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October 2, 2017

10 Creative Ways to Use Insightly CRM Voice Notes

Have you ever tried using the Insightly audio notes feature?

If not, you’re definitely missing out. Insightly allows you to record up to 60 minutes of audio per file. Voice notes can be linked to contacts, organizations, leads, opportunities, and projects. Best of all, free and paid users alike can access this feature.

So, what are some ways to use audio notes? Here are ten ideas to consider.

1. Recapping Sales Appointments

The best sales reps are usually very busy people. With client meetings from sunrise to sunset, there’s rarely a down moment. It’s therefore difficult (if not impossible) for your sales team to type summary reports for each completed appointment.

A more feasible approach could involve the use of audio notes. After finishing a sales call, the rep can easily locate the lead or opportunity record (via the Insightly mobile CRM app). Within seconds, he could be recording a brief explanation of how things went. Once saved, someone from your back office could then listen to the recording and update the record (such as changing the pipeline status).

A task that would otherwise take days to get completed (or never get done at all), could be done within minutes. Most importantly, your organization has the information it needs – and, your sales reps can get back to what they do best: selling.

2. Training Your Sales Reps

Good sales help is hard to find. And, more frustratingly, the really good ones are even harder to keep. (The competition is always happy to pay more!)

Before your top sales talent jumps ship, it might be wise to capture their best practices into audio format. In doing so, you’ll create a more scalable onboarding and training workflow for new sales hires.

What types of audio files could be beneficial? In a perfect world, new team members would probably appreciate a selection of recorded:

Cold calls
Follow-ups with stale opportunities
Upselling examples
Conversations with unhappy customers
Follow-ups with satisfied customers
Testimonial solicitations

Before you turn your star performers loose to create such recordings, be sure to review best practices for recording phone conversations. (You may need to ask clients for permission before recording such conversations, or you could use role play to achieve the same outcome.)

To what type of Insightly record should your sales team attach such audio notes? One option involves creating a never-ending project called “sales training.” As new team members are onboarded, add them to the project and assign new tasks, inviting them to review the recordings.

3. Outlining Blog Posts

Your content marketing always seems to take a back seat to more pressing matters. The moment you sit down to write a blog post, there’s always some new emergency that requires your attention. Despite your best intentions, there’s just rarely an hour in your week to focus on writing.

Audio notes can help you move one step closer toward your next published article. Simply pull out your smartphone, find your “content marketing” project in Insightly, and start dictating. Don’t get too worried about grammar or being concise. Just focus on collecting your ideas. (After all, you’re the subject matter expert.) You can have one of your staff members transcribe and edit the piece later on.

As you use Insightly to capture more of your blog ideas, you may find it helpful to follow a specific dictation pattern. For example, you might start by clearly stating the objective of the post. Once stated, you could then pause the recording until your first supporting point comes to mind. (Sometimes staring at a ticking timer is enough to give you writer’s block!) Repeat this process until you’ve fully developed your thoughts.

4. Interviewing Clients for Case Studies

Recent industry surveys have shown that customers trust online reviews as much (if not more) than word-of-mouth referrals. This is an astounding statistic, and it’s one that your business should be capitalizing on. The development of case studies for your website is one effective method for doing so.

Case studies don’t just fall from the sky. In fact, well-done case studies require substantial effort to produce. Interviewing clients, drafting content, and gaining final approval are just a few of the steps involved.

Luckily, Insightly voice notes can serve an invaluable role in this process. Rather than facilitating the client interview and manually keying in notes, Insightly can do the heavy lifting for you. Just jump into the client’s record and start recording. Your client will likely be impressed by how tech-savvy you are, and you can stay focused on asking the right questions.

Once you return to your desk, you’ll see the audio file in your activity feed. What a great feeling to know that you’ll never misquote another client!

5. Capturing New Product or Service Ideas

Great ideas can come during the strangest moments. For whatever reason, the grocery store checkout line seems to be a particularly fertile source of your ideas. Unfortunately, you rarely have a writing utensil on hand, and your phone’s notepad is a notorious black hole.

Instead, you might try creating a “new ideas” project in Insightly. When genius strikes, you’re then just a tap away from fleshing out an explanatory voice note. You can also customize the naming of your audio notes, making it easier to locate ideas in the future.

For added accountability, you could then assign yourself a date-sensitive task (with an email reminder). You’ll not only have an in-depth explanation of the new idea (in your own words), but you’ll more importantly have a deadline by which you must take action.

