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November 29, 2017

10 Outside-the-Box Ways to Use Project Pipelines

When you think of the word “pipeline,” what comes to mind?

If you’re like most business owners, you probably think of the sales process. Leads, opportunities, and new customers are all top of mind.

Although sales pipelines are vital to any company, a “project pipeline” can be equally useful from an operations standpoint. If you’ve never configured a project pipeline in Insightly, think of it as a way to avoid re-creating the wheel. Pipelines are great for things that follow a predictable pattern. As a project advances from one stage to the next, Insightly can even auto-assign tasks to individual users

In this post, I’ll share ten ideas for putting project pipelines to good use.

1. Hosting a Customer Appreciation Conference

Your customer base is growing. To show your appreciation and keep them informed, you’ve started hosting an annual conference. Pulling off this event requires a ton of coordination and planning. The first year had its share of bumps along the way. However, you’ve since developed a rhythm for organizing the conference.

Rather than keeping a handwritten checklist or spreadsheet, why not build a project pipeline? This way, when the conference rolls around next year, you can simply add the new event as a project and, magically, all of the necessary steps are preserved from the prior year. For example, your conference pipeline could have the following stages:

Preliminary planning
Venue planning
Official announcement
Event promotion
Collateral
Day-of priorities
Post-event follow ups

As you complete all of the associated tasks for a particular phase, your project pipeline helps you know what to work on next. After all, there’s no point working on an official announcement until you know where the event will occur.

2. Scaling Your Content Marketing

To get found on the search engines, you need to regularly publish excellent content. This often sounds easier than it really is. Your subject matter experts are too busy to sit down and write 1,000-word posts. Even if they had unlimited time, each writer has a slightly different style. It’s therefore no wonder why so many companies fail to produce content. Too many moving parts, and not enough foresight.

A pipeline can be a great tool for structuring (and scaling) your content marketing efforts. Break the process down into bite-sized, repeatable chunks, such as:

Topic pitch
In-process
Editing
Approval
Publishing
Live

For added firepower, you might try adding activity sets to your content marketing pipeline. This will keep everyone on task and reduce unnecessary confusion.

3. Exhibiting at Trade Shows

Your company exhibits at a handful of important trade shows each year. Although the events are at different locations, they all follow the same general sequence:

Reserving the booth space
Paying the vendor
Making travel arrangements
Ordering swag and brochures
Shipping the booth to the exhibit hall
Traveling to the event
Setting up the booth
Exhibiting
Tearing down the booth
Traveling back
Following up with leads
Evaluating ROI

To deliver a more streamlined pipeline, it might make sense to break this sequence down into less specific phases:

Event sign up
Pre-event planning
Day-of event
Post-event priorities

Remember, you can always link tasks to stages for a more detailed event plan. Traveling back, following up with leads, and evaluating ROI would be logical tasks to associate with your post-event phase.

4. Creating Your Social Media Plan

Social media isn’t just for your middle school niece.

Smart businesses leverage social media to drive conversions and increase customer engagement. One strategy for achieving this goal is to routinely publish share-worthy content. Unfortunately, great content doesn’t fall from the sky.

Creating a social media production pipeline can help you optimize the process. If you aim to produce on a weekly cadence, consider these phases:

Collect content
Draft plan
Approval
Scheduling
Reporting

Depending on your preferences, you might choose to reuse the same project for future social media plans. This would be beneficial if you want to centralize all social media-related chatter into a single record.

If that’s not important to you, just ask your social media manager to create a fresh project each week (incorporating the same pipeline, of course). Is your social media manager somewhat forgetful? Assign a recurring task with explicit instructions and due dates, ensuring no weeks go by without a new social plan.

5. Fulfilling Customer Orders

Order fulfillment is the perfect use case for an Insightly project – especially when combined with a pipeline.

Let’s say that your company offers a variety of handmade leather products. Your catalog offers a few dozen SKUs, and your customers are online retailers and brick-and-mortar shops. When customers place orders, they typically do so by submitting a purchase order for several dozen units.

Although each SKU is unique and has a slightly different lead time, it’s safe to say that production follows this general workflow:

Material sourcing
Production scheduling
Manufacturing
Quality assurance testing
Packaging
Shipping
Payment

It’s also worth noting that as pending deals become orders, Insightly allows you to convert opportunities into projects. This provides a 360-degree view of each customer’s order. Doing so also preserves all related emails, notes, and files. As the order advances through the manufacturing process, your team will have fingertip access to everything they need to do their jobs. No more hunting for information – it’s all right there in the electronic project file.

6. Performing Routine Website Maintenance

The web presents countless opportunities for today’s business owner. However, opportunity is not without risk. The internet is no exception to this rule.

Some business owners falsely assume that websites are a “set it and forget it” proposition. Not so, especially from a web security standpoint. In an age when government agencies and well-known brands are hacked, prudent business owners take steps to protect their online assets. One important step involves keeping your content management system up to date.

A pipeline can help bring order to your web maintenance program. If you’re using an open source CMS, your pipeline stages might look something like this:

Backups
CMS update
Plugin updates
Testing
Backups
Documentation

7. Recruiting Freelancers

It’s easier than ever to hire freelancers. Millions of freelancers are available via virtual work platforms, such as Upwork.com. And, the benefits of hiring freelancers are quite obvious to your business: no long-term commitments, less paperwork, and better talent.

