CRM Software
Are you a small business owner or an entrepreneur? If so, you know how valuable it is to save time and money. That's why in this video, I'm gonna share with you seven different types of software that every single small business needs to know, and I'm gonna be giving you a recommendation in each of those categories.
Hello, everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And if you own or operate a small business, well, then you have customers. And if you have customers, you need a customer relationship management system, better known as a CRM.
Why is a CRM system so important to you? Will you need a centralized place to keep track of all of your clients, even if many of them are just prospective clients? And when you're dealing with clients, you need to deal with, well, deals getting to the end sale, no matter what that product or no matter what that service is that you're selling.
Here I am within the Bigin CRM system, which is especially designed for small business owners and entrepreneurs. Now, Bigin is developed by Zoho CRM, which is one of the most popular and well-reviewed CRMs on the planet. However, Zoho CRM, along with some other CRMs, such as Salesforce, may be much too much for your needs and also a little expensive.
So at the fraction of the cost and with small business owners in mind, Bigin might be the ideal solution for you. So, here we have a list of different deals that I have going on. And why is this so important within your CRM system? Well, you want to know exactly where someone is within your funnel, within your pipeline as we see here.
So for example, I've got a client which is qualified. Maybe they've reached out to me for an initial conversation, but then I've got other clients here where I've actually given them a quote or a proposal. I can quickly and easily see where people are within this stage and hopefully, move them on along this process until the deal is won and they actually become a paid customer.
But the great thing here is that all of your contacts and those contacts, if they belong to other companies, stay in a single place. So for example, if I open up this deal right here, I can see further details in terms of the history of this deal, when it was added and what was going on within this deal. I can take notes and even see an email history here right here within Bigin.
But the great thing is, is that my contact information stays here as well. So if I click on Alison over here, I'm gonna jump over to the Contact section. I can see all that information here as well. So whether she is a brand new customer, whether she's a returning customer, I've got a complete history here, right within my CRM system.
Calendar Scheduling
Now, the second type of software, I think every small business needs is a scheduling tool, a quick and easy way for you to book things with your clients, or maybe just people that help you with your business. In my case, my recommendation is Calendly. I've been using Calendly for a number of years to make booking, meetings, and also booking consulting sessions with myself that much easier.
And you've probably booked a Calendly meeting with someone else, even if you're not currently a Calendly user. So for example, I can share this link, and my users can go directly to this screen and book times that are most convenient for them. Now, the great thing is, is that I can set up a number of rules as to when someone can book me, not just the times of day, but also which days of the week and how far out they can book.
In this example, you can see that no one can book me on Mondays or Wednesdays, I've reserved that for other activities, but you can also see, they can't book me beyond the 13th of October, why? Because I've set up a rule that I only want to allow people to book me 21 days in advance. So it's convenient for me, the person sharing that link, but it's also convenient for the user who can pick a day that suits them.
They can pick a time and select Confirm, and then enter in their details here. And added bonus is that Calendly makes it very easy for us to add payments directly to our booking. So in this case, if I am hosting or inviting someone to a consulting session, and I want to make sure that they complete payment as a part of the booking process, I can do so right here within Calendly.
Video Conferencing
Now, setting up your meetings is one thing, but next up, you're gonna have to actually have these meetings. So the next essential piece of software is a video conferencing tool. Now, there's a number of tools for you to choose from, but for me, my standard has been Zoom Meetings. In fact, I've been a zoom user since roughly 2016.
I use it for virtually all of my meetings and also for hosting my webinars and other events. Zoom is my choice because not only is it easy to launch a meeting and manage an admin and set all of the controls here, but I also find it's easiest for my clients to engage with. Let me start this new meeting right here, and let me say hello, there I am within my Zoom Meeting.
So of course, you want to choose a tool where it's easy and quick for you to set up either a one-time meeting or recurring meetings, but maybe just as important is how easy it is for your clients or the people that you're meeting with to join that meeting. And in my experience, Zoom is the easiest of all of the major players.
It doesn't matter if the people that I'm meeting with have advanced technology skills or they're basic users. I find that everyone finds Zoom very easy to deal with, and it has become just such of a standard over the past two years. So you're looking for something that is quick, simple, and easy, Zoom Meetings would be my video conferencing tool of choice.
But now that you're having all of these meetings, you probably have a number of projects on your plate. So let's see what I recommend when it comes to project management.