After reviewing your original idea and determining it has merit, you might choose to create a new project specifically for implementation. Choose between milestones or pipelines, based on the nature of the idea.

And to think….all of this started with a bag of avocados, a conveyer belt, and a store clerk named Jake.

6. Delegating to Your Team

You know what your team should be doing. If only they’d just do it!

The sad reality is that some instructions get murky when translated from your brain into text format. Just because you’ve assigned a task, it doesn’t mean that your staff will actually understand it.

For projects that are especially important, adding a voice note can help to reduce confusion and increase the quality of work. So, when should you take the added effort to include an audio delegation? Here are some possibilities:

You Need Proof of What You Said: Tired of playing the blame game with staff? Leave no room for error by adding a verbal narrative of what should be done. It’s hard for your team to point fingers when they have access to you in your own words.

Only You Know How to Do Something: There are some things that others in your organization can’t possibly know. (For example, your motivation for starting the business.) Sure, you could type up an email or document with this information. But, that takes time – time that you don’t have. A voice file is a much more efficient way to provide clarity.

You’re Tired of Repeating Yourself: Saying the same things over and over? Say it once in a recording, attach it to a project, and point future questions to this resource.

7. Increasing Engagement During Meetings

“Who is going to volunteer to take minutes at today’s staff meeting?” The room goes silent, until one brave soul hesitantly offers to do the work.

If you’ve ever been put into this situation, you know how difficult it is to take notes and participate in the discussion. You want to share your opinion, but you also want to avoid being the scapegoat for bad recordkeeping.

The next time you’re called on, consider harnessing the power of voice notes. Simply launch a related project or other record and start the recording process. As long as the meeting last less than an hour, you can rest easy knowing that Insightly has your back.

And, if your team is expecting a set of typed meeting minutes, you can just download the recording and transcribe it into document format. (If you’re too busy, simply assign the task to your administrative assistant.) Once transcribed, the typed minutes can be attached as a file to any contact, organization, opportunity, or project.

By providing both audio and typed meeting minutes, you’re sure to impress your colleagues!

8. Handing Things Off

In today’s virtual work ecosystem, aligning schedules and time zones can be challenging. Your team in the Philippines is usually gone for the day before your West Coast staff arrives. This situation forces your West Coast team to waste hours simply determining what has been accomplished.

Audio notes can create a seamless interaction between different teams. Instead of only relying on written updates, an audible summary of the day’s work can expedite the handoff from one worker to the next. (It might be wise to develop a standard naming structure for audio notes, including the day’s date or project number.)

And, unlike shared documents, which are easily overwritten and edited, an electronic archive of voice recordings (in the worker’s voice) creates an additional layer of accountability. If it’s later determined that a major oversight has been made, reviewing prior recordings can help your team identify where things went wrong.

9. Celebrating a Job Well Done

Your team works hard to close new deals. They work even harder to build positive, long-term client relationships. Although bonuses and merit increases are greatly appreciated, sometimes a kind word from management goes even further.

You’ve been known to go out of your way to show your appreciation. Many times, this comes in the form of a brief email. Other times, you’ve shown gratitude during company-wide meetings. Recording an Insightly audio note can be another effective way to show people you care.

Unlike an email (which usually lacks personality) or a shout-out in a meeting (which expires immediately after spoken), a voice recording can be a lasting source of motivation for your team. In addition to being front and center in Insightly, users can also download a copy to their computers. It’s the gift that keeps on giving!

10. Blowing Off Steam

You have a lot on your mind. Keeping customers happy, employees on track, and your business profitable can create significant stress in your life. You need an outlet to decompress. Insightly’s audio notes can serve as one way to blow off steam.

(Obviously, you’re probably not going to want others to access your innermost thoughts. It’s therefore wise to set up a private project, visible only to you, for collecting these types of voice notes.)

So, what are some situations that might necessitate the creation of an audio note? Here are a few possibilities:

Something is Troubling You: Customers can say nasty things. Employees can fail on the job. When problems occur, getting them off your chest quickly can help you move on to more important responsibilities (without completely forgetting about them).

Something Needs Research: A colleague from another company shares a sticky situation that you hope to avoid yourself. Get it into Insightly as a note and figure out what to do about it later.

Something is Broken: Things break. Some require immediate attention, but others don’t. (For example, you can’t figure out why your printer keeps printing everything in blue ink!) Make a note for yourself to solve the problem later – instead of wasting time on it now.

