All around the world, people use this program because it is remarkably powerful. They’re not die-hard techies, just real business people who needed a trackable, all-in-one CRM and marketing program.

Six Features Which Outclass the Rest

If you’re shopping for an online CRM but remain confused which to choose, here are six features that may give you that extra tip towards Infusionsoft:

1. Tags. These became popular with WordPress.  Tag Clouds – a way to classify information so that it can be easily found – are also great for segmenting your list. These tags allow identification of the right message to the right prospect.
2. Action Sequences.  You can easily add or change a record’s status based on certain conditions. For example, a prospect buys “Product X” from you, you can change the record’s status from prospect to client, add a tag indicating that they’ve purchased “Product X”, and initiate the marketing sequence of emails for Product X – marketing your up-sell packages based on what they bought.
3. Trackable Links.  You can send an email with a link that says, “Please have someone call me”, and once someone clicks the link, it starts an action sequence – perhaps it creates a task, assigns it to a salesperson to follow up, and sends off a sequence of emails.
4. Infusionsoft API.  It’s one of the few systems that allows direct access to your database via an API (Application Programming Interface). Basically, this gives it unlimited scope to ‘automate’ business operations. Read 19 More Ways to Use Infusionsoft APIs
5. Subscriptions and Recurring Payments. You can create order forms that accept credit cards and even spread payments out over a period of time.  After you’ve sold something, this allows you to concentrate on delivering the goods.  It takes a lot of worry out of chasing payments, just “set it and forget it.”
6. Custom Reports. If you really like to keep a handle on things, Custom Reporting is for you. The possibilities are: Marketing & Sales Funnels (graphical), Google Analytics through API, Managing Marketing Budget, etc. Infusionsoft users can copy the code from this informative post. You can create custom reports by pulling data from Contact Records, Tags, Order History, Opportunity Records, and many other database tables.

Of course, some people need to see it working to fully understand the functionality. So if you’d like to see it in action, click here to see a demo or have a go at the 15-day FREE trial.

My argument was that to become financially free via the traditional methods (not winning lotto or getting an inheritance), you need to work really hard.  His response was “it’s not about working hard – it’s about working smart”.

Upon reflection, I realised that it comes down to interpretation. Perhaps ‘hard work’ need not be difficult – I see it as persevering to achieve an outcome, and doing what it takes to reach it.

So let’s explore whether working hard is enough to make your business successful these days.

Well, are you currently letting your business run you? Are you reacting to clients, staff and suppliers instead of being proactive… do you often find yourself in a state of disorganised chaos?

OR… Are you in control of your processes, functions, and have systems in place to manage things in a calm and consistent manner?

People who run around busily each day without a clear goal or purpose are creating a lot of noise and flying papers, but they aren’t getting anywhere.

While those who link their daily activities to their strategic goals are creating less waste and inefficiencies, are finished sooner, and could be defined as working ‘smart’.

What Does it Take to Get Ahead?

The key to working smarter is to be really clear about what direction you are heading in.

-       What are your business goals and objectives?
-       What are the timeframes you want to achieve these within?

THEN, look at your daily activities and ask:

-       Are these activities linked directly to my strategic goals?
-       Or am I doing lots of ‘stuff’ without really achieving anything?

You’ll realise fairly quickly from your business results what the answers are.  You’ll also know from your internal sense of achievement.

The key to working smarter (and not harder) is to align your daily tasks and activities with your larger strategic goals. Then to use systems, technology and processes to make it more efficient and take the load off you.

That’s where a highly automated Email Marketing and CRM system comes into it, just like Infusionsoft.

• Consumer Brand building
• Personal branding
• Establishing yourself as a thought leader
• Creating a Facebook group as another touchpoint
• Advertising targeted to key demographics (this is not free – it’s pay per click).

Facebook is growing its offsite presence (it seems like an omnipresence) with ‘like’ thumbs-up buttons popping up on every website and blog, allowing users to ‘show interest’ in them and to share their message with Facebook friends at the same time. Within 3 weeks of the launch of this new ‘like’ feature, some brands were seeing traffic from the social site double (example IMDb.com, source ClickZ). So for consumer brands it works.

But for B2B, people who are looking for new opportunities and professional connections, they tend to use LinkedIn. It is easier to see if someone is credible and trustworthy, since most have their resume and recommendations from others.

