We have been doing a lot of planning this month. As business grows, client lists expand, taxes are due and calendars filled up how do you keep organized?
Today’s TidBits include a few tips and tools to keep track of people, places and things.
1. Highrise is Customer Management, Assistant, White-Board, Email, To Do all in one. TrueHero recommends Highrise to all our clients. It’s a one stop place for answers when responding to sales managers, accounts and reps. Each user can see who talked to the client last, when and what was discussed. Schedule a meeting, Task or Follow-up by Company, Brand or Client. You don’t have to bother Bob on his vacation for Client X’s info -it is right there Highrise. Easy, efficient and effective. Love this tool and it’s inexpensive ($25-$99 a month for multiple users!)
2. Google Calendar – It’s free but you need a Google account. Share calendars with one person or everyone on the team. It is a great place to book appointments for the shared conference room, trade shows or accounts.
3. Backpack is part of 37Signals like Highrise. If you have the $99 package in Highrise Backpack (and Basecamp) is included. No need for Google Calendars – Backpack has a group calendar. A great alternative to mass emails, notifications and group organization. The 37Signal tools work well together – one place, one app, easy.
4. Hootsuite – If you are using social media as part of your marketing strategy Hootsuite is a must-have, must-do. From one website you can tweet, facebook, update linkedin and WordPress. There is an url shortner built-in. Pictures are easy to attach. You can set pending status updates and messages. Post once and let it fly just as if you were tweeting all day!
4. Quickbooks: Our accountant loves us for this and therefore makes tax prep less expensive. With just a click (if we have been good about keeping it up to date!) off it goes to the taxman.
5. Mint.com: This a free online budgeting tool. Connect to your accounts (secure!) and all your bank, credit card, 401K, Loans…transactions are recorded. You can set budgets for anything from company dinners to coffee to fuel! Mint will tell you if you exceeded your budget via email (or not). We love looking at Trends to see where we are spending the most.
6. iPad: We take all of our notes right on the iPad. No paper, post-its, pens, pencils – just iPad. I never lose notes or notepads anymore. Everything is in ONE place. Another great feature “Notes” go straight to email! Walk into a meeting with a Mountainsmith Messenger Bag that holds the iPad: access to Keynote, Internet, Email, Agenda and Google Calendar to schedule the next meeting!
7. MailChimp: This is great for email campaigns, newsletters, blogs, product launches, show specials, etc. Put all your contacts from HighRise or any email file into MailChimp. From there you can filter and send out your message. MailChimp will tell you how many people opened, who opened, clicked and Facebook Liked. You can even compare to your industry standard. Write several posts, schedule them in advance and MailChimp will do the rest. We use this for TrueHero TidBits!
8. Google Docs: We do all of our To Do or Task Lists in Google Docs. This way we can access it via the iPad or our phones. Often, I will make a To Do list specific for one client and can easily share with them what we are working on, what is crossed off and what is left. It’s a free tool with a Gmail account or for more storage Google Apps $50 a year per person.
9. Take time to merge and complete your contact list. It is time-consuming but worth the effort. Export your contact list or vcards into a spreadsheet. Merge duplicates, verify current work information for each contact and delete contact information that is no longer valid. This will improve the speed and accuracy of sending emails from your phone or computer, sending text messages and networking!
10. What tools are helping you get the job done?
How do you have the time to learn how to use all of those applications? I am too busy!
Hi Billy
It’s all about time management. Try to spend 20 minutes a day on something new. We must strive for more!
TrueHero
time management is the key to success. i am always searching to find ways to put in more “time on task”. I set the timer on my phone to go off every 20 minutes, and strive to accomplish as much as possible every segment. The next 20 you can find me at the drumset shaking out the computer mouse kinks!
Thank you for all the tips for using technology to help handle all the various tasks in my business.
This is a GREAT newsletter True Hero! I will definately be using some of these tips for our small business A-Steam. These time savers will be so much help.
Awesome, Jackie!
Let us know if you have any questions or if there is anything we can do to help
Great article.
We use xero.com for our books and engage.calibreapps.com for goal setting and performance management.
Also love highrise!
TrueHero,
If you use all those tools than you should use OneSaas (www.OneSaas.com) to integrate all of them.
OneSaas is the only tool that integrates HighRise, BaseCamp, MailChimp and Google Contacts so you can remove and automate your task 9.
Plus your contacts will be up to date every time wherever they are.
Regards,
Corneliu
PS>> QuickBooks integration so you get those won deals from HighRise directly into your accounting is on the way as well.
Really good post, but if I can add one thing here, it’s the integration of OmniFocus into the mix. When you WebDav into Basecamp using spootnik.net, you really get to see the power of Basecamp.
The big issue for 37signals, as a Calendar, holistic view of projects, especially when you have many like most agencies, is the view to the 50,000 foot and the resources required to use the tool at maximum return.
That’s where OmniFocus comes, in. You could also use AgileAgenda as well, to give you a clear picture of where things are, what time they take and how to make Basecamp work for you. Highrise is great, and so is BackPack. Talking to 37signals all the time about a fully capable calendar function, to give me day, week or agenda based views to see what I should be doing that day.
I operate under a GTD umbrella, which means every minute of the work day is rocking the tasks against strategic goals to create a vision to the future I want. Sound too far off, way too much work? Tasks without goals alignment is chaos. Agencies become task based, not strategic. The work gets done, and agencies become more efficient and can prove to clients why they justify the hours.
I have seem the other side of task management and it ain’t pretty. Things seem to go on much longer. When you have the tie-in to goals, client and agency, the financial picture (P&L and Prospects) seem to get much brighter.
Thoughts?
Thank you for commenting! We are going to check out your suggestions and see how we can continue to streamline even more!
I did not know that QuickBooks worked with HighRise!
Are OmniFocus and AgileAgenda add-ons to HighRise?
Jon, we have been looking for some other great book keeping programs – thanks for the comment – I am going to check those out. Are you using any of the other 37Signal programs?
Thanks for taking this opportunity to discuss this, I feel fervently about this and I like learning about this subject.
Great blog, Just wanted to comment that i can not connect to the rss stream, you might want install the right wordpress plugin for that to workthat.
Mirta – thank you so much for letting us know about the RSS Feed not working! We have updated.
Thanks!
all you mentioned and
Evernote
Mindmanager
Dropbox
Zoho Crm
Freshbooks
+1 for Freshbooks + Dropbox!
What about blogging platforms like WordPress + Tumblr? Do those fall into this category? Or is that another list altogether?
Feshbooks….I need to look that one up. Blogging platforms is interesting. Could be a whole other category or one in the same depending on how you approach it. Linking them together – post once for different audiences or different posts for different audiences?
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We LOVE DropBox too! Thanks for posting that abelardo. We use that daily! Thanks freettoodesigns! So nice!
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Thank you so much, Lily! If you have a blog we would love to check it out.
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