As you add more virtual team members, you’ll need a better way to recruit and onboard them. Project pipelines can help you automate your freelancer management. For example, you could build a pipeline with these stages:

Job post
Invitations
Shortlist
Interviews
Hire
Onboard

As you use your pipeline to bring on more freelancers, Insightly can also automate some of the administrative tasks, too. If you’re a Pro or Enterprise user, you’re able to harness workflow automation to your advantage. Why is this helpful? Well, let’s say you want to automatically send new hires a welcome email shortly after onboarding. Insightly can send emails on your behalf, taking one more task off your overloaded to-do list.

8. Closing Out Your Books

We’ve all heard the saying about the two certainties in life: death and taxes.

Depending on your business model, taxes come due at many different points in the year. Estimated taxes are usually due on a quarterly basis. Sales tax varies by the state you’re in. And, your annual tax returns, always come due on (or around) April 15th.

For the sake of discussion, let’s focus in on your annual tax returns. Although you pay your CPA to “close the books” each year, there’s a fair bit of coordination on your end:

Collect 1099s / docs
Reconciliations
Summary for CPA
CPA work
Review & approve

Since this process only rolls around annually, you probably find yourself reinventing the wheel each year. Once again, a well-structured activity set can help you know exactly what to do next. For the “summary for CPA” stage, you might associate a task that contains links to your reporting template along with detailed work instructions.

Stop starting over each year – put last year’s knowledge to good use!

9. Evaluating Software

Cloud-based software is revolutionizing how business gets done. For every problem, it seems there’s at least several tools that offer a solution.

Some companies make the mistake of having no formal software selection process. Departments are free to define their own internal selection criteria – or, worse, use no criteria whatsoever. To provide a little more structure to your team’s software selection, build a basic pipeline like this:

Needs analysis
ID vendors
Demos
Shortlist
Selection

Even a simple pipeline (like the one outlined above) can provide your team with just enough direction to make an informed decision.

10. Mining for New Leads

Let’s bring this discussion full circle.

As I stated at the beginning of the post, many people associate the word “pipeline” with the sales process. If you’re still having a hard time associating pipelines with projects, here’s an example that might bring it together: data mining for leads.

It’s quite common for sales reps to spend a few hours each week mining for leads. Web forums, social media groups, and industry directories can be excellent sources. Sadly, not every rep knows what to do when instructed to “do some lead research.”

Bring order to the lead mining process with pipelines. The pipeline phases could be as simple as:

Check sites
Add leads
Done

Obviously, you’ll want to spend time building out the first stage and include helpful tips. Would it make sense to trigger an activity set for each site to check? Or, would a single task with detailed instructions make more sense? It really depends on your business, but either solution is better than nothing.

Get Creative with Project Pipelines

I hope that this article has gotten your creative juices flowing. As you can see, project pipelines can really be a game changer when it comes to creating a more systematized business. Now, go out there and get creative with pipelines!

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.

November 13, 2017

6 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Delegating Work at the Office

A project management tool, such as Insightly, can certainly make the delegating work at the office process much easier. Of course, that statement depends on your team’s approach to using the software. No matter how amazing a tool might be, “garbage in” almost always results in “garbage out.”

With this in mind, it’s usually a good idea to define in-house best practices for delegation. After all, the last thing you want to do is create more confusion than clarity.

In this post, I’ll share six questions to ask before making your next delegation.

1. Is This a Project or Task?

The words “task” and “project” are used quite loosely in today’s business environment. In fact, some might say that they could be used interchangeably. In my experience, however, they are actually two separate things. A task is usually a smaller unit of work and may be performed with minimal instruction or oversight. A project, by contrast, typically involves many different moving parts, team members, and considerations. To successfully complete a project, a team may need to batch together several related tasks.

If you’re an Insightly user, you’ve probably already noticed that the software aligns very closely with the definitions that I’ve just outlined. Although both records share some common features (such as the ability to add collaborators and notes / comments), there are distinctive differences.

To illustrate the differences between tasks and projects, let’s discuss a simple example.

Let’s say that your company is preparing to launch a new website. Some business owners’ first impulse might be to simply assign a task to their IT manager, not knowing what is actually involved with a website re-launch (not you of course!). However, in most cases, a website is going to require cross-collaboration from many different stakeholders. Such stakeholders might include marketing, IT, sales, product, and senior management.

An Insightly project is the perfect solution for this type of work. The team leader can quickly create the project record, upload linked documents or files, add collaborators, and assemble a detailed game plan.

Once the project has been initiated, your project coordinator will then need to rely on his or her team to get things done. For a website re-launch, such things might include:

Collecting input from key stakeholders
Selecting a new web template
Setting up a development server / site
Creating website copy
Editing the content
Designing banner graphics
Implementing tracking code
Testing the development site
Taking the new site live
Inspecting the launched site for any issues
Monitoring web traffic

Each of these could be easily packaged up into an assignable task. To create tasks in Insightly, your project manager would simply open the project, click on “actions” dropdown menu, and assign accordingly.

Once the tasks are assigned, your entire organization gains instant visibility into who should be doing what.

One final note about tasks: a task does not necessarily have to be linked to a project. In fact, many (if not most) of the tasks you assign will have no linkage to another record. Use unlinked tasks to delegate small chunks of value to your team. Examples might include: ordering office supplies, building reports, filing government paperwork, updating payment details, sending invoices, or anything else that is relatively straightforward.

2. Does This Task Repeat or Not?

Since much of your delegation will depend on the creation of one-off tasks, let’s spend some time thinking about specific task-related situations.

A popular place to start involves the frequency of the work being done. Your team is far too busy to waste time creating the same tasks over and over again. Why not set certain tasks to repeat on predefined schedules?

