Method Blog : CRM

Community Webinar 24: Method CRM - Documents, Dashboard and Opportunity Stages

Method_Danny — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 16:54:00 GMT

On Wednesday, April 28 @ 1:00pm, Amanda Mahadeo will be covering some exciting new features and updates released for Method CRM. Some of the topics that will be discussed are how to add attachments/documents to opportunities/solutions, an overview of the new charts on the Sales Center Dashboard and changes to Opportunity Stages.

This webinar will take place live but will also be recorded and posted as a comment on the Method Blog and on the complete list of webinars on the Method Forum.

Complete List of Method Recorded Webinars:

http://www.methodintegration.com/cs/forums/t/556.aspx

To register for this webinar, click the following link:

https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/696090899

Cheers,

Danny Do Couto
Method Integration

Method Integration Outlook Plug-In 2.0 Beta – Now Open

Method_Danny — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 13:20:00 GMT

Last year, I was super excited when we released version 1.0 of our Outlook plug-in tool. Now, less than a year later, I am thrilled to announce version 2.0 is officially open for public beta.

Caution – please sit down if you’re not already, as you may experience higher than normal levels of excitement when reading through the list of new features this plug-in has to offer. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

New features for our Outlook Plug-In 2.0

Create new QuickBooks customers, vendors, leads and contacts directly from Outlook and have it instantly appear in Method and QuickBooks. This means you will be able to create new contacts on the fly without flipping screens to QuickBooks or Method.
Bi-directional sync of calendar appointments from Method CRM to Outlook or Outlook to Method CRM. Choose the amount of days you would like to sync, or a specific day and your activities/appointments will appear in both calendars.
Categories in Outlook can be linked with Method CRM’s Activity Type and Activity Status fields. Why is this useful? Say for example, I set my green category in Outlook to match my Method Activity Status “Completed”. Now when I finish an appointment, in Outlook I can assign the category like I normally would and the next time I sync, that activity would be marked as completed in Method CRM.
Priority levels can now be assigned to follow-up appointments. This way your most important activities get the attention they need.
All email screens now support the ability to send emails directly to Method in a single click!
Lookup email addresses from Method CRM on any email screen using the “Address” button. Once the address is located, it is automatically inserted into the To, CC and BCC fields. No need to switch windows to lookup an email address! Can’t find the address you’re looking for? Add it directly from the Address window. How sweet is that?
Turn your Outlook Contact into a new QuickBooks customer/vendor/lead/contact in less than two clicks.
Step-by-step activity submission allows you to quickly see if the activity being added from Outlook to Method CRM has any open Cases or Opportunities that the activity might be associated with or require updating.

The new plug-in packs a lot of punch and a ton of value since its free for all Method users. A few things to keep in mind though:

During the beta, all questions need to be posted on the forum. Here is the link for your reference:
http://www.methodintegration.com/cs/forums/19.aspx
This plug-in only works with Outlook 2007 and higher. But if you’re using an older version of Outlook, you can still use our older version of the plug-in.
Unfortunately, the plug-in is a desktop app, so it doesn’t have the same flexibility you’re used to with Method to customize it as your heart desires. See what happens when you get spoiled with the Method mentality?

Now that we are done with all the official business of what it can do and how to get help, click the link below to be taken to the forum post with instructions on getting setup.

http://www.methodintegration.com/cs/forums/p/628/2096.aspx#2096

Once you get the plug-in working for you, please comment on your favorite new features!

Cheers,

Danny Do Couto
Method Integration

Opportunity stages made easy

Method_Danny — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 20:46:00 GMT

As a sales representative, managing your sales opportunities is pretty important. After all, an opportunity that is monitored and managed properly could potentially equal a sale. Throughout a typical sales process, a sales representative would update the opportunity “stage” to match where the client currently sits in moving ahead with the sale, as well as how likely they will be to pull the trigger. Now wouldn’t it be nice if all I had to worry about was updating my “stage” and not what probability percentage we were at? This is especially a nuisance to update if I already know certain stages typically equal certain probability percentages. Seeing as we use what we preach, we’ve added a little something to help out with this.

New feature: Automatic Probability %

Clicking the “Stage” dropdown list for any opportunity will expose a new column indicating the default probability percentage associated with that stage. Once a stage is selected, the probability percentage will automatically update to the default percentage. How does this benefit you? You don’t have to worry about entering in the percentage manually by typing it in. Secondly, you don’t have to remember to do it! You laugh, but it’s true. Can you imagine setting an opportunity to “Closed Won” yet forgetting to set your percentage to 100? That would totally throw off the very cool graphs I talked about last week in my blog post.

