1) Good and bad news
2) The right Sales Manager
3) We love trainings
4) Setting goals right
5) They signed the contract!
6) Keys are Key
7) In fresh perspective we trust
8) Sometimes when you think you’ve got the worst job ever, think again
9) Check that mail
10) Obvious benefits
These days we hear lots of calls to be more organised, efficient and productive. Injunctions to “Achieve more in less time”, “Beat the work overload”, “Work smart” all sound inspiring, but are they really achievable? And if so, what are the magic actions to take to get to this degree of perfection?
Today I’ll take a look at one of the time management methods called GTD, whose core promise is to boost your productivity in a stress-free manner. I am also going to give you a couple of business software tools that can actually help implement GTD ideas, and make them an integral part of your daily life.
GTD is shorthand for Getting Things Done, a productivity methodology pioneered by David Allen. The premise is that today people – especially business people – have to remember a lot of things they need to do. Keeping track of them takes up an inordinate amount of your brain’s capacity and energy, and results in stress and frustration.
The GTD method says we have to free our mind from remembering tasks and concentrate on actually performing them. GTD says it’s possible to transform the workload into an organized system, and it’s possible to do in a stress-free switch.
So what’s the secret?
There are four steps to make it work:
This is a summarized version of GTD on how to keep up with a busy workflow and stay in control. Since Getting Things Done method became popular, some business applications have applied GTD within their workflow. Here are three business applications (one ours) that employ the GTD concept and will help integrate GTD into your daily workflow.
Software core function:
OnePage helps small businesses manage their relationships with prospects and customers. It provides a single application to store customer and sales related information. This enables companies to attract new customers and retain their existing ones, in less time and at less cost.
How GTD idea is implemented:
OnePage CRM is focused on sales activity and turns it into a GTD-style workflow. By putting every prospect or customer in a list that’s sorted by their “Next Action”, the sales person will in a natural way, move prospects through the sales funnel towards a sale. One glance at the main screen lets the sales person know what actions they need to take now, today and tomorrow. That uncluttered focus helps to move forward every single sale to success.
Software core function:
Nozbe is a time and project management application for busy professionals and their teams. The app helps not only manage tasks and projects, but most importantly collaborate with others and communicate through tasks so that everyone is clear what needs to be done at any particular moment.
How GTD idea is implemented:
Nozbe focuses on three key GTD elements: Projects, Contexts and Next Actions – users can organize tasks into projects, execute them in contexts and quickly “star” their next actions and focus on their Next Actions list throughout the day. When they collaborate, delegating actions makes them someone else’s Next Actions. The idea is to help the team learn GTD by using Nozbe (aka “learning by doing”) even when they don’t want to read the amazing David Allen’s GTD book. These three core functions are further enhanced by an easy way to “dump stuff” into “Inbox” and processing it later. Nozbe tries to be user’s “trusted system” for storing tasks and projects and focusing on what really needs to be done next.
Software core function:
Tudumo is a powerful to-do list. Instead of managing many lists scattered all over computer, Tudumo keeps everything together. It allows to see all tasks, or focus on a subset and ignore everything else.
How GTD idea is implemented:
Tudumo distills GTD principles into a clean and simple user interface. The shortcut keys makes entering actions fast and easy. Tudumo helps focus on today’s work by reducing distractions. With Tudumo, the overwhelming workload becomes a structured set of tasks – to focus only on the actions that have to be done next.
Have you ever tried to apply GTD principles in your life? Did it help you succeed?
This contest is now closed!
The winner of the Funny Sales Stories contest is Kevin with the story of how Eastenders helped him make a sale! Kevin is from Dublin. He now has 1 Kg of chocolate for those who work with Kevin make sure to ask him for a piece (a BIG) of chocolate. When we asked Kevin to tell us a little more about his sales work experience, he said: “At the time of the story (3 years ago) I was a student studying Business and Law working a part time job in a customer service and sales centre, it was out sourced so we sold different things every week.”
Congratulations to Kevin and thanks everyone for taking part!
Sales are always a challenge, you meet new people, overcome objections, and create an image of the company you represent. However, it’s during the most serious negotiations that funniest things happen! Let’s have a good laugh at humorous or disastrous moments in speeches, sales presentations, meetings and learn from our mistakes!
OnePage CRM has created a “Funniest Sales Story” contest! Open until 30th Apr 2012, it invites everyone involved in sales to join! Submit your story as a comment to this blog post and whoever gets the most Likes will receive 1 kilo of chocolate (just don’t put it in the back pocket of your jeans when you are meeting a customer ;)!
Contest terms:
- The contest takes place from Mar 26 until Apr 30, 2012
- Submit your story in a comment to this blog posting
- The story must be related to sales and be funny
- The story must contain at least 100 words
- Your story will get approval before it enters the contest
- Every comment has a Like feature next to it. The story that gets most likes will win the contest
Best of luck everyone!
Tweet this contest for more funny stories & likes
Hey, it’s time to show you what we’ve been up to the past few months. We just launched version 2.0 of OnePage, and we think it rocks!
