Media training 101 for small businesses

-
Image
Great news: you just scored a big press interview to promote your business. The story will expose your brand to the perfect new audience and drive meaningful traffic to your website. So…don't blow it. Yes, just as quickly as the excitement for the opportunity arrived, the realization that you now have to do an interview sets in. I get it—press interviews can absolutely be intimidating. The resulting coverage represents a significant opportunity to acquire new customers, drive sales, or raise awareness, and you want to be sure to represent your brand well and really compel the audience to check out your company. On top of that, you have to contend with adrenaline and nerves in the moment. You may be thinking, "So many other business owners are so polished and articulate in their interviews. How am I going to pull that off?" Deep breath. A successful interview is usually the result of good media training: preparation and practice in advance of an interview. I've tr...
1 comment

A Realtor Reduces Her Time Spent Managing Leads by 40% with Zapier

-

"My Zapier automations give me more time to focus on building relationships and running my real estate business effectively and efficiently."Sommer Cronck, Best Bellington Homes

If it were up to real estate agents, all their time would be spent with clients, talking about and showing off homes. The reality of their work, however, is a bit different and might look familiar to you: hours spent on data entry, moving information from one system to another, and crafting and scheduling social media posts.

While essential work, it's not the best use of a realtor's time—or anyone's, for that matter. Tired of wasting time, realtor and founder of Best Bellingham Homes, Sommer Cronck decided to do something about it. She found app automation tool Zapier, and immediately gave herself hours back every week.

About Best Bellingham Homes

As part of the RE/MAX family of independent real estate brokers, Sommer founded Best Bellingham Homes to help her fellow Bellingham, WA residents find a home in the city she loves. As a solopreneur, Sommer has to be everything for her business—marketer, salesperson, developer, and CEO.

By relying on Zapier to handle her leads and more, Sommer focuses on growing Best Bellingham Homes and giving her clients an unforgettable experience during a life-changing moment.

Manage Contacts and Leads with Office 365 and LionDesk

Sommer found that a lot of her time was spent managing contacts and leads across a few different tools. That meant when an email came in from a client, she'd have to jump into her customer relationship manager (CRM) to see if that person was already in her contact lists, and she would then add a note with details from the email.

This manual process ate through her time, which meant less opportunity to "wow" clients. To fix this without having to hire help, she added Zapier into her day-to-day processes and built a few Zaps—our word for automated workflows.

"Automating with Zapier cuts the time I spend inputting data into my CRM by at least 30-40%," she says.

Best Bellingham Homes' Tools

Icon: App: Used For:
LionDesk CRM LionDesk Real estate customer relationship manager (CRM)
Office 365 Office 365 Email and contacts

The Workflows

To automate her leads, Sommer uses a couple of Zaps to connect Office 365 and LionDesk.

"The biggest one for me is a Zap that connects my Office 365 contacts to my real estate CRM, LionDesk," Sommer explains. "Any time I enter a new contact into my phone, it gets sent to the CRM."

Her second most used Zap has Zapier keeping an eye out for new emails in Office 365. As they come in, Zapier compares the sender's email address to Sommer's contacts in LionDesk. If there's a match, Zapier saves a record of the email to that contact's CRM record, allowing Sommer to monitor her contacts and maintain a complete record of conversation in one spot: LionDesk.

And be sure to check out some of our most popular real estate Zaps, too:

Simple automations help Sommer give her clients a stellar experience, while handling the back-end of her real estate business.

"I've saved so much time now that I don't have to copy contacts into my CRM regularly, or track down email conversations because they're instantly being saved," Sommer says.

Want to have more time to grow your business? Give Zapier a try for free.

All images courtesy of Sommer Cronck - Best Bellingham Homes.

Our stories explore how Zapier's users solve common problems. From marketers to CEOs, educators to real estate agents, millions use Zapier to automate their most tedious tasks. If you haven't yet, try Zapier for free to see what we're all about.

What's your story? Tell us how you use Zapier to do more. You can also read even more customer stories and find new ways to improve your workflow and productivity.



from The Zapier Blog https://ift.tt/2Q6rRxg

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

If Time-Tracking Apps Don't Work for You, Try a Productivity Journal

-
Image
Monitoring how you spend your time leads to a wealth of useful information: It can tell you what time of day you're most productive , help you create better estimates for how long tasks will take, and show you what activities you'd have to cut to focus your energy on a new idea or project. The most precise way to monitor how you spend your time is to use a time-tracking app . But these apps require a lot of overhead. You have to diligently log your hours (or make sure your app is logging them correctly) and sort your tracked time into categories. You have to pause after every task—no matter how brief—to capture time spent accurately. If tracking your time at such a granular level sounds like a punishment, but you still want insight into how and where you spend your time, consider the less menacing sibling of time-tracking apps: a productivity journal. What Is a Productivity Journal? I kept a journal as a preteen, though in those days I called it a diary. Snoopy and Woods...
Read more

The 25 Best Productivity Apps for iPhone in 2018

-
Image
The best productivity apps for iPhone make possible something that would otherwise be impossible, or they make something you need to do simpler and faster. Imagine being asked, unexpectedly, for a copy of a tax form from last year as proof of address during an important appointment that you traveled many miles to attend. In fact, it happened to me, and thankfully I had a copy of the document I needed saved to a file syncing application, which meant I could pull it up on my phone and show it to the gracious Customs and Border Protection officer who demanded to see it. If that's not productivity by way of efficiency, I don't know what is. Perhaps a more routine example is keeping track of time spent in an off-site meeting so that you can claim it as an expense later. If you have the right time-tracking mobile app, you can record the time on the spot rather than having to estimate it and remember to record it later. The use cases for productivity apps are infinite, and sometimes...
Read more

What's the difference between the Wiki and OneNote tabs in Microsoft Teams?

-
Image
It's easy, in a team chat app, for key points to get lost in the ongoing flow of conversation. That's why every channel in Microsoft Teams has a Wiki page, where you can store things like meeting notes or outline the current state of a project. You can also add a OneNote tab to every channel for similar purposes. The Wiki and OneNote tab are pretty overlapping features, so you might be wondering which one you should use. My answer, unhelpfully, is "it depends." Here's a quick overview: The Wiki is fast and simple but only works inside Teams. OneNote offers more features and can be used outside Teams. My advice: if the Wiki works for you, that's great. Use it. If you want more out of your note-taking, and the ability to reference notes outside of Teams, use OneNote. Let's go over both features with more detail, so you can choose the tool that works for you. The Wiki is fast and functional—but only exists in Teams You can probably find the Wiki in ...
Read more