But Should You Jump on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc?

There are no hard and fast rules to say you must have a presence on social platforms. If you’re flat out just following up the leads you have – why add to your stress with setting up social networking for business?

Don’t just jump in with the lemmings.  First develop a new Marketing Plan for business. See where your customers are coming from, what are they interested in, what is going to attract them?  From this information, your plan takes shape…including how best to attract, persuade and sell to your market.

You are probably going to need a central system to control your marketing communications and growing customer base.   Otherwise, with multiple databases and different lead campaigns, your worklife will become chaotic.  This is what I have found in many micro/small businesses.

So from Facebook or LinkedIn, Email marketing, Website leads, and offline leads, capture all this information together with a tool like Infusionsoft… so a step-by-step sales process can be easily set up, and you can go focus on the important work of building relationships.

What about in business – do micro and small business owners need automation?

In any business, automation can easily be set up in a number of ways:

• Scheduling daily tasks in the computer calendar, with timers to remind you when a task is due.
• Using software programs that automatically run a program every month.
• Operating system is set to check for updates on a regular basis.

These are all examples of automation.

So how does a Small Business Owner utilise automation more to save time and make life easy?

Firstly, look at the tools you have available.  A calendar is a great way to set things up so that you’re keeping on track.  If you’ve created a schedule of your day and allocated time to do certain things, then set it up in Calendar (inside Outlook or Entourage), with alerts to remind you when to finish and start the next one.

Let’s face it – emails often distract us from our task at hand. If you don’t want to be distracted by emails, turn off the automatic downloading of emails or set it to download only twice a day.

You can also create different views or types of calendars for the different activities you have – very handy for those of us leading double lives!  Some calendars – such as Google Calendar – allow you to colour code your different calendars and activities, so that you have a visual representation of the different activities you’re doing.

Taking It One Step Further – Complete Business Automation

You can take things to another level in your business by actually automating processes, so that tasks normally done manually are done using technology.  This is where a system like Infusionsoft can put your business on Steroids (good ones) with marketing, sales, and billing automation – to name a few.

The best part about automation is that you control the set up – so it can be customised to your business and personal needs. Before setting it up, my advice is to find some smart tools and ensure you’ve identified all the processes that can be automated.  The benefits are well worth it.  And if you’d like some help with this, just give me a call.

What is a CRM?
A CRM system – Customer Relationship Management – is a database that allows you to store information on your clients, prospects and other people related to your business.  The larger, fancier CRMs are more flexible and customisable, whereas the simpler, lower-priced ones are stock standard and hence have limitations.  Price follows functionality in this case.

What can it do for you?
I recall a client a couple of years ago who had a very profitable business, but was extremely inefficient in their processes and systems – so they hired me to sort things out.  What surprised me was that they had built a massively large database and huge client list using just Outlook, Word, Post-it notes and lists.  It’s no wonder they were in disarray!

Since they were adept at attracting business, imagine how much better off they were once they could view all their clients and sales details, and then follow-up with them all.

Ultimately you want a system that is going to make life easy for you.  So it should:

-       save you time
-       improve your productivity
-       streamline your processes
-       help you to make money

You might think that using those paper files, post-it notes, Outlook lists and Excel spreadsheets is safe – but it could be costing you dearly in time, not to mention efficiency.

Having all your client and contact information in the one central location is not just  ‘mandatory’ for big business; it’s essential for small business too.  As a solo business owner your time is precious – and you need to be able to access important information quickly.

Do your homework, set up a system, and reap the rewards.  Your time and business success is worth it.

First, think about why it’s so hard to get moving.  Are these tasks or items that are your least favourite things to do?  Or are they things that you’re putting off for some other reason?

As humans we tend to move away from pain, towards pleasure…

We all have days that we would rather sit on the back porch in the sun with a magazine and cup of hot coffee (or similar) at our side.  But the reality of our life is that the bills still keep coming in, clients need our assistance, prospective clients need to be found, and we have to take action to create a nest egg for our future.  So the choice is: do nothing and sit on the porch, or get into action and make some money.

Obviously, doing nothing WON’T pay the bills!  So how do you push past those internal barriers of resistance to the activities that you really don’t like doing?

