Guide to Getting Started with Zoho CRM Features

Guide to Getting Started with Zoho CRM Features

If you are interested in sales, have a knack for selling absolutely anything to people, or work in the sales department of a company, then you would identify with having that desire to be a smart sales representative at work.


Winning the sales game has a lot to do with using a sound CRM system to its full potential. For example, with the Zoho CRM features, your sales can be automated entirely, leaving you to focus simply on customer interaction and closing deals.


In this blog, we will be seeing the features of Zoho CRM that can help you become an efficient sales representative who knows how to ace customer relations and be one step ahead. Keep reading to see and understand these features one after another.


Use Zoho Mail Integration

 

Sales have a lot to do with being prompt with the customers. If you are a sales representative, you cannot afford to miss out on an important email from a customer. Let’s imagine running through all of your emails and replying to them simultaneously.


However, you realize that you ignored an important email from a hot lead by evening. The probable reason for this could be a cluttered inbox with many emails. Missing out on this important email may not be by intention, but the fact is that as a sales representative, you cannot afford something like this for your business.


It is important for the sales representative to attend to all the leads as soon as possible and for doing the same, there needs to be a filtered view of all the prospect emails. One of the most used Zoho CRM integrations, called Mail Magnet, allows you not just to receive emails but also get a filtered view of your prospect’s emails as well.


With this email integration, you will not need to keep checking the emails all the time. Every time you receive an email from a prospect, you will be notified by the mail icon that pops up right on the Zoho CRM home page. Remember that MailMagnet will be available with the Zoho Mail Integration only, so ensure that you ask your Zoho consultant to enable it and configure the email account with Zoho CRM.


Organize Emails According to Sales Priorities


Another essential thing to remember while dealing with customers is that the most recent email is not always the most important. For example, if a lead has emailed asking about the price of a product or negotiating on the price of a product, these emails must be immediately accessible. This can save considerable time and effort.


Naturally, you will be organizing the sales activities based on the pipeline and the level each deal is in. What’s notable is that you can similarly manage your emails using Zoho CRM features. For example, using the SalesInbox, you can access columns, filters, folders, and columns that can show your sales priorities and allow you to stay at the top of the emails that matter.


SalesInbox functions smartly by organizing all emails according to how you have set up your CRM. For example, even though the regular email clients allow you to filter emails based on a sender's address, SalesInbox enables you to filter emails based on the sender’s email address and sales parameters.


For instance, if you get emails from customers offering you deals of more than 1 lakh, that can be specified with the name Top Leads. Using SalesInbox allows you to create many folders and shows them right on the side of the folders you have.


Using SalesInbox, you can also automate the lead creation in your inbox, get automatic reminders, and work with helpful information.


Monitor Customer Activities

 

One of the most critical aspects of ensuring sales success for all sales representatives will be timing. SalesSignals gives you an immediate notification about what the prospects are up to. You will also know if the lead that you have been chasing has opened your email or not. An alert will be sent to you as soon as the email is opened.


Remember that the prospects and customers can reach out to you from different channels. They can visit your website, fill out surveys, raise support tickets, and post on your social media. To improve customer relations, you will have to be consistent and prompt. SalesSignal helps you track all customer activities by displaying them in an organized way.


SalesSignal will give you a prompt when your leads send you an email, open the email sent by you, click on the links in the email, or when the email gets bounced. You will also be notified when missed calls are received, surveys get filled, new tickets, comments, and responses are received, missed chats are received, or the support tickets are overdue or escalated.


Leverage Social Media for Getting Leads


As a sales representative, you must be aware of all that interests your prospects, the kind of products or services they are looking for, and what their likes and dislikes are. Like most people in the world, your potential customers use social media and post regularly. In this process, some of them may also be talking about the prospects they are using, their influencers in decision making, and the product and services they wish to use.

Being an intelligent sales representative, you must convert every like, reshare, or comment from your prospects into an asset. You can effectively convert the social media conversations into actionable leads by lead generation automation through a workflow. All you have to do is configure your social media channel properly.


If someone tags your organization’s replies to your social media posts, you can add this person as a lead and assign the lead to a sales representative. Likewise, anytime someone messages you on social media or comments on your posts, you can also add that person as your contact and assign this contact to another sales representative.


