Stop the leaks with a CRM

As a client-based small business it’s very important to keep track of clients and prospective clients and the communication between them. Emails, phone calls, in-person meetings, tasks, follow ups, introductions, handshakes, and games of charades – losing track can mean losing business.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) apps are designed to help wrangle all this information in easy to update and easy to digest ways. Finding the best one depends on your needs and your workflow.

Why use a CRM?

For anyone who deals with more than just a handful of clients on a daily basis, the question of why use a CRM is obvious. There’s simply too much information flying around to remember it all. Before I began using a CRM, here’s how the interaction with a prospective client could (and probably often did) transpire:

1. Prospective client calls on the phone about a website project. A meeting gets scheduled.
2. Meet with the client and discuss project. Leave feeling good about the prospect.
3. Proposal is created and sent.
4. Two weeks go by without hearing from client.
5. Prospective client gets forgotten.
6. Weeks later a vague recollection of a prospective client haunts me. What have I forgotten?
7. Prospective client is lost to the ether.

With only a few clients a prospect or two here or there this probably doesn’t happen. But once two, three, four new prospects a week start calling, it soon becomes impossible to stay on top of who said what without a little help.

CRM Software to the Rescue

Sure you could write it all down on sticky notes or in a notebook, but with the way our devices are synced these days with calendars, voicemail and apps, finding a good CRM application makes the most sense. Using a CRM and taking the above scenario, my interaction with a prospective client now transpires like this:

1. Prospective client calls on the phone about a website project. A meeting gets scheduled.
2. New contact get entered into CRM with as much detail as I currently have. Client is tagged as ‘prospect.’
3. Meet with client and discuss project. Leave feeling good about the prospect.
4. Project details are entered into CRM, task to send proposal on specific date is created.
5. Proposal is created and sent. Task created to follow up in one week created.
6. A week goes by without hearing from client. CRM sends reminder to follow up.
7. Follow up email is sent. New task is set to follow up again in one week.
8. If two weeks go by and client still hasn’t contacted me, a final follow up task gets created.
9. If client still has not contacted me after final follow up, client gets tagged as ‘dead prospect.’
10. More likely however, client has gotten busy, and by the second follow up has contacted me and the project begins. Client is then tagged ‘client.’

Finding the CRM that fits your needs

Finding the right software is a matter of your needs. I’ll be writing a comparison of the two that I’ve used extensively in a future post. For me though, a good CRM should be able to do the following:

1. Easy entry of a new contacts, including up/downloading in the standard vCard format – both single and multiple contacts.
2. Tagging or grouping of contacts for easy sorting.
3. Notes – there should be plenty of room for keeping date based notes.
4. Email/file attachments.
5. Date and Time based task lists.
6. iCalendar subscriptions to task lists.
7. iPhone/mobile application

I don’t claim to have used most of the CRM software out there, but of the ones I have, they all easily fit the above criteria.

Output = Input – or – You Reap What You Sow

Once you’ve found your software solution, it’s time to start entering. Every correspondence you get should immediately go into the CRM. If you take good paper notes of phone calls or networking encounters, you could also set aside time each day dedicated to keeping your CRM up to date. For some, this might seem like a waste of time. Yes, I  spend what seems like an inordinate amount of time looking at, updating and referring to my CRM – but since I’ve started using CRM software I’ve landed more jobs simply because I’ve been able to stay in front of my prospects minds, with timely follow ups and gentle reminders.

What do you think?

Do you use CRM software? Do you have a solution that works better for you? I’m famous for spending an hour to save 5 minutes, so I’d love to hear what you’ve been doing to stay on top of your prospects and client tasks.

Is there life after MobileMe?

About a month ago I received an email from Apple informing me that my MobileMe subscription was coming up for renewal. I’ve loved the services that MobileMe provides since signing up over a year ago, and had planned on keeping it going. But with the holidays coming up I decided to look into the possibility of dropping MobileMe while retaining the capabilities that it provides.

Turns out that it’s not only possible, but pretty darn easy to replicate most of the services MobileMe provides, for free. I’ll go through each service, in order of importance to me. Note: These steps were all taken with an iPhone and a mac, but similar options exist for PC/Other Phone users.

