CRM for small business – user's Blog!

September 29, 2016

Insightly Recognized By Gartner

Insightly places on the new FrontRunners quadrant for CRM software!

FrontRunners is a new research methodology on Software Advice, powered by Gartner Methodology. Similar in design to Gartner’s Magic Quadrant, the FrontRunners quadrant provides a data-driven assessment of top performing products that offer the best capability and value for small businesses. It’s driven by real user reviews and ratings, and verified product data.

The FrontRunners methodology assesses products on two primary dimensions: Capability on the x-axis and Value on the y-axis. The Capability score is based on three criteria: user ratings on capability, a functionality breadth analysis, and a business confidence assessment. Learn more about how Gartner selects top contenders.

At Insightly, we offer a CRM used by small and mid-sized businesses from a variety of verticals. Learn about all of Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial.

September 13, 2016

Customer Q&A: Manufacturing a Better Business with Insightly

Take a look around your office: chances are manufacturing professionals created most of the items you see. These professionals harbor a wide range of talents; they are artists, scientists, engineers, and craftsman. Yet, when faced with the challenge of managing their production time and the business side of things, many small- and mid-sized manufacturing companies admit that they could use a little help.

Insightly surveyed 465 manufacturing professionals worldwide through a third-party vendor to identify their top project management and sales challenges. One of those customers, Lorin Zavik, who oversees the sales and marketing department for Mid Atlantic Manufacturing, discusses how Insightly changed the way her team runs their business.

Insightly: In your own words, what does an ideal customer look like for Mid Atlantic Manufacturing?

Zavik: An ideal customer for us is one who comes to us with a concrete vision that we help them further ideate and create. We manufacture solid surface and laminate countertops. But as you can imagine, no two customers are the same. Being that we are located right outside of Washington D.C., we’ve had the chance to manufacture countertops for military bases, apartment buildings, schools, hospitals, restaurants, and corporate headquarters. The needs of a school differ greatly from that of a military base. But at the end of the day, we love working with such a variety of industries because it makes every day different.

Insightly: Wow! Impressive roster of clients. We imagine that some clients like to know what “the norm” is for their industry before they place an order. How do you keep track of all that variety?

Zavik: Honestly, that’s part of the reason we started using Insightly a year ago. Our business was expanding and we needed a platform to keep track of all of our work. Our CEO Laurent Claudel was also traveling more and networking with various potential customers and he needed a way to keep track of all those prospects while on the road. In the past, we kept track of all this information in paper files but Laurent is extremely environmentally aware. He wanted to go paperless and Insightly gave us a way to better track our current project and leads, while also helping us to reduce our carbon footprint.

Insightly: That’s great to hear you’re so environmentally aware and we are happy to hear Insightly helped your team go greener. How are you using Insightly on a day-to-day basis?

Zavik: We use Insightly to track opportunities on a daily basis. Once a customer requests a project, we enter the customer information into Insightly and use it to track the project from start to finish. We track our KPIs on a monthly basis; once a month, our team gathers to examine all of the current projects in Insightly, analyzing what we have won and what we have lost. Insightly allows us to set goals for the future and improve on existing processes. I also love that it is integrated with Google Apps so it can sync with my email and calendar for project management purposes.

Insightly: That’s great! What about hurdles and challenges? We saw in our survey that 62 percent of respondents cited organizing information as their top challenge. Is this something your team faces?

Zavik: We are a small business so being able to have one source of information is crucial for our team. But it’s more than that; Insightly’s mobile platform allows our team to work and stay connected from anywhere in the country, which is a challenge we previously had as a company. If a family issue comes up, I can work from home and I don’t have to come to the office and file my information for the team to see my project status. We also have an outside sales consultant who logs all of her meet-and-greets into Insightly from home. The ability to incorporate remote work capabilities into our office culture is definitely a cultural change, but an extremely positive one.

Insightly: Customer service is crucial in any industry, but I’m sure it’s especially important in the manufacturing space. Has Insightly helped in that aspect?