Project Management
Now, there are many different project management tools to choose from but if you're a small team, if you have less than 10 employees, my recommendation would be to start off with Trello, why? I find that Trello has the shortest learning curve so that you and other members of your team can get going and actually get stuff done in the first few days.
You don't have to wait weeks or months to get used to the system, you can start seeing the benefits right away. Now at first glance, you may think that this looks an awful lot, like the CRM we looked at at the beginning of the video. And in many ways, most Trello boards are designed for a similar concept of dragging a task or dragging a project from left to right.
But unlike the Bigin CRM that we talked about earlier, in this case, we are talking about projects. So these don't represent new deals, in this particular example, this represents things that you're actually working on. So maybe you need to redesign your website, maybe you need to use a project management tool to manage all of your content, for example.
Trello is an ideal place to make sure that everyone is on the same page and that you can move things through their different processes. Trust me, as someone who's been providing Trello consulting services for nearly 10 years, I have yet to find an industry that cannot benefit from using the Trello system.
Email Marketing
So now that your business is up and running, and you have customers, and you're selling products and services, it's so important for you to keep in touch with your customers or to reach out and communicate with prospective clients. And with that, you're going to need an email marketing tool.
Now, there's a number of tools out there at various price points and different features but Mailchimp might be the best place to start. It's almost that perfect balance between costs but also with how easy it is for you to set up and get going. So here I am within my Mailchimp dashboard, and the great thing about an email marketing tool is that, it manages all of those subscriptions and people who sign up for your newsletters or future announcements, which you want to send to.
But the great thing is, is that not only does it make it easy for you to send out mass communications, you can see detailed statistics on those messages. So for example, here, I'm taking a look at some data from a previous campaign, I can see quickly and easily, what was the open rate, for example, on this particular email, What were the clicks per unique open?
How many total clicks? And other statistics that are gonna be helpful for me. But if I click this campaign in particular, I can go into a little more detail as well. Now, one of my favorite pieces of data that I like to look at right here within MailChimp is Click Performance. Meaning, where did people actually click on the email itself?
So in this particular campaign, this particular message which I sent out, I was encouraging people to go to this link. In fact, there was only one destination within this email, but if I view the click map, you can see, I actually gave them a few different places to access that link, a few traditional links here, I also included a button.
And now beside it, I can see what percentage of the people who clicked, chose which option, so this is gonna be really helpful for me as I'm creating new emails and new campaigns in the future. So for example, it looks like this Register Now button with this green color right in the middle, was perhaps the most successful but not too far behind was this very first link here as well. So great data, great details that I can use to market to my clients and my customers.
Social Media Management
But of course, email is not the only way in which you run your business. You want to make sure you have a presence on social media as well, so you're going to need a social media manager. In this case, we're taking a look at Buffer, which I use to manage and schedule out all of my social media in advance.
So, if you're not familiar with a social media manager, what you can do, is connect your various social media accounts. So for example, here, on the left-hand side, I have a Facebook account and Instagram account and a LinkedIn account, and then I can create content and schedule it or set it up in a queue, so it goes out at specific times or specific intervals.
So here you can see in the next few days on the next week, I've got some specific pieces of content, which will be posted on my Facebook channel. And if I want to, I can post the exact same thing across my channels, or be a lot more specific. If I click on the calendar up here at the top, I'm just gonna take a glance at the month view.
Here, you can see a history of all of the things, which I've posted in the last month. So I can go back and review and also see the data from those postings as well. Something like Buffer makes it so easy for us to create new content, all I need to do is click up here on this space, select which channels, for example, I want to include, maybe I want all three, maybe I want just two.
Write my content down below, maybe add an image or a video and then schedule it or just send it all right here from within Buffer. So not only is it going to save you time, it's going to keep you engaged with your audience on your various social media channels.
Accounting Software
Last but not least, if you run a small business, you need accounting software, you need a tool, which is going to give you an accurate representation of where your money is going and where your money is coming from. Now, my recommendation for you is to use QuickBooks online, not only for its ease of use, but also for the number of integrations in which it connects with other tools that you may already use, including your bank accounts, credit cards, and other tools that you're using to receive payment.
Trust me, you don't want to wait too long before starting to use a real accounting piece of software. You don't wanna miss out on those tax advantages and you also don't wanna come up short at the end of each month. Now, if you have questions about any of the app categories or the specific tools in which I've mentioned here in today's video, be sure to let me know in the comments down below.
I hope you subscribe right here to the Simpletivity channel and give this video a like. And remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.