Use Your Voice to Get More Done

Most people can talk a lot faster than they can type. Thanks to Insightly audio notes, you can increase your productivity simply by speaking. No more searching through your computer’s folders or smartphone’s text files for the next million-dollar idea. Everything is intuitively organized within Insightly from the get-go – in your own words.

If you’ve never tried this powerful feature before, it’s time you did so. In time, you’re sure to think of many new and creative ways to put your voice to work!

Matt Keener is a marketing consultant and President of Keener Marketing Solutions, LLC. Matt specializes in content marketing and strategic planning, having helped numerous Saas (software as a service) companies and other small businesses worldwide. Read more of Matt’s work, get his book, or connect on LinkedIn.

September 21, 2017

6 Reasons to Stop Using Your Inbox as a To-Do List

Whether we’ll admit it or not, our inboxes can be addictive.

After all, checking email is as easy as tapping an app or refreshing a web browser. Is there a new and exciting business opportunity waiting for you? Will your web developer finally send an update on the shopping cart project? Is your realtor ever going to sell your house? Checking email gives us hope that our dreams will soon be realized.

Addictions aside, email inboxes actually make a terrible to-do list. Sadly, many businesses use email to structure their work days. Despite the prevalence of affordable project management apps, some people just can’t break free from the shackles of email.

In this post, we’ll discuss six reasons why you should stop using your inbox as a to-do list.

1. Your Inbox Doesn’t Care About Importance

There are only so many hours in a work day. As a business owner, you rarely run out of things to keep you busy. Pitching new clients, dealing with employee issues, and developing game-changing strategies are all in a typical day’s work. With so much on your plate, you can’t afford to waste time on non-value-added stuff. In fact, you take great pride in your ability to efficiently identify (and solve) most problems that pop up.

With that being said, why do you spend so much time jumping between emails? Granted, it’s impossible to know when an important email will pop up. Keeping close watch on your inbox makes sense from that standpoint. On the other hand, I would wager that 90%+ of the emails you receive are less than important. If your inbox is anything like mine, you probably get a ton of stuff like this:

Industry newsletters
Emails from sales reps, who are trying to sell you things
Promotional emails from your vendors
Alerts from social media
Low-priority requests from colleagues or clients

Worst of all, your inbox doesn’t put the most important things at the top. As additional emails arrive, important requests sink further down into obscurity.

Sure, you can try to keep pace by deleting and archiving unimportant messages. However, is this the best use of your time? Probably not.

2. You Can’t Mark an Email as “Done”

Let’s assume that you’ve somehow devised a process by which only “important” messages make it to your inbox. To do this, you unsubscribed from all non-essential messages, set filters to auto-forward any administrative emails to your assistant, and convinced customers and team members to reach out sparingly (good luck with that!).

Now your inbox is the perfect to-do list, right? Not so much.

To illustrate my point, let’s say that you have the following emails awaiting your attention:

Subject: Select the Company Picnic Venue

Subject: Please Sign Up for an Insightly Trial

Subject: Finish Slide Deck for Next Week’s Proposal

Being the productive person that you are, you’re able to complete these tasks in less than an hour. Unfortunately, all three “tasks” are still sitting in your inbox. What should you do with them now? Delete? Move to a folder? Do you need to respond to each person, indicating that you’re done? If so, how much time will that take?

Wouldn’t it be nice to just mark your tasks as “done,” and then move on with your life? Sadly, email doesn’t work that way.

3. Delegation is Messy

To add another layer of complexity, not every task fits neatly into a single email exchange.

Take, for example, the selection of a venue for the company picnic. What seemed like a relatively straightforward decision has quickly evolved into dozens of separate email threads. Shortly after sending your confirmation email, you received several additional emails from staff at the venue. Their accounts receivable department needs you to make a 25% deposit by the close of business. You also received a 12-page PDF, containing all sorts of parking information, menu options, and other important details. And, to top things off, the venue’s Executive Director wants to connect for coffee later this week.

All of these things can (and should) be delegated to someone else on your team. Here’s the problem: delegating from your inbox is messy.

Forwarding messages to your accounting department and virtual assistant won’t take much of your time. Problem is, there’s no guarantee that they’ll remember to follow up. Their inboxes are overflowing with tasks, too.

Alas, you bite the bullet, stop what you were doing, and spend another hour on administrative work.