Zavik: Insightly is key to delivering the level of excellence we strive for when it comes to customer service. We are big on transparency, and Insightly’s reporting feature allows us to deliver a factual document that we can present to customers. It also allows the entire team to have a historical record of our customer. In other words, it is an educational gold mine of contact information for us. Not only that, the Insightly training webinars also offer some great insights and tips so I can expand my knowledge of customer service.

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.

August 4, 2016

5 Ways to Create All-Star Content for Your Brand

Ah summer…sunshine, green grass, fresh air, and of course BASEBALL! It’s America’s national pastime!

As marketers, you might be struggling to hit a home run in the slower summer months. Sales can lag in this quarter, as folks pack up their bags and the office and hit the road for summer vacations. Once you’re past the start-of-year, over tax season, and haven’t hit the holiday and end-of-year rush yet, you might be feeling the long lazy days of summer hitting your bottom line.

So what can we learn from the “boys of summer” to keep things fresh, and make sure you’re hitting home runs with your customers and not striking out. Keep batting a thousand and keep your customer experience out of the park.

1. Keep Content Current
Focus on current events, stay up on industry trends, keep tabs on your customers and know what’s going on. One game can rarely make or break a team in baseball (unless it’s the World Series), but cumulatively a series of losses add up. Stay up on what’s going on and don’t let a miss cause you a big loss.

Organize your customer data and track leads, sales, and points of contact regularly. Reach out to customers consistently with targeted communication. This might mean keeping your social media content fresh, regularly posting to your blog, and engaging with customers online. Respond to customer feedback, and keep your content relevant and up-to-date.

On the same note, if you’re hitting a slump when it comes to marketing ideas, focus on what’s going on in the world around you. With current events (Olympics, election, sports and trends) you can easily pick and choose content that touches on the pulse of what’s happening in the world.

While you should avoid sport-industry-level controversy, of course, mentioning current events helps customers realize you are timely and in the know (and can boost your SEO and trending topics).

2. Know Your Stats
They say baseball is a thinking man’s (or woman)’s game. It’s a game of statistics. Incremental returns and cumulative scores add up into a series of wins or losses. Your analytics are your own personal statistics. Many of us avoid our analytics because they can be intimidating, or even – well, let’s face it – boring. Learn to understand the story and you can find your stats to be just as riveting as any MLB All Star.

Your analytics reflect your customers’ experience. They can tell you what’s generating responses and what’s being ignored. Data paints for you the ways your customers are interacting with your content and reveals what searches lead them to you.

Watch for trends. Watch for marketing efforts that get clicks, shares and engagement, and keep going with similar content. Ask for customer feedback and keep your eye on satisfaction and customer happiness. Customer satisfaction matters in all industries, including baseball.

3. Save Your Closers for the Final Inning
When you’re in the bottom of the ninth and the bases are loaded, your entire team looks to the closing pitcher to make or break the game. In your business, when you’re at a make or break point, whom do you look to?

What member of your team is the closer? Not just in sales, but the team leaders who can rally and do what it takes to keep you on top of the game? Those people are your leaders. They are the employees who should be treated like gold.

Typically, your all-star team members are the ones on board with the company’s vision. They understand the big picture, and are in it for the best outcome for all, not just themselves. Find the employees you can rely on and who are loyal and honest. Keep those hardworking visionaries happy. Put them in the bullpen and bring them out when you need them to throw some strikes. Take care of them, and they’ll take care of you.

4. Know Your Competitor
When a visiting team comes to your stadium, you know their stats. You’ve studied the talent on their team, and pick your best players who can go head-to-head for the win. Know your competition just as well as you’d know the opposing team. Don’t keep your eyes focused on the dugout, worry about the game at hand, but know what your opposition brings to the table and plan accordingly.

Study industry news on your competitor’s successes and failures. Keep a handle on what they’re doing well, and what areas you excel at. Play on your strengths and learn from theirs. If your competition has great customer service, then it might be time to focus on building your customer experience. If your competition has great social media presence, then maybe it’s time to bolster your own.

