Focus Group #3: De-duplication in Zoho CRM enhanced with auto-merge and more.
Hi folks! We're back with the 3rd Focus Group convention with de-duplication's auto merge feature in CRM as the centerpiece. As the avenues to generate leads and contacts in your CRM increase, the chances of duplicates that accumulate in your CRM database will tend to increase as well. Bringing in a lead that has already been created via import is one such scenario. The de-duplicate feature of Zoho CRM, now enhanced with auto-merge and further enhancements help weed out duplicates, making
Emails - just list all together NOT Emails Sent form CRM/ Zoho shared users
We have to click on each user or click back to sent from CMR. All emails sent to that client should list there and not separately. I have to look through each user or the Sent from CRM area to make sure I am not duplication an email taht was sent out of the CRM or by another user. You could still use the sent by column to separate these but All emails should list as one list not separate lists. Thank you
How to start a blueprint only from the first stage. #16
Hello everyone, It’s Hack Wednesday and I’m going to share a simple hack around Blueprint. Blueprint ensures that your sales team follows a standard set of processes without bypassing any processes in between. Let us consider a sales process with eight Lead Status - Attempted to contact, Contact in Future, Contacted, Pre-Qualified, Event scheduled, Event updates, Convert lead and Lost Lead. A Blueprint is created with these lead status as States and the successive stages as transition. This ensures
Tip #20: Avoid Unanswered Calls or Emails
Hey folks, It's Thursday again! As part of our weekly Tips and Tricks, we are back with a tip on how you can avoid unanswered calls or emails. The one most critical but frustrating job in the daily routine of any sales rep is calling contacts and actually being able to talk to them. But getting hold of them in the first place is a real challenge in itself. Well, that's not going to be the case if you are using Zoho CRM. With Best time to Contact suggestions by Zia, reps can now be aware of the right
Tip #19: Created a recurring event by mistake? Here's how to stop it.
Hey everybody, As part of our weekly Tips and Tricks series on using Zoho CRM, we are going to focus on activity reminders today. While creating an event, you have an option to repeat the event daily, weekly, monthly etc. When you choose to repeat an event, you must also select when you want the repetition to end. Many a time, it so happens that we overlook this section and go ahead with the default option of "Never" - which essentially means that there is no end to the recurring event. If you
Community Digest - October 2017
Hello! We are back again with the gist of all that's been happening in the world of Zoho CRM the past month. October's edition of the Community Digest encompasses useful CRM hacks, tips and tricks, custom functions, and more. Community Learning Series: Ask the Experts: Thank you, awesome members, for the fantastic participation in "Ask the Experts" session. The session was centered around 'user management in Zoho CRM'. Our experts enjoyed fielding over 100 questions for the 3rd consecutive month
Function-15: Notify task owners when the ownership is changed
Welcome back everyone! Last week, we learnt how to get record owner details inside a record with the click of a button. This week, let's look at a custom function notifies the task owner when the task is transferred to another owner. Business scenario: Tasks help organize and manage your sales routines efficiently. Your sales routine might include a set number of tasks. Let's say the prospecting process of all your inbound leads includes 2 tasks - analyzing requirements, sending a quotation. This
CRM Hack #13: How to export a select set of records without creating reports?
Hello Everyone ! The "More Actions" button - the one with three dots next to Import button - has useful options like Mass Email, Mass Convert, Zoho Sheet View, etc. Of these options, the "Zoho Sheet View" is an underdog feature whose utility is not known to many. Any view can be translated to a corresponding "Zoho Sheet View" from which the records can then be exported. This week's hack utilizes the tags and export option in Zoho Sheet to cut down on the need to create a report for exporting a select
Search for records in specific modules without applying filter.
It's Wednesday and we've got a simple yet effective hack for you. Search is one of the most widely used tools in Zoho CRM. Zoho CRM's global search allows you to query across multiple modules at the same time. So, a global search for leads, in addition to pulling, the leads, pulls even the tasks, event, calls and contacts.. Won’t it be more useful and contextual if the search shows the records available within a specific module? Consider you are on an inbound call with Zylker about a quote just
CRM Hack #12: Lock down a pick-list value field for all users but for select few, once a specific value is selected
Hello Everyone ! Zoho CRM provides the flexibility to set up access permissions at field level. What if your business process warrants you to drill down a bit further? For instance, let’s assume your sales process involves obtaining legal clearance for select deals and the same needs to be tracked using a pick list capturing lead status. Say the pick list contains 8 values namely Attempt 1, Attempt 2, Contacted, Contact in future, Legal check, Legal cleared, Send Document and Document received.
