Tuesday 22 October 2013

You Just Signed a Deal, What To Do Next in Zimplu CRM?

You just received a lead from the Marketing Department, you called, you met the prospect, and everything went well. In the end, you signed the contract and the new customer seems happy. Of course you wrote all the discussions in Zimplu CRM, and all the history is there for you and others to see.

But what do you do now? Every contract we sign has an expiration date, and the customer you just signed today must be happy after 1 or 2 years when he has to decide again. Zimplu CRM tasks help a lot reminding you to call contacts, send emails or any other activities you or your co-workers need to do. This feature will tell you when you're getting close to the contract expiration date, and it helps you make sure your customer stays yours.

Your staying in touch strategy
One of the biggest mistakes a salesman can make is focus too much on gaining new leads, new customers and completely forget about their existing customers. You always hear that gaining 1 new customer is 10 times more expensive than keeping a current customer, don't make that mistake, keep your customers close, find out what they think, how happy they are, and very important, find out if other competitors approached them.

Make sure you think about a "staying in touch strategy" for your customers, add a task to make a call after 2 weeks, another one after 3 months, another one after 9 months, and of course, a few weeks before the contract expiration date. Don't assume your customers are doing well, make sure of that, and never let your customer feel like he was just another one buying from you.

Thursday 17 October 2013

Major Change in the Plans and Pricing List

We decided to make a change in the Plans and Pricing which we believe will fit the needs of our customers better. Some may consider this as an advantage, and some may consider it a disadvantage, but when we usually make a change, we are looking to satisfy the general needs of the companies who use Zimplu CRM.

We thought a lot about this change, and we are sure that most of you will be happy with the new Plans and Pricing list. There has also been a lot of effort in making the payment method easy to use and to perfectly match PayPal, and taxes like VAT.
Zimplu CRM
Plans and Pricing

What is the major difference?
As you can see in the image above, the Subscription has changed from paying for every user, every month, to paying an amount for up to 10 users and Storage Space.
We have also received a lot of requests to offer a price per year, as companies consider this a long term investment, and they want a lower price if they decide to stay longer. That is why we now have a Prepaid option for Companies who want pay for the whole year, which brings benefits like having 2 Months for Free.

Right now you can see the Plans and Pricing changes by selecting Plans and Billing option from the Settings section of your account.

As for the future, we are looking forward to adding more payment options besides PayPal.

Wednesday 2 October 2013

See Your Companies On The Map with Zimplu

Zimplu CRM released a new feature which enables us to set the location of a Company or a Contact on the map. This is very useful if you want to have a view of how you are standing in contacting leads in certain regions, or it can give you an idea of where you have a strong influence and where you don't.
In the picture below we can see that we have a stronger influence on the west coast, but not so much on the east coast or south USA. This can give you an idea of where you should expand and where to invest more time and money.

All of your contacts on the map

How does it work?
We added a new field when you create a company or a contact. Street field is completely new and it is different from the Address field. It is not a mandatory field, but if you want to have the company/contact on the map and if you choose to fill the Street field, you will have to fill the Country and City field.

Once you filled these fields, you will find the location on the map. If you believe this slows you down, you can choose to Mark The Position On The Map by clicking the Mark position on the map button. Once you click it, you will be able to click on the map on the exact location you want.

Where do I see the companies on the map after I create them?
If you created the company and you marked the position on the map, you will be able to see it in the Reports section. If you go to Reports and you click on the Companies report (checking the With Map box will enable you to see the map), you will see all the companies on the map created within a specified period.

You can also click the companies/contacts on the map too, doing this will show you the contact details of the selected company.

If you are asking yourself what map is this, this is the Open Layers Map.

To make it easy for you, we created a video where we add a Company on the map, you can watch it below.