I’ve written at length on this topic in prior posts, so I won’t spend too much time explaining how to configure recurring tasks. I will, however, at least challenge you to evaluate which things happen regularly in your business. Make a list and start building recurrence patterns in Insightly. In doing so, you’ll find more time to dedicate to high value, high impact activities – and, less time spent recreating the wheel.

To get your creative juices flowing, consider the following ongoing responsibilities that are common to many businesses:

Making quarterly tax payments
Filing business entity reports
Paying and collecting sales tax
Publishing blog content
Preparing agendas for standing meetings
Preparing your monthly newsletter
Posting your social media plans
Looking at monthly web traffic reports
Submitting expense reports by month’s end
Completing employee performance reviews

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but I hope it at least helps you identify a few candidates for recurring Insightly tasks. It’s time you stopped wasting so much time on administrative work!

3. Who Should Be Held Accountable?

Assigning a task (or even a project, for that matter) does little good unless someone is accountable for delivering results. And, just because you create an assignment, it doesn’t necessarily mean that your team knows what to do next. You need to put some teeth into your delegation workflow.

Therefore, when assigning work, it is important to specify an assignee. For Insightly tasks, there are two basic options.

Assigning to an individual: This is probably the most common situation, and it’s basically what I’ve been referring to up until this point. You need to have a task done, so you pick a specific person to do the work. In Insightly, just search for the user’s name, pick it from the dropdown, and move on.

Assigning to a team: Insightly also allows you to assign work to a particular team. This can be done one of two ways:

Assigning the same task to each team member – Use this when each team member must complete the same task. For example, you might want each team member to do a final click-through of the development site (before going live).
Assigning one task to the entire team – Use this when it’s OK for any one person from the team to do the work and mark it completed on behalf of the entire group. For example, if you have three web developers working on a project, you might ask for someone to set up the development site (whoever can do it first). This approach, although probably less common, offers additional flexibility – especially for your team projects.

When it comes to projects, you can select a team member to serve as the primary point person (aka “user responsible” in Insightly). In most cases, you should probably pick the person who will be supervising the entire project, delegating related tasks, and coordinating the various other aspects.

4. Is This Project Going to Follow a Predictable Pattern?

No two projects are exactly the same.

However, some projects follow a similar pattern of events. Taking a page out of the sales pipeline playbook, Insightly also allows you to define project pipelines. This feature can be especially useful for companies providing products or services with very tight quality control procedures.

Here is a perfect example: Since I love baseball so much (and, since it’s October!), let’s imagine that your company manufactures baseball bats. Most of your orders come from two key distributors. When a distributor places an order, you have 30 days to source the materials, schedule production, make the bats, package and palletize the units, and deliver to their dock. There are many contingencies that go along with each step and, in the past, you’ve had difficulty with certain departments (which will remain nameless) doing their jobs. To improve your company’s workflow, you decide to set up a pipeline specifically for fulfilling distributor orders.

Once built in Insightly, you can reuse the pipeline for subsequent orders. No more scrambling at the last minute to fulfill an order. Your project pipeline keeps everybody on track, every single time.

Better yet, you’re able to achieve the much-needed visibility that you so desperately crave.

5. Could We Automate the Delegation Within Our Project Pipelines?

For the sake of discussion, let’s keep with the baseball bat example. After you run a few orders through your pipeline, you begin to realize that specific tasks happen during certain phases of production – regardless of order volume. For instance, during the sourcing stage your team must always do the following:

Select the correct vendor
Prepare the purchase order
Route the PO for internal approval
Submit a deposit
Track inbound freight
Pay the balance to the vendor

As we saw in the recurring task section, it’s inefficient for your team to waste time with manual task entry. Unfortunately, these are not technically “recurring tasks,” as they only happen when you have a project going.

Here’s some good news: As an Insightly user, you can harness the power of activity sets to reduce unnecessary administrative work. Simply configure your activity set for the correct pipeline phase, create your task templates, save your settings, and you’re done.

Now, each time a project advances into the sourcing pipeline phase, all tasks will automatically be created on your behalf. You can even auto-assign them to specific users in advance (or do so manually when the project changes phases).

6. How Will We Create Scalable Visibility?

As your team buys into your delegation methodology, you’ll likely witness an explosion of productivity – particularly in the volume of created and completed tasks and projects. This is, of course, great news, but it can also be overwhelming.

Luckily, your Insightly account makes it easy to track and report on your team’s productivity. Jump over to your reports and play around with the various task and project reporting options. Keep in mind that your reports will start out at a relatively high level, but you can always filter and drill down into the exact data points that you need.

Need to find out how many tasks an individual team member has completed? Want to see who is doing the most amount of work?

Insightly lets you build interactive charts and graphs with your data, making it easier to know who is performing – and, who could stand to pick up the slack.

Think Before You Delegate

As you can see, taking a structured approach to delegation can mitigate confusion and improve the productivity of your entire staff. It can also help you achieve even greater ROI from your Insightly subscription.

So, before doing any further delegation, assign yourself a task to think through these six questions. It might just be the most impactful task you ever create!

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.

July 10, 2017

Import Contacts and Optimize Your Schedule With Ease In Latest Version Of Insightly Mobile App

Today’s business landscape calls for you to be connected at all times and have instant access to vital information, even when you’re away from the office. We remain committed to providing our users with an excellent mobile experience. With the latest version of the Insightly mobile app (3.20), you can now import contacts directly from your mobile phone’s address book, view your device’s calendar within your Insightly calendar and view your coworkers’ Insightly events on your own calendar.