4. Your Inbox Doesn’t Tell the Whole Story

You finally get to a good stopping point on the picnic stuff, and you check your inbox for the next thing to tackle. Great news awaits, as you learn that another hot prospect wants a proposal. Even better, the slide deck that you just finished for a different client can be easily adapted for this new prospect. Both essentially want the same service, but you’ll need to make a few adjustments (such as updating the client’s name, logo, and key assumptions).

At this point you think to yourself, “Aha! Finally something that I can delegate to my administrative assistant!” So, you find the related email threads and forward them along. You even walk over to your admin’s desk to stress the importance of this project.

A few days pass, and your administrative assistant stops with a troubled look on his face. He’s clearly confused by the assignment, as evidenced by his questions:

“So, which deck is the one that still needs to be updated?”

“Are we keeping the color schemes the same? Or, should I update the background colors to match the prospective client’s logo?”

“Speaking of logos, where do I find a copy of their logo?”

“What is the due date for this task?”

“Did you want to proofread a digital copy of this before I print it out?”

“Where should I save the finished copy once it’s done?”

Once again, your delegation plan has been foiled. Your team is normally very competent, so why is this project creating so much confusion?

As effective as your staff may be, they’re not mind readers. They’re looking for you to provide the necessary information to do their jobs. Just forwarding a bunch of disjointed email conversations only tells part of the story.

5. There’s Software Designed Specifically for Organizing To-Dos

By now, I hope you’ll agree that your inbox is letting you down. If so, you might be asking yourself what (if anything) you can do about it.

There is good news – as I alluded to at the onset of this post, there are many online software tools that can structure your company’s work. Insightly, which is perhaps best known for its sales management features, also provides a suite of integrated productivity tools. Let’s look at how Insightly could solve many of the headaches we’ve discussed.

Sequencing Important Work: Unlike your inbox, Insightly brings clarity to your most important tasks. Assign due dates, priority, completion, and status with a few clicks.

As due dates and priority levels are defined, it becomes much easier to see the “big picture.”

Tracking Completed Tasks: A task tracking system, like Insightly, will also fulfill your desire to check things off your list. Marking a task “done” is as easy as clicking a button.

Want to see a historical archive of the great work you’ve done? Jump over to your “completed tasks” view for a detailed review.

Delegating to Others: Getting the rest of your team into Insightly can also be beneficial. Rather than delegating from your inbox, Insightly provides a more structured workflow. Create tasks to occur on a one-time or repeating basis, thereby making the very act of delegation natively more efficient. To assign work to others, just select the correct team member from an intuitive dropdown. Connect the task to additional contributors or larger projects.

You can even add detailed notes to ensure your team is always in the know. No more excuses!

Connecting Sales & To-Dos: For added context on sales-related tasks, you can easily link items to opportunities in your pipeline. Within a click or two, your team has access to information that would otherwise only reside in your brain.

6. The Rest of Your Team is Following Your Lead

Leadership comes from the top – even when it involves juggling mundane tasks.

By continuing to rely on your broken inbox-dependent process, you’re telling the rest of your team to do likewise. Is this the best use of their time and your resources? I think not.

Take the bold step toward a more streamlined approach to productivity. Your team will thank you – and so will your bottom line.

August 23, 2017

6 Tips for Building a More Collaborative Virtual Team

Big businesses aren’t the only ones benefitting from virtual teams.

Thanks in large part to freelance marketplaces, such as Upwork.com, traditional brick-and-mortars, mom and pops, and startups are now able to rapidly staff up with team members from across the globe.

Although virtual teams offer a number of tangible benefits to your business, they do have their share of distinct challenges. In particular, many companies struggle to create a truly “collaborative” virtual culture.

In this post, we’ll explore a few best practices for using Insightly to boost engagement among your virtual workers.

1. Get Everyone In the Same Place

Emails…group chats…random to-do lists…shared project documents…customer tracking spreadsheets.

Unless instructed otherwise, remote workers have a tendency to spread information across multiple systems and inboxes. Although productivity may seem high, it’s impossible to know for sure. After all, you don’t have time to dig through the many different apps they’re using. Likewise, it would be wasteful to ask each team member to manually cobble together a report. Unfortunately, you’ll just have to assume things are operating smoothly.

Solving this problem requires you to first take control of the situation. Even though your team has your best intentions in mind, reliance on overlapping systems or siloed datasets is no longer going to cut it. You need everyone working from the same system and database.

A system like Insightly can get everyone on the same page. Your sales team can hit the ground running by centralizing all of their customers, leads, and deals. Customer emails, notes, invoices, and quotations are also accessible from any web-enabled device.

