Is there anything better than finding a great new tool? One that is easy to use and makes your life easier? I’ll freely admit that I’m a bit of a geek when it comes to stuff like this… but I wanted to share with you today 3 tools that we’ve recently starting using and LOVE.
Tool #1: Pipedrive
If you have conversations as part of your enrollment process then you can appreciate the value of a good CRM tool.One that keeps track of all of your people, conversations and follow-up. (If you don’t have good tracking you will lose sales! Simple as that)
Being an Infusionsoft user we have relied on their CRM for years now, and although functional it wasn’t always that “friendly” to use. They don’t have great reporting and it’s never been easy to get an overview of conversations and status.
A friend recommended Pipedrive and we fell in love. Pipedrive is visually appealing – their layout makes it fun to use AND allows you to see the “money on the table”. You can also customize your pipelines and stages to match how YOU like to run your sales process. For the first time ever in my business I feel like we have a real handle on our sales (which is HUGE given that most of our business comes to use via conversations.)
Once we fell in love with Pipedrive we had a bit of a dilemna… which leads me to our next favorite tool.
Tool #2: Zapier
We still use Infusionsoft to manage all of our lists, registrations and new leads. (ie: When we run a webinar, all of our attendees are tracked in Infusionsoft). We needed to find a way to move leads from Infusionsoft to Pipedrive, and I hated the idea of doing it manually. (Not only is that added work on our plate, but pretty much a guarantee that stuff would be missed.)
Enter Zapier, an amazing tool that connects the web apps you use to easily move your data and automate tedious tasks.
Here’s how it works – a new contact comes into Infusionsoft and we “zap” their information over to Pipedrive. How cool is that?? (I almost thought it was too good to be true until I saw it in action.)
Now we haven’t done this yet, but you can create zaps between all kinds of different programs out there – check out their website to see all the options.
Tool #3: Canva
Design is important to me – if something doesn’t look good it feels ugh. But I’m not a graphic designer so I can’t whip up great graphics that easily.
Yes, I have an amazing designer I work with on bigger projects but from time to time we just need something quick and awesome for social media posts, Facebook Ads and so on.
I found Canva a few months back and I squeeled in glee – it’s an online tool that allows you to create REALLY GREAT graphics in minutes using their templates. No talent required – just pick the type of graphic you want and away you go. Plus it’s super inexpensive to use – just $1 per graphic (or free when you upload your own images.)
Honorable Mention: Bigstock
We use alot of stock photography for our newsletters, presentation and such. In the past we would buy credits at certain sites and download photos when needed. Bigstock takes a different approach – instead of spending credits (sometimes ALOT of credits) on an image you get a monthly flat-fee subscription to download ANY images you want – any size – up to 5 (or more!) a day.
It’s not the cheapest option out there – if you don’t use alot of images may not be worth it for you – but they have GREAT photo selection and it’s just plain fun to shop around (I will go download stuff just for fun even when I don’t need it for a specific project.)
How about you? What are you using these days that you love?
Please post/share below (NOTE: Without affiliate links pls – any posted affiliate links will be removed)
Curious what other tools I use in my biz? Check out my top 10 tools here.
PS – I’m not making an affiliate commission on any of these recommendations, just sharing what we use and love.
I have used Basecamp for project management and enjoy Zoom for video conference. I use mobile a lot and the importance of android integration is key for me. Square is my favorite on the road mobile credit card collection product for that “impulse buy” and PayPal’s new PayPal.me service is fast.. example: http://www.paypal.me/trigve you simply put in your amount and it’s into PayPal.
We use Zapier to work between Aweber and Zoho CRM in much the same way you do, Tina. I also really love TimeTrade for scheduling phone calls with prospects and clients. My favorite tool of all though is Asana. Free project management system for, I think, up to 15 team members. Totally robust, simple to use, and they are constantly adding new features to make it even more awesome. Love, love, love Asana.
I love Canva. There is so many things you can do with it. My other two favorites tools are Pocket and Evernote.
What is pocket? haven’t heard of that one
Hi Tina: Pocket is an app to save articles that you would like to read later. I save websites, articles from blogs that I want to read later. You can download the app on your mobile or computer. Here is the link: https://getpocket.com/add/?ep=1
I’m curious to know what zaps are working to successfully integrate PipeDrive with InfusionSoft..
I love PipeDrive but feel I need to end our love affair and stay with the more stable yet unattractive InfusionSoft for pipeline management and marketing automation
I would love to hear your integration success and this make spark my love affair again 😉
We’ve essentially moved all of our CRM over to pipedrive – so our zap is essentially one way. If someone signs up via a form in IFS (ie: applying for a program) then it gets zapped to pipedrive so my sales team can take it from there. All purchase/customer info stays in IFS of course, so there is still a bit of back and forth but WAY better to manage the sales process.
PipeDrive looks similar to Trello, and it looks like it tracks the dollar amounts for you. It looks like you have the same ZanBan card layout system that Trello uses. Zapier also works with Trello. I’ve seen how Trello, Zapier and Gravity Forms (WordPress) can be used as a CRM/System for Selling with freelancers in mind –> http://casjam.com/system-for-selling/ This article explains it all – how it works, what you need, etc. Looks promising.
Sherrie PipeDrive is completely different to trello when it comes to its use however similar when it comes to the simplistic use
Trello is a great simple project management tool and PipeDrive is a good crm and pipeline management tool in which you can drag and drop prospects through each stage of a customized pipeline
Thanks Tina, I am checking out Pipedrive now! I love LastPass because it’s so easy to share passwords with my team! Another fav tool is Helpscout, the note feature is wonderful 🙂
Lastpass! Yes – I love that one too… used it for a couple of years now. DREAMY! What is Helpscout?
Helpscout is customer support, similar to Zendesk I think. It works great for team communication when it takes input from others to help with support but without email chains because it has a great internal note feature!