Think Pipeline - PipelineDeals CRM

PipelineDeals - Mobile CRM Projects Underway

Today, we are announcing a new mobile CRM strategic initiative. Our goal with our mobile CRM solutions will be to take the same simple CRM tool we provide at PipelineDeals to mobile devices.

Our mobile CRM solution will provide the same simple and powerful tools to manage your sales pipeline, contact, leads and deals.

Why Mobile CRM ?
Sales professionals by their very nature are road warriors. They spend time in airports, hotels, at client / prospects' locations, and every cafe and coffeehouse in between. They need critical access to prospect contact information, notes, prior communications, tasks and directions to their offices. In short, they need access to their CRM tool while on the road.

PipelineDeals iPhone mobile CRM Solution
Our first mobile CRM solution will be for the Apple iPhone.

Below we share some preliminary designs for the PipelineDeals iphone mobile CRM solution. We won't share all of the designs as we have some nice surprises up our sleeves.

Access Sales Deal Information
Easily access, view and edit all of your critical sales information from the deals summary.

View & Type Notes
Of course, you will be able to add notes for your leads, contacts and deals when they are most timely after your meeting on site at the prospect.

Search and Find Contacts and Leads
You will be able to easily and quickly locate your contact information quickly for all of your deals, leads, and contacts. And with a few clicks, you will be able to call them directly from the iPhone.

Access your Agenda and Calendar
A simple view to see all of your relevant sales appointments, meetings and tasks will be included in the agenda application. The agenda application will be consistent and similar to the PipelineDeals Weekly Agenda on your home page.

We will also be developing additional mobile CRM solutions for Blackberry, Windows Mobile and potentially even Google's Android platform.

Let us know what you think, and which features you are looking for in an iPhone or mobile CRM solution.

Now Launched: Welcome Tab and More Videos

Now Launched - The Welcome Tab, a friendly way for new users to get acquainted with PipelineDeals.

Welcome New Users
The Welcome Tab is the first place you land if you are new user on PipelineDeals. The goal of the Welcome Tab is get you up and running as quickly and effortlessly as possible.

Watch the Video

The Welcome Tab for New Users
For a new user, you can watch a 5 minute overview of the entire application, as well as some simple videos to import your leads and contacts. In addition, there are more in depth videos available on each of the application tabs, as well as links to our blog, faqs, and forums.

The Welcome Tab for the Administrator
If you are the administrator for your account, we have a new series of videos which take you through the setup, configuration and customization of PipelineDeals for your account and users.

Turning the Welcome Tab Off
You can easily remove the welcome tab by clicking on the hide link. The welcome tab can be turned back on by changing your options on the My Settings page, so you always can have a handy place to get back to any of our instructional videos.

We hope you find the Welcome Tab useful and that it helps get your team setup quickly so more time can be spent selling and managing your sales pipeline.

Now Launched: Keyboard Shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts are here. You can now use PipelineDeals to manage your sales pipeline even faster than before with simple keyboard commands:

NAVIGATION KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS

Type the letter "h" or the number "1" = go to the Home Page
Type the letter "d" or the number "2" = go to the Deals Page
Type the letter "c" or the number "3" = go to the Contacts Page
Type the letter "l" or the number "4" = go to the Leads Page
Type the letter "k" or the number "5" = go to the Calendar Page
Type the letter "o" or the number "6" = go to the Documents Page
Type the letter "r" or the number "7" = go to the Reports Page

FREQUENT TASKS

Type the letter "s" to open Rover search
Type the letter "a" to go to the Add Contact form
Type the letter "z" to go to the Add Lead form

Type "n" - to create a new note on the deals or contacts profile page
Type "t" to create a new to-do or event on the deals or contacts profile page

WATCH THE VIDEO

COMMON REPORTS

Type the number "8" to go to the Notes Report
Type the number "9" to go to the Deals Tag Report
Type the number "0" to go see your Reports Dashboard

Now Launched: Rover Search

Today, we are previewing our new global search feature on PipelineDeals, aka Rover Search. This feature is not yet live but will be launching soon.

What is it?
Rover is a global search feature that very quickly scans all of your data in PipelineDeals. More specifically, Rover will search the following:

- Deals
- Leads
- Contacts
- Documents
- Notes
- To-dos & Events

In a few clicks, you can find your specific deal, lead, contact or note and directly access it. Rover even searches your Notes content. So, you can find that one note you wrote about that sales prospect a few months ago very quickly.

How do I enable Rover Search?
Rover is accessible from the top navigation Search link or a shortcut key: simply type "s" key.

Watch the video

Improved Contacts Search: Now Launched

Some nice improvements to our contact management application will be launching soon. Specifically, we will be launching the following:

IMPROVED CONTACTS SEARCH
Our current search for contacts works only on by searching last name. Many of our customers found this very limiting and we agree. Many sales professionals often only know first names at a specific company early during the early leads prospecting phase.

Our new search feature will allow a live search based on: First Name, Last Name or Company Name.