Cut the MobileMe tether

First things first. Giving up on MobileMe meant turning it off across all devices. It may feel a little strange at first, like you’re hanging free in the wind, but it’s a necessary step. After one final sync to make sure everything was updated, I created a backup of both my calendars and contacts. Then I turned off MobileMe on both computers by opening System Preferences > MobileMe and logging out. I also deleted my @me.com account from Mail.app and on the iPhone.

Note: Anytime you monkey around with your contacts and calendars, it’s a good, no – GREAT idea to create a backup first. Just in case.

Contact & Calendar Syncing: Google Sync

The ability to keep contacts and calendars synced across all devices (Mac Pro, Powerbook, iPhone) was the single biggest reason to sign up for MobileMe in the first place. Google provides excellent documentation on how to use their sync services, for all kinds of phones and OS’s. The article explained nearly everything I needed to get my contacts and calendars synced.

Contacts

To sync both contacts and calendars, you’ll need a Google account of some sort. I’ve got a Gmail account, which includes a contact list. If you don’t have Gmail, Google has an article on how to manage contacts outside of Gmail.

Once you get a Google Contacts account set up, open Contacts, and in the General section of the Preferences, select “Synchronize with Google,” and enter your account credentials. Do this across all of your machines. If your contact lists on each machine differ, there may be a period of time that you’re asked to review duplicates, or resolve conflicts. Eventually everything will be synced and you’ll no longer be bothered with these notices.

Update: Apparently contact syncing only works if you have an iPhone or iPod Touch and have synced with Google before. Fortunately, Lifehacker has a workaround for non iPhone/iPod Touch users.

Calendars

Syncing calendars follows a similar path as syncing contacts, using Google Sync. You’ll need a Google Calendar account, and you’ll need to already have your local calendar synced with that account. Here’s an article from Google on how to sync iCal and Mozilla Sunbird with Google Calendar using CalDAV (and here’s how to do it using Outlook). I use BusyCal, a more robust calendar app for the mac that allowed me to sync calendars with G Cal before Google Sync existed. It’s also a great upgrade iCal and I highly recommend it.

Once you get all your calendars synced with Google, consider all your calendars synced. Add an event to any of your calendars, and in a short while you’ll see them across all calendars.

iPhone

To get contacts and calendars synced on the iPhone, this article from Google explains the steps I took to get the phone set up. Once you get the account set up, you’ll be asked to select the services you’d like to sync. I selected them all, and when prompted, chose to delete the existing information on the phone. If you don’t, you’ll end up with duplicate contacts and calendar events. If you didn’t back up your data in the beginning, this step may prove a bit nerve wracking. Back up your data first, then come back and turn on the syncing services.

That’s all it takes, really. Your contacts and calendars are now synced between all computers and your phone. For free. Sweet.

Email

Since MobileMe had nothing to do with syncing email between my iPhone and my computers, there was nothing to do here. I have numerous accounts set up through Spigot Design, all set up as IMAP accounts. They sync just fine to the phone via wifi and Edge (it’s a first generation phone). I’ve never set them up for ‘Push Notification‘ but emails often come in on the iPhone before my regular mail app. In a year and a half, I received a total of 3 emails on the .me account, all test messages from myself. Nothing to see here, moving on.

iDisk: Dropbox

Having the iDisk show up in the Finder sidebar is an easy way to keep things backed up and share files that are too big to email. Dropbox does the same thing, for free. Well, sort of free – The free account only includes 2GB of storage, while the iDisk holds up to 20GB. I’d been using Dropbox before MobileMe came along, so there was no switch needed as I didn’t use the iDisk anyway.

Gallery

The MobileMe gallery was another reason why I initially wanted the service. There’s no denying the design skills of Apple, and the Gallery is a great example. Easy to use and nice to look at. But I found myself not really using it. It doesn’t have the social aspect of Flickr, and it’s hard to get to unless someone knows the address. I wrote an article about how I was rethinking Flickr and MobileMe gallery options that might explain my thinking further. I used the gallery mainly to store pictures of the kids, and found that most of the visitors to their site preferred to stay on the site rather than be taken externally. I opted for a simple jQuery lightbox script that displays a slideshow on each individual post, and it’s been working great.

