Services

Finding the right CRM and then getting it customized to meet your specific business needs can be challenging. It’s often difficult to weed through the list of features each CRM says they have to see if that is what you actually need. And then even more difficult to understand if that feature works or works in the way you want.

That’s where CRM Total Solutions comes in. We are CRM experts and have a proven methodology for partnering with you through this process. Just like a good architect is critical to the success of a building, having a CRM expert to help determine which CRM is right and then design it to meet your needs is critical to the long term successful usage.

And your database is valuable – it is valuable intellectual property for your company. So, investing in your database will have a financial payout as well.

CRM Total Solutions is ready to help you unlock your team’s potential through more effective, efficient selling. Now, more than ever, you need to make it easier for your people to focus on the best prospects and close more deals.

Certainly, customer relationship management (CRM) and business intelligence software is an important part of that equation. But so is an experienced partner who can make sure that your company is up and running with the new software on time, on budget and with minimal disruption to your business. CRM Total Solutions is that partner.

Our team of experts, with proven track records, can apply the best practices we have developed over hundreds of successful CRM implementations to your project, allowing your team to focus on what you do best – building profitable relationships with your prospects & customers.

Our solutions deliver a comprehensive, 360-degree view of prospects, customers and opportunities, enabling your people to have the information on hand to identify, nurture and build customer loyalty. CRM Total Solutions can deliver an outstanding return on your investment.

After spending lots of money on the software and customization, training is critical for your team. CRM Total Solutions has certified trainers who understand how to communicate information in a way that can be easily understood and assimilated.

All of our CRM training is hands-on. Our approach is simple and effective. We demonstrate a specific function and then ask you to try it. Hands-on training adds a third modality and really cements the understanding. You hear how to do it. You see our trainer do it. Then you get a chance to do it as well.

And in this new world of instant information and shorter attention spans, we have evolved our trainings over time from full day CRM trainings to focused One Hour Lunch N Learn training. We have found that almost everyone can give a dedicated one hour to learn something new. This approach teaches new functions and allows your team to try them during the training and then immediately after the training as well.

In addition to hands-on CRM training, all of our training is customized for you and your team. This means that your objectives and goals for the training become our objectives and goals. And we train using your specific database rather than a demo database. This allows the training to be real as the data is your data.

Here are the various training options:

1:1 coaching – this training is customized 1:1 with you. For many of our clients, they put together a list of questions or functions they need to learn and then we get into a training session and go through each function. This is highly targeted and specific training and is incredibly effective.

Introduction to CRM (typically 3-4 one hour Lunch N Learn sessions) – the goal of this training is to ensure everyone is using the CRM in the same consistent fashion as well as teaching the core functionality of how to navigate and use the CRM. The topics covered are: CRM navigation (aka. How to get around); adding contacts to your CRM; basic lookups of contacts; scheduling activities/to-do’s; integration with Microsoft Outlook.

Advanced CRM Training (typically 2-3 one hour Lunch N Learn sessions) – the goal of this training is to create Power CRM users. The topics covered are: advanced lookups/queries; creating customized reports; creating email templates; setting up workflow tasks.

eMarketing Training (typically 1-2 one hour Lunch N Learn sessions) – the goal of this training is to teach you how to make eMarketing templates; send out campaigns; track results and creating action items for the hot prospects.

Administrative CRM Training (typically 1-2 one hour Lunch N Learn sessions) – this training covers adding users to your CRM database; database customization; data import and export; database backups and restores; creating remote/off-line databases.

eMarketing is something that may be new to you but it is something you see every day.   Each and every day, you receive emails from shopping sites like Amazon, Costco, etc.  These emails are sent using a third party eMarketing solution like Mail Chimp, Constant Contact or Vertical Response.  The actual email goes out through the servers of Mail Chimp, Constant Contact, etc.   When you open any of these emails and/or click on a link, that “opened” or “clicked on link”  information is sent back to the company that sent you the email. 

You can do the same thing with Act!. Act! has an integrated email marketing module that allows you to send out mass emails and then track the results.  These emails go out through the Act! servers rather than through your own Outlook.  This is important as your ISP (Internet Service Provider) has the ability to mark you as a spammer if you were to send out hundreds of emails using mail merge.

So, let’s break down exactly how the Act! eMarketing module works as it is a bit different than tools like Mail Chimp or Constant Contact.  And when I say different, in this case, I actually mean better – much better.  One of the biggest problems using any of these third party eMarketing tools like Mail Chimp or Constant Contact is that they create a second database, in addition to your CRM database.  You have to take the email data from your CRM database and export it to Mail Chimp or Constant Contact and send out your campaign.  Those incredibly valuable campaign results of “who opened my email?”and “who clicked on my links?” are located on the web under your Mail Chimp or Constant Contact account – not in your database.  So then you have to manually add activities like creating a “Call Hot Prospect” call list back into your CRM database.

Act! is different because the eMarketing is fully integrated in your database.  With Act!, you would first create your eMarketing template.  You can import graphics like your logo and pictures.  You can add links to your website (including links to landing pages)– all of which you can track.  Once you have created your template, within Act!, you can initiate the campaign.  You can send a campaign to one user, to a Lookup of Contacts, to a Group or to a Company.  Many of our clients create specific eMarketing groups based on dynamic criteria.  So you would choose which group or lookup or company to send the campaign and then give the email a subject line and click Send [note: you can also have a Scheduled Send so you can create the campaign on a quiet Saturday morning and have it sent on Tuesday at 11am].  That’s all you need to do to send a campaign – you don’t need to export the list to excel and then import it into a web eMarketing solution (like MailChimp.)

And while that is pretty cool, the true payout is when it comes to tracking the results of the campaign.  Instead of going to a Mail Chimp or Constant Contact website and looking at the results, you can click on the eMarketing button in Act! and see the results of each campaign.  The results show you who has opened your email, how many times they have opened it and how many times they have clicked on any links you had in your email.  And Act! then scores each response based on these numbers. 

You can highlight these hot prospects and create a Lookup of these contacts with one click.  And you can also create an activity for them with one click.  All within Act!  So it is integrated and actionable.  And fast.  You send a campaign.  You track the results.  You create action items to follow up on the people that are most interested in your campaign.  Simple.  Easy.  Intuitive.  And you can make money.  Anyone that has clicked on your link is interested, so call them.  Or send them another email with more information.

Act! eMarketing is truly the best eMarketing solution out there.  Having only one database and being able to create campaigns, track results and take action on the results all with Act! make this CRM software incredibly powerful.