So we’re going to get in a time machine now and go back to my training session with Paula, before Christmas card writing!

The training session was focused on me observing while Paula showed me around the system, this was exciting for me because for a while I had only been using the email (head back to Pt3 – The Nitty Gritty to find out why!) so seeing the actual CRM was pretty cool.

All the basics are covered off like creating a new contact, converting leads to won business, adding additional employees to an organisation.

I was particularly impressed seeing the social media link up in action, you can link a contacts Twitter feed and link their Twitter image to become a profile image for your contact, I loved that! Plus, there is a neat function that enables you, with one click, to see a Google search on them or visit their Linked In profile.

I thought this was ace, imagine you click into a contact to ring them, you can quickly check out what they’re saying on social and if there are any recent developments in their online profile.

So the training was all good, but here is the important bit! Paula schedules a call to follow up with you in a week, to see how you are getting on and so you can ask any questions. Make use of this! Book time in your diary to have a play around, try all the different tricks that you are shown, make a note of what you’ve forgotten or what doesn’t seem to do what you want it to do.

That half hour call was invaluable for me to chat about all the bits that I knew Paula had shown me but I had forgotten! Also she reminded me of all the great user guides that can simply remind me of how to do everything, to be fair though the system is fairly self explanatory, you just need to use it!

The key then was consistency, it was so easy to stick to the habits that I had always had, I don’t think I used it for about 3 weeks following the training, I then reminded myself of all the snazzy features and made sure that I was adding opportunities and new contacts when I got them.

This was the turnaround, gaining momentum, you see once I started to log opportunities it became more fun, I could see a funnel of sales potentially coming through, it made me think about what I could do to connect with those people (remembering that sales story that you need up to 12 contacts before a sale), I was able to use the notes to create reminders and add in details about my clients that I wanted to remember, no more scratching around in notebooks.

It would have been really easy to have done the training and then not made any changes in my routine, to really get the best from your CRM you have to change your habits, you have to use it!