At the same time, if you are known for your ability to deliver on a deadline, or your attentiveness to the individual customer, don’t scrimp on your strengths to compete with another company. Play up the things you do well, and work on the areas that need attention.

5. Rely on Your Fans
When it comes down to it, the things that make a baseball team truly great are the fans. Sticking it out through inning after inning, flying out of state for spring training, jotting down the stats in their notebooks as they sit in the stands with their baseball mitts. True fans are vital to the success of Major League baseball; just as much a part of the game as beer, hotdogs, peanuts and Cracker Jack.

Your customers should be your biggest fans. Loyal, repeat customers are your most valuable commodities. It takes years to build up a customer and seconds to lose one. Paying attention to the needs of your clients, being attentive and quick to address their concerns, and working hard to stay “on the ball” will keep you ahead of the game.

When summer is over and the season has ended, applying these lessons from America’s favorite sport can help you hit home runs in your industry all year long.

July 26, 2016

From One Creative to Another

Creatives inherently go against the grain; it’s what fuels the value they deliver to their customers. But what about when it’s time to bring in business, support customers and nurture leads?

This is where many creative businesses struggle. In a recent survey of nearly 400 creative professionals and business owners in marketing, communication, design, advertising, media and creative agencies, Insightly identified the specific challenges agencies most often face when it comes to project management and sales. Organization and client management rose to the top of the list.

Among the survey respondents was Chase Clymer, CEO of digital marketing agency two70. We spoke with him recently about how CRM has helped him to overcome project management challenges and improved the way he runs his creative business.

Insightly: Describe two70 and the services you provide.

Clymer: two70 is a digital marketing agency based out of Columbus, Ohio. We enhance our clients’ work by creating visually appealing materials, and we specialize in web development, content marketing, and social media management.

Insightly: What made you want to start your own business?

Clymer: I’ve been doing freelance photography since college. I was also in a band, and after graduation, we toured across the country. During that time, I still needed to make money, so I continued to freelance while also using my digital marketing skills to promote the band. After the band broke up, I took a job as creative director for a music festival and further honed in on my marketing chops. Three years ago, I decided to go out on my own and that’s when two70 was born.

Insightly: On average, how many projects do you have at any one time?

Clymer: I work on between 6 and 12 projects at one time. Our clients are in a variety of industries, including insurance, real estate and fashion.

Insightly: Why did you look for a new solution, and were you looking for a CRM specifically?

Clymer: I knew I needed a better way to keep track of contacts and project details. I’ve used CRMs before, but I never found one that really met all my needs. I heard about Insightly, and after reading reviews from other users about how easy it is to use and its solid integration with Google Apps, I decided to try it out. The scalability of Insightly’s Freemium option was also a huge draw. two70 is growing, so I needed a tool that could grow with it. Now, when we need to add more functionality, it’s there, and we don’t need to search for another tool.

Insightly: What were you using to manage contacts, leads and projects before Insightly?

Clymer: For a long time I used a simple notebook to keep track of to-dos, client phone numbers and emails, and notes from client calls. Once I found Evernote, a digital notebook, I started to use that, and it worked for a while, but things were still falling off my radar. I knew it wasn’t a good way to keep a growing business organized, manage simultaneous projects, or keep up with prospects. Once I started to use Insightly, it was like night and day. I was able to quickly reference notes, see the progress of each project, and stay on top of daily tasks.

Insightly: What is your biggest sales challenge?

Clymer: It’s been a challenge to move customers through the sales funnel, so this is an area of the business that Insightly has really helped to improve. When a new lead comes in, I add it into Insightly and immediately start to assign myself tasks and reminders. This can be anything from a task to schedule a consultation, to setting a reminder to follow up with a lead in a few weeks to see if they’re ready to move forward

Insightly keeps us on track with our project deliverables. Now we can automate the tasks for putting together a proposal and assign deadlines, so we can get material to the client quickly. The ability to turn around proposals and projects is what sets us apart from other agencies. Once the contract is signed and we’ve officially won the business, we get the project moving, assigning tasks and deadlines for both two70 and the client. Our clients have a million things to do, and Insightly makes working with two70 a seamless process.

