Lesley Beagley is the Admin Guru and CRM Queen. She runs an online course for small business owners to learn some of the techniques she uses to help her Admin Consultancy clients to streamline their admin processes and free up time for the important stuff. You can download her free INSIDER SECRETS report as www.SmallBizAdmin-sorted.co.uk

When you are just starting out in business there’s a LOT to think about!
Assuming your product or service is already clearly defined, you still have to work out your marketing strategy, get your branding designed, set up a website perhaps, get some stationary printed (using GoodPrint of course!), register your business, find an accountant… the list seems almost endless!

And the chances are a lot of your attention will be on getting started with promoting your business and finding those first few crucial customers.

And there’s no doubt about it, getting (and keeping) customers is probably the single most important aspect to growing a business.

BUT…
Time and time again as a professional Admin Consultant I see small business owners, perhaps just a year or two into their business, struggling to stay on top of all they have to do.

They often started their business so they could be their own boss and have the freedom to spend time with their families and in leisure pursuits, but find themselves working evenings and weekends and feeling stressed and burnt out before their working week even begins!
Usually this is because they start out just doing what they do and muddling through with keeping things in their heads, and that was fine when they had only one or two customers, but as the marketing kicks in and they get busier in doing whatever it is they do, one of the first things to go is their admin, and that includes the follow up of new leads and the building of customer relationships.

And it only gets worse. As you get busier and busier, more and more will fall through the cracks unless you have some processes and systems in place that allow you to stay on top.
By setting up some basic systems and processes BEFORE you need them you can avoid many of these problems. One of the most essential systems, in my opinion is a CRM or Customer Relationship Management system.

Trouble is, there are thousands of them out there, and they range in price from just a few pounds per user per month to several thousands of pounds. So where do you start?

Here are six things to think about when deciding on a CRM

1. Think ahead of where you PLAN to be, rather than where you are right now Choose your CRM system that will grow with you. Or at least make sure that you will be able to export ALL of your data – including contact history – should you need to move on in the future

2. Consider how the CRM you are reviewing will work with other systems
Will it, for example, share data easily with an accounting package or a newsletter system or online shopping cart? Integration is the watchword here!
3. Think about how you could share your CRM with someone else – without sharing your computer.
Perhaps you need to opt for a ‘cloud’ based solution. This is all about Delegation – you may be on your own now, but at some point you will need another pair of hands!

4. Is it customizable?
Can you add custom fields for data that is important in your particular business?

5. Can you easily maintain a record of all your interactions with a customer
For example, does it integrate with your email system, or can you send emails into it and attach documents if needed?

6. Can you set up automated workflows and tasks to ensure you can duplicate a process for following up with leads and customers?

This isn’t the whole story, of course, and my best advice is to review several systems, download free trials where they are available, upload some test data and really put a system through its paces before committing. It may take a bit of an investment of time, but it will save you much time and heartache in the future!

Do it now, before you get too busy!

So what are these QR thingies?

QR (quick-response) codes are 2-dimensional barcodes most commonly used to access information from a smartphone. They’re really easy to use – simply download a scanner for your phone (you can see what’s available at http://getreader.com) and get scanning!

What’s one going to do for me?

QR codes can do a whole host of different things, they can add your contact details to a client or prospect’s phone, send a text message, open a web page, call a phone number or simply show some plain text. This means you can make it easy for people to put your details onto their phone, give them a discount code, enter a text competition or show them a message!

Great! How do I make one?

We’ve made it simple to add a QR code to the back of any business card, either using one of our templates or uploading your own artwork. Just follow the instructions below to add to the back of your card, or if you’d like to add one to your own artwork, create and download your code here:  http://www.goodprint.co.uk/qr_generator/

Getting started with QR codes

The above image shows email clients in which our customers opened our most recent email campaign. It certainly shows that more and more people are checking their emails on their phon first, before possibly going to their computer to order. If you've not started testing your email campaigns on smart phones, you really should now start!

As I'm sure you've all noticed, things look very different at Goodprint. We've spruced up the look of the site, but it's more than just a new design, we've made changes under the hood as well. Here's what's new:

New Design

We've had our old site for nearly 5 years now, and it's served us well, but it was due a revamp. We've made the new site modern and fresh so your experience with the site is much more pleasant. We've also tried to make the order process more intuitive and going from homepage to completing the order should take about 15 minutes if you have to design the card from scratch using a template.

Goodprint's more social

As part of the redesign, we decided to make the website more engaging with our customers. Our dynamic feeds display your designs to each other, so you can broadcast your business to all of our customers! There's also a feed for our most popular designs, feedback and tweets.

The most exciting social tool we've added is our "share" button. When you're reviewing your card (after adding a back) you can choose to share an image of your card on various social networking sites, so you can show off your design to your friends on Facebook or your followers on Twitter!

Tweak-it now available on all products

For the past 18 months or so we've given you the option to have us make any amendments you like to our business card templates by ordering a tweak. This means if you couldn't get your business card looking perfect, we'd do it for you! Thanks to its success, we've now rolled out this option on all of our products.

Visual display of rounded corners

Rounded corners are a unique addition to a business card, but if you've never seen it before or don't know how it'd work with your design, you may be put-off ordering them. Well we've solved that problem by adding a visual display to show you exactly how your cards will look. Have a play with different combinations until you find the right one. My personal favourite is to round 3 corners, leaving the bottom right or left squared, so the card looks like a speech bubble.

New Products

Ok, so we've not launched any just yet, but there are plenty around the corner. We've made our site much easier to add new products to, so our designers and developers are working round the clock to make sure Goodprint can fulfil all of your printing needs. We're always looking for suggestions, so please do let us know what products you'd like us to add, just leave a comment on this blog post!