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Melinda: Hi everyone thank you so much for joining us today. The topic for this webinar is how to increase your productivity and revenue with Insightly. I wanted you to know that you’re in good company today. We had a huge number of registrants for this webinar and I’m not surprised because productivity is essential to your success. It translates into great customer experiences and most highly successful companies leverage productivity to gain customer loyalty which is a sales and marketing advantage.

It also translates to better experiences for your employees your employees are an investment in your success if they’re empowered to do more do it faster and do it better focusing less on manual tasks using automation you’re all in a better place because they can use that extra time that they get back to help you grow making it easier for your team to be more productive with tools technology and process also helps motivate teams because it boosts morale peoples feel supported in their efforts to do great work.

I’m Melinda Prescher and i’m your host for today’s webinar and i’d also like to introduce you to Amy  Payne our guest Amy  is a certified professional organizer she launched her company lasting order in 2011 with the goal of helping people live their one and only lives with purpose and intention her firm helps people clear the clutter at home and at work which has become even more important as home and work have in many cases merged during the pandemic Amy  is also a skilled technologist and is incredibly passionate about utilizing technology to help business professionals maximize their time and resources at work to level set there are three things that we want to cover during today’s webinar we want to ground you in Amy ‘s focus on productivity process and technology and then tie this back to helping you understand why it’s so valuable and why it’s so important to helping businesses grow and then we’ll also share Amy ‘s top five Insightly features and hacks and how to use process mapping to help you more easily think about how to frame up the technology best for your business.

Amy, let’s start first with how you got into the productivity business and tell us more about your company.

Amy:  All right thanks so much for having me today. I was born into chaos. I shouldn’t say I was born into chaos, my parents were organized but after I got married, my life was a little bit of chaos. We moved 11 times in 12 years and had three babies in three and a half years.

During that time so i had to learn how to adult I had to learn how to get organized where did I i turned to the Internet. I learned all about habits and routines and really how to manage my household.  

I gained a lot of organizing skills and people started recognizing oh you’re so organized i’m like can you say that i’m fun do you have to say organized is that a compliment. We were living in Dallas texas and i went to the Dallas home show and i saw booths with professional organizers and i’m like you can get paid to organize other people this is awesome so since then i’ve moved to Indiana and then in 2011 i started my business as a professional organizer i have grown that business to multiple employees. 

