about the human tendency toward procrastination. If you can, bite the bullet and be ready to file on tax day, otherwise you’re delaying your payments and making that intimidating bill even more costly. Your local and national government is likely to have plenty of information available online and might even be able to answer questions to diminish your anxiety about the whole process. If you’re still having trouble with it all, look into other resources like local organizations or friends and family who can guide you. Need some motivation? Think about the relief you’ll feel when it’s done and behind you!

 

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 and improve their work processes for over ten years.

Image courtesy of hywards 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 phone tips!

	Optimize Contact Numbers for Your Mobile Phone
	If you’re using either of Insightly’s mobile apps for Android or iOS, you can include dialing codes when you enter a phone number in Insightly and make dialing easier from your mobile phone. For example, phone numbers with extensions or phone trees will require a pause between the dialed phone number and the option number or telephone extension. Most mobile phones allow you to include a comma (,) to allow for a 2-3 second pause and a semicolon (;) to wait for your okay to continue.   When entering the phone number into Insightly, you can include these characters directly in the phone number string (for example, “1-800-555-7662,101”). Anytime you dial a contact from one of our mobile apps, the pause and extension will then be dialed for you with no additional steps required!
	Common Sense Phone Etiquette is Good for Business
	Communicating with your prospects or customers over the telephone always requires knowledge about your products or services to effectively make a sale or resolve a problem. But the way you communicate is just as important as the information you’re sharing. Your greeting influences your initial impression, so err on the side of formality as you identify yourself and your business. Smile while you’re on a call to help you maintain a friendly tone—you can even install a small mirror on your desk as a reminder. Phone calls are like any other conversation, so listening carefully will go a long way toward understanding the customer’s needs and addressing them properly. Keeping these basic practices in mind will help your customers feel welcome and respected.
	Protect Your Smartphone
	Today’s $600 smartphones hold exponentially more information than a computer from the 1970’s that cost $2,638. With all the apps, contacts, and communications available, the data on your phone is certainly more valuable, too, so it’s important to protect it from unauthorized access. Setting up a PIN or password is a simple step that will help keep your personal information safe. When you change phones or upgrade, restoring the factory settings on your old phone will wipe out your own information before you sell it or trade it in. The FCC Smartphone Security Checker can provide you with specific steps to secure your brand of phone as well as other links to help you better understand mobile security.

 

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 and improve their work processes for over ten years.

Image courtesy of imagerymajestic at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

The best online CRM has the best customers in the business and we want to help you connect!
Twitter chats provide a forum to both follow and participate in a question-and-answer session on Twitter, and Insightly’s first #LoveYourCRM Twitter chat will take place on Wednesday, April 1, 2015 at noon, eastern time. (Nope, this is not an April Fools’ Day joke!)

With the #LoveYourCRM chat, Insightly will bring together business owners to share success stories, best practices, and tips for using CRM. The focus will be on the creative and innovative ways that companies are using CRM to improve productivity and efficiency across the organization. Each month, we’ll feature a different guest to share his or her story and then everyone else is invited to share ideas and ask questions.

Our first chat will be with marketing expert and CEO of Flight Media Joshua Coffy, and will focus on how he has implemented CRM to improve organization and significantly increase revenue.

If you can make it, we’d love to see you participate in our CRM Twitter chat and hear your feedback afterwards. With your contribution, we can make this an informative and valuable experience for all participants!

To learn more about how to join a Twitter chat, see Janet Fouts’ great article, How to Participate in a Tweet Chat.

Excellent customer relationship management (CRM) has always been important, but it has gotten even more so over the past few years. Today, your customers have many choices of goods and service providers, and many avenues for finding and spreading information about your products and your company (for example, social media). CRM is a growing industry, especially as more tech companies are getting into the game and producing more sophisticated CRM software products with an ever-growing list of functions and features.

But as the field expands and more tools become available, too many businesses are focusing so narrowly on the management aspect that they are losing track of what is at the heart of customer relationship management: relationships with customers. The secret to excellent CRM is really just excellent customer relationships. CRM software can automate and streamline the management part of the process so that you and your employees can concentrate on what’s really important.

Here are 10 tips for how to use CRM software to build and improve customer relationships. Sign up for a free 14-day trial of Insightly to put these tips into action.