Insightly: How does Insightly help you deliver excellent client service?

Clymer: We’re very personable and take pride in our ability to respond quickly to inquiries – we never let emails sit for too long. The integration with Gmail makes it easy to add a task from within an email, so I don’t have to remember to add it to Insightly later. We also automate tasks and add reminders, so nothing falls through the cracks, which helps us to provide clients with excellent customer service. Because we take such good care of our clients, we have a very high retention rate, and referrals make up a large part of new business. Insightly also helps us to keep track of who is referring us to new business.

Insightly: What does Insightly mean to you as a business owner?

Clymer: I don’t know how I ran my business before Insightly – it’s my favorite tool. I love that it’s an all-inclusive platform, so I only need to remember one password. I can keep track of almost every aspect of the business, and the fact that it’s so tightly integrated with Google Apps means my Gmail, Google Docs, and calendar are easily accessible, which makes my life just that much easier.

Insightly: Describe one of your favorite client projects. Why is it your favorite?

Clymer: During this year’s NBA finals between the Golden State Warriors and Cleveland Cavaliers, two70 worked with Ohio Against The World, an apparel company based in Cincinnati. During the series, the T-shirts were flying off the shelves, and we executed a Facebook advertising campaign promoting the brand. It was cool to be part of a viral campaign connected to a moment in sports history.

Insightly helped to manage what needed to get done and when. This was a fast-moving project, given the pace of the series, so we had to stay on top of everything. I set reminders for game days, and would immediately check the stats post game so I could update the wording of our ads. This happened all the way up to the final game. Once the Cavaliers won, I immediately updated all the messaging to promote the champions t-shirt. It was much more intense than the usual social campaign, so it was vital that I had Insightly there to keep me on track and on pace.

Insightly: How will Insightly help in the continued growth of two70?

Clymer: I just hired a new assistant and the first thing I told her was that she needed to watch the Insightly University videos so she’s up to speed with how to use the platform. Insightly is at the core of my business, so any new team member needs to be able to dive in and use it efficiently. As the business continues to grow, I know Insightly is going to be the best way to manage my team and projects so there’s no confusion about where things stands and what needs to get done.

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.

July 21, 2016

How To Get Your Salespeople To Use Your CRM System

A few years ago, we suffered a horrible customer relationship management (CRM) failure.

The project involved an international distributor based in Pennsylvania with about 50 sales reps around the world. Every week the sales reps sent in their Activity Reports in all sorts of different formats – spreadsheets, word docs, scrap pieces of paper, telegrams, notes tied to carrier pigeons – to an administrator who then spent a day consolidating all the information into a single report for the VP of Sales to review. The VP of Sales, tired of the effort, decided to invest in a CRM system. He hired us to do this. And so we did.

We setup a great CRM system for the company. We configured screens and put in a process for entering data. We trained the sales group both in-person at their annual meeting and then online. We worked hard to put in place the best CRM system a company could buy. And it was awesome. Except for one thing. No one used it.

Well, not exactly no one. Let’s say about a third of the sales reps didn’t use it. There were lots of reasons given. “The forms are too cumbersome,” one said. “The process is too slow,” another complained. “I prefer my spreadsheet,” a few others said. So what happened? They went back to doing things the old way. And, worse, the VP of Sales let them. When a third of the people in a workgroup don’t use a workgroup system then the system fails. The company’s CRM system failed. We failed. So what did I learn? Three things.

Treat each sales rep individually.