Everyone else will love the built-in project and task management functionality. Since each team member has his or her own unique Insightly log in, you can create a greater sense of accountability. Assign due dates, define recurrence patterns, and indicate priority for each task. No more handwritten sticky notes or “forgotten” assignments.

Note: Insightly also allows you to configure teams, letting you assign and manage view permissions in fewer steps.

2. Differentiate Between Projects & Tasks

Some initiatives require more collaboration than others.

For example, rebranding a website involves much greater thought and coordination than scanning a stack of paper documents. Launching a new product line is more complicated than invoicing a client. Some initiatives require multiple iterations, meetings, and collaborators to achieve the greater goal. In other words, not every delegation is as simple as making a one-time request. You therefore need a process for managing the many moving parts.

At the heart of this discussion is the differentiation between “tasks” (individual pieces of work) and “projects” (larger initiatives or desired outcomes). If you’re planning on using Insightly, this terminology is natively built into the application. In fact, you can “link” individual tasks to a larger project, making it easier to see the specific steps required to arrive at your end goal.

Projects can be structured one of two ways in Insightly. For initiatives following a sequential pattern (such as onboarding a new customer), using a project pipeline might work best.

For less predictable projects (such as an expansion into adjacent markets), you might consider using one or more milestones. Milestones allow you to set goals, assign dates, and group together related tasks – without the rigidity of a sequential pattern.

With milestones, pipelines, and tasks, your team will feel more organized and less scattered. As the business owner, you’ll appreciate the enhanced visibility into your company’s work-in-process, bottlenecks, and completed work.

3. Integrate, Integrate, Integrate

Migrating your project and sales processes into a single web-based application is a great starting point. However, even the most robust of platforms can’t do everything. Your team will still rely heavily on their email inboxes, document processors, marketing tools, and other third-party apps.

A highly integrated platform, such as Insightly, can offer the best of both worlds. Insightly actually acts as the “hub” for everything else your team uses.

Take, for example, your marketing consultant who uses the MailChimp email marketing software to build and send the company newsletter. He’s doing a nice job, but he occasionally forgets to prepare the summary reports that you need. This situation reduces the productivity of your strategy sessions and creates unnecessary friction for the entire team.

How can you make this problem go away?

One possibility is to connect your Insightly and MailChimp accounts. Insightly’s innovative integration pulls in highly valuable marketing analytics into each lead or contact record. Once enabled, you’ll be able to see real-time MailChimp data without ever leaving your Insightly account, such as:

Campaign history
Click rate
Open rate
Engagement history
Opt-in / subscription date
List membership

Problem solved! Now, your marketing consultant can stay focused on the next newsletter, and you have the information you need.

Better yet, Insightly integrates with dozens of other best-in-class apps. The possibilities seem endless.

4. Build “Links” Between Internal (& External) Relationships

Organizational charts become murky as you grow your team of freelancers, part-time staff, consultants, and employees. Who reports to whom? Solid line or dashed? The questions never seem to end.

It’s time to scrap the diagram software and leverage the info that’s already in Insightly. If you’ve already added your team as Insightly users, you can easily use relationship links to track your organizational structure.

Each user can be linked to other internal (or external) team members, offering a 360-degree view of who knows whom. Insightly’s relationship dropdown lets you identify:

Boss / direct report relationships
Client / consultant relationships
Colleague relationships
Other unique relationships

This type of linking also comes in handy for tracking your customer relationships. By tracking the organizational hierarchy of your customers, your sales reps and support staff will be more equipped to deliver an unbelievable experience.

5. Free Up More Time for Collaboration (with Automation)

Just because something needs to be done, it doesn’t mean that a human has to do it. As workflow technology and artificial intelligence become increasingly prevalent, business owners are seeking ways to maximize their investment in human capital – virtual team members included.

A tool like Insightly can help you maximize ROI from virtual staff via automation.

To illustrate my point, let’s look at your current web lead management process. If you’re like many business owners, your web developer probably configured your site to send email alerts for new leads. New lead data is keyed in by your virtual assistant, the lead is assigned for follow up, and then your reps finally reach out. All of this occurs over several hours (or days), during which leads can go completely cold.

By leveraging Insightly automation, you could build a better lead management model. How does the following workflow sound?

The lead fills out a form on your website.
Insightly automatically parses the lead information and creates a new record.
Insightly immediately sends an email that “looks like” it came from your sales rep.
Insightly assigns the lead (and a follow-up task) to the correct rep.