We made sure to make all three of these exciting new features available for both our iOS and Android apps.

With version 3.20 you can:

Import contacts from your mobile phone directly into your Insightly app. Have some contacts in your phone’s address book that you’d like to add to your Insightly? We’ve made it pretty stinkin’ easy to import these contacts. All you need to do is ensure the contact has a first and last name entered and you’ll be able to drop the contacts right into the app. We’ll even tag them for you upon import.

See your device’s events on your Insightly calendar. Tired of toggling back and forth between calendars on your mobile device? You can now view both your Insightly calendar and any of the calendars on your device simultaneously within the app. Simply open your Insightly calendar and tap the three dots to configure which calendars to display, and just like that you’ll be able to view all your appointments in one place.

View your coworkers’ Insightly events on your Insightly Calendar. Just like on the web, you now have the option to view a coworkers’ Insightly events on your calendar. All you need to do is tap the three dots on the calendar screen and select from other users. Quickly pull up their calendar and let the collaboration begin.

In our coming releases, we are streamlining the Insightly mobile apps to prepare for future updates. To add upcoming features, we will no longer be able to support older versions.

If you are using an older version of the Insightly app, be sure to update it! Always remember that you can avoid having to install manual updates by setting up automatic updates on both Android and iOS.

July 6, 2017

Delivery: The Culmination of Your Sales Cycle

“We deliver on our promises.”

You’ve probably heard companies that tout similar mottos. On the surface, this type of tagline can almost seem clichéd. Clichés aside, delivering on promises is a fundamental part of being in (and staying in) business. Unfortunately, some companies mistakenly focus too much effort on their sales pipelines at the expense of downstream delivery.

In this post, we’re going to look at a few common delivery models and how they differ. We’ll also discuss a few tips for leveraging CRM technology for a more scalable delivery of products and services.

Physical Goods

Let’s start by examining something we all love: stuff.

Whether it’s the latest gadget, a yummy pizza, or a flashy new sports car, there’s a certain level of excitement we humans get by exchanging hard-earned cash for something tangible.

For manufacturers and retailers, getting stuff into the customer’s hands isn’t always as straightforward as it seems. In some cases, it may involve selling directly to end users. In other situations, selling through third-party resellers or franchises may make more sense. Whether you sell to consumers or other businesses, the sale of “stuff” tends to follow one of two models: direct or through distributors and/or dealers.

Let’s briefly review each model and consider a few examples for each.

Direct-to-End User Model

There are certainly perks involved with the direct distribution model. For starters, the vendor has a highly accurate feedback loop with end users. This, of course, makes it easier to adjust the product mix and develop new offerings. Since there are no “middlemen” to account for, the vendor may also be able to maximize its margin potential. On the other hand, some direct-to-end user firms operate under tremendous margin pressure – especially those offering a commoditized item.

Here are a few fictitious examples, along with a few less-than-creative slogans for illustrative purposes. (Please note: Few businesses operate in a purely “direct” or “indirect” ecosystem. Also, “B2C” is an abbreviation for “business-to-consumer” and “B2B” represents “business-to-business,” but I’m sure you already knew that.)

B2C

Uncle Joey’s Pizza & Delivery – “Uncle Joey’s famous pie…in 30 minutes or less.”
Tri-State Botanical Nursery – “We grow the best plants in the Tri-State area.”
Grandma’s Handmade Silk Tie Shop – “Stop by and find the perfect tie!”

B2B

City Iron Foundry – “We’ll cast just about anything you need!”
Reliable Software Associates – “Join 10,000 happy customers who use our platform.”
Industrial Medical & Safety – “Our best medical supplies, direct to your business.”

A direct distribution model typically relies on a high-volume, high-touch sales and support model. By assuming more control over the pipeline, the supplier also takes on greater responsibility for acquiring and servicing the accounts.

As one might imagine, many B2C companies follow a traditional retail model (be it in-person or online). A standardized (or somewhat standardized) product is made or created, the customer pays for the item, and the process repeats itself. In some cases, the “sales cycle” (if you can call it that) may only take a few minutes (or seconds, especially if done online). In such cases, a CRM may offer the most value for tracking new product launches, managing customer contact information, and encouraging future repeat purchases.

When it comes to delivery, B2B firms tend to see even more value from a CRM. Take, for example, our iron foundry example. The foundry has a team of sales reps, each of whom is actively working a lead list. When a lead converts into a new paying customer, the foundry must then flawlessly fulfill the order. By leveraging a tool like Insightly, which lets you instantly convert opportunities to projects, the company can move seamlessly into order fulfillment mode. All prior emails, notes, design specifications, drawings, and documents are brought over from the originating sales record. Now, the engineering team can hit the ground running without pestering the client for duplicate information.

Indirect Model

In theory, a purely direct model sure sounds great. In reality, it’s difficult for most businesses to pull off – especially if the company desires expansion beyond a specific geographic region or niche.

For this reason, many companies choose to sell their products through third-party wholesalers, distributors, agents, dealers, merchants, and other entities. By tapping into a pre-existing distribution model, manufacturers can expedite brand awareness and – most importantly – sales.

Here are a few example companies that fit into the “indirect” supply chain. These organizations add value to the marketplace by selling products from one or more manufacturers, usually within a specific area and/or product category.

B2C

Texas Tom’s Auto Dealership – “All your favorite brands…with deals the size of Texas!”
Crafty Catherine’s Online Shop – “Everything you need for your next big project.”
Corey’s Computers & Parts – “Gadgets you want for prices that you’ll love.”

