Prevent accidental deletion of leads or deals in CRM

We recently went live with a new update on ToolsonCloud Sales CRM. In this update, we made certain UI enhancements to prevent accidental deletion of leads or deals.

Here’s is a quick peek into this enhancement….

Need?

Until now, if any user wanted to delete a lead or deal, they can navigate to leads or deals listing page and they can click on delete button from the option menu of the particular record’s row, in order to delete them instantly.

Though this was quick and easy to do so, sometimes it may happen that the user could have accidentally deleted Leads or Deals. 

There was a need for the user to review the action before performing any delete action on any record.

What’s New?

Post this update, if a user tries to delete any Lead or Deal, the user will be displayed an addition popup dialog box prompting them to confirm if they want to delete the record.

The dialog box shall appear as shown in the below image.

In addition to this, if any of the Lead or Deal cannot be deleted due to any linked Meetings or Tasks, system shall display appropriate error messages to the user mentioning the reason why the selected action cannot be performed.

I hope this small improvement shall help improve your user experience. Do let me know your thoughts.

Manage Meetings in CRM without sending Invitation emails

We just went live with a new feature on ToolsonCloud CRM, which lets you choose if you wish to enable or disable the meeting invitation emails being sent to your invitees.

Here is a brief of this new update…

Need

Until now, whenever any user creates any Meeting in Toolsoncloud CRM, the attendees of the meetings are sent a Meeting invite over an email. The recipients can add the invites in to their Calendar (such as Google or Outlook).

However, certain users prefer to add meeting invites only for Internal tracking. They do not want to send Meeting Invitation mailers to the invitees. Until now, there was no such option available to control sending the Invitation emails.

What’s New?

With this new update, now users can control whether they want to send a meeting invitation email to the invitees while creating a Meeting invitation.

While creating a Meeting, users will get a dropdown option titled “Send Meeting Invite” as shown in the below image. 

If the user wants to send a meeting invite email to attendees, he can select “Yes”, otherwise he can select “No”.

This option will also be available in case you are updating an existing Meeting Invite. Here, you are free to control if you want to disable or enable email updates while updating an existing meeting details in CRM.

In case the user is canceling a Meeting in CRM. Email notification will be sent to the invitees only if the previous Meeting invitation was sent to them. This shall help the invitees to get an update regarding the cancellation of the event, so that they can remove the invite from their calendar.

I hope you will find this new feature useful. Do let me know your thoughts in the comments or via email.

If you are yet to try ToolsonCloud CRM for your business, go check it out and do try it for free!

View count of Pending Tasks by user in CRM

We just rolled out a new enhancement in your beloved ToolsonCloud CRM which gives you the capability to view the count of pending tasks against each user in your CRM account.

Here’s a sneak peek into this new update…

Need?

Sales Leaders always want to get a summarized view of the actionable of their team members. Task module is one of the important module in CRM which gives a view of the next set of actionable for each team member which might be against any lead, deal or a contact.

However, Sales leaders may find it difficult to assign tasks to their sales reps if they are not aware of the current workload of their team members. Hence it is essential to equip them with some insights to help them understand the number of pending tasks assigned to each team members.  

What’s New?

Starting today, your dashboard page will have a new dashboard element which will provide you with user wise count of the number of pending tasks in each user’s bucket.

This insight will be available under a card titled “Pending Tasks”. This element can be located just next to the existing dashboard element titled “Tasks Added Daily”.

This dashboard element shall be visible to all team members in the organization including both Admin users and team members.

Here’s how this will look like:

We hope this dashboard insight shall prove to be helpful for you to improve you sales process.

We look forward to hearing from you…

Get Sales Funnel view of Leads in CRM

Dear all, we just dispatched a new feature on ToolsonCloud CRM using which you can now get a Sales Funnel view of Leads in your beloved CRM.

Need?

In order to make consistent sales, Sales leaders are required to ensure that their leads pipeline is filled in appropriate ratios at every stage of the leads journey. Sales leaders are also cognizant of the fact that not every lead will necessarily get converted. Many leads may drop off or may not be qualified at all to be pursued further by the organization. 

Hence Sales leaders would want to track the sales funnel metrics on regular basis in order maintain a consistent flow of leads.

What’s New?

With this new update, you will be able to see a new dashboard metrics in your CRM dashboard titled “Active Leads Funnel”.

You can locate this dashboard element just next to the metrics for “Leads Added Daily”.

This metrics shall provide you with insights on the number of active leads which are currently in the pipeline at various stages.