Instead of wasting time on data entry, your virtual assistant can finally get around to organizing your backlog of game-changing ideas. In addition, your reps can engage leads with much less effort.

6. Monitor Productivity

There’s an additional benefit of using a self-contained management system like Insightly: better business analytics. Each task, project, contact, lead, opportunity, and event is a trackable piece of data that’s easily modeled within Insightly’s intuitive reporting dashboard.

Perhaps you find yourself asking these questions:

Which team members are completing the most tasks?
Who is delegating the most work to other users?
What are our bottlenecks?
How long did certain milestones take to complete?
Who has the most overdue tasks?
Which projects are requiring the most effort?
How many leads can each sales rep manage per month?

If your virtual team is using Insightly correctly, you should be able to answer these questions within seconds. Better yet, you’ll be able to sort, filter, and customize the reports to your exact specification. Just drag and drop, and Insightly gives you the data that you need.

Columnar reports can also be converted into highly engaging charts and graphs. This saves you (or your assistant) the effort of exporting and charting the data. Once again, Insightly does the busywork for you.

Get a More Collaborative Virtual Team

Your virtual team adds value to your business. No question about it. However, there’s always room for improvement. By leveraging a cloud-based business management system, such as Insightly, you can boost engagement and take their value to an entirely new level.

To learn more about Insightly, click here to compare the features that best fit your virtual team.

May 17, 2017

5 Time-Wasting Business Habits & How to Avoid Them

Time goes by much too quickly.

As the leader of a growing business, you know this to be all too true. Days and weeks continue to zip by in a flash, and your strategic priorities seem no closer to implementation.

Although you can’t slow down time, you can identify time-wasting habits that may have formed in your business. Overcoming these habits can free up new time and resources, making goal achievement more feasible.

In this post, we’ll discuss five common time-wasters – and how to overcome them.

1. Constantly Jumping Between Email, Chat, & Social Media

In a perfect world, you’d never be bothered during work hours. Instead of constantly putting out fires, a targeted focus on your ever-growing to-do list could yield significant value.

Unfortunately, your work life is far from perfect (so is everyone else’s by the way). Customers are always emailing you directly. Your team is not shy about pinging you with questions. New sales inquiries and support problems frequently require your input. And, your social media followers always appreciate your pithy thought leadership. All of this is, of course, encouraging news for your business. Clients increasingly trust the brand you’ve built. But, servicing so many requests can quickly grow tiresome and even serve as a distraction for your company’s future growth. Spending every waking hour jumping between your inbox and discussion forums diverts your attention away from your goals.

How can you gain greater control over your schedule without missing opportunities? Here are a few ideas:

Set aside “distraction-free” time each day: Set your IM status to “do not disturb” and close your inbox. Put your smartphone in a different room. Pour yourself a cup of coffee and spend 30 minutes on something you deem to be important. Try this for a couple days and measure the impact. I think you’re going to like it – and, you might even be surprised by how little you’re actually missed!

Study the sensitivity of your response time: Does each request deserve an immediate answer (by you)? How many of your emails are truly “urgent” in nature? Study these types of questions, and you’ll be more likely to identify how much “distraction-free” time you can get away with.

Look for additional things to delegate: Just because you’ve historically done something, it doesn’t mean you should keep doing so. Does it make sense to hire additional staff or freelancers to ease the burden? Perhaps you already have staff who could fill this role? It’s worth considering.

2. Capturing & Organizing Minutes from Meetings

Speaking of things worth delegating, how much time do you spend on glorified administrative work? For example, what percentage of your week is consumed by the seemingly simple task of organizing your own meeting notes?

If you said “not much,” think again.

Let’s say that you typically have between eight and twelve meetings each week (we’ll call it ten on average). You usually create a meeting agenda, share it with your team in advance, and then use the document to capture meeting minutes. After the discussion is over, you spend about fifteen minutes trying to make sense of your notes. You look for any action items and manually enter each one into your project management system. By my math, you’re spending over two hours each week (or 150 minutes to be exact) on post-meeting administrative activities! This is not to mention the time you’re spending during the meeting by trying to multi-task as both scribe and participant.