As i grew i just really had to learn how to set up process and system processes and systems for my own business as i did that in speaking with other entrepreneurs and small business owners i realized as there’s a lot of small businesses out there that are lacking systems all the information is in the owner’s head and it’s not on paper in technology to where that business can grow and replicate itself through employees so i started consulting with other businesses on matters of digital organizing and productivity before we first spoke i envisioned your business as being really similar to marie condos but it’s so much more than that talk about how you’ve incorporated CRM technology into your business so the home side of what we do is a little bit like Marie Kondo but the business side is very different i quickly realized that customer relationship management software really is the hub of productivity within a business and again that’s how you grow so i started specializing in helping small businesses select a CRM and implement that CRM software i’ve done a lot of research on different CRMs i don’t work exclusively with Insightly but i will say it’s my favorite it’s my favorite because it’s very adaptable to many different types of businesses and different types of industries i love that Insightly focuses on sales task and project management not just exclusively marketing i mean if you can’t manage the leads and clients that you already have why are you trying to go get a whole bunch more of them my background is a little bit unique because i focus on organizing first not software even though i am a self-professed tech geek so i do see everything through the lens of organization and functionality well this is great we love having you on as an Insightly expert   the product inside and out so set up this next section with what you like about Insightly and why you recommend Insightly to your customers well there’s a lot of things i love about Insightly i was just saying i could talk about Insightly much longer than an hour but there are four things that we want to focus on right now because those bring so much value to myself and to my customers so customization Insightly can be tailored to the suit the needs of your business really any kind of industry we can make it work for your business you can create fields for any data that you want to capture under each object and Insightly and then you can create custom views that show data from specific fields and we’ll get into that a little bit more later activity sets and pipelines you’re able to customize your activities and your pipelines to your business that you apply when necessary and then creating repeatable task lists for each area of your business task management is key this is a key to staying organized you can organize your tasks by due date priority category and then dashboards and reporting they really help you understand your business what’s working what’s not how can you improve and isn’t that really what growing in business is all about all right so let’s dive in let’s have you share your top five Insightly features and why you like them and so let’s start with number one all right number one is custom fields and layouts you can view your data in a way that makes the most sense to you so when you go in and create custom fields and sections you can create sections on your layout for various purposes so for example i have an employment section for my employees where i can keep track of their hire date their rank their pay etc so in the video we’re going to see how you can mirror your existing paper forms and documents in this video it’s going to show how you can go in and you’re creating which we’re creating a custom field here and you are able to create it however you want to add the data that you want to and this one i created a lead organizer field and then in the contact layout i am able to assign a lead organizer to a customer so as you can see here i’ve got specific sections like household info client details emergency contact info etc and then you’re able to show only the fields that are filled out in your client so that are in your contact so that it’s less visual clutter once you actually get in to use that data i personally lay out my fields exactly the way my paper form was like my client intake form i’ve got it laid out exactly the same and then i use fields that can capture data to be filtered sorted etc so that i don’t even need as many reports for example we can look at our lead organizer client list so we have our lead organizer drop down field that has our organizers names and then client type where we indicate whether they’re not a client their current client past client or an active and then by filtering those two fields we’re able to view a list of current clients for each organizer that’s perfect and the next key feature is really taking what you just described and developing custom list views from that tell us more about custom list views and why they’re so important custom list views are amazing i love them and i always this is this is a feature that just wows my clients when i’m helping them set it up each user can view the data in a way that makes sense to them so you’re utilizing your fields tags different users etc and then you can save custom views and share them with others or use them just for yourself one thing i do i view data in different ways for different types of contacts or projects so for example with my list of current clients i want to see their name their contact info and the date of their next activity with business associates on the other hand i want to see their name their title their organization and their contact info so you can create these custom list views to be able to see different kinds of information in addition i use the custom list views to find gaps to make sure no one falls through the cracks for a lead for example we always show the date of next activity column if you have a lead there should always be some kind of an event or a task coming up so that that person doesn’t fall through the cracks so that’s one way that we use those custom views in the video you’re going to see for business associates we have certain business associates related to seniors because we do senior moving and we want to make sure that we’re constantly keeping in touch with them so in the video i’m showing how i’ve created a custom list view for business associates related to seniors and then i’m able to see if they have an upcoming task or not so we’re able to again find those gaps make sure no one’s falling through the cracks and just make sure that we’re staying on top of our contact activity like we should be that’s a great way to to manage that we use custom lists in place of reporting and to enhance reporting so again instead of running a report i created a view for all of our leads that have no upcoming tasks so with one click of the button i can double check and make sure that all of my organizers are staying on top of following up with their leads all right so activity sets and pipelines are a great way to operationalize business processes how do you think about the importance of this functionality and how do you use it i personally think that activity sets and pipelines are really the crux of running a successful business you’ve got to get that workflow out of your brain and into a trusted system so that other people can follow it this is what allows you as like a business owner to delegate and grow the business beyond your own capability you can’t grow the business and delegate if things aren’t captured in some sort of a system it allows these activity sets and pipelines allow you to have a consistency of workflow and business processes throughout the business so let’s look at this video where we look at our customer journey so we’ve created a pipeline for new clients and in this pipeline we’ve got three stages the inquiry booked consult and project complete and then each stage has an activity set and the activity set details all of the tasks that are to be done when and by whom so you’re able to build that out we’ll talk a little bit more about that later in the workflow section but this allows your communication to be responsive you can set up templates for your email and document all as a part of