I have met plenty of sales reps that can sell snow to an Eskimo in January but aren’t very good with software. Fair enough. But software and databases are necessary tools for salespeople today. I failed to come up with a compromise for each salesperson individually. At the international distributor, like most companies, a third of the sales people needed extra hand-holding. We should’ve known about these people in advance and had a plan to help them individually understand the system. An internal support person should have been assigned to these salespeople to monitor and answer any questions so they didn’t feel like they were alone in the woods (or in Germany or Japan, or wherever their office happened to be). Each person is different – some may prefer a mobile app, others to do data entry on a desktop. A few may want to just call in their appointments to an admin for updating over the phone. It’s all good as long as we get the data into the system. For a CRM system to be successful, each sales rep has to be treated as a customer. We never asked ourselves what could we do to minimize their data entry time so that management can get the data they need to run the business?

Keep it simple.

We had way too many fields and way too much information that we asked the sales reps to submit. Sure, it was all useful data. But it wasn’t critical. And much of it wasn’t used on the Activity Reports, which were the primary driver for the system in the first place. The salespeople became frustrated with all they were asked to do. And when they failed to do all the data entry there weren’t any repercussions because no one was really checking. We should have minimized the data required and only asked the salespeople to complete only what was needed for the VP of Sales to get his weekly Activity Report. Once that objective was realized it may have been time to consider more data. But not all at the beginning. It was too much to ask, particularly of a group of people who have never done this before.

Finally, man up.

We should’ve been tougher with the boss. Yeah, the VP of Sales. It was his system. And he knew how valuable it could be. We needed to make sure that he was committed and ready to weather whatever grumblings he received from the sales group. For a CRM system to work everyone must understand that the database is not about them. It’s about the company. Sure, we want it to help sales people be more productive and close more deals. But the data is what’s important and the executives who succeed with their CRM systems man up and hold firm. We should never have let our client cave in to his sales reps’ complaints and re-accept those Activity Reports the old way. He should’ve said “if it’s not in the CRM, then it doesn’t exist and you and I have a problem.” He should’ve offered whatever resources to address his sales reps’ questions so they could get with the program. But he didn’t. And we let him. And the system broke down.

We made mistakes. But we’ve learned. CRM systems don’t save time. At least, not at first. Activities, notes, conversations and emails need to be entered into the database. We now know that this is not something that many sales reps are used to. But over time, the data provides great insight into opportunities and the better management of resources. If we had understood this better our client would today have a great system for all their sales reps. Instead, it’s just a glorified rolodex, at best.

About the Author: 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 Washington Post, 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

July 16, 2016

Are You Managing Your Sales Team Efficiently?

Whether you’re in sales, marketing, or administration, when arrive at work in the morning chances are you’ve got a long list of “to do’s” for the day. Unfortunately that list sometimes resides solely inside your mind, leaving other people in the dark when it comes to accessing important information. In fact, 44% of sales executives think their organization is ineffective at managing the sales pipeline, yet companies with effective pipeline management grow 15% faster (Vantage Point Performance).

Lead by example with specifics

Manually assigning leads is a tedious administrative process which takes time away from other more important tasks which will actually grow a business. And, manual processes are always subject to errors. So, manually assigned leads will likely be mis-assigned, not assigned at all, or assigned when the lead has already gone cold.

With Insightly you can build out and maximize an efficient workflow by creating lead-flow processes that are both logical and repeatable. If your sales team is generating solid leads, for example, you can use Insightly to help qualify their potential. Likewise, if you’re collecting prospect information through a web form, you can flow that information right into Insightly using the Leads tab.

We’ve recently added a new feature to lead management with the release of Lead assignment rules. Lead assignment rules automate the process of assigning leads as they are added to Insightly. If you’re a sales manager, this makes it faster and easier to distribute leads evenly or according to specific criteria, including:

Geographic area, by selecting fields like Postal Code, State/Province, or City.
Number of employees, by selecting the Employee Count field.
Your own custom fields that you’ve set up in Insightly.
Round robin, by selecting a team or multiple individuals to receive leads on a rotating basis.

By automating the lead assignment process, your sales reps stay informed in real time which helps them to more accurately schedule their daily sales activities.

To create a more comprehensive picture, Insightly Lead Forms are now also supported by custom fields. Custom fields give you the flexibility to create fields for non-standard information such as billing ID numbers, birth dates, contract renewal dates, project types, and referral information.

