CRM Hack #3: How to update formula functions for already created records.
Hello everyone! It’s Wednesday and we are back with yet another hack.. I'm sure you've used formula fields to meet some requirements specific to your business. Let's consider an example each for external (customer-facing) and internal facing scenarios
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,
CRM Hack #1: Advanced filters in CRM.
Hello Everyone! If you loved the Tips and Tricks and Automate over custom functions, you're going to love this one! As part of the Zoho community learning series, we're now launching the ''Hacks from the Support Desk'', where every once in a while, you'll
CRM Hack #15: How to check for duplicates for contacts that are not converted from leads #15
Hello Everyone ! The leads module in Zoho CRM helps aggregate all the unqualified leads which is then qualified and converted to contacts by your sales team. However, the chances of running into a highly qualified lead upfront cannot be ruled out. Such situations prompt you to skip the lead creation process and create contacts directly. Taking the traditional route of qualifying a leads to contacts does have its own advantages. For instance, leveraging the deduplication option to eliminate duplicates
CRM Hack #4: Instant access to a Lead from a link in the email template.
Hello everyone! It's that day of the week and we are back with a hack. I'm going to share an interesting yet useful hack that lands a lead as a link in the email template, something that comes handy in your day to day business. What problem does this hack solve? As a lead owner, you get notified when a lead is assigned to you. This hack adds more value to the notification email by inserting a hyperlink to help navigate to the newly assigned lead in CRM.This enables instant follow-up and
CRM Hack #14: How to send emails to Accounts in your CRM?
Hello everyone, Let's start the day with a small hack. Every business is unique and the sales routines vary based on the needs. In Zoho CRM , the Contacts are associated with Accounts through a lookup field. So, the emails section under the Accounts is the list of emails that are sent to the Contacts associated with it. There is no provision to send emails to the account directly. Some of our users have asked for a send mail button in Accounts module similar to the one in Contacts module. This
How to add the stages to a blueprint and update for existing records ? #21
Hello everyone ! An optimal sales process helps improve the efficiency of your sales team. Won't it be great if your CRM system let's you tailor the sales process the way you want it? Blueprint in Zoho CRM helps you do just that. By setting stages and trigger workflows, Blueprint ensures your sales team follows a set process without deviating from the specifics. Let's assume you've set the required stages and triggers, and fine-tuned your sales process with Blueprint. Your team has been following
CRM Hack #7: How to trigger a workflow for imported records?
Hello everyone, It's hack day again! A few months ago, we had one of our users present a case to us. She had set up a product module workflow rule that executed at the time of creation.This workflow also has a time-based action tied to the product sale
CRM Hack #6 Notify the manager/higher-ups on unattended new leads
Hello everyone ! Strike when the iron is hot', they say. This is perfectly true in sales. Research shows that a whopping 35%-50% of sales goes to the vendor who reaches out first! And here is the bigger deal- the chances of converting is 9x more if you reach within the first 5 minutes! And I share this stats for a reason :) This week's hack is for the sales supervisors or managers who have a tough time dealing with new leads that are left unattended. I'm sure you've faced instances where a Lead or
CRM Hack #25 : Adding a numeric formula field when the number of permissible numeric fields is exhausted.
Dear Users, Formula field is an extremely useful utility in Zoho CRM. It does the required calculations in the back-end thereby saving the hassle of performing them manually. Formula fields are mostly numeric and the hack I’m demonstrating today is a suggested workaround for a limitation faced by quiet a few of our customers.The hack is applicable for the professional and enterprise CRM editions and I'm sure you'd find it useful. Adding an extra numeric formula field when the number of permissible
CRM Hack #22- How to find the parents records that doesn't have any child records associated to them?
Hello everyone! This is going to be the first hack for the year. Let us consider a scenario in which a sales rep wants to know the list of vendors that don't have any contacts in it. Because, without a point of contact to the vendors, the inventory management cannot be managed properly. In Zoho CRM, we have reports that help us extract the data that is present inside CRM. For instance, we can find all the Accounts and Contacts for which the "Industry type" of the account is "Software". So we only
How to schedule more than 5 emails from a workflow in Zoho CRM?
Hello everyone!Following up with your clients in CRM makes it different from a normal database management system, especially when the follow-ups are automated. Let's consider a business scenario in which there is a website about the product that the company sells. The product is going to be a tour package. Let's say the client submits a form and a deal is created and invoice is generated. Finally, the deal is closed won. Now, if the admin is willing to send out scheduled emails for all the clients
How to restrict a sales person to create a contact without creating a lead? #19
Hello ! It's wednesday and we are again back with this week's hack. When you run a business we all know how important are the leads as they only eventually become contacts and generate revenue. You might have certain metrics to be satisfied for a lead to become a contact and you would want your sales team to convert those leads alone as contacts and must not allow them to directly create contacts. How to do this ? Please go to setup --> Users and controls --> Profiles --> Click on Contacts and disable
CRM Hack 18: How to ensure leads are assigned the first stage when attempting to create with an intermediate stage?
Hello everyone ! We shared a hack earlier on leveraging blueprint to restrict users from creating leads from an intermediate stage. Let's take it one step ahead. This week's hack helps assign the 'first stage' to a lead created at an intermediate stage. And this change in the lead stage is notified to the manager concerned. Let's consider a sales process with eight Lead Statuses - Attempted to contact, Contact in Future, Contacted, Pre-Qualified, Event scheduled, Event updates, Convert Lead and
How to make sales rep follow sales process ? #17
Hello Everyone! It's Wednesday and we are up with the hack. Consider an admin has set a blueprint for lead status with five stages to follow the transitions for each stage. Now, if an user while creating a record sets the lead status from stage three then the transitions and the process for first two stages are missed out . So you will want your sales rep to follow the process by going through stage one to the last stage and not start from a stage in between for the leads status field. How to achieve
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
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.
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
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
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
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