Using Zendesk Sell (formally Base CRM) for a Seasonal Business

Update: Novem­ber 2018: Base has joined with Zen­desk Sup­port. Their new name is Zen­desk Sell. Their pric­ing struc­ture has changed as well. It spans from $19, $49, $99 and $199 per user. I use the words Base CRM in the arti­cle below, writ­ten in 2014. This fall (2014), I helped a sea­son­al Christ­mas light­ing com­pa­ny set­up and man­age a Cus­tomer Rela­tion­ship Man­age­ment (CRM) that I use and like: Base CRM. I have been work­ing with them since 2008. In pre­vi­ous years, the com­pa­ny used sev­er­al dif­fer­ent meth­ods to man­age leads and sales rang­ing from Google Apps, Drop­box, High­rise CRM, Zoho and a few oth­ers. Yet there was real­ly noth­ing that real­ly quite worked well until we imple­ment­ed Base. Each year the com­pa­ny’s leads have grown mak­ing it that much more cru­cial to track and man­age the sales process. Here are a cou­ple of the high­lights of how a sea­son­al busi­ness is using a CRM and why it is work­ing so well.

Web Leads

All web leads now come direct­ly into the LEADS sec­tion of Base CRM. The sales man­ag­er receives a noti­fi­ca­tion as well. The web leads form was cus­tom built with­in Base to get the detailed infor­ma­tion we need. This saves time not hav­ing to re-enter con­tact infor­ma­tion.

Lead to Deal

Once the web lead has been reviewed, we then quick­ly move the lead into the DEALS sec­tion and assign it to a sales­per­son who is noti­fied by email.

Auto­mat­ed Task 

One of the real­ly strong fea­tures of Base CRM is the auto­mat­ed task. This has been set­up so that all aspects of the sales cycle have a next step and will receive the prop­er noti­fi­ca­tions. Exam­ple: when a LEAD is moved to a DEAL (Esti­mate), it goes to the first stage of the DEAL which might be ​“Appoint­ment Set.” Then the auto­mat­ed task kick in such as: ​“Call to con­firm appoint­ment at 8AM tomor­row.” (that per­son will be remind­ed by email to fol­low up on that task. Also when a deal is won, I have them set­up with all the next steps in the process that are assigned to all the right peo­ple: Deposit, Sched­ul­ing of Job, Take­down Sched­uled, Con­firm­ing Instal­la­tion etc.

Email Fea­tures

Instead of bounc­ing between our email and cal­en­dar pro­grams, this Christ­mas busi­ness can now rely 100% on Base CRM for com­mu­ni­cat­ing with leads and cus­tomers. One can send any email he’d like or choose from a list of tem­plate emails for each stage of the sales cycle. For exam­ple, when we get a new lead, we like to send them a wel­come email that is per­son­al let­ting them know we are review­ing their infor­ma­tion and will be in touch short­ly. One still has to do a few clicks to get this email sent, but it real­ly only takes a few sec­onds. I’m sure this will be even more auto­mat­ed in the future. For now, the email fea­tures in Base make it one of the best CRMs on the market. 

Deal Stages

We have cus­tomized each sec­tion of the deal stage. This allows the sales man­ag­er to know where a sales­per­son is at any giv­en time. He/​she can quick­ly fol­low up with his staff to make sure things are mov­ing along. Because this is such a sea­son­al and fast pace busi­ness, it is easy for deals to be missed. Base helps keep things mov­ing along with the stages, noti­fi­ca­tions and auto­mat­ed task. The ball is not eas­i­ly dropped. One can be noti­fied in sev­er­al dif­fer­ent ways: email, desk­top pop ups or on their mobile device. 

Goals and Reporting

We have not used the Goal fea­ture in Base this year. Main­ly because I’m get­ting the team used to using a CRM. I did not want to over­whelm them with too many fea­tures. I just want the con­tacts infor­ma­tion in the pro­gram, pro­pos­als uploaded and email com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Although we are not using Goals, the reports in Base will be help­ful at the end of the sea­son. We will be able to tell how many leads we received from all our sources (not just web) and how much was sold, lost or nev­er went any­where. Reports in Base are very cus­tomized and can tell you a lot about your com­pa­ny’s sales and mar­ket­ing. [cap­tion id=“attachment_2539” align=“aligncenter” width=“550”] One of many reports in Base.[/caption]

Accounts

Many of the Christ­mas cus­tomers con­tin­ue from year to year. So we were able to go back over the past 10 years and update past DEALS. Base CRM uses an ​“Account” fea­ture. So we can click on a cus­tomer and see how much mon­ey they have spent over the years and all their past and cur­rent DEALS (esti­mates).

Doc­u­ment Storage

I nor­mal­ly like to use Google Dri­ve for my file stor­age. You can do this with Base CRM in the Deals sec­tion too. Yet for this sea­son­al busi­ness, we’ve used Base’s built in fil­ing sys­tem instead. We upload all the paper­work, maps of the dis­plays, invoic­es and so on right into each spe­cif­ic deal. One real­ly neat fea­ture is this can be done from any mobile device run­ning the Base CRM App: iPads, Androids etc. You can take a pic­ture of some­thing, scan a doc­u­ment and upload it to a spe­cif­ic deal. This is a fab­u­lous feature.

Base CRM Mobile Features 

I’ve writ­ten in past blogs that Base CRM is per­haps one of the best CRMs on the mar­ket for the mobile user. Sales­force, Zoho amongst oth­ers is very pow­er­ful for those sit­ting at a desk, but Base real­ly does shine for sea­son­al busi­ness­es and con­trac­tors who are in and out of the office. One can pret­ty much do almost 100% of their sales using a smart­phone or tablet. There are only a few key fea­tures that are on the desk­top only, such as the email tem­plates. Yet one of my favorite mobile fea­tures is the Geo-Map­ping. On an esti­mate call, a sales­per­son can click the map­ping icon to show off where the jobs are being sold and pro­duced. [cap­tion id=“attachment_2546” align=“aligncenter” width=“550”] You can zoom in clos­er to see more details.[/caption] There is more you can do with Base CRM, but I want­ed to share a few high­lights on how one com­pa­ny is uti­liz­ing a CRM to help keep them orga­nized and on track in their busi­ness. It is worth the effort if you are not using a CRM. Give Base a try today and let me know what you think. You can start with a free account, yet the key fea­tures you will need start at either $15 a month per user or $45.