B2B

Downtown Promo Products – “Ad specialities, gifts, tradeshow items…and more.”
Top Office Furniture & More – “More than just desks and executive chairs!”

With an indirect model, there are at least two points of delivery to be tracked. First, the manufacturer is responsible for ensuring timely delivery to its downstream distribution partners. Whether items are to be manufactured just-in-time or fulfilled from an existing inventory, a project-conscious CRM (such as Insightly) can be tremendously helpful. As new purchase orders are received, they can be uploaded and linked to a fulfillment project. Production, post-production, shipping, and customer communication can be built into the project pipeline, ensuring nothing slips through the cracks. In addition, individual tasks can be assigned to team members, creating additional accountability and clarity.

For downstream distribution partners, delivery can vary greatly based on the business model and customer type. A computer retailer, for example, usually maintains a standard inventory level. Upon paying for a product, the customer is then free to take immediate possession of the item (except in rare circumstances, such as specialty orders or out-of-stock parts). By contrast, a promotional products company has a much more complicated delivery model. Even after a customer places an order, there could be several weeks of back-and-forth prior to delivery. Obtaining written approval from clients, working with manufacturers and pad printers, and coordinating freight are just a few of the many related tasks.

The more complex the delivery model, the more vital your CRM becomes. Be sure to look for a CRM that not only tracks your projects and tasks, but one that will also allow you to save and link your email correspondence. Digging through your inbox is not the most productive use of time. Get everything in one place – and never lose an important client approval again.

Services

Time to shift gears and look at services.

We live in an increasingly service-driven economy. But, unlike products which have an easily defined cost of goods sold, services can be a bit more difficult to quantify from a profitability standpoint.

To ensure profitability, it’s especially important for service-oriented businesses to have a finely tuned delivery model. Time is money, and every minute wasted is money down the drain.

Note: Before we look at specific service model examples, I’ve chosen to categorize services into two models: recurring and limited engagement. I suppose one could categorize services as “direct” and “indirect” (as we did in the product section). However, a frequency-based explanation seemed more logical for this discussion.

Recurring Model

Keeping existing customers happy is often times easier than winning new business. Existing customers represent a known entity and can be easily upsold. New customers can represent new levels of risk and uncertain profit potential. For these reasons, some service-oriented companies focus on a recurring service model.

Not every recurring service model is identical. Some companies will bill on a straight hourly basis. Others will bill on a monthly retainer. Still others will batch together a hybrid of hourly and a la carte add-on services. Regardless of how billing is done, the goal remains the same: provide clients with more value than what they are paying for.

Let’s look at a few example companies engaged in a recurring service model.

B2C Examples

Larry’s Lawn Care Company – “Keeping your lawn trimmed, green, and beautiful.”
Community Preschool & Daycare – “Caring for children as if they were our own.”
Upper Storage Facility – “Put all your extra stuff in storage – for a few bucks a month.”

B2B Examples

Matt’s Social Media Super Stars – “Get more likes and shares with Matt’s team of stars.”
Bob Smith Commercial Insurance Agency – “Working to protect your business from risk.”
XYZ Web Hosting – “Your website, our servers = faster load times.”

In each example, continued engagement with the client is dependent upon the service provider’s performance. In the case of a lawn care company, brown yards and out-of-control dandelions are a sure-fire path to lost revenue. Likewise, a social media company that forgets to schedule posts will find itself looking for new victims…I mean clients.

With so many ongoing clients to keep happy, how can companies consistently deliver? A tool like Insightly can be a great solution for keeping everything balanced. Insightly allows you to set up recurring tasks, which can be linked to existing customers and organization records in your CRM. Once you’ve set up a task to repeat, Insightly will help you remember to follow up in a timely fashion. You can even have Insightly send you email reminders as due dates approach, making it even easier to deliver on your promises.

Limited Engagement

Not every service model fits neatly into an ongoing engagement. In fact, some companies never deal with the same client twice. It’s not because the service provider did a bad job – rather, the nature of the business simply does not necessitate future services.

Let’s take a quick look at a few examples of what I like to call “limited engagement” service providers.

B2C

Smith Home Realty Agency – “Your house…sold in 60 days or less!”
Western Kentucky Tree Trimmers – “Tree down? Let us handle that for you.”
Lucinda’s Auto Body Shop & Paint – “Your best choice for your busted-up vehicle.”

B2B

Tax Crisis Audit Partners – “Let us take care of your worst tax nightmare.”
Quad-County Machine Shop – “Quad-county on-demand machining services.”

Limited engagement service providers may have the most complicated delivery model. Each customer probably has a completely different situation, requiring a highly customized plan of action. Although in certain instances it may be possible to follow a sequential project workflow, limited engagement service providers may realize more value from Insightly milestones. For example, a realtor needs to simultaneously draft the listing, build the social media plan, and collect high resolution photographs of the property. Insightly milestones allow her to do all of these things at once – without losing track of the bigger picture. Each milestone can have linked tasks and due dates, helping her to delegate with less effort.

Or, take the machine shop as another example. “Machining” is a rather broad service set, leading to a diverse group of customers and projects. Again, milestones can provide the machinists with the flexibility that they need. Instead of being forced into a pipeline that doesn’t make sense for their business model, milestones accommodate delivery planning and adapts to the dynamics of their customer lifecycles.

Deliver with Better Technology

Whether you’re a boutique advertising agency or an online retailer, one thing is for sure: delivering on your promises is an important part of what you do each day. Don’t just hope that things will work out as they always have.