Of course, you can always add your own stages and change the percentages to match your needs by clicking the details button (... – the three dots next to the dropdown list). If you don’t like the default set by that stage, just type one in manually and override it.

What’s even cooler is that a new plug-in we are releasing will also update the percentage using the same perference you set in Method. Oops...more on that later.

Cheers,

Danny Do Couto
Method Integration

Enhance your CRM experience using Outlook

Method_Danny — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 01:22:00 GMT

I’d venture to say that a majority of you are like me and throughout the day, the one application that tends to stay open the most often is Microsoft Outlook. Okay fine, maybe iTunes comes in at a close 2nd, but does that really count? Without Outlook, I’d be a very lost individual. You laugh but it’s true. It tells me where I have to be, when I have to be there, who wants to talk to me and who I have to talk to. Not to mention, I don’t half to have a phone book on my desk with important phone numbers. It remembers that too.

We all know any company who is serious about their customer relationships and wants to increase their sales in the most efficient and effective way will use some sort of CRM software. If you’re a QuickBooks user, there is no argument as to which software you should be using. Not being biased or anything. ;-)

Now that we’ve agreed on which software should be open, CRM and Outlook, wouldn’t it be nice if they actually talked to each other? I’d say so. The Method Team has launched an early beta of our Outlook plug-in for use with Method CRM and I for one could not be happier. Why you ask? Well, check out what I use to do on a daily basis.

When an email arrived in my Outlook from someone other than my family, friends or coworkers, I’d take note of the person’s name.
I’d switch to Method CRM and lookup the person’s name and see if they were an existing or potential customer that I was working with.
Let’s just say it was a new customer. I’d have to switch back to Outlook, take note of all their contact information, switch back to Method, enter them in as a new customer and create an opportunity for them, switch back to Outlook to write my email response and make sure that I copy the email I received and sent, switch back to Method and create an activity to log the work I had just done and last but not least, copy and paste the email I received and sent just so I have a record of it.

Sounds like fun, doesn’t it? Try doing that when getting upwards of 50+ emails and you’ll have a headache just from switching between the screens. With the Method Outlook plug-in, you can:

Select an email and enter the email automatically into Method CRM.
Instantly see if the person sending you the email is an existing or potential customer.
Instantly see if the sender has any outstanding opportunities with your company and if you need to create a new one, go right ahead.
If they are a new customer or vendor, add them right into Method.
If the email is in regards to an existing problem, you can log an activity for outstanding cases or create a new case.
Create your activities right through the plug-in and schedule a follow-up if needed- all in one step.

This has saved me a tremendous amount of time. I can’t tell you how many times I’ll say out loud in the office “I love this tool”.

Naturally, this plug-in will grow to allow functionality with calendars and other parts of Outlook. For now though, embrace the power of this tool! Want to hear the best part? It’s free! Here are the steps if you want to get started. By the way, this is for use with Outlook 2003 and 2007.

Download: http://www.methodintegration.com/documentation/MethodCRMAddinSetup.zip
UnZip the zip file anywhere, like C:\temp.
Close Outlook.
Double-click on Setup.exe.
Go through the installation program.
Open Outlook again.
Once Outlook is open, click the "Setup" button in your toolbar and fill in your Method account information.

I hope you love this as much as I do.

Cheers,

Danny Do Couto
Method Integration

Method awarded as one of Joe Woodard’s Top 5 IDN for 2009

Method_Danny — Mon, 25 May 2009 18:34:00 GMT

With today’s economy, businesses have to make difficult choices as to where they will spend their hard earned dollars. For anyone who attended the Scaling New Heights Conference in Atlanta last week, I strongly feel it was money well spent. This conference gave attendees a very unique opportunity to learn Intuit products, prepare for Intuit certification exams and interact with various ProAdvisors and Intuit Solution Providers. If that wasn’t enough, attendees at the conference received hands-on training from some of the top trainers of Intuit products like Joe Woodard, Laura Madeira and Mario Nowogrodzki just to name a few!

I feel extremely privileged that Joe allowed me to join the Scaling New Heights team last week, seeing as only 2 IDN products were invited to the conference. On Day 1, I led a class during the lunchtime break session, focusing on using Method for CRM (Customer Relationship Management). It was nice to see some familiar faces in a packed classroom. If anyone is like me, my stomach starts to feel a little funny when doing training sessions or presentations, but this time, it was also because I didn’t have a chance to touch my lunch. I was being pulled left, right and center by people wanting to have a few questions answered regarding Method. The training session went off without a hitch and for many people in the room, this was their first exposure to this product called “Method”.