Check our video to get a feel of the new design… or just log in!
Our new interface gives you the power features you need while retaining the one-page concept! We’ve learned about your need for basic contact management and integrated it right into main screen. These changes allow us to now fulfil the product roadmap with a solid underlying concept.
Invite members of your team to collaborate on sales! We recognized that there’s about three or four staff involved in sales in small business. From the business owner to the sales person and the administrator… you’re all now on the one page :)
The new interface now puts the power in your hands to work faster and more efficiently. Quickly ‘star’ contacts that need your attention later. Never drop the ball again on a prospect – our waiting for filter automatically alerts you in case you haven’t heard back!
Log in to OnePage or sign up and give it a try!
So what’s next? Marketing and social features coming soon, stay tuned!
Had a great chat with Renee Blodgett at SXSW Interactive. She’s the CEO of Magic Sauce Media, founder of We Blog the World and an avid traveller. Renee created a really accurate review of OnePage CRM and we’re proud to repost it to our blog. I think our marketing will learn from her!
I’ve always been interested in CRM solutions, particularly ones aimed at small businesses, since solutions like Salesforce and expensive and complex tools like it don’t really serve the SOHO market, of which I live in.
I had a sit down with the founder of Ireland-based OnePageCRM in Austin at SXSW last week.Michael Fitzgerald seems to have the right approach to helping small businesses out by simplifying what exists out there, while adding in the social bits that we all need in our daily outreach to customers, prospects, partners and more.
He says that their solution is 100% focused on “sales actions.” Action is where we all want to take our ‘to-do’s’ as much as they’re often hard to get off the ever growing check-list. The problem with many of today’s solutions is that those follow up ‘action items’ get buried under other actions and other priorities and we don’t always follow through as quickly as we should. Transfer that to a typical sales environment for a small business and that lack of aggressive follow up can make the difference between a closed sale on a hot lead to a hot lead turning warm or going with a competitor in the interim.
Their approach was inspired by the GTD (Getting Things Done) philosophy…not formally, but Fitzgerald is a strong advocate of their system and thinks that applying that way of thinking to CRM is the way to go. For those not familiar with GTD, it is David Allen’s time management system for productivity success and increased focus. What they want to encourage with OnePageCRM is upfront decision making on every contact.
The team is focused on the professional services sector with their sweet spot targeting small businesses in the 5 to 25 employees. Their sweet spot he says, is around 3 users. Why? Based on their own research, typical accounts/people in a system have 3 people ‘touching’ it throughout its cycle (receptionist/office manager or assistant, the sales guy and a product liaison who is the technical eyes and ears executing on those customer’s orders and needs). Industries singing their praises today include: Business-to-Business Sales (designers, architects, engineers, lawyers, PR agencies, financial services firms, software IT and training), Consulting (management consultants and business advisers) and the most natural fit: Telesales(those dealing with outbound sales and marketing tradeshow follow ups).
There are 3 main concepts they focus on today:
1. Focusing on that ONE Next Action: this ensures that leads and prospects are constantly being moved through the sales process to a successful win.
2. Dynamic List of Contacts: If you think about it, CRM programs are often pretty flat and siloed in ways that aren’t necessarily useful in other areas of your workflow process. OnePageCRM sorts your contacts according to their next action and creates a dynamic list which prioritizes your time. By simplifying and uncluttering the process yet making it dynamic at the same time, you can view the main screen quickly and figure out what actions you need to take now, today and tomorrow.
3. CRM Essentials on One Page: The one page UI was designed with simplicity in mind. Often, information is buried in another layer that we don’t see and therefore don’t do. Out of sight, out of mind. By keeping everything on one page, Fitzgerald says that it will ensure continued everyday usage.
By storing and displaying only critical data and sales activity on one single page, the idea is that small business owners can more efficiently make forward moving sales decisions with clarity and ease. Rather than miss opportunities or forget about them, new customers are more likely and existing customers are retained, leading to increased sales, lower costs, and less admin. Says Fitzgerald, “we never drop the ball on the customer.” Salesforce is more ‘tab’ focused, which means that certainly there are deeper layers and more features and functionality, but OnePageCRM isn’t going after the large Enterprise market. Rather, they’re focused on the SOHO market where there’s a gap and feel their solution will be a huge “win” for small business owners around the globe. “With Salesforce, it’s the “kitchen sink” approach – everything is in there — which is overkill for a small business,” says Fitzgerald.There are four areas of their system:
Contact Management – there are tons of CRM systems out there but they don’t necessarily lead to more action or more sales.
Deal Flow – this is the core sales piece of their system. Classify the deal, get a timeframe for the deal and then be able to do forecasting based on that data. (all in one easy-to-access window). Custom “smart filters” is a great added feature that allows you to only see leads and prospects from one region of the country as an example.
The last two — Marketing and Social – are coming soon, and we’re eager to see (and use) it once they’re added since, with these two features, it seems like a perfect solution for any small business owner regardless of what part of the world you live in. Marketing and social are the cherry on the cake so to speak. Fitzgerald emphasizes with a smile, “We’re all about having an uncluttered focus. A next actions focus. A trusted system focus.” And, I have to admit, their UI was crisp and easy to navigate.