Put your delivery model into a more scalable format with Insightly.

June 6, 2017

Time Management Secrets for Marketing Consultants

Time management secrets are essential for marketing consulting success.

Right-brained or left-brained? Creative or analytical? Strategic or tactical?

Marketing consultants have a fine line to walk between ideation and execution. On one hand, we must continuously develop innovative ideas that keep clients ahead of competitors. On the other hand, we also must be highly efficient in the implementation of campaigns and programs.

Luckily, technology is here to help.

1. Strategically Examine Your Work

Before spending too much time on the technology aspect of this article, let’s first step back and examine the bigger picture. If you’ve been in business for very long, you probably have a good feel for your business model. But, have you ever paused to specifically consider the commonality of your client engagements?

To do this, pull out a whiteboard or notebook and list your most important clients near the top. Below each client’s name, answer these questions:

What is the nature of my relationship? (hourly, fixed retainer, per deliverable, etc.)
What services do I provide within the framework of this relationship?
How much do I usually bill for each service?
Do any of these services follow similar production cycles, regardless of the client? (i.e. pitching, drafting, writing, editing, etc.)
Which steps in the production cycles are known to cause bottlenecks?
What do I (or others on my team) regularly forget to do?

What’s the point of doing this exercise? In the context of this discussion, you’ll be setting the groundwork for designing more effective workflows in your project management system. From a broader perspective, you may also identify new upselling opportunities. What works for one client typically works for several!

2. Divide Your Work into Two Camps

I’ve often heard experts compare marketing to an engine. Before you start your vehicle’s engine, you must first put in the right type of fuel. As your car takes you where you need to go, the fuel tank begins to run low. Unless you want to be stranded somewhere, you must continuously refill the tank before reaching empty. And, it’s always wise to have a qualified mechanic to run diagnostics and recommend ongoing preventative maintenance.

Like your car’s engine, your client’s marketing engine depends on you to fuel it. Quality content, wise SEO decisions, clean and mobile-friendly web design, and effective branding are just a few of the important ongoing responsibilities. Much like the mechanic, you also keep a close eye on performance by reviewing web traffic reports, lead data, email analytics, acquisition costs. You use this information to recommend exciting new initiatives, aimed at optimizing performance.

Although there are many moving parts, most tasks usually fall into one of two categories:

Repeating
One-off

Before going any further, make a list of your tasks that repeat. As you look at the many services you provide, it may be surprising to see how many occur on a recurring basis. Unless you’re already using project management software, simply remembering to do these tasks on time can be a chore. Looking at my own to-do list, I must admit there are many recurring responsibilities, such as:

Monthly

Prepare newsletters
Develop content plans
Review and interpret website traffic reports
Send invoices

Weekly

Review and approve social media plans
Publish blog articles
Prepare for 1×1 meetings
Check weekly SEO analysis reports

Daily

Provide feedback to web developers
Provide feedback to graphic team

Identifying your repeating tasks is relatively straightforward. But, what about things that are less predictable? For example, if you’re a digital marketer, you’ve probably helped a client promote a whitepaper or two. At first glance, this seems like a one-time engagement. In reality, although the specific whitepaper is new, the process typically follows a similar pattern. Spend time listing out the steps you typically follow to help bring a downloadable asset to fruition. Your list might include:

Gather content
Edit copy
Ask for client input on draft
Design the layout
Create landing page & thank-you page
Build email nurture sequence
Enable CRM integration for web leads
Seek client’s final approval
Set up goal tracking in analytics package

Go through this process for any other work that requires a specific production workflow but does not necessarily occur within a predictable time frame. Examples might include:

Launch a new website
Promote a webinar
Design a brochure
Write a guest blog post
Produce a training video
Deploy a new CRM system
Implement a marketing automation package

3. Create Standardization with Technology

Now that you’ve documented how your time is spent, the fun can really begin.

A system like Insightly can help create work standardization while simultaneously reducing your propensity toward forgetfulness. To illustrate, let’s see how client invoicing can be streamlined with Insightly.

Most of your clients prefer to be billed monthly. However, you have a few on bi-weekly billing. With everything else on your plate, keeping these dates organized is more challenging than it seems. Forgetting to invoice a client is not only bad for your cash flow, but it also sends the wrong message about your project management skills. If you can’t even send an invoice on time, how can you be trusted with other more important matters?

Automate your client invoicing by setting up repeating tasks in your project management system. For clients on a monthly schedule, you might just set up a single recurring task (to avoid unnecessary task clutter). In Insightly, that might look something like this:

Now, let’s take care of your handful of customers who prefer bi-weekly billing. Set the task to first occur on the next due date and select a repeat schedule of “every two weeks.”

Once set up, each completed task will automatically trigger Insightly to create the next instance on your behalf. Remembering to invoice clients on time just got a lot easier.

By automating your repeating tasks, you’re likely to find new time in your schedule. Reinvest some of this time into building more scalable operations for your business. If you’re using Insightly, you might pre-populate an activity set for each important process.

Recalling the whitepaper example from above, we discussed how the production of such an asset follows a specific, predictable process (gather content, edit copy, design the layout, etc.). Regardless of the whitepaper’s theme, these steps must be followed each and every time. It therefore makes sense to create an activity set to serve as a template for your milestones or project pipelines.

Once created, the activity set can be applied to all future whitepapers that your team produces. Instead of wasting time to figure out what happens next, all of your steps are clearly laid out with a single click.