ADVANCED SEARCH
We also will be launching some long overdue advanced search options. You will be able to search your contacts by the following attributes:

1. Name
2. City
3. State
4. Postal Code
5. Phone
6. Tag

EXPORTING CONTACTS
Working in conjunction with the new advanced searching options, you will be able search and export the contact list.

RECENT CONTACTS
We will now be keeping track of your recent contacts by always displaying the last 10 contacts viewed. This will now be the default view on contacts. We heard many requests to change the default view from the current one of listing your contacts ending in "A", the first letter on the rolodex.

Polish & Wax: Postpone Your To-Dos

We continue on our mission to make PipelineDeals simpler and easier to use by reducing clicks across the application with our Polish and Wax initiatives. Our goal is to make PipelineDeals the simplest and easiest to use sales pipeline and CRM system on the market.

To-Dos Editing
Editing todos and events are one of the most frequently used tasks in PipelineDeals. Today, editing is accomplished with a few clicks - click the edit link on the deals, contacts or leads page, click the calendar icon, pick your new date, then save. That is 4 clicks.

Postpone a To-Do or Event
We are adding a new feature soon to allow you to postpone any to-do or event to the next day with just 1 click. The feature will be available on the deals, leads and contacts profile pages. Simply click the grey postpone icon to move the to-do item to the next day.

To-Do Templates Enhancements - Now Launched!

As part of our strategic enhancements for Pipelinedeals this spring, we are proud to announce new Todo Template features - launching soon. Below is a brief overview of the new features.

To-Do Templates - Overview

To-Do templates provide the ability to define specific steps and due dates for your sales and leads processes. Templates can save you valuable selling time and can help ensure consistency in your approach to managing leads and deals in your sales pipeline.

What's New with Templates?

Leads Templates
Previously this feature was only available for deals and now we are extending it to leads. You can set up a leads template to focus and ensure consistency around your upfront leads qualification and new business development processes.

Your leads templates will automatically apply to all new leads created on your worklists using the Add Leads form as well as importing leads using the import tool.

Multiple Templates
Now you will be able to create multiple to-do templates for both leads and deals. This will allow you to better focus your sales efforts. So, for example, you could have one sales template to facilitate small account sales and another for larger or national accounts. You could also create templates to help you sell different products or services.

Templates for each Deal Stage
A typical strategy for using multiple To-Do templates would be to have separate templates for each deal stage. For example, you could have a specific set of to-dos and events for the proposal stage, contract stage, commitment stage, etc. This would improve selling effectiveness.

Polish & Wax

Today, we have started our process to put some polish and wax on PipelineDeals. Over the next few months, we will begin rolling out small incremental improvements designed to improve your workflow, and reduce clicks inside the application. We hope to optimize the finer details (aka the polish and wax) in order to be the easiest to use Simple CRM solution on the market.

A few polish and wax features that are now live:

DEALS SEARCH IMPROVED
You can now search the full deal name from your deals directory. This will improve your search hit rate and allow you to find your deals more quickly and efficiently. The old deals search only would search the first few letters of the deal name.

WRITE A NOTE
You will now notice that we reduced clicks to perform one of the most frequented actions - writing a note for a deal. We now open the deals page with the write a note form open.

Expect more improvements over the next several months.

Leads Management is Launched!

The Team at PipelineDeals has been working hard to provide you with the best simple CRM tool on the market. We are excited to announce the launch of our new Leads Management Module. We also have some exciting enhancements planned in the upcoming weeks and months.

Our new Leads Tab provides some simple and powerful features to better manage your unqualified business prospects. Our goal was to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of working new business relationships.

Read about the new features here in the preview blog posts:

1. Preview #1 - New Leads Management

2. Preview #2 - Measuring ROI on Leads

3. Preview #3 - Importing

Let us know what you think. We already made some improvements based on initial feedback from customers.

Importing Leads

Today, we are previewing some important new importing capabilities we will have with our new leads management module.

HOW IT WORKS

The new leads importing tool includes some powerful features. More specifically, you will be able to:

1. Import leads in any CSV formatted file in any order, with any number of fields
2. Assign Leads to your team members (either to a specific member or round robin) during the import process
3. Add a lead source to the leads
4. Assign one or more tags to your leads on the fly
5. Send email notifications during assignment
6. Map multiple notes and/or tags from your file to PipelineDeals fields
7. Map your data to custom fields

Of course, you can also re-assign, mass tag, archive and delete your leads using the new leads worklist as well at a later point in time.

How is it different than the current importing process?
Essentially, the current bulk lead importing process will be replaced with this more flexible importing tool. The current contacts importing process will stay in place. That is, you will be able to import contacts in pre-defined formats such as vcards, Microsoft Outlook, Highrise or Salesforce.com.

It is important to note that any contacts imported will not be treated as leads and will not show on your leads worklist. You can always turn any contact into a lead by adding a lead source.

WHERE DO LEADS GO?
After the import, you will then be able to begin working your leads in the new leads worklist.

WILL I NEED TO ALWAYS MAP FIELDS?
No. Our importer is smart enough to recognize a prior format and will just use the rules and mapping that you defined from an earlier import. For example, if you purchased leads from a specific vendor which has a pre-set field and file format, you will only need to map those fields once.