An Action Plan to Create Money

First:

• Identify what it is that you like doing and what you don’t.
• Identify what you’re good at and what you’re not.
• Identify the things that actually bring money into your business, and the things that don’t (for example they’re just admin tasks).

Then:

Consider how long it takes you to complete the things you’re not good at and don’t like doing, and what that time is worth in $ terms.  Is it worth outsourcing?  Someone else might be able to do it far quicker, and you can make better use of your time too.

When you’re in ‘work hours’ – always do the things that bring you money FIRST.  Leave the non-revenue stuff for the times when it’s not suitable to be sourcing clients or doing marketing.

And finally, remember your goals… look at any Goals list that you wrote on January 1st. Bigger goals are always much easier to get motivated for, so keep your Big Hairy Audicious Goal in mind as you set to work on those smaller tasks.

We all have motivation slumps – but if you re-examine your daily tasks, you’ll be able to manage them so much better.

While social media is the belle of the ball, Email marketing still arguably provides one of the most cost effective returns on investment… if you have a well-managed database.  So how do you spin those database names into pure gold?

Give it a Branded Look

Effective email marketing systems let you use easy templates, which you can have customised with your branding. Use them time and time again. This gives a consistent look to your prospects when delivered over time.

Send Laser-Targeted Campaigns

You can improve your campaign performance by segmenting your audience based on information collected with web forms, emails they’ve opened and clicked, their location, and previously purchased products.  This is the ‘gold’ in email marketing!

Track All Email Activities

If you want to know how successful your emails are, you need to track your email campaigns to see how well your campaigns engage (and convert) those that respond.

When you can easily view open rates, click rates, opt-out rates, and bounce rates for each campaign, you will know how to tailor future emails.

If you have a large database you should also test new emails on smaller sample groups (i.e. A/B split testing). You can test things like subject lines and pricing offers.

Automated Marketing

Most email marketing tools can send autoresponders (a series of pre-set emails sent by the system).  These are often lists of email addresses, rather than a database for your prospects and customers – which can prove quite limiting if you want to store and manage information about your prospects.  As well as the ability to have unlimited autoresponders, Infusionsoft can automatically start or stop any autoresponder when a person fills out a form, opens an email, or clicks a link.  And the database will tell you exactly who has done it, and who hasn’t.  Hence – you are using a far more sophisticated tool to manage campaigns that make the data crunching and analysis a whole lot easier.

Deliverability

While the average legitimate email delivery rate is around 56% (Return Path, 2008), a good commercial delivery rate is over 90%. Infusionsoft has a 97% delivery rate. A careful watch on wording will also see it get past the individual’s junk mail filters.

Delivering more emails makes the most of your marketing efforts, so it’s important to use your time and choose your system wisely.

Follow-up of Interested Prospects

I’d also recommend you employ a follow up system for all email and web form enquiries; people will have questions about your products, service, or costings. After all, this is how you bring people into your sales funnel and learn more about them!  Customer-focussed businesses need to watch they don’t ‘forget’ to respond. Australian businesses have a dismal rate of follow-up: 59% of businesses do not respond to email or web form enquiries within seven days (Strike Force Sales survey, 2008, NETT).

Copywriting of Emails

Use the right writer! While it calls for a journalistic style for newsletters, it takes stronger persuasive writing for effective lead generation emails.  Don’t think because you wrote a good essay back in 9th grade that you automatically know how to write to capture leads!  So seek out assistance of those who can do it better, quicker and more effective than you can.

Here are some guidelines:

1. The messages will need a consistent style and tone (especially if you’re marketing as if it were coming direct from you).
2. The copy must be not too wordy, and it should draw attention right from the subject line.
3. Of course, it must deliver on your campaign goals. Calls to action must be there!
4. Good writing needs time. Planning your campaigns well in advance with a copywriter will ensure that your emails are written in both good time and good style.  Let them know all the research on your customers that you have gathered, because then they will be better able to connect with your prospects.

If you hire a copywriter, expect to pay around $70 to $140 per hour. You can negotiate a good rate for multiple email projects.

Remember: email marketing when done properly with the right tools and resources will make a huge difference to your business.

Efficient means you can get a lot done in a small amount of time… yet proper time management for the benefit of the business’s bottom line is another thing!