4. Commit to a Disciplined Work Life

As a marketer, you’re an expert at juggling a lot of things at once. Client meetings, phone calls, emails, and webinars are just a few of the many priorities in your busy workday.

Without a disciplined approach, it can be easy to get very overwhelmed. After all, your clients count on your expertise to grow their businesses. To provide prudent and timely advice, marketers must possess expert-level prioritization skills.

How can you achieve this for your consulting business? Digitizing your to-do list (as outlined in the three previous steps) is a great place to start. Unlike handwritten notes or even a spreadsheet, a project management system helps you to visualize your daily workload. By assigning due dates for yourself, your tasks can be automatically sorted by due date or priority. Log in, get your plan, and stay focused on what’s most important.

It’s important to note that any to-do list (be it digital or paper-based) is only as good as what you make of it. Failure to check it regularly will cause you to only feel further behind.

To avoid this situation, set a goal of checking your to-do list at least daily (preferably in the morning). Identify that which must be done today; anything else can happen as a second priority (or be pushed back to a later date). As you complete tasks, be sure to mark them as “done” in your project management software. This step is particularly important for repeating tasks, as to ensure future tasks get created by the system.

5. Delegate First (When Possible)

An idle task represents a missed opportunity – particularly if it involves work that requires group collaboration. When facing a list of a dozen or more tasks, give preference to those that can be delegated.

For example, let’s say your task list is packed full of (among other things) client infographic ideas. Although you’re not the person who will design the graphics, each concept does require your attention. Before the designer can do his job, you must first scope out the idea, provide detailed instructions, and explain your overall vision. Making this type of delegation doesn’t require a significant investment of your time. But, with everything else on your schedule, it’s natural to push it off for later. Unfortunately, in doing so, your graphic designer will be twiddling his thumbs instead of adding value.

With a rock-solid project management system, you can expedite your delegation process, thereby increasing the likelihood you’ll actually do it. With Insightly, delegating is as easy as updating the assigned user, adding your comments, and saving the record. You can also indicate progress completion, priority, and/or status.

Of course, on unusually hectic days, it may not be possible to find time to delegate. Time management can be well intentioned but not always feasible. That’s OK. Just to be sure to set aside delegation time on your “normal” days (if there ever is such a thing) and always look for things that can be delegated downward. In doing so, you’ll keep others busy, improve your team’s output, and make your workload seem much more attainable.

6. Create Accountability

Even the best of plans are worthless without proper accountability.

As the days and weeks go by, you may be tempted to fall into your old routines. Don’t let this happen to you! Instead, seek technology that can serve as your accountability partner.

For example, Insightly can actually remind you when important tasks are almost due. By enabling task reminders, you can make sure that nothing slips through the cracks. For visibility into tasks assigned to other users, consider building a task report that tracks overdue tasks by owner. Advanced users can even opt to automatically receive emailed reports. Customize the delivery frequency to fit your business model and availability.

From a bigger picture perspective, it’s also wise to incorporate a retrospective process into your project management workflow. Not every project goes as planned, which means there are probably valuable lessons to learn.

As you peruse your list of completed projects (and/or associated tasks), consider these questions.

Did we finish behind, ahead of, or on schedule?
What caused the deviation from our original plan?
Were there certain tasks that held up the process?
Are certain team members consistently clogging things up?
Could some tasks be merged into fewer items, thereby creating less clutter?
Was the client satisfied with the outcome?
How much downtime was attributed to delegation delays?
At the end of the day, was this project profitable for our business?

Of course, an in-depth retrospective doesn’t make sense for every work product. Depending on your business model, it may be best to spot-check at random. Or, it may make more sense to review closed projects over a certain budget or hour amount. Either way, define a process for your business and stick to it. Use this information to further optimize future work and technology decisions.

Better Time Management = Happier Customers

Clients don’t pay you just for the sake of paying you. Rather, the goal for any consultant is to deliver more value than what the client pays. Making the most of every minute, hour, and day with better time management will ensure clients always see you as a net positive asset.

Thankfully, technology continues to provide innovative solutions to even the most difficult productivity challenges. Make time to regularly identify your bottlenecks, map more efficient workflows, and deploy software features that can bring your vision to life.

February 7, 2017

Are You Ready for Prime Time?

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

Welcome to Turn It Up Tuesday, where we bring you 4 weekly tips—a tip on running your business, a tip on using Insightly CRM, a tip on improving your sales, and a tip on improving your life. Enjoy this week’s tips!