Here is a quick peek into the Sales Funnel metrics displaying the number of Leads which are Cold, Warm or Hot.

We hope this metrics will help you gain better insights into your sales state and shall help you maintain a healthy sales pipeline for consistent sales conversion and growth.

We would love to hear back your thoughts on this…

Free CRM Trial for 14 days with Full Premium Features

Dear all,

We just went live with a new update for Toolsoncloud CRM along with some enhancements to the platform.

With this update, we have a good news to share with the users who are looking out to try ToolsonCloud CRM's Premium features for a few days before buying the subscription.

Need?

Before this update, we had 2 pricing plans:

- Free Forever Plan

- Premium Plan. 

The Free forever plan is limited to single user with a good set of usable features. Additionally we have Premium Plan which supports more than 1 users and comes loaded with advanced features such as Custom pipelines, Custom fields, Email Integration and many more.

Earlier new users were required to subscribe to Premium plan if they wanted to use Premium features, however we wanted to provide an option for the users to first try out the Premium features for free so that they can take a call whether ToolsonCloud is the right fit or not for their team.

What’s New?

From now on, if you are new to Toolsoncloud and sign up now, you will get a default access to Premium Subscription for Free for 14 days.

This shall help you try out all Pro features and get adapted to it before making the final purchase decision.

What happens once my Free trial is over?

Don’t worry! Even if your free trial is over, your data remains safe with us. 

You will be automatically moved to our Free Forever plan.

We understand that buying a CRM needs careful discussions with team members and your sales leaders. Should you feel the need to try the Pro features for a few more days, feel free to shoot out an email to our support team to extend the free trial.

That’s not yet over. If you are an existing free user who wanted to try out our Premium Features but could not try it out, then just shoot us an email to our support team to allocate a fully free 14 days free trial on your account.

We hope this would be helpful in your CRM purchase journey. Do let us know what your take on this is.

Add Call Logs in CRM to keep track of Sales calls

Hello All,

We just introduced a new Call Logging feature for all the users in the latest update of ToolsonCloud CRM.

Here is the glimpse of what’s new in this update…

Need for this feature:

Often Salespersons interact with their leads over a series of phone calls. However if that particular lead is being handed over to another salesperson, then the new team member may not have the complete logs of the conversation they had with the leads or customers. Additionally if the lead volumes are high, it is highly likely that the initial sales person also might forget the details of the call over a period of time.

Moreover, maintaining the call logs shall help the Customers to be able to derive more meaningful insights for their sales teams such as Good time to call leads, Number of calls it takes to convert a lead, Number of calls it take to close a deal, Approximate time duration the Sales reps spend on each conversation, Average number of touch points required with the prospects to nurture and convert them, etc. 

Hence, there was a need from the users to be able to log their call so that they can refer them later for closing the deal and to unravel new insights from this data.

What’s New?

In this update, we have introduced a new Call logging feature for users to support the above mentioned use cases.

You can visit the Call Logs page by clicking on “Conversations” and then “Call Logs” option in the top navigation bar.

In this page, users will be able to view the existing calls logged by their team members in chronological order of calls.

In order to log a new call, you can click on the “Log a Call” button on the top right corner. you will receive a dialog box prompt to enter the Call log details such as Related Lead, Related Deal, Related Contacts, Call timings, Call Type and Call Notes as shown below.

You can add the required call details and click on “Log” button to add this call log into the CRM.

You can view the details of the call log by clicking on the records row and view the details as shown below.

You can also navigate to the related Lead, Deal or Contact from this page by clicking on the respective names displayed in this page.

You can also modify this call log by clicking on edit icon towards the left corner of the card. This will prompt you to enter the updated call details. 

You can modify the call details to resubmit the new values which will be updated in the CRM.

I hope you will like using this feature to gain more insights to improve your Sales process and productivity. 

If you have any feature suggestion to improve ToolonCloud CRM, feel free to contact us.

Create Custom Fields in CRM Deals Tracker

Dear Readers,

We just went live with a new update on ToolsonCloud CRM. 

We are pleased to announce the introduction of "Custom Fields feature in Deal Tracking module".

Here is a brief of what’s new in this release…

Need

Currently, when using Deal tracking module, users get to use the fields related to a Sales Deal. These fields are generically designed and are provided as it is by default to all customers whenever they sign up.

But there were certain advanced users who wanted to customize the Deal Module by introducing some additional fields which suits their domain specific business needs.

For. e.g. 