Here’s a better approach:

Step 1: Before the meeting, identify a related project or customer record via the Insightly mobile app.
Step 2: On the “related” tab for the record, tap the “+” symbol and select “Note with recording.”
Step 3: Let Insightly record the discussion and link the recording to the related entity.
Step 4: Have your administrative assistant listen to the audio transcript and add new tasks on your behalf.
Step 5: Enjoy the additional time in your busy work week!

Optimizing your meetings is only the beginning. With a tool like Insightly, you’re bound to identify other administrative tasks that can either be eliminated, streamlined, or delegated.

3. Waiting for the Next Assignment

Although your to-do list is always overflowing, the same isn’t always true for other members of your team. Granted, some staff members take the initiative and find ways to add value without being asked. Others, however, prefer to take a “wait and see” approach, hoping that you’ll find something for them to do.

Idle staff can be doubly wasteful to your organization. With the proper instruction, they could be helping you work through your overwhelming backlog. This would not only ensure their time is well spent, but it could help you move your vision forward – faster. Instead, idleness is reducing output and inhibiting the realization of your strategic agenda.

To reduce the risk of downtime, it’s important to take a proactive approach to project management. For example, you might:

Tag your projects: People can’t help you if they don’t know what’s on your mind. Consider tagging certain projects that may benefit from team involvement. Doing so will make it easier for staff to view and sort that which is important to you. They can even volunteer for specific tasks, allowing you to expedite the implementation of certain strategic initiatives.

Encourage group discussion: Sometimes a project just needs a healthy discussion to get liftoff. Set up a recurring monthly (or biweekly) calendar invitation, during which your team can collectively review and discuss your tagged projects.

Automate recurring tasks: Just because a specific task is marked as “completed,” it doesn’t mean that it’s done forever. What types of activities does your organization do on a repeating basis? Examples might include: monthly bookkeeping, preparing social media plans, and pulling sales reports. Configure repeating tasks to keep your team on track and avoid downtime.

4. Moving Data From Your CRM to Other Systems

You need timely and accurate data to make informed decisions. And, although you spend much of your day in your CRM, there are other software apps you use to run your business. Exporting, importing, and de-duplicating data lists isn’t exactly the best use of time.

How can you streamline the data management aspect of your business?

For starters, it’s important that you fully understand the native potential of your CRM. For example, some Insightly users overlook the fact that the system offers accelerated sales management and project management under one roof. By simply utilizing the built-in project aspects of Insightly, users can bypass the headaches of porting data between systems. When an opportunity is marked “won,” a new project can be created in less than ten seconds. This is especially useful for business models that require a high-touch fulfillment model.

Naturally, it’s unreasonable to think that your CRM can fulfill every aspect of your technological needs. Even after maximizing the use of a tool like Insightly, your organization will probably still rely on:

Eternal inboxes
Document sharing apps
Accounting & bookkeeping software
Email marketing systems
Scheduling calendars
Customer ticketing software

Before you export another customer data CSV file, it’s worth a look at the native integrations to your CRM. Insightly, for example, offers dozens of easy-to-enable integrations. And, if that’s not enough, you could leverage the power of the Zapier platform and potentially connect your CRM to more than 750 third-party tools.

With each newly enabled integration, your staff is bound to save hours of frustrating, non-value-added administrative work. You’re also in a better position for avoiding data headaches and oversights.

5. Relying Too Heavily on Your Desktop (or Laptop)

Unless you’re a millennial who grew up with a smartphone in hand since childhood, you probably prefer to do certain tasks via your desktop or laptop computer. There’s a certain sense of comfort that comes from your oversized monitor and ergonomic keyboard.

Despite the appeal of a traditional office setting, you and your team might actually be wasting time.

To illustrate this point, let’s imagine you have a busy day scheduled for tomorrow. You’ll be attending an executive networking event at 7:30 am, which is immediately followed by a couple of important on-site client meetings. After that, you’re meeting a potential new hire for lunch. Your afternoon calendar is fairly open, which seems like the perfect opportunity to regroup from the busy morning. Unfortunately, when you arrive back at your desk, a new emergency has arisen. Updating your CRM records will have to wait until tomorrow morning (hopefully there won’t be a new emergency then!).

In this scenario, which depends upon being at your desk and doing work, you’ve let a full day slip by before any follow-up action can occur.

A better approach might have looked like this:

After each event, pull out your smartphone and pop open the Insightly mobile app.

Find the related record and add a voice note (see above) to summarize your notes.

If immediate action is required, assign a task to one of your team members (or yourself!).

Close the app and move on to your next meeting.