Bookmarks: XMarks

One small thing that MobileMe introduced to my world was bookmark syncing. I never really knew how important that was to me until it was gone. Fortunately xmarks comes to the rescue. Sign up for an account, download it to each computer, and your bookmarks stay synced. Xmarks for Safari installs itself as a preference pane item, and with a little configuring, I was able to let it do its thing pretty much in the background by disabling Growl notifications and taking the icon out of the menu bar. Xmarks for Firefox installs as a plugin and is set up in a similar fashion. Free free free.

Xmarks actually turns out to be a nice little upgrade over MobileMe, now that I can keep both Safari and Firefox synced.

Bookmark syncing on the iPhone is no longer done through the air, but I’m still able to keep them fairly well updated through the iTunes/iPhone sync. This isn’t an issue however, as my bookmarks are rarely updated and therefore don’t need up to the minute syncing.

Find My Phone

This is the one service I wasn’t able to replicate. There is an app called Undercover for the iPhone that allows for tracking of lost or stolen phones, but it costs $4.99. I’ve heard that this MobileMe services is the one that truly makes the $99/year worthwhile, but not for me…

Conclusions

MobileMe is an easy to use service with all the design and usability bells and whistles that Apple is known for. With a few extra steps, however, it’s entirely possible to have nearly all the services it provides, for free. There may be a day when I go back to MobileMe, but for now I’m getting along just fine without it.

What do you think?

Have you given up on MobileMe too? How has it gone? If you have any thoughts on this article, please let me know by leaving a comment below!

Let me start by saying that I love Harvest. It has saved me a ton of time in billing for projects and tracking how much time each aspect of a project takes. I agree completely when you say it’s the ‘worlds best time tracking application.’ It’s worth every cent of the subscription costs.

Which is why I think you are the company best equipped to build my dream application.

Because as much as I love Harvest, I find myself wishing it did more. What I really want is an application that does all of my business related business. Accounting. Time tracking. Invoicing. All in one application. I’m tired of doing things twice, such as entering information into an invoicing app, and then entering it again into my accounting app. I know I can export to Quickbooks or Excel, but I don’t want to do that. That’s still doing things twice. Here’s how I want the workflow to go:

1. Enter a new client and a new project to the system.
2. Track time and expenses for that project.
3. When the project is complete, set up an invoice according to the project settings. Invoice is customizable.
4. If the invoice needs to be edited for any reason, such as offering a discount, I can do it on the fly while setting it up.
5. If I have additional line items to add to the invoice, they can also be added on the fly.
6. Invoice can be emailed directly from the application, attached as pdf.
7. Accounting app records invoice as an Accounts Receivable item.
8. If client is late in paying invoice, invoice tracking app sends notification of late payment.
9. When client pays invoice, I deposit check into business checking account.
10. Accounting app connects to my banking account, and sees that there has been a deposit. Since the deposit is the same amount as a pending invoice, app asks if the two are related and if I would like to reconcile it.
11. Invoicing app marks invoice as paid.
12. At the end of the year, the accounting app spits out the reports I need to get taxes and such done.
13. And its all web based for multiple users.

Expenses will work in a similar manner, with the application able to connect to a credit card account and quickly and easily reconcile any business expenses. Even if those expenses aren’t directly attributable to a particular project or client.

I realize this is a big app and maybe a lot to ask. But this is what I want, and I’m guessing there are a lot of folks out there who want the same thing. I’ve been on the Quickbooks forums and have felt the frustrations I find there first hand. Small businesses want this. There are apps of this kind coming out in other countries (Xero.com in New Zealand and Australia) that look promising, but I’ve yet to find something similar here in the U.S.

Iridesco, you are uniquely situated to fill this niche. The care you put into usability and UI design far surpass others I’ve seen. I would love to see the thought and care you could put into an application of this sort.

Thanks again for Harvest, it truly is indispensable to me,
Bryan Hoffman
Spigot Design

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