Zoho CRM Community highlights - 2017
Happy holidays, everyone! And on that joyful note, we've got some good tidings to share. 2017 has been a happening year for the Zoho CRM Community for many reasons. Over the year, our Community has built itself to create a space where you, our users, engage with each other, our product experts, and a few Zoho partners. The launch of the Community Learning Series this year fueled increased interactions and engagements among the community members. Here's a quick recap from this year. Here's a bunch
Focus Group #5: Telephony integration with Zoho CRM
With the holiday season fast approaching, we understand how stressful sales can get. Your Sales reps are kept on their toes, fending off calls from clients throughout the season. PhoneBridge promotes efficient sales by enabling calls right from your CRM among other things. But you already know that. We wish to let you in on some best practices and tips we have come up with, to best use PhoneBridge. On Dec 19th, we're hosting our fifth Focus Group - A webinar where we'll be helping you optimize
Tip #26: Add new prospects through your incoming call pop-ups.
As part of our weekly Tips and Tricks series, we are back with a small tip about adding prospects to your CRM database faster. If you've integrated your telephone provider in your Zoho CRM account, the calls that you make or receive inside Zoho CRM would have contextual business information. That way, you'd know details of any lead or contact who's calling you, before attending the call. But when a prospect who isn't in your CRM database calls you, you would get an incoming call pop-up from an
Ask the Experts #3: 5-hour live forum discussion on customizing user management in Zoho CRM
Hi folks! October's "Ask the Experts" session is set to go and we can't wait for you to start firing off your questions. In continuation with our "Customizing Zoho CRM" theme, this month's session is centered around user management in Zoho CRM. Feel free to post your questions about any of the following: Users and groups Roles and profiles Data sharing rules Record-level sharing Territory management Company details customization This platform brings together the CRM product experts, partners, and
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
Community Digest - November 2017
Hi folks! Below, is the gist of all that's been happening in the world of Zoho CRM the past month. November'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 users for the active participation in last month's, " Ask the Experts " session once again. The session was centered around ' Workflow automation in Zoho CRM '. Our experts were kept on their toes by the overwhelming response
Focus Group #1: Tags in Zoho CRM
Hello All! Owing to popular request from our community, we at Zoho CRM, have implemented the ''Tag contacts'' feature and it's now in the testing phase. Happy to let you know that it will indubitably be available soon :). As a prelude to the general availability, we're premiering this feature to a small group of users including those who'd expressed the need earlier. Join this premiere and get to know: How tagging helps sort, filter, and segment records. How tags can be used as descriptive categories
"Ask the Experts' session on Zoho Projects and CRM integration!
Hello Members, An 'Ask the Experts' session is in progress now on the Zoho Projects forums linked below. The topic inviting questions and discussions from you is, Projects and CRM integration. Hop over to the following topic and start asking your questions if any! https://help.zoho.com/portal/en/community/topic/ask-our-experts-2-a-5-hour-knowledge-exchange-marathon-on-projects-crm-integration-in-zoho-projects PS: Option to comment is disabled on this post. Do leave your questions as comments in
Ask the Experts #4: Q&A session on Automating workflows in Zoho CRM
Workflows help you automate routine CRM tasks, optimize your time, and promote sales efficiently. Workflow rules help you stay productive by sending emails, adding tasks, or updating fields for you.Here are a few of the primary benefits: Automating workflow rules, field updates and webhooks Trigger pre-defined emails Instantly assign leads to employees Trigger actions in third-party applications This November's Ask the Experts session is going to focus on workflow automation in Zoho CRM. This is
Tip #23: Mapping dependency fields.
Hello! Today's tip is based on dependency fields that helps you reduce clutter. Many a time, a picklist field’s values are so many that it gets difficult to find the right one when needed. A very common example would be that of the Country and State picklist fields. Imagine if you had an entire list of countries and also a full list of all the States to find and choose one. How tedious and confusing that would be! But that is not how we have it! We generally select a Country and the relevant State
Black Friday Bonanza: Share your sales story and win $25!
With Thanksgiving, And Black Friday coming your way, Let's skip the gravy And get right down to turkey. Let go of failures And focus on deal closures. Revel in merriment Be this, a testament To great sales And successful emails. So come over and bask in your gloryUpon sharing your sales success story! Hey Folks! Zoho Community wishes you a happy Thanksgiving! With Thanksgiving right around the corner, let's whip up some festive cheer. Share your recipe for success and win a $25 Amazon
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
Tip #22: On using website visitors information inside CRM
Hello folks, As part of our weekly Tips and Tricks series, we are back with a tip on using website visitor information inside Zoho CRM. When you are a sales person at a physical store, you can mostly tell if a customer is really interested to buy something or he/she is simply a window shopper. You can decide on your pitch and conversation accordingly. On the other hand, when you are working with leads online and over the phone, you can never be quite sure. Not until you have their visit information
Focus Group #4: Setting up SalesInbox and best practices.
Hey folks! We're back with yet another edition of Focus Group, this time we'll be focusing on something exclusive to the Sales side of Zoho CRM - SalesInbox. A big chunk of your time is utilized for checking emails from leads and contacts, and providing timely response. With CRM insights right inside your email client, SalesInbox helps you prioritize your emails and perform CRM actions right from your email client. Why toggle between your email client and CRM when all you need is presented right
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
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
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