these activity sets so for example when we get a lead we try to make sure we follow up with them right away within two hours and then again within two days um our monthly team meeting prep we’ve got this needs to be done monthly but because the date of our team meeting changes we can’t use recurring tasks for this so we instead apply an activity set where the end date is the date of our meeting and that way we can get everything prepped and ready for our monthly meeting similar for our monthly newsletter we have things that need to be done before it goes out after it goes out and so we build those activity sets and then everything gets done properly one of the things i do to keep the data in my system clean and keep my information and slightly organized is i create little cheat tasks for example things that remind me to change a field or a client type or add a tag so it keeps the system organized as we go through the process sounds great next we hear from so many customers that they love Insightly task management i’d love to hear your thoughts about how you make task management work for you and your customers one of the things that i love the most and i think i’ve said that every time is the task management feature what i have found in my CRM research is that most CRMs have either no task management or it’s simplified and it doesn’t work for a team in Insightly you can even customize the task screen if you don’t need all of the options given so when you go into that page layout under objects you can change your task management so for example in my business we would never log what percentage of a task is complete so we just took that option off of our task view you can use recurring tasks as well and set up your monthly or weekly routines so if every monday you want to take care of finances pay your bills update your quickbooks or whatever you can set up your recurring tasks for those types of things and then your categories help you with productivity they help you focus in on the most important work at that moment so this video is going to show you an example of that where we have set up a follow-up category and so this is we’re looking at jamie’s open tasks and we are able to create a custom list view to focus in on her follow-up tasks only and then you can batch process your tasks by blocking time on your calendar just to do follow-up or just to do whatever category it is that you need to focus on and then like i said Insightly task management mark works especially well for a team where you can run reports to see what items are being done by people assign tasks to one another and see each other’s lists and finally great reporting is the lifeblood of any business talk us through your thoughts about Insightly’s capabilities here and how you use it to run your business so i know probably everyone on this is at least interested in Insightly but i tell people all the time if you have no reporting capability in your CRM you are missing out the opportunity for you to do better in your business to improve your processes understand how you’re spending marketing dollars having accountability within your team these are all things that you can do with reporting so if you don’t have reporting or you’re not utilizing this you really are missing out um you can use your custom fields and custom views as well as customize just about anything you would ever want to know with one of the reports so let’s look at the video okay and in this video we’re looking at a report to see where the leads are coming from how many leads you’re receiving versus how many close meaning you’ve got the deal and then how much money did each person spend and then you’re able to group the money field to where you can see the average amount each lead source produces why would you want to do this well it informs your marketing dollars your efforts and how your business is run it really helps you then when you’re doing your planning for the following year to be able to see what was the return on my investment and do i want to spend the money that way again next year in addition to that you can take these reports and export them to csv or excel file and then you can run all sorts of numbers and formulas and and really look at your data and your information one of my favorite things with reports is that you’re able to schedule them to be sent to you automatically whether that’s weekly monthly daily so for example we have last week’s leads gets sent to my office manager every monday morning at eight o’clock so that she gets this easy report of what’s happening with our leads coming in that’s great so Amy  this was all really great information and i’d love to have you build on this by sharing a couple of stories related to how these features have helped your customers i think the more effective you are at setting up and maximizing Insightly the more you can actually focus on your business most people got into business to do whatever service or products they offer not to fuss around with their CRM so CRMs are supposed to simplify and streamline your business life not complicated so i think the setup is so extremely important i’ve got two different stories here one is the first one’s about a direct sales professional in her business this was a multi-level marketing company everyone would start on this 30-day wellness journey and then she would have texts phone calls emails documents that she would communicate out to them over the course of this 30-day journey each person though started that journey on a different date so it doing this with activity sets through Insightly allowed her to get the proper tasks for the proper day for the proper person and it enabled her to just handle every single one of these tasks for the customer outreach for those 30 days in addition to that she was training new representatives and she needed to know which steps they had followed check in with them at least every 30 days etc so Insightly i mean you can imagine how difficult that would be to track on paper which is what she was doing prior to Insightly so it really got her on track and it just made her look like a complete rock star to her customers and her new reps the second story is about an accessibility specialist she’s managing a large volume of projects that are all in different stages and by being by setting this up in Insightly we were able to create email templates document templates through the pandadoc integration and she was able to hire a virtual assistant delegate smaller tasks to her have her handle the form letters and email templates that could be sent on her behalf and she now instead of managing 150 projects at a time she can manage 250 at a time so again as you can imagine this is increasing her bottom line her ability to handle more projects absolutely what’s interesting about all of this is that your focus starts well before the implementation of a CRM i’ve heard some really dire statistics about how 70 of CRM implementations fail because they don’t have the right attention to detail before implementation i’d like you to share your planning process so people get a sense of what it takes to do it right that is so true i’m such a procedural person and i like for things to be done certain ways so i see the value of consistent procedures with both my clients inside of their businesses and with myself the process i walk through when i help my clients customize and implement Insightly so mapping out your process and having consistent procedures it just empowers you to be able to prioritize so   what’s the most important thing i need to be doing right now you’re not wasting time trying to figure out what needs to be done it allows you to be more productive so you’re not reinventing the wheel and again like the customer story it empowers you to delegate work to others with confidence that it’s actually going to be done correctly and at the correct time with my clients i have this process that i walk through to help them customize and implement and that makes sure that the most important issues are resolved first so that we’re not having to go back and fix things later for example you don’t want to import 2 000 contacts into your system and then decide that you want to create a custom field and now you’ve got to manually go back into 2000 contacts