• A Coaching business would like to track an additional attribute such as Educational Qualification. 
• A Logistics related business would like to track an additional attribute such as Pickup Location, Delivery Location, etc.

What's New?

With the new update, users can now create their own custom fields and customize the Deal module in CRM to align to their sales process.

Admin users can create custom fields by visiting the “Custom Fields” section located in “Settings” page.

Users just need to provide a custom field name to get started.

Once the field is created, all team users will be able to view this new attribute or field in the “Add Deal” and “Edit Deal” forms as shown below.

 

Once the user saves any values in the custom fields, these values will be displayed in the deal’s detail page on the right side card as shown below.

This feature shall help you to quickly customize your CRM and get started as per your business needs without the need for any additional technical intervention from IT Team.

I hope you will find this feature useful. Do let me know your thoughts. 

Advanced Filters for CRM Data segmentation

We have recently gone live with a new update on ToolsonCloud CRM with advanced data filters to enable the users to better segment and view their data.

Here is what’s new in this release…

Need

Earlier, users just had the search bar to filter the data being displayed in Leads, Deals, Contacts and Organization’s listing page.

However, with the existing search bar, users were only able to filter the data using a single keyword.

There was a need from the users for advanced filter options to help them apply filters on multiple columns simultaneously for better filtering and segmentation of data in various listing pages.

What’s New?

With this release, we have introduced a range of data segmentation filters in various pages of CRM i.e. in Leads, Deals, Contacts and Organizations listing pages.

In each of the listing page, user will be able to locate a new Filter icon on the menu options near add buttons as shown below 

On clicking this icon, the user will be displayed a dialog prompt listing down the multiple column on which they can apply parallel filters with "AND" condition

In Leads listing page, users will now be able to filter the leads based on values in “Title”, “Label”, “Source” and “Assigned To” fields of the Leads as shown below:

In Deals listing page, users will now be able to filter the deals based on values in “Deal Name”, “Pipeline”, “Status”, “Organization” and “Assigned To” fields of the deals as shown below:

In People Contacts listing page, user will now be able to filter the People Contacts based on the values in “Name”, “Job Title”, “Organization” and “Email” fields of the Contacts as shown below:

In Organization Contacts page, the user will now be able to filter the Organizations based on the “Company Name” field as shown below:

Once the user applies any filter, system shall also display the list of filters applied on the list for reference just above the table list as shown below:

Hope you will like using these features. If you have any feedback or suggestions, do let us know.

View Sent Emails in CRM

 Dear Users,

We have recently gone live with a new feature on ToolsonCloud CRM around Email functionalities. Here is a glimpse of the new change.

Challenge:

Till now users were allowed to send emails from the CRM either from Email page or from any lead's detail page by clicking on the Email icon.

However, user were not having any way to view the past emails sent to their contacts. 

There was a need from the users to be able to view the sent emails as well. 

Hence it motivated us to build this feature for the benefit of the users.

What's New?

Now, Users can view the Sent emails as well by navigating to "Email" page and then clicking on "Sent" link in the sidebars.

Users can quickly check out the recipient, subject and date on which the email was sent earlier. 

They can also get a detailed view of the email content which was sent by clicking on the email row to open a detailed view of the sent email. 

Here, user can view the full length email body of the email along with the date on which the mail was sent to the recipients.

This feature will help the users keep track of the past interactions with their prospects and customers for future reference. This will ultimately help the Sales team members with the necessary data to initiate a meaningful conversation with their customers.

I hope you will like using this feature. 

If you have any feature suggestion in mind, do let us know.

Bulk Import Leads in CRM using CSV file

Dear Users,

We recently went live with a new update of ToolsonCloud CRM.

Here is What's new...

What's New?

Bulk Import functionality for Leads 

- Need:

There was a need from the users who receive a lot of leads in bulk on regular basis from different marketing channels such as marketplaces, social media channels, forms, paid lead service providers. They wanted to import Leads in bulk into the CRM on regular basis. 

Hence, there was a need for a Bulk Import feature to support this use case.

- Solution:

With the latest update, user can easily upload leads in bulk.

User can make use of this functionality by visiting "Settings page" and clicking on "Bulk Import Data" link on the sidebar.

In Bulk Import page, user can select the import option as "Lead" to proceed importing Leads.

They will be shown a set of easy to follow instruction to upload the file.

User will be required to download a sample CSV file. This sample file has some dummy data for reference which depicts the data format.

Users can then replace the sample file data with their own data in the same format and upload back the CSV file. This will import all the Leads into ToolsonCloud CRM.