1. Track everything
   CRM software is commonly used to house contact information and to track contact history, sales history, and so on. But real customer relationships are based on more than just who bought what and when. Use your system to also track personal information about your customers, such as their birthdays, hobbies and interests, and so on—anything that might give you further insight into your customers as individuals. You can consider conducting an online survey to obtain information that falls outside of your sales process.
2. Identify your top customers
   All of your customers are important, and they all deserve excellent customer service. But remember the Pareto principle (aka the 80:20 rule): 80% of your profits come from 20% of your customers. CRM software provides analytical tools that can help you identify that vital 20%. It can also help you identify the 20% of customers who are taking up 80% of your agents’ time—they likely aren’t the same 20%! Using this information, you can better manage workflow and allocate resources to make sure that your top customers are getting the very best service from your organization.
3. Schedule regular customer contacts
   Use your CRM system to make sure no customers get left behind. As you no doubt know, keeping your existing customers is far more profitable over the long term than constantly having to search for new ones. Make your customers feel valued by scheduling regular contacts including thank-yous, service follow-ups, and other check-ins.
4. Contact customers using their preferred channels
   Some customers like email, others engage with your company primarily via Twitter, and still others prefer the good old fashioned phone call. Knowing how your customers prefer to interact, and respecting their preferences, makes them feel valued by your organization. Not only that, but many customers often ignore messages that don’t come in via their preferred channels.
5. Respond more quickly to customer questions and complaints
   These days, if it takes you longer than a few hours to acknowledge a customer’s question or complaint, chances are it’s too late—that customer has probably already posted something on Facebook, Twitter, or Yelp about your poor customer service. CRM software can help you monitor the social networks for problems. Since all of the customer’s data is housed within the software, it can also help you respond to that problem as fast as possible, which will leave your customers with a good impression. It doesn’t take very many bad reviews to irreparably damage your reputation. The flip side is that positive reviews and referrals can quickly bring you new customers.
6. Provide offsite access to customer information
   Your employees don’t interact with customers only when they’re sitting at their desk. They may also have contact with them during on-site sales pitches, at trade shows, and (for sales reps) even on their mobile phones during off-hours. In today’s instant gratification world, customers certainly don’t want to wait until your employees can get back to their computers to have their questions answered and issues resolved. CRM software that supports remote and mobile access puts relevant information at your employees’ fingertips so that customers always receive the same high-quality service, regardless of whether they are calling in to the help line or talking with your company’s representatives at an industry event.
7. Make sure your CRM system is fully integrated
   Most CRM software can be integrated with other data tracking systems, and they should be. Full integration allows each employee who deals with a specific account to have a complete picture of the customer and the customer’s history with the organization. For example, this knowledge can come in handy when identifying untapped sales opportunities and when dealing with questions and complaints—customers don’t want to have to explain their problem more than once.
8. Offer a more consistent, streamlined experience
   What is the typical process by which customers interact with your company? Do you have certain salespeople and customer service agents assigned to each account, or do your customer interactions operate on more of a first come, first serve basis? Customer relationships don’t move down a one-way street—many clients prefer to deal with the same employees each time because they feel those employees best understand their particular requirements. CRM software allows managers to delegate tasks and manage workflow in a way that provides customers with a more consistent, streamlined experience every time they contact the company.
9. Identify upselling opportunities
   The more you know about your current customers, the more you will be able to make recommendations about additional products and services to meet their needs. You might even help them identify needs they didn’t know they had and that your products can solve. CRM software gives you the ability not only to get to know your customers on a more personal level, but also to analyze their buying patterns so you can get the most benefit out of your sales opportunities with each and every customer.
10. Personalize your marketing campaigns
    One of the most powerful, and most underused, functions of CRM software is the ability to target marketing campaigns to specific customers. By combining data about customers’ purchases with information about the customers themselves, you can develop personalized marketing campaigns that have a much greater rate of return than campaigns that take a shotgun approach.

 

Insightly includes features to help you implement all of Sameer’s tips. Register for a 14-day free trial to see if it’s the right CRM software for you.

About the Author: Sameer Bhatia is founder & CEO of ProProfs, a leading provider of online learning tools for building, testing, and applying knowledge. ProProfs Knowledge Base Software is used to create highly-searchable online FAQ’s to improve customer service and reduce tickets. It helps centralize access to organizational files, documents and how-to articles ensuring they can be accessed across multiple devices and platforms.

Sameer founded ProProfs based on the vision that knowledge should be freely available to people from all walks of life. The site hosts 1,000,000+ pieces of content in 90+ languages, and is a leading platform for online training and assessment with the world’s largest library of professional tests & quizzes. He has a Master’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Southern California and is an ed-tech industry veteran. You can find him on Google+ & Twitter.