I used to think onboarding was for huge companies with hundreds of orders,contacts and customers.
But as I automated more and more and more of my business I realised this was so far for the truth. Automation isn’t a dirty word though. Not a day goes by where I don’t look at a task and say could I automate this or at least make it faster.
I also took “The Creative Class” course by Paul Jarvis which has a simple yet clear section on onboarding and automation and now this happens for every single project however small (even if it is a quick 2-3 hour task).
Pipedrive
I used to track leads and contacts in EMail (screams of pain), post-its, pages, Google Sheets and scraps of paper littered on my desk. And I used to forget to follow up. Not all the time but enough to make me realise I needed to be a bit organised.
CRM Stands for customer relationship management. A very well known one is Salesforce which would suit the above volume. I played with Salesforce for a bit but it hugely complex and much more expensive as well.
I looked around and found Pipedrive which was suitably priced. lightweight enough and suited what I wanted it to do. There are lots of CRM out there but Pipedrive works for me.
I don’t get evens tens of contacts per week but my Inbox and phone burp along all the time during the week.
And emails move down your Inbox, you get busy doing work, life intrudes and what I found was that a small or even potentially big task was missed often enough for me to realise I needed a CRM. In addition having a slick onboarding process starting with using a CRM as part of it helps you stand out from the Post-It gang.
I also hear all the time from clients – I emailed company X and they never got back to me.
Not me – oh No not me anymore more. I get back to everyone within seconds of email and within minutes post call.
Here is how.
- When you get in touch with me you are added to a pipeline in Pipedrive. Contact details, email, phone and a note usually (there are other fields which I don’t use as much or at all. I usually try and add the persons details asI speak to them if a phone contact. If the contact is from a website contact form they get added automatically. But definitely the minute I hang up you get put into the system.
- Depending on the lead type then you go into a Pipeline (I have 4 different ones – website project, eCommerce project, marketing inquiry or quick fix to a website.). Then you get an automated email with some important information, FAQs and a link to payment page if it is just a quick fix.
- There are then various stages of the pipeline that allow me to move people along to either winning a project or losing it. Some of the stages also trigger automatic emails again
- e.g. if I haven’t heard from a lead after sending them a proposal (see below) or unanswered calls I move you toa stage that triggers a “Goodbye” email.
- The CRM is also linked to Pandadoc my proposal system to allow me create a proposal or pricing easily from the details I have entered during the initial contact.
Now you may be a one person show and wonder if you need this. You may be super organised (I am not) and be impeccably in control of all your contact.. But Pipedrive costs me €29 a month for one seat and saves me hundreds of hours per year and definitely has improved my prospects of winning projects by 25-30% along with the proposal process.
When I ask customers why they chose me for work it isn’t because I am “King of thee WEb”. Its 70% of the time because I sent them a proposal the same day or next.
It is the best €25 I spend every month
Pandadoc
Similarly to Pipedrive and my proposals years ago (I am using Pandadoc for more than 4 years now) used to be a mix of emails and Word documents. However my proposals tend to be 80-90% the same content.
More importantly for a “quick job” which in the past was priced verbally and not scoped I used to suffer from the dreaded scope creep. So I used to end up doing more than was asked for as it was either poorly document in an email or worse still not documented at all.
Now every job or project gets a proposal even if it is a two pager with the tasks, price and payment conditions.
All my proposals for web or quotes go through the same process
- I link it with the quote in Pandadoc from the Pipedrive system so I can open a new document template in seconds in Pandadoc that has the client’s name, company, email already in the template I select.
- I then fill out some pricing, timelines and expand on the scope a little.
- I rarely spend more than 15 minutes doing this.
- I hit send.
- I can track when and if the client opens the document.
- Then in Pipedrive I can move them through the pipeline, speak with them auto email then If needs) and keep notes there as well
So What You Say