We recommend starting your PlanPlus CRM implementation in the Project Module. To begin, you'll want to define your project by creating a Vision or Success Statement. Your statement defines what a successful outcome looks like. Here is a list of some of the most popular goals related to "Implementing a CRM."
Suggested Activity: Make a list of your team members and their responsibilities. The "who" and the "does what". If you are your only staff member then this is still a useful activity for the purposes of breaking down your activities and grouping them together. For assistance on this part you can refer to the Training by Role page.
Create the user accounts for each person on your team. It is a good idea to refer them to the User Setup videos located here. If you are a single user or not ready to set up the multi user features at this time, you can skip this section.
One of the great productivity features of PlanPlus is the ability to view another user's calendar. By clicking on the Calendar tab and selecting another users' calendar from the drop down, you can view when users are free or busy and even schedule appointments for your other users.
The contacts tab is used for individual people, the Organizations tab is used for companies or other organizations. Since real estate is primarily a B2C business, or Business-to-Consumer, the majority of your clients and prospects will be listed under the contacts tab. If you do work with a builder or want to track your dealings with other companies or vendors, you will put the company names in the Organizations tab.
In the Real Estate edition of PlanPlus, the category & classification fields have been pre-configured with common values. If you desire to change these, this video will show you how.
The Real Estate Edition of PlanPlus includes many pre-configured custom fields. If you would like to make additional changes these videos will show you how.
The important thing to remember when configuring page layouts is that you may need to add the custom field first, and then place it on the page layout second. Try creating field groups for easily moving groups of fields or adding color to your page layouts.
Where is your data at now? Do you use outlook? Do you have customer or sales data in Excel spreadsheets or another CRM? In creating your plan for how to import your data it is best to start by identifying all of your data sources. You can either , or sync with outlook.
PlanPlus allows you to organize contacts and organizations into "views." These are lists in an access database created according to custom criteria. Views are a great way to drive the workflow in your business. They can be sorted according to user groups to keep them organized.
Web forms are data entry forms that can reside on a website to capture information from visitors such as "Contact Us" forms, "Request information" forms, or customer support inquiries. You can use web forms to standardize the information that you receive from customers.
The sales stages in the Real Estate template have been pre-defined. If you choose to modify them these videos will show you how.
Add your logo to the account to give it a custom feel.
Each user will need to set up their incoming/outbound email settings. You will need your Pop3 or Imap4 setting from your email provider. If you are the account administrator you can get the email settings and share them with your team so that they just need to put in their password.
Your account should have come with a pre set Outbound mail sever identified. If you want more control over your email deliberately and email reputation you can update the settings with your own mail server.
Review the existing email templates in the Account>>Email Templates section to get familiar with the templates that are available and to make any necessary changes.
Blast Campaign are made up of a template, an audience, and a schedule. A template is an email template, the audience is the group of contacts who will receive the email and the schedule is the date the message will be sent. Drip Campaigns are defined without an audience. In defining a drip campaign you only need to configure the content of the emails and the sequence of days between each of the emails. Once a drip campaign is associated with a contact or many contacts they will follow the specific sequence and send emails on the dates defined by your campaign.
Here are a few videos that will help you with some of the advanced automation features found in the Background Workflow Engine.
API Documentation (Contact Professional Services team for additional resources on this topic)