Customize Templates

 

All sales professionals do not like manual data entry. However, there are times when entire days get wasted in typing emails while leaving only a little time to do what you are actually hired for, and that is selling. Email Templates is one of the Zoho CRM features that can help get rid of this.


You can personalize the emails for every activity and send these emails to individual prospects. In addition, you can also send mass emails to a list of leads. For example, if you have imported leads from market research and wish to engage prospects, you can send thank you emails. All that you have to do is choose the list of leads and send a mass email.


To customize the templates, you have to design your template with the help of text, images, and tables; merge fields to your template, and add headers and footers to the templates.


Track Email Performance


You can also monitor how your emails have performed. Remember that you will not be able to send better emails in case you do not know how they have performed. Hence, an innovative sales representative must be able to consistently send engaging emails that can grab the attention of prospects get them to read and respond as well.


There are smart insights available on how the templates are performing, and by using these insights, you can get closer to writing better content. The email insights can also get you weekly and monthly reports on the emails' open, click, and bounce rates. In addition, the dashboards can tell which email templates have the best open and click rates.


Keep in mind that you can use the templates with the highest open rates, update existing content, and create new templates. In case you have been sending the email template, your job is done.


Complete Sales Activities On the Go

 

The sales representatives work while also being a part of customer meetings, events, and conferences. While managing so many meetings altogether, there must be something handy to update the activities, keep the team in sync, and do important things on the go. Zoho CRM features solve this problem by coming into your pocket.


With Zoho CRM Mobile, you can add leads, create tasks, receive email notifications, find customers, etc. You can locate all prospects near you using Map View and locate leads, contacts, and prospects in any area while scheduling meetings on your trip. In addition, you can log in all your visits so that your team knows about all locations that you have visited.


In addition, you can also record your takeaways from a recent meeting with a customer effectively. Again, there is no need to type out lengthy notes; you can just record the voice notes when walking and driving, associate the audio files with the records, and download them for reference.


Use AI-Based Sales Assistant


Being a sales representative, you should not let multiple calls go unanswered. There is a smart approach called Zia, an artificial intelligence-based sales assistant that shows you the notifications that let you know if your leads, prospects, or customers have been opening up and replying to your emails.

This assistant keeps track of when the prospects participate in surveys and posts on social media and based on this information. It tells you the correct time for reaching out to the prospect. If you know the best time to get in touch with your customers, you will get more replies from them at the right time.


Automate Actions

 

Being a sales representative, you will follow a fixed set of actions while contacting leads. For example, if you target to reach 40 leads a day, and 30 of your calls get answered, you can leave an email or voice message for the other ten leads.


After you complete your daily activities, you will update the tasks done. However, there is no need to manually follow a similar routine because you can automate these actions with macros. You have to choose the records and run the macro so that the repetitive tasks are taken care of automatically.


The Zoho CRM features know that a large part of your day includes a standard set of actions, which prompts you automatically with a suggestion to run a macro. For example, if you call a lead, send that lead a follow-up email, and create a task, Zia can suggest the same list of actions as a macro the next time. All that you need to do is run the Macro if it suits your needs.


Use CRM View for Activities

 

The workday of a sales representative is full of multiple events and activities that could be anything from visiting a prospect, demo shows, task creation for calling a prospect, or following up with customers after visiting a website. How can a sales representative know which task needs to be taken first on priority?


The CRM View for Activities lets you prioritize all sales activities by being available for tasks, calls, and events in the Activities module. In addition, the interface uses a view that lets you plan who should be followed up on that day. This view is divided into the categories called Customers, including all tasks associated with the customers; Open Deals including all tasks associated with deals in the pipeline, Leads including all tasks associated with leads and contacts; and Others including all other records.


Streamline With Tagging

 

You will need unique identifiers associated with your CRM records to help you effectively search, sort, categorize, filter, and segment the records. The tags can help you clearly prioritize all records and contact them as well. For example, if you have some leads in your account that must be prioritized, you can tag these leads as Important and filter all of them easily from other leads in the Zoho CRM account.


