How to use CRM for effective account management

Today marks a milestone in the OnePageCRM development roadmap. After months of careful consideration, coding, and bug-fixing we launch our new and improved UX and Account View.

Account Management with OnePageCRM

With the new Account View, you can focus on the company first, with a separate description and company-wide custom fields. In typical OnePageCRM fashion, we’ve further simplified the sale process by bringing your prospecting tools into the CRM. Conduct further research on companies by searching via Duedil, LinkedIn, Hoover, Google, and Facebook.

Finally, with the addition of our ‘Linked Contacts’ you can now link external contacts to a company in the CRM; ideal when you have multiple parties involved in the decision-making process for a deal.

CRM features for account management:

• New Research menu: Perform deep research on key contacts using Hoover, DueDil, LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter.
• Company description field: Specific information on the company, not just the individual contacts.
• Company-wide fields and custom fields: Now custom fields can be applied to companies. Company-wide custom fields appear beside the contacts-custom fields under the ‘More’ button. These can be configured in Settings and go beyond individual contacts. Examples include the company’s industry or number of employees.
• Linking contacts: Link contacts to the account view that are related to the sale but not part of the prospect company.
• Contact / Company switcher: Switch quickly between the Account view and your individual contacts within the company.
• Enhanced A-Z Contact list: See all contacts within a company at a glance.
• Bulk updates: Apply bulk updates to companies, not just contacts.
• Status Sync: The Status of contacts within an account is not in sync by default, you can enable this feature if you wish.
• Company preview: Selecting the new company preview icon beside the contact’s details gives you quick access to company-related information in a popup and a list of all contacts working for the same company
• Do more with contacts: Clone, Link, Split, and Edit contacts from the preview in one click.
• More powerful edit contact: When you choose to Add/Edit your contact, scrolling down to the bottom enables you to enter company information.
• Contact/company activity: For companies with multiple contacts, quickly switch between Activity timeline for the contact or the company as a whole.
• Deals: A total of all Pending / Won Deals for the company.

Add new accounts to your CRM

When creating a new record in your CRM, you’ll see two options: there are separate tabs for “Contact info” and “Organization info”.

It allows you to create an organization initially, even when you don’t have any of the contact’s personal details. This happens in many cases as you set out to sell to a particular organization without knowing who to make a connection with.

This makes lead generation and management much simpler when there are multiple contacts in an organization. This is particularly useful when you only discover new leads or decision-makers during the sales process.

Sync Status & Tags across all contacts in the same company

You can also update the Status or Tags of one contact in a given company and have the Status and Tags of all other contacts in the same company updated automatically.

Status Sync

In 98% of cases, you will have only one deal with a company at a given time, regardless of whether you have one or ten contacts from that company in your CRM. With multiple contacts, it’s important to keep their Statuses in sync so that you have a clear picture of where that company stands in your sales process.

For example, if you’re selling windows to a construction company, their architect may be the person leading this deal but other contacts, such as the purchasing department or management, may get involved at different stages. Once their Statuses are synced, you can view and update the Status for all contacts in the company as required.

Note: Status Sync is enabled by default on your account. Should you wish to set individual Status’ for contacts in a specific company, you can choose to disable Status Sync.

Tag Sync

You can now also choose to keep Tags in sync across all contacts in a company, or leave them independent.

Since Tags are a great way to segment and filter through contacts, they do not sync by default.

To Sync Tags across all contacts in a specific company, simply click the checkbox on the Edit Company page.

Global Sync Settings

You can decide whether or not to sync Status and Tags for all new companies added to the CRM, by editing your Global Settings. With this latest update, Sync Status will be enabled by default, while Sync Tag is disabled, but again, you choose how this is set as per the picture below!