Today I met with a successful business coach who has a few different income streams.  He was talking about how he’d spent all morning on his copy for a new landing page he’s created to promote an upcoming event.  However the time he spent ‘locked away’ writing was in business hours, when he could have been making money calling and meeting with businesses!

One of his business services requires him to meet personally with his clients fairly regularly, and he isn’t able to do that during the middle of the day – when they are busy with the lunchtime retail trade.  He failed to see that this time in the middle of the day could be spent making money on another income stream, OR on those activities that need to be done AFTER all the client interaction has been done.  So I pointed this out to him – and he was very grateful for the tip.

Sometimes we’re too close to our own work that we can’t see how to improve it!

The important thing is to have a clearly identified plan of all the business activities to be done – and when those activities should be done in your workday. You will find that following a written schedule allows you to get the most amount of revenue in the door.

So think about all the things you spent time on in the last three business days and ask yourself:  were you making the best use of your time for your bottom line?

Tip:  Use your computer’s widgets to set up a sticky note reminder for yourself: “Am I Getting Paid for This?”

Many business owners believe that getting the latest gadgets and programs will help their business… but the reality is far from it!  You can spend thousands of dollars on the latest laptop, related software, and then some specific programs for your business needs.  The costs can mount up.  But do you really need this major upgrade?  Will you use all the functions?

Every day there are new applications created for the iPhone and iPad, but most of these are more time wasters than time savers…  Then there are the programs that profess to take your hassles away, manage your marketing or your data, or print labels seamlessly, or even manage your tasks better in a timely fashion.

Here’s a tip:  technology is a lot like the big sales at Myer and David Jones… it’s only a bargain or of value if YOU NEED IT!

Determine Your Real Needs First
In my line of work I am constantly seeing new applications and systems designed to do multiple things. The marketing campaigns for these are brilliant because they make the busy business owner think that they NEED it to make more money!  Occasionally that might actually be the case.

Yet without having identified the business needs first – you aren’t going to make many wise purchase decisions.

When I worked for large corporations like NAB and Australia Post, we spent a LOT of time in the initial stages of our projects to determine our needs.  This shouldn’t be any different in the small or medium business.

If you don’t do this initial analysis, you will end up being MORE frustrated with a new tool that doesn’t meet your needs.  Plus you may find that they bog you down with complexity rather than make you more efficient. Seems pointless if you’re aiming to create an efficient and leveraged business!

So my advice to you is… if you are considering a new app, tool, system or gadget – ensure you know exactly how it’s going to benefit your business.  Otherwise you could get the exact opposite of what you set out to achieve.

Remember: in business purchasing make wise, informed decisions, and if you don’t have the expertise or knowledge about something – ask someone who does.

Comfort Zones
We are very comfortable in our core talent, and there are also other things that come naturally to us in our daily work. Some people love administration and organising their desk! Others are suited to bookwork and managing accounts. Some people are naturally great communicators. We’re all different.

Yet as business owners we all have this common need to wear a lot of different hats to manage our business. These hats represent different functions and activities (e.g. sales, accounting, management, customer relations). Since most of us have invested a lot of ourselves in our business initially, it stands to reason that we want to ensure that everything goes smoothly under ‘our control’.

A typical small business owner naturally wants to control everything – because the business is their creation and investment. Yet, outsourcing or delegation is the first step to leveraging your time and being able to work ON your business instead of IN your business.

Getting help from someone else is often difficult and uncomfortable. The pain and fear of outsourcing is often expressed as doubt. A client of mine recently said, “I know I need to do it – I just get nervous that they won’t do a good job so I end up reviewing everything they’ve done”. Sound familiar?

How Do I Let Go?
There’s a process of letting go that will make it easier for you. My advice is – do it in baby steps. Outsource a small function first, one that doesn’t require a lot of time and energy and that you can check on in the early stages to ensure it’s being done correctly. Once you’re comfortable that they’re doing it well – then let them do it alone.

Choose your next hat and again keep it a small task. Do the same thing for the first outsourcing task. Give yourself time and don’t think that it’s going to happen overnight. Simply trust that it will be for your benefit, since you deserve to have your time back for yourself!

In all of this, remember that it’s important to find help from people who have proven experience and come with good, solid credentials. Use your wisdom and instinct in choosing outside service providers, and you will be far better off.

Outsourcing is going to be a strength for you and your business: so don’t be afraid to venture out from your comfort zone.