Conclusion

 

If you use all the fantastic Zoho CRM features listed above, you will see your productivity go very high. You can use Zoho CRM to maximize your potential as a sales representative, but you need to understand all the features offered by it. And now you know all the basics :)


If you need further support in implementing Zoho CRM, you can get in touch with our expert Zoho consultants. They come with years of experience that can lead them to help you maximize your potential.



I hope that you learned something new 
Cheers!
Abhi
(Seasoned Zoho Authorized and Certified Partner)

Feel free to contact me if you have any queries
Email: abhishek(@)encaptechno(dot)com
Call: +1-416-405-8185

    • Sticky Posts

    • How to reach the official Zoho Support channels and avoid fake ones.

      Dear Customers, Thanks a lot for choosing Zoho! Our applications are built to help achieve your day-to-day business goals. We are committed to engaging with you, to understand and develop solutions that enhance your productivity.  We are happy and ready to help you use our services effectively. Understanding and avoiding fake support Just like using popular bank names and financial applications for phishing purposes, using Zoho and claiming to be providing Zoho Support or services with false numbers

    • Function #35: Close all tasks associated with a lead and create a new task.

      Welcome back everyone! Last week, we learnt how to close all tasks of a deal depending upon the deal stage. This week, let's look at a custom function that lets you close all of the tasks associated with a lead while simultaneously creating a new task, like when you need to halt all progress towards a lead while the lead is not available at the moment but create a reminder task. Business scenario: The success of a company, in one way or another, is determined by the leads it gets. Each lead is just

    • Zoho CRM Webinar - Redesigning Daily User Experiences with Canvas

      <br> Your users across roles use the CRM for day-to-day tasks that are necessary. Whether they perform their tasks on time, the right way, or at all depends on a lot of factors, including User Experience. Many businesses struggle with rigid layouts,

    • Join us at the Canada ZUG Meetup: What’s New in Zoho CRM

      Hello Zoho Community! Start your year with fresh insights into Zoho CRM’s latest updates and tools. Whether you're a CRM beginner or a experienced user, this meetup is crafted to help you optimise your processes and leverage new features. Explore practical

    • CRM Hack #2: Automate sending of birthday greetings to your customers.

        Hello everyone! What sets you apart as a sales person is your ability to add that personal touch to your business relationship with your customers. Sending a gift on a special day, or leaving a note wishing them on their birthdays, are small, yet significant actions that show your customers that you care. And these are actions done without any expectations :) You must be engaging with a lot of customers and it is highly unlikely that they all are your friends on Facebook or some social channel,

    • Recent Topics

    • Cliq Meeting Calls No Audio and Screen Share

      When in a Cliq channel meeting, the audio does not work at all on pc. When i use my phone as audio source, screen share on pc does not work. I have updated audio drivers but the strangest thing is that during a 1 on 1 call, it works well. Therefore the

    • Bug in Total Hour Calculation in Regularization for past dates

      There is a bug in Zoho People Regularization For example today is the date is 10 if I choose a previous Date like 9 and add the Check in and Check out time The total hours aren't calculated properly, in the example the check in time is 10:40 AM check

    • Work anniversary and birthdays on connect

      Hello, I like the idea of having employee's work anniversary and birthdays on the dashbaord. Do you have to have the employee complete this information themselves in connect settings, or does it pull from their directory settings? (ie. we use Zoho one

    • Alias Email Id already exists

      Hi I'm trying to create an alias : contact @ yoavarielevy.co.il but i get the message  Alias Email Id already exists I had an account with the same name but I deleted it. Can you help? Thanx Yoav

    • BANK FEED - MAYBANK , provider from YODLEE IS NOT WORKING

      As per topic, the provider YODLEE is not working for the BANK FEED. It have been reported since 2023 Q3, and second report on 2023 Q4. now almost end of 2024 Q1, and coming to 2024 Q2. Malaysia Bank Maybank is NOT working. can anyone check on this issue?