This set the tone for the rest of the day on Monday, leading up to Tuesday when I helped Joe with presenting Method as one of his top 5 IDN (Intuit Developer Network) picks for 2009. I focused my presentation on 10 problems that could be solved by using Method. For anyone who is interested, Joe is offering a simulcast package with 5 of the classes that were at the Scaling New Heights Conference. For more information, please visit http://www.scalingnewheights.com

Scaling New Heights also marked the beginning of our Solution Providers Pilot Program which is going to help empower both Certified Consultants and Certified Account Managers with extensive Method product knowledge starting this week!

This was Joe’s first conference and was a major success. I look forward to attending Scaling New Heights 2010! Nicely done Joe!

Danny Do Couto
Method Integration

Powerful CRM + QuickBooks online access = Method!

Method_Danny — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 18:55:00 GMT

Ever hear the term “The best of both worlds”? Oh come on, I know you have. For those of you who haven’t heard of this, here’s what it means:

“The best of both worlds” is to have the best aspects of one choice and the best aspects of another choice when you have been asked to select between two choices.

Every now and again though, we find a way to have “The best of both worlds”. Now that would be the ideal situation wouldn’t it? I thought so. So how does this sound?

Keep your existing QuickBooks desktop version that you know and love and add instant online functionality to it so it can be accessed anywhere in the world via a web page while any changes you make will be updated in real time. PLUS…
Add CRM capabilities to QuickBooks so you can keep track of your sales campaigns, opportunities, inbound and outbound calls and provide your customers with online access to their account information.

Does that sound too good to be true? It’s not. Method has just stepped it up a notch and added CRM functionality to its already powerful Customer/Vendor/Employee Center. So what features are available now?

Sales Center

The Sales Center first welcomes you with the ‘Sales Center Dashboard’. The dashboard provides the signed in user with a quick glance of any tasks, new opportunities and appointments for that day.

Want to have a way to track the success of your marketing projects? Campaigns allow you to do just that! By assigning both ‘Opportunities’ and ‘Activities’ to ‘Customers’ and ‘Leads’, you can determine how many of your leads are converting into sales.

To help drive your marketing initiatives, use the ‘List Builder’ to create mass emails for all of your customers or a selected group. The best part is you can also automatically create follow-up activities for your sales team, to help seal the deal and close sales.

Call Center

Just like the Sales Center, the Call Center prompts you with a 'Call Center Dashboard'. This dashboard shows information related to both ‘Cases’ and ‘Solutions’.

A ‘Case’ is a way of tracking and detailing Customer and Vendor problems, feedback and questions. These cases would be created whenever a Customer or Vendor contacts your company via phone, email, fax or via your Third Party Portal (if you have that setup).

Ever have those questions that get asked time and time again and you have to stop what you are doing to answer it. I know it happens to me ALL the time. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a central location to store all this information so it could be easily referenced? A ‘solution’ is just that. Solutions are detailed descriptions of common customer questions or issues, along with the appropriate answers or steps to resolve the issue.

Customer Portal

Now a days, customers demand having access to their account at any time. They want to be able to see their current balance, most recent transactions or simply ask a question after hours when the office may be closed. The ‘Customer Portal’ gives your Customers or Vendors the ability to tap into this information. All they would need to do is click on a link. Simple enough isn’t it?

This adds SO much power to a QuickBooks user. You have just enhanced the ability and functionality of your accounting software to a whole new level, online, available anywhere and with CRM capabilities. Not to mention, we are talking about Method here. So if there is something you need to change to fit YOUR needs? Do it. Customize it. Love it!

So how do you get your hands on this new functionality?

Current beta testers

In order to have access to the Sales Center, Call Center and Customer Portal, you will need to create a new Method account. Follow the same steps that you received from me when doing the initial setup interview. If you have old screens you want to use with your new account, you will need to import them. You can do so under the Customize – Screens area and clicking the Copy/Import Screen button.

New beta testers

Later today, you will be receiving invitations to begin participating in the beta. Follow the steps in the setup email and your account will automatically have the new functionality, as well as the Customer Center, Vendor Center and Employee Center.

It’s nice to have ‘The best of both worlds’ isn’t it? We tend to think so.

Till next time!

Danny Do Couto
Method Integration