We hope you will like using this new feature. Let us know your thoughts.

Quick Add Options, Add Sub-tasks and Meetings in CRM

Dear users, 

Hello and welcome to year 2024. Wish you happy and prosperous New Year.

In this issue, we bring to you a lot of updates and enhancement in ToolsonCloud CRM. 

Read on to learn more.

What's New?

1. Quick Add options on Navbar to Add Records from Any Page

Now, users will get a new Quick Add options at the top right corner of the navigation bar, just next to the Profile icon as shown in the below snippet.

With this option, user need not always traverse back to the different pages to create different types of records in the CRM.

For e.g. If a user is on a Deal's detail page and want to quickly create an Organization, they need not navigate all their way back to Organizations page. They can quickly create these type of records from any page within the CRM app.

In this edition, it will support Organization, Deal, Quote and Email. We plan to add more type of records in future releases.

2. Quick Add sub-tasks and sub-meetings from Lead Details page

Currently, Users can view the Tasks and Meetings linked with a Lead by navigating to the Leads Detail page. Here, users were not having an option to quickly add an additional Task or a Meeting from the same Lead details page. They were required to go to Tasks or Meetings list page.

With this release, user will get a new quick Add button next to Tasks and Meetings placeholders. Using this, they can quickly add a Task or a Meeting under that particular Lead without the need to go back to Task or Meeting list pages.

What's Improved?

1. New Error messages added on missing fields

We have enhanced the field validation error messages for the users to improve the data quality of your CRM data. 

With this update, user will be prompted with appropriate error messages in different pages, if they try to submit any possible junk or invalid values while creating or updating any field in the CRM.

2. Create Tasks on past dates as well

Earlier, if users wanted to create a new Task, they were allowed to select only future dates on the "Planned Date" field. 

Based on user feedback, we got to understand that sometimes, sales team members tend to create some past Task which they had done but was not added in the CRM. They prefer to add the past task in CRM in order to keep track of the different activities which were performed to convert the Lead. 

With this release, users can now select past dates as well on "Planned Date" field while creating and updating Tasks.

Hope you will like these updates. If you have any suggestions or feature request in mind. Do get in touch.

What is Smarketing?

What is Smarketing?

Smarketing refers to the practice of aligning Sales and Marketing teams in order to achieve a common organizational objective. This helps reach a synergy between both teams which work together as one team instead of treating each other as separate departments.

Why do organizations need Smarketing?

As per conventional organization structure, Sales and Marketing are organized under different departments. Due to this, both teams tend to work in siloes. When related teams work in siloes, it leads to a lack of effective communication leading to lower overall productivity. 

If the Marketing team is not aligned with the Sales team’s requirements, then this can lead to lower conversion because of low-quality Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL). Similarly, if the Sales team is not aligned with the Marketing team’s approach then this can lead to situations such as the loss of qualified leads due to a misunderstanding of client’s requirements or leads lost due to non-timely follow-ups, etc.

This necessitates that both teams work together and align their efforts toward their common objective for the benefit of the organization, be it increasing revenue or improving branding in order to increase better brand recall in the market.

How to align Sales & Marketing?

• Improve access to information: Teams tend to be misaligned if both of them do not have shared understanding and information. Lack of communication happens when teams do not have the appropriate information and insights needed to support each other. Organizations should bring together both teams under the same umbrella with shared information. Using smarter tools such as CRM can help teams achieve that since they can get quick access to information they need to support each other.

• Cross-functional teams: Instead of making Sales and Marketing operate independently under separate leadership, try to bring together professionals from both teams to work in smaller teams together. If this is not possible, then leaders can try to build a matrix structure where resources tend to experience working together with cross-functional teams. This helps build better bonding with team members and they tend to align their efforts toward common goals.

• Communicate the Vision: Leaders should constantly communicate the common objective to both teams in order to keep the Sales and Marketing aligned. Communicating the goal and letting them know the expectation goes a long way in aligning two different departments.

• Measure and Analyze regularly: Leaders should measure and closely analyze the efforts and performance of both teams. The best practice would be to have common meetings with both teams in order to keep everyone on the same page. 

• Use good collaboration tools: Try to use good collaboration tools which improve communication with both teams. Tools such as cloud tools like Google Docs, Google sheets, Cloud-based CRMs, Instant chat messengers, etc, can help with that.

I hope this article helped you gain a better understanding of Smarketing, its importance, and some ways to achieve that.  By the way, if you are looking for a smart CRM for your team, do check out ToolsOnCloud Sales CRM.