Meet in the middle

When used correctly, one of the many benefits of a CRM solution like Insightly is that it takes the burden off of your brain by minding the details for you. You have to meet in the middle, however, by taking the time to input information consistently. If you remain consistent, at the end of a busy day, you can stop worrying about the “herding cats” aspect of managing your team’s activities, knowing that you’ve got the end-to-end support you need to take a hot lead and turn it into a sale.

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.

July 13, 2016

Are You Using These Insightly Integrations?

There’s no such thing as a “one size fits all” when it comes to CRM. This is especially true for small and growing businesses – your needs can change daily. In order to meet the needs of our growing customer base, both big and small, we combine Insightly’s capabilities with the best apps on the market. These are a few highlighted Insightly integrations you may be missing out on:

Accounting and payroll software: Xero & QuickBooks Online

Xero creates visibility throughout the entire process – from early prospect communication, through to sales, invoicing, and payments, Insightly’s integration with Xero allows you to draft invoices from within your CRM, which means you will never lose track of customer payment information and will help to get you paid faster.

Also, with our QuickBooks Online integration, users can view any customer payment status and history within Insightly. Dual data entry is eliminated, giving you a single operational and financial view of your customers and their account status, invoices, and payments.

Proposable

Proposable offers sales proposal automation and sales intelligence for sales teams. When a proposal is sent, Proposable automatically creates an Insightly opportunity and continually updates the opportunity in real time as your contact interacts with it.

MailChimp

Email marketing with MailChimp is even easier when integrated with Insightly. Now, you can import contacts to Insightly from your MailChimp account and export to any of your MailChimp Lists, cutting down on the repetitiveness of an unnecessary task.

Evernote

Insightly offers users the ability to link Evernote items to Insightly records.

All your recorded notes, photos, voice memos, and other important information about clients and projects that housed in Evernote can be immediately accessed from within your CRM.

Zapier

Zapier automates workflows between Insightly and more than 600 apps –say goodbye to manually importing and/or exporting contacts, tasks and opportunities. Connections, which are called Zaps, perform all the tedious, manual tasks you used to do, letting you focus on the things that matter.

PandaDoc

PandaDoc helps you build and deliver quotes and proposals from a single interface. This means you can automate your workflow, stay up-to-date on documents, and quickly close deals with legally binding eSignatures. Insightly + PandaDoc allows you to build sales collateral from within the platform by pre-populating deal data with prospect contact information, product, and pricing details into sales documents.

Here at Insightly, we’re always working to make your CRM and contact management tool easier to use and with the most up-to-date integrations so you can be as productive and efficient as possible. With these highlighted integrations, you and your team can create deep customer relationships even after the sale, which will make your customers happier and more loyal for the long haul.

Do you have a suggestion for a new integration? We want to hear from you; post your idea in our community section.

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.

July 7, 2016

CRM for All: Consulting

Business owners are pulled in every direction on a daily basis. From managing operations, sales and marketing, to customer service and so much more. There’s no way that one – or even two – people could keep it all straight. Those who head up consulting firms are no different. When traditional rolodexes and spreadsheets fail, smart consultants turn to customer relationship management (CRM) to regain control of their operations. Our consulting customers broke down the top three reasons they turned to CRM:

To improve workflow

Business Made Simple needed an easy-to-you, inexpensive and intuitive tool that would improve workflow and task management. Co-founders Erin Mathie and Melissa Bamfo use Insightly with the Evernote integration to capture notes from customer and lead calls. The information is automatically populated to the corresponding account records, so data can be tracked and easily accessed. The duo also loves Insightly’s pipeline tools, which manage client fulfillment projects from start to finish. All of this has contributed to greater sales conversions.

