Zoho CRM is a cloud based SaaS (software as a service) for customer relationship management (CRM). How to setup and manage new and potential business contacts in Zoho raises the question – what is a lead, what is a contact and what is a potential in Zoho ‘Jargon’. Managing Leads, Contacts and Accounts is a critical function of your business and it’s just as important that you understand Zoho’s sales management process.

Congratulations if you’ve already decided to use Zoho CRM, if you’re still deciding look at my guide on how to choose a web based CRM solution.

Zoho is extremely flexible in how you manage your database of contacts – in fact you can rename pretty much any Tab, Function or section if you want for example I could rename Leads to ‘Junk’ if I wanted – or realistically rename Potentials to Opportunities. I’ll cover this later.

Managing Leads and Contacts using ZOHO CRM

In daily business you will meet people and collect business cards or email addresses – these are going to be entered as new LEADS in ZOHO CRM or new CONTACTS.

Use Leads – if you need to do more work and nurture the lead before it becomes a new potential or opportunity.

Use Contacts – if you already qualified the lead and have a new quote or sales pitch to work on.

An existing contact can not have new leads – this is the only thing that may seem wrong with Zoho CRM especially as from time to time your existing contacts will tell you about potential new business – but this potential new business is really a Lead until you qualify it.

What is a Lead in Zoho

A lead is not a contact (yet)
A lead must have an owner and must have a Last Name

When a Leads is qualified you approve it and you convert it to a new contact, a new account (if needed) and a new potential

What is a Contact in Zoho?

An existing contact can not have a lead but it can have many potentials or opportunities

A contact can be associated with both an account and a vendor so don’t use Vendors if you don’t need them.

What is an Account in Zoho?

An account provides a hierarchical structure – A contact must belong to an Account or a new Account is created

Accounts are the same as businesses you work with

Notes on Vendors in Zoho CRM

Vendors are different to Accounts – Vendors can’t have sales opportunities

Damien Saunders

Well hello Customer Service and Customer Management consultants … who here is reading this and is building a business case for improved customer service by moving customers to self care tools such as web forms and e-mail?  Most of you reading this are probably think about it constantly. THEN DON’T DO IT unless you’ve gone and tested it and got it right.

I recently got an iPad 2 – an upgrade from my first iPad … Some nice marketing product person at O2 figured out an email with a link to reset the iPad MAC address so I can continue to use free wifi would be helpful.

So I went to the web form … and filled in my details

And almost immediately I got an email back — NICE — I thought, prompt service.

but really, oh NO  — I must have been dreaming —

Apparently, O2 is using a webmail form (hopefully linked to a good CRM tool) but it isn’t so up to date to deal with this special iPad MAC address reset form.

Top marks for testing your MAC address reset form.

Just wait for my story on another UK operator – after speaking to 5 different agents – I’m told to fill in an email form on their website. Grrrrrreat.

Damien Saunders

Have you seen this … This has to be the future of customer service and online shopping — say goodbye to messy forms or complicated shopping charts. Those crazy people in Tre Sweden www.tre.se just like to push the envelope here. And maybe some of those other mobile operators or utility providers can do this too.

Once you’ve checked out this promo video – go take a look at the 3 LiveShop – it uses Adobe Flash embed video chat for the fun stuff.

3 from B-Reel & B-Reel Films on Vimeo.

Damien Saunders

ZOHO CRM has some great features including web to lead forms – but they don’t really look too stylish. Especially if you use 3rd party tools for your web forms.

If you use custom web to lead forms you may have to make the change to using the more secure HTTPS connection. After I noticed the web to lead form was not working I checked the standard code from ZOHO.

<div id='zohoWebToLead' align=center>

<META HTTP-EQUIV ='content-type' CONTENT='text/html;charset = UTF-8'>  

<form action='https://crm.zoho.com/crm/WebToLeadForm' method='POST' onSubmit='javascript:document.charset="UTF-8";' accept-charset='UTF-8'>

This is the code today … so you can see the form action URL is now HTTPS

Were you affected by this? Did you know about this change?

Damien Saunders

So you choose to use ZOHO CRM because it’s a great web based solution for customer relationship management. There are now 3 ways to sign-up to ZOHO CRM using Google Apps or a Gmail address.

