CRM Essentials Details
The CRM Essentials System has been developed to track the progress of business prospects and to make sure you do not miss an opportunity to sell your services to your existing and potential clients. Setting up and getting started Getting to know a system in the early days is always the time when you need most help. CRM Essentials includes a number of features that will make this time easier. Included throughout the system is a function we have called 'Pro-active Hints'. As you progress through the system you will see yellow screens pop up to give you help and advice as you progress. When you begin to understand what to do and where to go next you can switch each of these hints off individually. This provides you with useful support as you get to know the system. Before you can use the system to enter your first prospect you will need to enter some basic details. There is a Getting Started section in the Help file to help you prepare the system to match your own business requirements. Prospect List The system is designed around a prospect list. This list shows you the name and brief notes about the prospect. It also shows the quality of the prospect and the product in which they are or might be interested. Another column shows the next date to contact the prospect if one has been selected. The prospect list is initially displayed in alphabetic order. The list can also be sorted into any other order you may choose simply by using the grouping facility. To display the details of any of the records in the Prospect List you double click the required record and the detail screen will be shown with all the prospects details displayed. Prospect Details Each Prospect is shown on a detail screen. This screen will show the contact information including address, telephone, fax, email and web site details. There is a section for notes and next contact date. You can also select the target Product, the Quality of the prospect and the current Status. These fields can be updated as progress is made with the prospect. There are four flags to control the prospect and where it appears. There is a Leaflet flag, a Mailing flag, a Watch flag and a Hide flag. The first two allow you to list all those, with the Leaflet or Mailing flags set, in a single list. The name of the Leaflet and Mailing flags can be changed to suit your own company activities. The Watch prospects are those to which you want to pay particular attention. If the Hide flag is turned on the prospect will not be included in the Prospect List. On the right hand side of the Details screen is a section for recording all the Events. Events are things such as 'I rang client' or Client emailed us' etc. All the details of that event can be stored as can the text of an email or letter if required. This is a very convennient way of tracking your progress in detail. Next Contact List This is the list of all Prospects that have a Next Contact date set in their record. The list is shown in date order with the oldest at the top of the list. If the date is today or has passed it will also have a cross shown alongside to identify those who are the most important to contact. Double clicking any of these records will display that Prospects detail record and allow you to familiarise yourself with the situation. Customers Once a Prospect has been converted to a Customer you may wish to continue to monitor the development of that client. For this purpose there is a Make Customer button which automatically create a Customer record with all the history included. Activity Should you wish to review the activities of any period, all the 'event' records from any prospect are displayed as a list showing the prospect name, what the event was and the detail and a time and date. This provides managers with a powerful tool for reviewing groups of work either by prospect, type, date range or personel.