The OnePage team is expanding!
We currently have two open positions to fill; a Growth hacker (Digital marketeer) and a Ruby on Rails developer.
See the full details on our website here.
Please spread the word – we’re looking for a-listers!
Michael.
Cool! We’ve been nominated for the “Top CRM Solution” again this year! If you have a minute, please click on the graphic above and give us your vote. Should only take a minute or two. Thanks a million.
Email dropbox
Now you can automatically store emails sent to contacts in OnePage!
When you click on a contact’s email address (opening your default email client), OnePage places an address in the Bcc field that sends the message to your OnePage account and associated with that contact.
Find contacts on LinkedIn
As you know OnePage is really suitable for business to business service organisations. And where do business customers hang out? Yep, LinkedIn.
We’ve just make it super easy to find your prospects on LinkedIn and save their profile.
Usability improvements
It might be only a small change (technically), but adding a popup to show a contact’s full history, their email dropbox etc. has made the world of a difference.
Now you get a consistent and fast view of contacts from any area of our app.
See for yourself when you log in.
Public API
We’ve released the power of OnePageCRM to the public. Our API has been made public, have a look…
onepagecrm.com/api/sales-crm-api.html
Using RESTful API with XML, JSON or YAML over HTTP.
It’s just after mid-day and among a slew of other tasks, I’ve followed up on about a dozen customers who owe us money.
Some of them are only just due to pay, some are slightly overdue, and some are annoyingly way past the point at which my patience is guaranteed.
Each one of them has received previous communications about their account from me – either an invoice with a note, a reminder, or a series of progressively more pointed emails amounting to a plea with a veiled threat of consequences.
Even with only a dozen such ‘flagged’ accounts, though, among all the other bits and pieces that I have been doing as a small business owner this morning, it would have been impossible to keep track of who said what, when, and how I’m meant to follow up, without a very good system.
I remember a really nice fella, Willie, I think, was his name, used to do the credit control with Smurfit Communications when I worked there many years ago. And I remember him explaining to me, over lunch in Dobbins one pre-Celtic Tiger day, what made him good at his job – it wasn’t rocket science, and it didn’t require you to be a ‘heavy’ with ‘reluctant clients’: what it needed was detailed notes.
He used to have a large diary open in front of him at all times on the desk, and in it he’d note everything a client who owed money would say during his conversations with them. He’d also forward-note next actions to be taken, having agreed with the client that on a certain date or by a certain time a particular piece of the jigsaw would be in place that would move the issue (payment) along to resolution.
Come that day or time in his diary when, according to his notes, such-and-such was meant to have happened, Willie would duly ring the client back and based on his notes he’d be able to see how much truth there was to the client’s story and respond accordingly. He proved that politely calling a client’s bluff on a cheque-is-in-the-post type porky was far more effective in getting an outstanding balance paid than threats and accusations.
He was methodical. Old fashioned in the tools he used, but fully up to speed with the job. Unfortunately, even though I learned the theory from Willie that day of how to keep bad debts down and credit stretch to a minimum, I never applied it thoroughly enough.
I used to have terrible trouble in this area, forgetting to invoice, forgetting to follow up, forgetting what the customer said, forgetting to check statements, and ultimately losing a lot of money because of my sloppiness.
I always had the diary open. I always took the notes. But amidst all the other tasks and scribbles and thoughts that I generated as an owner-manager, the diary system just didn’t work for me. I was, like so many solo-managers, overwhelmed by the multitude of tasks I had to perform just to get jobs done and keep the whole thing ticking over.
Finally, though, I have it under control. In fact, I have it down to such an art that my customers are asking me how I’m so on the ball with credit control. OnePageCRM is the answer – it is where I keep all the notes and enter all the diary information for future actions on each and every account, and even though it is slick, dynamic and very helpful in how it presents the information and in how I can focus on the one activity by filtering out other tasks, it is really Willie’s approach that underlies it.
Guest blog post by at Penhire www.penhire.blogspot.com
Latest updates to OnePageCRM!
Custom filters
The much requested Custom filters has been added. This gives real focus on a subset of your contacts when required. So if you need to see “Pending deals in London”, it’s only one click away. Do it by Status, Tag, Location and Deals!
GTD’s “Waiting for”
As you know, our app has a GTD gene- Uncluttered focus- Upfront decision making, and- Encouraging the “next action”
In true GTD-style we’ve also added the well-known “Waiting for” concept, for when you’re “Waiting for prospects to get back to you”
New filter mega menu
Just when you thought the OnePage interface couldn’t get any cleaner!
Now all your contact focus is now under one menu and only one click away. Including the new Custom filter and Waiting for options.
Quick open for Full Details
It’s just a small thing, but we know it’s the small things that make an app one you’ll love using.
Last month we enhanced the Full Details page (on each contact), well now you can open it directly from your action list, just click the arrow on the right hand side of the row.
Thanks for your continued support!
Michael.
Happy Selling.