By following this process (which takes five minutes or less), you’ll save yourself time later in the day. In addition, your staff can help coordinate the many follow-up activities before you ever get back to your desk. It’s the best of both worlds.

What Other Time-Wasters Do You Struggle With?

Struggling to overcome other time-wasting habits in your business? The first step to improving your situation is to realize a problem exists. Only then can you begin matching technology and other best practices to solve your newfound inefficiencies.

March 20, 2017

YouTube Live: The Power of Productivity

Join us on Friday, March 24th, at 11:00 am, PST, for an Insighlty YouTube Live event hosted by small business expert and publisher of Smart Hustle Magazine, Ramon Ray. Ramon will engage in a conversation with Insightly customer, Fran Davis — personal chef, entrepreneur, and founder of The Flavorful Fork.

Together, Ramon and Fran will discuss how to avoid stumbling-blocks that get in the way of productivity, and instead employ tips and strategies that can help any busy working professional get more done in less time.

Save the date. Save a space. Register today!

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.

Share love, share Insightly: Refer Insightly, Receive a Reward.

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.

July 28, 2016

Keep Your Business Moving During the Summer Slump

Summer is in full swing, which means warm weather, barbeques, and more time with family. But as you start to trade in your office chairs for beach chairs, remember that your business shouldn’t have to take a vacation. Here are four tips to help keep your business moving forward through the remainder of the summer months.

Plan ahead.

Many companies experience a dip in activity over the summer. It’s important to prepare well in advance so there’s a stream of business to take you through Labor Day. Ahead of the summer months, look at new contacts and prospects that could fuel business during the slower months. Additionally, take a look at your team’s summer vacations to make sure all your customers have a point person checking in regardless of schedules.

Stay visible.

This is your chance to get some quality face time with your customers and strengthen your relationships as their schedules slow down for the summer. A weekly newsletter informing customers and prospects about company updates and new blog posts is a great way to maintain engagement during the summer. Doing so will show customers that you haven’t forgotten them over the holiday months and reminds them why they selected you as a business partner.

Take on a project.
Use the slower-paced period as a time to work on other projects. Redesign your website, brainstorm new ideas or revisit old ones that your team had discussed earlier in the year but couldn’t pursue because of bandwidth. These activities will help you and your team to innovate and continue to move the business forward.

Recharge.

Go on vacation and enjoy the weather while it lasts. Everyone, (yes, that includes you.) needs time to relax and recharge. Take a few days off, and encourage your staff to do the same, so everyone can come back ready to get to work. But make sure you appoint someone to answer any incoming customer queries or questions while you are out!

Use these tips to build up a pipeline that will continue business momentum throughout the slow season. Summer is a great time to refocus and recharge, so take advantage of the slower season to get your business on track for a successful second half of the year.

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 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.

March 2, 2016

3 Project Management Mistakes to Avoid

Project management can be considered almost an art. From start to finish, multiple moving parts and people involved can make it difficult to keep on track. Most projects go bad because there is a breakdown in communication between team members or there’s a lack of planning on the part of the project manager. So how can you make sure your projects are completed without a hitch? We’ve come up with the top three project management mistakes and our advice on how to avoid them.

Mistake No 1: Putting the wrong manager in charge.

One project manager isn’t going to be the right manager for every project. Project managers are often chosen based on their availability for the project — not necessarily their skill set. Putting the wrong manager on a project can mean failure even before it gets off the ground.

The solution: Instead of taking the easy way out, really look at the available project managers and chose the one that has the skills to get the project done right.

Mistake No. 2: Lacking communication.

Communication can be one of the most important factors in successfully managing and executing a project. Often times, when there isn’t enough talking happening, misunderstandings arise. As a result, deadlines are missed, time is misused, projects fall apart and dollars are wasted.

The solution: Project managers should have a set date and time for the team to meet each week. During these meetings, everyone should come prepared to give a detailed update as to where things stand from the week prior and their plans for the week ahead. Doing so will keep everyone on the same page and aware of others’ priorities.

Mistake No. 3: Micromanaging.

Don’t babysit your employees. No one likes to have a manager at their desk every moment of the day asking for updates.

The solution: Rather than constantly checking up on your team, use software that can allow employees to proactively provide updates and remind them of tasks and deadlines. This will allow you to take a more hands off approach to project management while still ensuring that things will stay on track or alert you when deadlines are missed.

Mistakes are inevitable, but by being aware of the most common ones and putting processes in place to avoid them, you can make sure your project runs smoothly and on time.