To move leads through the sales funnel

Eric Greenspan, CEO of 74 Systems, uses Insightly to improve efficiency and keep tasks from falling off his radar – it’s become mission control. A majority of his leads come in from the website and webinars. Before, it was a challenge to keep prospects in order and moving through the pipeline. Now, using Insightly and Zapier, Greenspan has leads automatically pushed to the platform and turned into opportunities. He then reaches out to determine next steps. Since first implementing Insightly, the company has had more than 30 new customers sign up over the last three months.

To boost customer experience

Winston Faircloth, CEO of Winsightz, has to keep track of individual clients and projects, so he can provide the right support at the right time. Using Insightly has proved to be invaluable in helping Faircloth heighten customer service. He assigns goals, holds training sessions and provides ongoing support, all of which are tracked and monitored on an ongoing basis. It’s been especially helpful in situations when Faircloth has had to quickly access client activity. When a client asked what was in the pipeline, he was able to immediately pull it up on the spot and show all the activity.

Especially in consulting, with so many moving parts, project and contact management can quickly get out of hand. With CRM and project management, consultants can keep tabs on what needs to get done, so client projects stay on track. Even better, Insightly surveyed its consulting customers and 56 percent of respondents paid back their investment in Insightly in one to three months or less.

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.

June 22, 2016

CRM, Google Apps, and Xero Help Winsightz Keep Personal Service in Sight

Founded by Winston Faircloth in August 2015, Winsightz helps small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) and nonprofits recapture and retain customers, donors, and volunteers. Through a blend of software and coaching services, Winsightz helps organizations translate business requirements to the right technology solutions and learn how to apply those solutions to achieve their goals.

As a solopreneur, Winston Faircloth found it a big challenge to just keep track of conversations, emails, appointments, leads, and myriad other details. Faircloth found Insightly mentioned favorably on a few blogs, but it was the Google Docs integration that compelled him to give Insightly a try. Using Insightly for relationship tracking allows Faircloth to quickly see interactions, attachments, next steps, and tasks in the queue. And Insightly’s tight integration with Google Docs and Gmail makes creating or updating a contact record or project seamless. When Faircloth learned that Insightly also integrates with accounting tool, Xero, he was thrilled. He loves how Xero brings in transactional data from the bank, credit cards, PayPal, etc., which makes that part of the accounting incredibly easy.

In addition to effective relationship tracking and management, streamlined organization and accounting, Insightly helps keep administrative overhead lean and frees up Faircloth (and his future team) for customer-facing activities. Although still in the early days of his new company, Faircloth feels Insightly is an important part of the company’s journey and future success.

Insightly allows me to take what’s in my head and share it with my employees to help them learn and get up to speed faster. It’s a clean, simple and intuitive tool that helps me stay organized and allows me to provide the best service possible.

– Winston Faircloth, co-founder and president, Winsightz

Find out more about how Winsightz uses Insightly to track and manage client relationships and accounting, and streamline organization. Read the full story – and others like it – in our customer case study library.

April 13, 2016

HelperMonkeys Increases Efficiency to Produce More Leads

HelperMonkeys is a referral management website that helps small businesses increase their sales through word of mouth. Rather than giving away deep discounts that eat away at profits, small business owners can set their own offers and manage promoters that drive traffic and refer new customers.

After founding the company in 2011, Justin Woo needed an inexpensive way to track the activity of his six-member sales team. Initially, Excel and Google spreadsheets appeared to be his cheapest option. Woo quickly realized, though, that this method was neither efficient nor effective. HelperMonkeys needed a CRM solution that was inexpensive and easy to use. After researching several platforms, HelperMonkeys found Insightly gave him the most capabilities and was the most qualified and cost-effective tool.

Since implementing Insightly, business has expanded rapidly for HelperMonkeys. Woo estimates that his team is 20 percent more effective and is noticeably producing more leads.

Insightly has helped to relieve a lot of headaches associated with managing a sales team. As a result, I’m able to dedicate more time powering the direction of the company, rather than managing sales employees.

– Justin Woo, founder of HelperMonkeys

Find out more about how HelperMonkeys is using Insightly to be more efficient and produce more leads. Read the full story–and others like it–in our customer case study library.