I am just getting started with Zoho CRM and have a couple of questions (actually a lot).
MAIN OBJECTIVE - GET STUDENTS TO ATTEND MY SCHOOL
I want to use Zoho CRM primarily to keep information about all of the potential students that want to sign up for my school. I started out importing a list of everybody who wants a guided tour at my school as leads, so they are in my database.
So first I disabled the requirement for a lead to have an account (company name), so I could just treat them as individual persons. Is that a mistake, or did I do this correctly? When would I convert a lead to a contact? When they want to get a guided tour? When I answer them?
Now, what I am selling is a course which starts either in August, October, January or March with different lengths. All of the leads might be a potential student for each course, as they have not decided yet. Some have a specific wish for which course they might be interested in. How should I create the potential for them while converting them to a contact? Do the potential need an assigned product (the course(s) they can sign up for) - or how can I see how many potentials are for a certain course?
I can see the potentials here, but they do not really tell how many I have in the pipeline for a certain course.
It would also be great if there was a way to differentiate how the customers flavor of course is like (we have different sports on each course).
Where can I get an overview of how many people I have in different stages of a selling funnel (or in the pipeline for converting to sales?)
What I want to use Zoho CRM for is getting an idea from year to year - how many brochures did we hand out, to whom and when, how many guided tours did we do, how many new leads were we able to get from Google Adwords, Facebook and when, and did we end up loosing or winning the sale - and how many potentials for the different courses do we have in the pipeline?
How would you setup valuable dashboards for this scenarium?
All accounting and other stuff will be done in other applications which I cannot integrate with Zoho CRM, so which modules would you enable to be able to have a more streamlined selling process for a school which sells courses (around 200 courses pr. year is the sales volume).
SECONDARY OBJECTIVE - GETTING PEOPLE TO SUPPORT OUR FUND
We have a fund - how can I keep track of the people that are in the fund - and the people which is not paying anymore, but maybe I want to reengage for the fund. Could I keep them here in the same system?
THIRD OBJECTIVE - KEEPING TRACK OF OLD EMPLOYEES
Right now I manage an Excel spreadsheet, but I wanted to put it into the same system to keep all relations in one place. How could I put them in but keep it clean, so it is easy to find only old employees.
FOURTH OBJECTIVE - KEEPING TRACK OF OLD STUDENTS
Would it be possible in the same system with restricted users to use the CRM also to keep track of Alumni students (which is invited to join a reunion each year - and might be invited to other stuff). How would I put them in as contacts (which should be grouped in the year they attended the school).
Are there any good howtos in Zoho and these scenarios?