Ask the Experts #2: 5-hour live Q&A session on Customizing modules and fields in Zoho CRM
To close more deals in less time, the need to craft your CRM to fit your industry is super important. Zoho CRM is designed to allow users to flexibly customize and tailor it to suit their needs. Customize the sales dashboard, standard and custom modules, tabs, email templates, and more. Our next session in the Ask the Experts series focuses on yet another segment that frequents our support desk- customizing Zoho CRM. This on-demand, expert advice is a 5-hour knowledge exchange marathon. Post your
Tip #16: Using workflow rules for specific layouts
Hello everyone! We shared a tip earlier on how you can map fields for lead conversion based on your page layout. In continuation to that topic, here is another one - creating workflow rules that apply to records from a specific layout. Workflow rules are created for a specific module. You can create a workflow rule for the Deals module to automate the process of following-up on a big deals and creating timely tasks for the team. That is neat but say for example, a company sells furniture and also
Community Digest - September 2017
Hi folks! Below, is the gist of all that's been happening in the world of Zoho CRM throughout the past month. September's edition of the Community Digest encompasses useful CRM hacks, tips and tricks, custom functions and more. Community learning series: Most Discussed: The second Ask the Experts session garnered quite the attention with our product experts answering questions, live in the forums for a 5-hour session. Customizing Modules and Fields in Zoho CRM was the talk of the day. Automate
CRM Hack #10 How to access the Leads within CRM instead of accessing it from your mailbox.
Hello everyone! Time for an interesting hack this week ! Are you finding it difficult to switch tabs to follow up with your clients ? We got a solution to that. Let's say, the administrator has set up the CRM in such a way that the leads get assigned to the sales reps and the lead’s link is sent through an email to their mailbox. The sales folks therefore have to go to their web mail and click on the link to open the lead inside CRM for follow up. [Refer to this link to know how to send a Lead’s
Function-11: Turn a contact into a vendor.
Welcome back everyone! Last week, we learnt how toadd the international call prefix '+' and remove the alphbet from numeric fields. This week, let's look at a custom function that lets you turn a contact into a vendor with just the click of a button. Business scenario: The Vendors module in Zoho CRM facilitates efficient tracking of all vendor related details. It lets you create and associate vendor records with address, contacts, products, and such. We recommend this method for creating vendor
Tip #14: On Reports
Hello folks, Following our weekly tips on using Zoho CRM, we are back with a tip for this week on Reports. Tip #14: On Reports Everybody loves Reports. More so in sales! Reports give a sense of direction to the sales reps in terms of where they stand and what they have to do specifically to reach their target. They quantify the sales reps' hard work and give them the much needed sense of achievement and motivation to push further. Zoho CRM comes with a set of standard reports and the option to create
Focus Group #2: Integrated Finance Suite in Zoho CRM - A preview.
Dear Users, Do these Sales challenges sound familiar? "I have to access multiple applications to get the requisite receivables/payables insights of an account." “Management asks for more insights on my sales spend.” “I rely on insights from operations team for stock availability before committing a sale.” “I need more customization and automation in the quote templates.” Well, these are some of the many benefits Zoho CRM will bring to your business with the much awaited Finance Suite integration. We’d
CRM hack #9 : How to add exceptions to a workflow for select contacts?
Hello everyone! Workflows in Zoho CRM lets you automate routine processes thereby allowing your sales team to focus on the most important thing, closing more sales optimally. Let’s consider a scenario where an administrator sets up a workflow to send out 5 emails, one every 2 days from the date of creation and a followup task for the sales representatives. First email is an instant email about the overview of the product and the next set of 4 emails are about the details of the product which are
will this be available online after the fact
for those of us who are travelling. The Zoho Q&A on the community (CRM)
Community Digest - August 2017.
