Dear Fellow Entrepreneur, Business Owner, Marketer, and Salesperson,
(I currently am all of these roles in my business) 

    Some salespeople appear to have a secret formula or to have inherited their natural sales traits, right?  There's more to sales than raw talent.  You don't need to be born into sales. The truth is that companies offering proper training and support are much more successful than competitors who expect their natural-born sellers to carry the load.

If you feel the pressure and fear making silly mistakes, then check out our Top 10 list of sales fails and CRM pitfalls. You can circumvent these issues in your business, as long as you have a plan and plenty of practice. 

Why Are You Struggling to Sell?

What are your Sales Fails?

Let's start with the list of possibilities. Click any of the phrases below to read more about it or just scroll through the list. 

1. Unclear Process from Marketing to Sales
2. Poor...

Written by Randi Zimmermann

In my previous blog post, I outlined what Zoho Projects is and some of the key features Beckmann Collaborative uses in the application. This article dives into some of the features that you'll notice upon first logging into Zoho Projects. The first time you log in to any project management platform, it might be intimidating. Zoho Project has feeds, projects, dashboards, and task lists. No need to fear, I've got some helpful directions for you here. 

Zoho Projects Dashboard

When you log into Zoho Projects, you will either be directed to your 'feed' or your 'dashboard'. The feed can be useful for team communication. Today, I want to cover the features and cards available in your home dashboard. At Beckmann Collaborative, we use the dashboard to give us a high-level overview of what is happening across all projects with clients and what needs to be done on a daily basis. You'll find your dashboard by clicking the 'Home'...

This is the second post in our series about Zoho CRM setup. If you are still looking for a basic understanding of definitions and CRM strategy, read the first post. This post is focused on more specific logistics of setting up your CRM account so that it's customized to your needs. We'll touch upon the most important settings including:

• Personal Settings
• Company Details
• Email Integration
• Phone Bridge
• Social Integration
• Custom Fields - Modules and Fields
• Email Templates

How do you get to your settings? Click on the wrench and screwdriver in the top right corner of your screen, similar to the screenshot below.

1. Personal Settings

In the General section, you'll find Personal Settings. Fill out all of the fields in the Personal Settings - most important will be your email signature. Your email signature will show up in any emails you send out from the CRM.

2. Company Details

The things to update in your company details include your logo, Fiscal Year, and...

If you're new to either Zoho or project management software, you might not be familiar with Zoho's popular project management tool, Zoho Projects. Zoho Projects is a cloud-based application that enables you to assign and manage tasks for multiple projects in thorough detail. It is primarily designed for small and mid-sized businesses, and it keeps all of your projects conveniently in one, user-friendly place. In a review from PC Mag, Zoho Projects was labeled an outstanding choice for both small businesses and mid-sized businesses.

Key Features of Zoho Projects That We Love

Time Tracking

For Beckmann Collaborative, one of the most convenient features of Zoho Projects is time tracking and reporting. We use time tracking for EVERYTHING. It helps us continually learn and improve our marketing operations. 

First, we can export comprehensive and well-organized timesheets which makes invoicing a breeze. Alternatively, timesheet data...

If you are currently shopping around for the right CRM System, chances are that you already understand the value of customer relationship management. Right? 

Have you come up with a clear plan or strategy for HOW you will use Zoho CRM in your business? New technology is fun and the idea of automating processes is very appealing. The hitch is that planning work needs to be put in before you start uploading contacts and setting up workflows. 

If you already have a CRM Strategy, then you can jump down the page to the "Intro to Zoho CRM" section.

Offer Value + Listen, Watch and Ask.

Clients ask me about how to write social media posts that will connect with their customers or emails that will get opened because of a good subject line.

The first thing I tell them is to be sure they are offering something of real value. Offering value is through your marketing is called a  content marketing strategy and it's a powerful tool.

The second thing I...

The following information is sourced from the Zoho CRM help guide. I found it to include helpful insights, so I'm sharing it with you. 

While customer relationship management is an important aspect of running a business, it can often become overwhelming due to the extensive amount of work involved. You must always ensure you are keeping in touch with your customers through email and over the phone so you don't miss out important leads or a potential deal. In the meantime, it is also crucial to stay on top of your projects. Sometimes such multitasking may show downside effects on the overall functioning of your business.

Zoho CRM aims to make this easier for you by providing multiple features under a single platform. Collectively, these features can help you a great deal in enhancing communication with your customers.

Email: You can send emails to your customers from your Zoho CRM account. You can also integrate your personal email accounts with CRM to make sure the...

What do you do when your business requires 30+ documents from the client for them to work with you?

Do you email them a list of all the documents and wait for a reply?

Do you repeatedly call the client and ask for the documents to be sent by a specific date?

This is a problem I recently faced in a marketing operations improvement project. The reason I describe it as marketing operations is because the client communication channels is key to the company’s reputation, which is their number one way of marketing themselves – strong processes and communications. The company was already a user of Zoho CRM, so making sure that the marketing operations improvements worked with that platform was important.

The Project Requirements:

• Collect 30+ forms and documents ranging from a simple contract to detailed personal financial information
• Get digital signatures on some of the documents
• Make it easy to collect the documents
• Make it easy to submit the documents
• Create email...

How do you use Google Analytics and Zoho CRM to Create a Profile of Your Ideal Customers?

We all know Google Analytics is a powerful tool to understand what is happening on your website. The data is all anonymous, but it provides us with such interesting insights about website visitors and their behaviors.

Your Zoho CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software has a different kind of power. The data you’ve collected about the people you already know is in a centralized place where you can pull reports and see patterns.

How do you use these two business tools to create a profile of your ideal customers?  There are three key areas to look into: Demographics, Behaviors, and Sources. This article looks at these areas and how you can use them to learn more about your best customers.

WHO: Customer Demographics

Figuring out the demographics of your ideal customer is relatively easy. There’s data from your own business experiences as well as Google Analytics...

Beckmann Collaborative is now an Authorized Zoho Partner!

What is Zoho?  It's is business management software that is cloud-based and can be fully integrated into every nook and cranny of a business. If you're interested, you can read their story and more about Zoho here. 

What does being a Zoho authorized partner mean? It means that we have worked with the many different Zoho applications long enough to officially help other small businesses to use it. 

At Beckmann Collaborative, we love marketing operations and improving processes. It's how we found Zoho. After using it within our own business for several months, we started to see how it could make our client's workflows much smoother and improve their productivity. So we've been helping several clients to implement it... so far it's going great.

The best "bang" for your buck, in our opinion, is Zoho One. This is your master-key to access all of the Zoho products. The reason you would want...

Author: Randi Zimmermann

Everyone wants to make their life easier, right?

We use email to communicate because it’s faster and easier than sending a letter using snail mail. We use social media because seeing baby pictures is nice, even if those ‘friends’ are not close anymore. Technology is driven by convenience and operational improvements. This is especially the case with some of the business management software that’s currently available. Ideally, these software tools make us happier, more productive, and better connected.

When you’re running a business, higher productivity leads to increased profits, right? Streamlining processes saves time and energy, right? Anyone who’s ever searched for the right tool to make operational improvements has discovered that making work easier is not immediately easy.

Narrowing down the choices of platform or app can be a puzzle, causing overwhelm. And that’s only the first...