1. Google Apps – If you are an administrator you can add ZOHO CRM from the Google Apps Marketplace

2. Google Apps – Sign-up online and create a ZOHO account at the same time

3. Gmail – as above, signup online and create a ZOHO account at the same time.

There is a 4th way to get started with ZOHO CRM and you sign-up and which is to create a ZOHO account that is NOT associated with your Google Apps or Gmail address

First-timer User Sign-up and Login using a Google Apps or Gmail address

1. Go to crm.zoho.com

2. In the sign-in box click on either the Gmail or Google Apps icon

3. If you choose Gmail or Google Apps the next screen will ask for your permission to use your Google credentials, then click OK

4. Now just confirm your username and accept the T&C’s

Eh voila … you are now registered and logged in to ZOHO CRM.

Damien Saunders

ZOHO CRM, which I reckon is the best free CRM for the web or SaaS is now available to add from the new Google Apps Marketplace.

(note if you’re already using ZOHO CRM with Google Apps you are better to leave things as they are for now)

What is CRM?

Customer Relationship Management or CRM is really about 3 things:

1. Building up knowledge on the people you do with business with or relate to – your clients, customers and the companies they work for
2. Communicating with your customers and managing those ‘relationships’
3. Selling your stuff, or supporting your clients and staff to sell

In the past business process managers would have focused on Managing Customers as a key process for the Customer Lifecycle. CRM provides a holistic overview of these activities.

You can read more about how to chose a web based CRM and the key features in ZOHO and tell me what you think …

Have your say: Are you using ZOHO for CRM??

Damien Saunders

Inbound Marketers, Sales managers, customer care, account managers, business development managers – all need a good system for managing diaries, customer details and leads. Managing your sCRM using something like Zoho CRM means you have access to all your customer relationship data anywhere you are. And you don’t have to install anything on your Mac, PC or Linux operating system, just open your favourite web browser.

What is CRM?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is an art and a science. CRM is really about 3 things:

1. Building up knowledge on the people you do with business with or relate to – your clients, customers and the companies they work for
2. Communicating with your customers and managing those ‘relationships’
3. Selling your stuff, or supporting your clients and staff to sell

In the past business process managers would have focused on Managing Customers as a key process for the Customer Lifecycle. CRM provides a holistic overview of these activities.

What is Saas?

It’s easier to understand that Software as a Service (SaaS) as just cloud computing.  So this means if you have a SaaS CRM solution then

• it is always online,
• it travels with you – you can access it from the office, from home, on your iPhone, etc
• features and roadmap are managed by someone else
• technology and operational costs are external to your business
• your data is backed up in the ‘cloud’
• you normally have to pay to unlock premium features

Why choose Zoho CRM?

Zoho CRM is possibly one of the most feature rich CRM solutions around. It’s difficult to find a features comparison matrix but here’s a quick summary of a few systems

1. Highrise from 37 Signals

• Offers a ‘free’ account with 2 users and 200+ contacts.
• No product or price book
• Supports Contact History
• Supports To Do list
• Minimal document storage

2. Salesforce.com

• No ‘free’ account
• Regarded as the fully-featured SaaS service
• Supports Price Books
• Supports Customer Contact History
• Supports To Do Lists
• To unlock features like Forecasting, Autoresponders, Document Management, you must be on the £45 per user Premium plan
• Up to 1gb per user storage

ZOHO CRM

• Good features in the ‘free’ account – up to 3 free users
• User Pays Freemium pricing model
• Supports Price Books
• Supports Customer Contact History
• Supports To Do Lists
• To unlock features like Forecasting, Campaigns, Email Autoresponders, Document Management, you must _buy_ 1 user at on the £12 per user per month (then all 3 free users are upgraded as well.
• Login using Google Apps Domain
• Supports Google Docs
• Supports Outlook or Gmail plugin (from £3 per month)
• 1GB per domain.

Getting Started with ZOHO CRM

Every business needs a good customer records system – even if you only use the free ZOHO CRM tool you’ll find that you can manage your accounts, contacts and meetings all in one place.

Damien Saunders

Until recently mobile devices were often overlooked by marketing managers in favour of online campaigns or traditional paper-based direct marketing. However, brands, ad agencies and telecoms operators are increasingly using mobile as part of their customer relationship management (CRM) strategy.

The rapid growth in smartphones spurred by the iPhone, Windows Mobile and Android has given mobile marketing a major boost. The latest devices offer fast and easy web access, often with flat-rate charges. This has sparked a flurry of development in a range of formats, including thousands of mobile apps, as well as in music content, search and social media.

The latest handsets can add location and web browsing behaviour to the streams of customer data, such as call statistics and purchasing behaviour, that mobiles already generate. This data can be harvested or saved to improve customer service and increase sales from existing customers. In theory, the more a company knows about its customers, the better it can match communication to behaviour.

[via new media age]

Damien Saunders