Hello everyone! Here's the CRM Community digest compiling the most discussed topics, hacks, tips and tricks around CRM, and much more. Read on in case you missed out on the highlights from August 2017! Community Learning Series: Most discussed: Zoho CRM Community launched the first edition of 'Ask the experts', a 5 hour knowledge exchange marathon in forums focussing on anything to do with emails in Zoho CRM. Automate your work using Custom Functions: Introducing custom functions and the way it
Tip #13: Customize related lists to view relevant information
Hello! It's Thursday again and we are back to add one more tip to the list. Let's go to a record in the Deals module. If you notice, a deal record in Zoho CRM lists the basic details about the deal such as the expected revenue, the stage in which the deal is in, probability of winning the deal, etc. Along with it the related lists give all the other details - notes by the sales reps or manager, relevant documents attached, contact persons involved in the process of acquiring the deal and their roles,
Tip #6: Maintain a style sheet for a clean CRM database
Hello! Your CRM data too needs maintenance. Outdated phones numbers, invalid email addresses, confusion in abbreviations, and duplicate entries can add up to a database that needs cleaning. It can be problematic when you have to pull specific data. In our upcoming posts we will be giving tips that will help you maintain a clean CRM database. So here it is - Maintain a Style Sheet Picture this. A sales rep is trying to collect customer’s data in a particular region to send mass emails. While
CRM Hack #8 :Retrieve and update the missing fields in Contacts from Leads after conversion
Hello everyone ! Typically, when users sign up to Zoho CRM, they start by adding Leads and then convert them into Contacts. . Let's say a CRM administrator creates custom fields in Leads and Contacts modules, and educates the Sales reps to convert them when there is some progress on that Lead. You run into situations where the Leads would have converted to Contacts but with some missing information. The lead conversion mapping feature bails you out of this situation. But then, what would
Tip #12: Automate the generation of leads via social media
Hello everyone! We are back this week with a new tip on social selling. Please refer to our previous tips here. Social media is undoubtedly a gold mine for business prospects. It can be a really effective lead source, but only if you reach out to the right people at the right time. With Zoho CRM, you can ensure that you do not miss out on any valuable prospect from social media anymore. This is achieved by setting up what we call "social automation rules". These are just like your regular workflow
Tip #11: How to Work Efficiently with Zoho CRM Calendar
Hello folks, We are back again with yet another powerful tip dedicated to all the sales professionals and small business owners out there. Tip #11: How to Work Efficiently with Zoho CRM Calendar For every busy sales professional or business owner, calendar management is mission critical. A single missed appointment could break a deal that you worked so hard on. Given that your calendar is so full of appointments already, let's look at some tips on how you can find some peace in the chaos. Set clear
CRM Hack #5 : Re-assign records of one sales person to another without actually transferring the records!
Hello! It's hack day again! When was the last time one of your sales rep quit? Happens all the time, right? And how did you get all the records handled by this rep transferred to another new sales rep? I'm guessing you went about transferring them methodically. What if I tell you that there is a simple yet quick hack that lets you just replace the owner of those records from the earlier sales rep to the new one? No need to take the long route when a safe short cut is available right? Now let
Tip #10: On Email Templates
For the past few weeks we have been posting tips to keep duplicates out of your database and to maintain a clean CRM. If you missed those tips, here is a link. In today’s tip, we will get to know the tiny details that matter in using email templates. Background color - Selecting a template from the gallery can save you time but if at all you want to send a simple email that does not look like an automated email, then here is a tip. The basic templates comes with a grey background. So when you send
Tip #9: Run duplication check across converted leads
Hello everyone, I hope you find our tips on maintaining a clean CRM useful. Our previous tips on the subject dealt with the following: Maintaining a style sheet for a clean CRM database - ✓ Creating Unique fields to avoid duplicate records - ✓ Merging duplicate records - ✓ This week, we are back again with another tip on dealing with duplicates. Tip #9 - Run duplicate check across converted leads When you mark fields as unique in CRM, you can enable duplication check within Converted Leads
Tip #5: Discover significant sales insights instantly using advanced filters
The Advanced filters in Zoho CRM are a great avenue for you to dig deep into your CRM to discover important sales insights in no time. Consider the following scenarios: Over the last six months, your CRM has accumulated a great number of leads. You have followed up with most of them but there could be a big deal hidden somewhere amidst the leads that did not respond the first time around. If only you could pull up such idle leads quickly and follow-up again. You have a handful of deals that are
Tip #4: Automatically receive updates on records that matter to you with Feed's Auto-Follow rules
The fourth tip in our Tips & Tricks series is focused on getting automatic updates on the records that matter to you the most and that needs your attention. With a huge database of records, there is a big chance that you might miss something important. It could be anything: A big deal that could seal your monthly target and requires every bit of your attention. A tough prospect who makes it nearly impossible to close the deal and who makes things harder than it needs to be. Leads generated from a
Tip #1: Use Lead Scores to Prioritize your Lead Follow-up
Hello everyone!We, at Zoho Community, are happy to launch ‘Tips and Tricks’, a weekly activity that focuses on use cases gathered from some of you. We’ll also ferret out the lesser known or hidden functionalities that will help you set up an efficient CRM. We urge you not only to try them and let us know if it helped, but also to tell us what else you’d want addressed in this section. Tip #1: Use Lead Scores to prioritize your Lead follow-up Let's face it. When you are into sales, there is never