CRM or no CRM: that is the question

Most organizations I work with have some type of customer database or CRM (customer relationship management) system in place. If you do, then you should learn all the aspects and use it to manage your work life. Simple.

A good CRM will allow you to track every contact with a customer, what you said, what they said, and the progress you made throughout your company’s sales process. CRMs can be useful for curating data like Key Performance Indicators – KPIs and many of them have built-in calendars and email management.

If you don’t have a CRM system, buy one, rent one that’s in the cloud, like Salesforce, or use the latest version of Microsoft Outlook with the CRM plugin. Better yet, get Office 365 for you and your team, add the CRM plugin, and you’ll be cooking on fuel. If you’re familiar with Outlook and the Office suite, your learning curve for Office 365 will be negligible. I’m going to show you how you can do this and finally get familiar with email and time management.

Office 365 is an insider’s dream. Add Dynamics CRM Online and you have the perfect intuitive solution. Your Outlook emails, tasks and appointments can be automatically synced in the database. Your Word documents and Excel files can also be stored there. Your conversations will be annotated and saved. And not just for you, but for your entire company.

There is nothing worse for a customer than when they call a business and are treated like a stranger. That doesn’t happen with a good CRM system. You and your employees share all interactions with your community in the system. You have the system integrated with social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. You have emails, activities, notes, conversations and documents linked to each contact and account. Let’s get into Office 365.

use the cloud

Office 365 is in the cloud, in other words, it can be accessed from any device over the Internet. Don’t sit on an outdated hard drive. This means you can pull data from any device, so set them all up first. Your phone, laptop, PC, tablet. Every time an entry is made on any device, the database is updated in the cloud in real time so anyone can view the information from their devices.

365 contacts

The best feature here is the merge option where you can link your social media accounts to your contacts. So when you link to a new contact, their details are automatically transferred to your contacts, with a picture too.

If you get into the habit of photographing people you know with your phone, incorporate it into the contact details. So when they call your mobile phone, your name flashes and so does a picture. An image brings back memories much faster than a text.

Emails from new contacts can be dragged into the contact box and a contact entry is automatically made with all the details collected from the email.

365 Calendar

First set the options so that your calendar looks the way you want it to. Decide your work week, which can include Saturday, mine does. Order the default view for your calendar.

Now decide on the colors for the different items. Here is my suggestion:

• Red – earn money

• Blue – marketing activities

• Yellow – administration

• Green – self-development

• Orange – personal activities

You can then see at a glance whether or not you’re being productive.

Microsoft provides an enterprise-grade web meeting software platform called Skype for Business. You are using the Skype engine but you are not connected to your personal Skype. It allows you to have a web meeting with any person or group at the click of a button. Be sure to get it and link it to Office 365. It’s much better than GoToWebinar and more cost effective too.

365 Tasks

Office 365 comes with a stable task management engine that is underused. Many people just list all their tasks on one giant “to do” list and this can be very disconcerting.

There are a couple of ways you can turn your tasks into something more digestible. The first way is to put dates on each task (start and finish dates) so that they appear at the bottom of your calendar for the corresponding day. Useful if they need to be done on that day.

I do it differently I classify each task so I can group them in my calendar. I find that I am more productive when doing similar tasks in groups rather than doing it freely.

First, I am crystal clear about my goals, support projects, and goals I need to achieve. I’m sure you are too. With that in mind, you need to choose whether to add an item to tasks. You should only do this if it makes you advance your goals. Doing so is known as a Tactical Proxim Action – a TNA.

I have TNA for:

• TNA: Calls

• TNA: Online

• TNA: do

• TNA: write

• TNA: Someday maybe

The last one is true; I have 35 items in that category right now, but none are deal breakers, but the first four are the biggest takers on my calendar.

When a new task enters your task list, set it to unassigned: it will automatically find its way to the top, so when you do task management, you can assign it a TNA. Use your phone to add tasks whenever you think of something or someone gives you a job to do. Don’t trust the brain to remember, it won’t, but the phone will. The task will be quickly moved to the cloud and will be synced across all devices.

email 365

The base of all communications and one of your pickup points. I will talk about the collection points shortly. But let’s tame your email once and for all; I’ve met salespeople who have grown into it. That’s how.

Before proceeding, disable the email alert feature. This has to be one of the worst distractions known to the insider.

You are allowed to check email regularly for important items, but it is better to do it every two hours, for example, at 9 am, 12 noon, 3 pm and 5 pm But just to deal with the urgent ones, leave the rest for later when you clear your inbox. For a quick reminder of the urgent vs. the important, you won’t do worse than Stephen Covey’s Time Management Grid. You can see below that it creates four boxes that determine whether a task should be done, delayed, or even ignored.

If you really need to monitor urgent emails as they arrive, buy yourself a smartwatch and Bluetooth on your inbox. I have a Microsoft Band that does this for me, it vibrates and you look at the small screen without accessing email.

And you should clean your inbox every day. That’s how.

Choose a 60 minute window every day at some point, best before the end of the game. Start with the first email. Can you handle it in less than 2 minutes? If so, handle it. If it’s going to take more than 2 minutes, put it on a task to deal with at another time. You can simply drag the email to the task area in Office 365 and it will automatically complete a task, which will remain unassigned to be assigned an SNA later.

If it’s something you don’t want, like a subscription, see if you can unsubscribe. Be ruthless with these.

If it just needs to be archived somewhere, just drag it to the folder on your PC where it belongs.

Work your way through your emails this way and you’ll clear your inbox. And you must do this every day. Trust me, you’ll feel good when you do.

dots collection

This is my term for the place where information and communications enter your business. Quickly think about what collection points you have. Here is mine when I first did this exercise:

• Texts

• Email

• To post

• On a tray on my desk

• Desk

• Board

• post it notes on my computer screen

• Unassigned tasks on my phone

• mobile voicemail

• fixed voicemail

• Direct messaging on social networks

• whatsapp communications

• Ideas stored in my brain

The goal is to reduce them, I was ruthless because the more collection points you have, the harder it is to maintain control and you will soon be overwhelmed. Here is my curated list:

• Texts

• Office 365 email

• Unassigned tasks for ideas, etc.

• In my desk tray for all paperwork including posting.

• Plastic briefcase folder for receipts etc.

Email is king for me so I funnel everything through my email inbox and since I can access this on my phone I don’t miss a thing. All the messages from social media make it to email, eBay notifications, everything. It means that I have a full inbox every day, but I delete this every day.

Do all of these things and you too will manage your time really effectively so you can focus on selling. Yes.