    • Feature Request: Ability to Set a Custom List View as Default for All Users

      Dear Zoho CRM Support Team, We would like to request a new feature in Zoho CRM regarding List Views. Currently, each user has to manually select or favorite a custom list view in order to make it their default. However, as administrators, we would like

    • Adding Multiple Products (Package) to a Quote

      I've searched the forums and found several people asking this question, but never found an answer. Is ti possible to add multiple products to a quote at once, like a package deal? This seems like a very basic function of a CRM that does quotes but I can't

    • webinar registration confirmation are landing in SPMA folders

      I am trialing zoho webinar and do not have access to custom domains. When I test user registrations, they are working but the resulting confirmation email is landing in a spam folder. How can I avoid this?

    • Making digital signatures accessible to all: Introducing accessibility controls in Zoho Sign

      Hi there! At Zoho Sign, we are committed to building an inclusive digital experience for all our users. As part of our ongoing efforts to align with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), we’re updating the application with support that will go

    • Delegates should be able to delete expenses

      I understand the data integrity of this request. It would be nice if there was a toggle switch in the Policy setting that would allow a delegate to delete expenses from their managers account. Some managers here never touch their expense reports, and

    • Add Save button to Expense form

      A save button would be very helpful on the expense form. Currently there is a Save and Close button. When we want to itemize an expense, this option would be very helpful. For example, if we have a hotel expense that also has room service, which is a

    • Multiple organizations under Zoho One

      Hello. I have a long and complicated question. I have a Zoho One account and want to set it up to serve the needs of 6 organizations under the same company. Some of the Zoho One users need to be able to work in more than 1 organization’s CRM and other

    • Error AS101 when adding new email alias

      Hi, I am trying to add apple@(mydomain).com The error AS101 is shown while I try to add the alias.

    • Unbundle feature for composite items

      We receive composite items from our vendors and sell them either individually or create other composite items out of them. So, there is a lot of bundling and unbundling involved with our composite items. Previously, this feature was supported in form

    • Regarding the integration of Apollo.io with Zoho crm.

      I have been seeing for the last 3 months that your Apollo.io beta version is available in Zoho Flow, and this application has not gone live yet. We requested this 2 months ago, but you guys said that 'we are working on it,' and when we search on Google

    • MTD SA in the UK

      Hello ID 20106048857 The Inland Revenue have confirmed that this tax account is registered as Cash Basis In Settings>Profile I have set ‘Report Basis’ as “Cash" However, I see on Zoho on Settings>Taxes>Income Tax that the ‘Tax Basis’ is marked ‘Accrual'

    • workflow not working in subform

      I have the following code in a subform which works perfectly when i use the form alone but when i use the form as a subform within another main form it does not work. I have read something about using row but i just cant seem to figure out what to change

    • Fetch data from another table into a form field

      I have spent the day trying to work this out so i thought i would use the forum for the first time. I have two forms in the same application and when a user selects a customer name from a drop down field and would like the customer number field in the

    • Record comment filter

      Hi - I have a calendar app that we use to track tasks. I have the calendar view set up so that the logged in user only sees the record if they are assigned to the task. BUT there are instances when someone is @ mentioned in the record when they are not

    • How to View Part Inventory and Warehouse Location When Creating a Work Order in Zoho FSM

      Hi everyone, We’re currently setting up Zoho FSM and would like to improve how our team selects parts when creating a Work Order. Right now, when we add a part or item to a Work Order, we can select it from our Zoho Inventory list but we don’t see any

    • FSM too slow today !!

      Anybody else with problem today to loading FSM (WO, AP etc.)?

    • Not able to Sign In in Zoho OneAuth in Windows 10

      I recently reset my Windows 10 system, after the reset when I downloaded the OAuth app and tried to Sign In It threw an error at me. Error: Token Fetch Error. Message: Object Reference not set to an instance of an object I have attached the screenshot

    • Mapping a custom preferred date field in the estimate with the native field in the workorder

      Hi Zoho, I created a field in the estimate : "Preferred Date 1", to give the ability to my support agent to add a preferred date while viewing the client's estimate. However, in the conversion mapping (Estimate to Workorder), I'm unable to map my custom

    • The sending IP (136.143.188.15) is listed on spamrl.com as a source of spam.