and fix that you want to think through your process and what information you want up front you create your import list correctly and then import it into the fields instead of kind of working from backwards and having to fix it so doubling down on this the key element is really to start with why tell us how you go about doing that well first you want to start with why to side note the process process mapping it could be called a process a workflow a flow chart an sop you may be familiar with those terms in other contexts they’re all essentially for this purpose the same thing so we’re starting with why what is your end goal are you looking to improve your client experience are you looking to streamline your operations save money create consistency   what’s your ultimate end goal and what process do you want to start with and you may those may be all very different processes within your business but formalizing those processes means that your decisions are made in advance so again you’re not reinventing the wheel it saves you time creates consistency and it allows you to delegate great and then what is your focus on the execution side so once   why you’re doing what you’re doing definitely you want to start with one process you’ll get overwhelmed if you start to think through more than one process so i say map it on paper first paper meaning it could be a physical piece of paper it could be a mind map a spreadsheet however whatever you want to use for it but the idea is not to start with your technology it’s to start with basics think about who is going to do it what are they going to do and when does it need to be done and start listing steps and working out how this is going to happen then you can start introducing technology to help you achieve that goal and finally you bring in the technology after you set up your process tell us about that so once you’re ready to start inputting it into technology this is what i’ve noticed with your processes it depends on what your CRM capabilities are right so you want to think about the order of operations are there any dependencies in this workflow does one task have to be done before another one are there any natural pauses like in our processes we have when we get a new lead when we sign up a new client and then when the project is complete so of course there’s a natural pause while we’re organizing them so think about that start to create templates when possible and by templates i’m referring in Insightly to activity sets Insightly activity sets are based on a start date and an end date so you can build out your activities from after the start date or before the end date and then they can coincide with different pipeline stages so that’s where they may sit in a section of the pipeline and not need any activity at the moment but when they move to the next stage maybe they do need some activities to happen and then automate when it makes sense not just automating for automation’s sake a lot of people are scared to automate they don’t want emails to go out automatically on their behalf they want to double check things that’s okay bells and whistles are fun but it’s more important that you have functionality efficiency and clear communication all right well to close this out it’s clear that Insightly has been a real benefit to you and to your customers so why is Insightly in your view better than the competition well i think it slightly is better because first of all it’s easy to set up there are so many um things that you can do with it it’s pretty amazing but you don’t have to when you open up Insightly you get your free trial and you open it up or you’re on the free version temporarily you can use it straight out of the box it’s pretty easy to go in the upper i always tell people go to the upper right corner that’s where your actions button is in each different object you click on the actions button there’s a lot of different options under there but it’s pretty easy to just start using once you are ready to take the next step then you can customize and to me the customization that’s the fun part that’s where we get to explore and be creative and say what information is it that you’re looking for how can we make Insightly do what we want it to do for your business and so the ability to just go in there and   create fields and layouts and activity sets and pipelines and all that stuff it’s the custom customization is just ridiculous compared to other CRMs where you’re just so limited maybe you can add a custom field but you can’t control what order it goes in at all and that’s frustrating after using Insightly i’ve gotten spoiled just a little bit and then function takes precedence over other function over beauty in Insightly some other CRM focus on making things beautiful they’re very graphics heavy or email marketing heavy but they miss out on features that really help your business actually run and i think that’s the key to a CRM is that you can actually run your business and be efficient and productive and effective some CRMs tend to focus only on enterprise enterprise sized businesses and they ignore all the features that small business owners need but not Insightly again you can pop it out right out of the box and poof you can start using Insightly right away and it really is functional and wonderful and then task and project project management i think Insightly is very heavy on the task and project management features not just on the contact management side it has both but personally i feel like if you’re following up with your contacts and you’re wanting to make notes and send them emails and things like that the task and project management is so essential to go hand in hand with it it’s not just contacts but you need to be able to manage your whole project and manage all the tasks associated with following up with your leads and communicating with your clients in the same system and not have to go to an outside task management system fantastic well let’s move on to q a and we have a couple of questions here um how did you start to think beyond what might be thought of as very basic organizational processes and start using CRM to organize your business and others businesses i think once i really learned what CRMs can do especially Insightly once i like i said i got spoiled once i learned what it can do my brain just goes that direction when i’m looking for a solution for a client that needs to keep track of leads follow up with people know where they’re at in projects and with customers now my first instinct is to go to a CRM because it encompasses so many of those things that people need absolutely um talk about a time when your business changed and you needed to change Insightly to fit a new need and the reason i think this question is so incredibly important is just how i think what you’ve demonstrated is how easy it is actually to customize Insightly to your business need right so in the past i had always done all of the sales and marketing for my business i had organizers going out doing hands-on work but at one point i decided to hire a sales professional to help us grow the business and i was easily able to go into the system that we already had set up in an Insightly and added some custom fields added some additional tags uh created some new custom views around how we were going to be looking at referral partners and sales she was specifically going into like senior living facilities and making contact and trying to have them refer us when they had a senior move and so i was able to adjust our CRM system to that situation and create processes around how she was going to be managing the business associate side at the same time that my organizers were managing home organizing clients and projects so it was able to handle all of the above very smoothly in the exact same system with some different fields layouts and views fantastic well i think that is all we’ve got um for today i just really want to thank everyone for joining us and thank you so much Amy  for sharing all of your information with us this has been really really insightful and so good to hear how you are using Insightly and how you’re able to help use Insightly for the businesses you help thank you so much again thanks for having me okay everybody have a great day [Music] you