	Let Insightly Remember Your Production Workflows
	In a recent Turn It Up edition, we alluded to how Insightly activity sets can improve your lead management efforts. If you haven’t played around with this feature yet, an activity set can apply a collection of tasks or events to a lead or opportunity. Rather than relying on reps to enter each item manually, Insightly adds them in bulk (on your behalf). Did you know that activity sets can also be applied to your Insightly projects? This can be especially beneficial for things you do somewhat infrequently – but are nonetheless still important. For example, let’s say that your company provides technology consulting services. Every month or two, clients inquire about your website security audit service. In the past, you’ve tracked the audit process in a simple spreadsheet. For each new client, you just clone your previous report and start from there. Although this approach has worked fairly well, you find your staff regularly using outdated templates or forgetting important steps. Bypass the frustration by centralizing your process with an Insightly activity set. Here’s how to set it up: Open your activity set dashboard (click here) Create a new activity set. Be sure to check the “for projects” box. Edit your newly created activity set and begin adding tasks (or events). Customize each task with the necessary details. Once you’ve added all your tasks (or events), apply the activity set to your next project!
	Integrate Sales and Project Management into a Single Ecosystem
	Although thousands of users rely on Insightly’s project management features, the software is probably best known for being a great CRM. In fact, some customers continue to use third-party project apps despite using Insightly for sales management. While there’s nothing wrong with this approach, there could be a better way. By unifying all project and sales activities into a centralized ecosystem, you gain a number of tangible benefits, such as: One database to maintain – rather than two Single point of login for your staff Ability to convert won deals to projects 360-degree view of each project (from initial lead generation to completion) Fewer to-do lists to keep organized Potential cost savings (one subscription vs. two) So, if you’ve thought about ditching your third-party project system, what steps should you take? Consider these suggestions before hitting the “cancel” button: Which users still need to be added to Insightly (non-sales staff?) How can we transfer existing work to fit a pipeline or milestone model? Do we have project templates that should be transferred as new activity sets? How many recurring tasks will need to be transferred? Do we rely on other third-party integrations that also need to be moved? Moving everything to one cohesive system is likely to provide greater clarity for you and your staff. Just be sure to make a transition plan and stick to it!
	Recognize Your “Prime-Time”
	To stay ahead of your clients’ needs, you probably find yourself working long (and intense) workdays. In the winter months, it’s not uncommon for you to be in your office during all daylight hours. (Pretty depressing, huh?) If you’re like most professionals, there’s a good chance that your productivity (and attention span) fluctuates as the day drags on. And, although you never let clients notice, you’re certainly aware of the problem. For example, John is usually on his second cup of coffee by 10 am, which makes his to-do list no match for him. Unfortunately, by 1 pm, he often experiences a significant drop in motivation. This can be bad news, especially when he has several important tasks that require significant brainpower. Although John can’t magically make his day shorter, he can try studying his work patterns. It doesn’t take much analysis for John to realize his “prime time” is from 8:00 until 11:00 am. What should John do to maximize his prime time? For starters, he might try packing that period with work that is time-sensitive and/or challenging. Instead of spreading such tasks across the never-ending day, John could guarantee that his most productive hours are spent on what matters most. For the remainder of his day, John might do that which does not require “prime time” focus. (Of course meetings and other obligations can throw a wrench into this plan.) So, what’s your “prime time”?
	Create Predictability in Your Pre-Sale Process
	The client wants a proposal. Sounds good, right? To win the sale, quoting and presentations are necessary evils. Creating the necessary documentation can consume considerable internal resources (namely, man-hours). This is especially true if your team has free rein to build their own proposals from scratch. Step up your game by leveraging activity sets in your pre-sale process. In doing so, your CRM could automatically create and assign the following tasks: Submit opportunity details to the quoting manager Make a copy of the approved proposal template (link to the document) Build the presentation deck (include pricing info from the quoting department) Submit proposal to management for approval Send the package to the prospective client Follow up with the client for a yes or no What other repeatable processes could your sales organization streamline with activity sets? Here are a few other possibilities: Client invoicing Lead list importing Sales report creation Trade show preparation Expense report creation Ready for a more predictable approach to sales management? Start by identifying that which your sales staff does regularly. Then, leverage the technology that you already use to do it even better!

Would you like to share your tips with Insightly customers? Send them to us! If we use one in our weekly feature we’ll send you a $10 Amazon Gift Card! Contact us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or send us an email.

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

About the author: 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, check out his book, or connect with him on Linkedin.

September 14, 2016

CRM for All: Government

Government offices aren’t known for being first-adopters of cutting-edge technology. However, as technologically savvy citizens look for more ways to engage with their city officials, it’s become a necessity for local and state offices to adopt and implement tools that will help them to keep track of conversations and incoming requests. Luckily, there is a solution to help build better relationships with constituents. Public-facing government offices are finding value in using customer relationship management (CRM) solutions to help manage citizen interactions and manage incoming projects.

Doing more with less

In an age of stripped-down budgets, government officials and employees are looking for the most cost effective solutions. Thankfully, there are CRM options available that have all the functionality and capabilities of a fancy, enterprise CRM but without the high price tag. And for those agencies that might not need all the bells and whistles of an enterprise-grade CRM, there are solutions that offer a plug-and-play experience so companies can find out which tools work best for them.

Making real connections

Employees of government offices need to be able to keep track of contact information and reference relationship details. It’s critical they have access to historical knowledge of interactions between government officials and citizens, and a CRM database is an easy way to save this information. Being able to reference this historical knowledge is what builds relationships between local offices and their citizens. It gives users a clear picture of problems or issues citizens may have called about in the past and cuts down on callers having to re-explain a problem or issue every time they speak to the office.

A real-world example

Chief of Staff Scott Esty immediately recognized the need to implement a system that would keep track of constituent conversations, concerns or proposed legislation (Tweet this!). More than 18,230 people and 5,200 organizations have contacted the New York State Assembly office since assemblyman Christopher Friend was elected in 2010, and the team needed a simple way to keep track conversations with these contacts and groups.

Since tracking all of its work with constituents, organizations and lobbyists, the office is much more effective in how it assists each of those groups and assesses legislation before the assembly. Every team member can quickly pull up the contact’s record when answering phone calls, which allows them to address their constituent’s needs effectively. Correspondences related to legislative issues are tracked according to bill number, so when it comes to a vote or debate in a committee meeting, Assemblyman Friend can quickly present constituents’ positions on each bill. Whether it’s getting tax refunds, sorting out DMV issues or getting new legislation passed, the New York State Assembly office can manage all of the conversations and subsequent progress with constituents, which helps them to solve the problems of the people in their district.

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.

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.

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.

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