      Hi, it just two day when i am using zoho mail for my business domain, today i was sending email and found that message "The sending IP (136.143.188.15) is listed on https://spamrl.com as a source of spam" I hope to know how this will affect the delivery

    • Delegates - Access to approved reports

      We realized that delegates do not have access to reports after they are approved. Many users ask questions of their delegates about past expense reports and the delegates can't see this information. Please allow delegates see all expense report activity,

    • Split functionality - Admins need ability to do this

      Admins should be able to split an expense at any point of the process prior to approval. The split is very helpful for our account coding, but to have to go back to a user and ask them to split an invoice that they simply want paid is a bit of an in

    • Is there a way to request a password?

      We add customers info into the vaults and I wanted to see if we could do some sort of "file request" like how dropbox offers with files. It would be awesome if a customer could go to a link and input a "title, username, password, url" all securely and it then shows up in our team vault or something. Not sure if that is safe, but it's the best I can think of to be semi scalable and obviously better than sending emails. I am open to another idea, just thought this would be a great feature.  Thanks,

    • Single Task Report

      I'd like a report or a way to print to PDF the task detail page. I'd like at least the Task Information section but I'd also like to see the Activity Stream, Status Timeline and Comments. I'd like to export the record and save it as a PDF. I'd like the

    • Auto-response for closed tickets

      Hi, We sometimes have users that (presumably) search their email inbox for the last correspondence with us and just hit reply - even if it's a 6 month old ticket... - this then re-opens the 6 month old ticket because of the ticket number in the email's subject. Yes, it's easy to 'Split as new Ticket', but I'd like something automated to respond to the user saying "this ticket has already been resolved and closed, please submit a new ticket". What's the best way to achieve this? Thanks, Ed

    • How to Push Zoho Desk time logged to Zoho Projects?

      I am on the last leg of my journey of finally automating time tracking, payments, and invoicing for my minutes based contact center company - I just have one final step to solve - I need time logged in zoho desk to add time a project which is associated

    • Cannot access KB within Help Center

      Im working with my boss to customize our knowledge base, but for some reason I can see the KB tab, and see the KB categories, but I cannot access the articles within the KB. We have been troubleshooting for weeks, and we have all permissions set up, customers

    • Export to excel stored amounts as text instead of numbers or accounting

      Good Afternoon, We have a quarterly billing report that we generate from our Requests. It exports to excel. However if we need to add a formula (something as simple as a sum of the column), it doesn't read the dollar amounts because the export stores

    • why my account is private?

      when i post on zohodesk see only agent only

    • Getting ZOHO Invoice certified in Portugal?

      Hello, We are ZOHO partners in Portugal and here, all the invoice software has to be certified by the government and ZOHO Invoice still isn´t certified. Any plans? Btw, we can help on this process, since we have a client that knows how to get the software certified. Thank you.

    • 500 Internal Server Error

      I have been trying to create my first app in Creator, but have been getting the 500: Internal Server Error. When I used the Create New Application link, it gave me the error after naming the application. After logging out, and back in, the application that I created was in the list, but when I try to open it to start creating my app, it gives me the 500: Internal Server Error. Please help! Also, I tried making my named app public, but I even get the error when trying to do that.

    • Client Script | Update - Client Script Support For Portals

      Dear All! We are excited to announce the highly anticipated feature: Client Script support for Portals. We understand that many of you have been eagerly awaiting this enhancement, and we are pleased to inform you that this support is now live for all

    • Professional Plan not activated after payment

      I purchased the Professional Plan for 11 users (Subscription ID: RPEU2000980748325) on 12 September 2025, and the payment has been successfully processed. However, even after more than 24 hours, my CRM account still shows “Upgrade” and behaves like a

    • how to edit the converted lead records?

      so I can fetch the converted leads records using API (COQL), using this endpoint https://www.zohoapis.com/crm/v5/coql and using COQL filter Converted__s=true for some reasons I need to change the value from a field in a converted lead record. When I try

    • Auto Update Event Field Value on Create/Edit

      Hi there, I know this question has been posted multiple times and I've been trying many of the proposed similar scripts for a while now but nothing seems to work... what might I do wrong? The error I receive is this: Value given for the variable 'meetingId'

    • Pre-orders at Zoho Commerce

      We plan to have regular producs that are avaliable for purchase now and we plan to have products that will be avaliable in 2-4 weeks. How we can take the pre-orders for these products? We need to take the money for the product now, but the delivery will

    • Next Page