81 - Getting the Most out of your CRM
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Hello friends. Welcome back to the crush, your goals with Christi podcast, the business podcast, where you'll find clarity over confusion, community over competition, and the confidence to crush your goals. I'm your host, Christi Johnseen *laughs* Christi Johnson - it came out wrong - wedding photographer, business, strategist, and online business manager dedicated to helping you build a life and a business that you love. 

Every week on the podcast, I share step-by-step tips to make your life easier as a business. Owner and to achieve your dreams today, we're talking about how to get the most out of your C R M. CRM stands for customer relationship management software. And I know a lot of people use them, but they don't use them to their full extent. So we're going to talk about how to do that. Some of the reasons why people don't use them and what you can do right now in your CRM to make your life easier. 

Now first you may be like, okay, what even is that? I don't, I don't understand what that is. Well, a CRM is a tool that you can use to do all kinds of things in your business and keep in touch with your customers. It's a way to organize your customers projects. Uh, way to keep notes for each customer and also a way to share documents. So the way that I use CRMs in my business, well, I ha I actually have a couple of serums that I use because I'm working with clients in multiple ones, um, because I'm an online business manager, so I help people in theirs, but the one that I use. 

It's called 17 hats. And what I do with that is I send my contracts to my clients. I sinned. Email through there. I sent invoices, they get automatic payment reminders and I can even send them questionnaires to get more information about them. So basically it is my one stop shop for my. For my clients projects or the things that I'm working on within, I also use task management software sometimes, but, uh, if you're a service-based business owner, you can do a lot in the CRM and you may not even need a task management software, which that would be something like Trello or a sauna or click up or whatever. 

So I use my CRM to do a lot of things. I also use it to, uh, onboard my clients to send automatic emails to them. When I welcome them. As a client. Not only that I use it. Two. Kip keep track of my tasks. So I have it set up to where it can send me, uh, reminders about tasks. Uh, if I typically I'm going through the same exact steps for every single client. So I have set up some, some workflows, some automations where it will pop up and say, Hey, this is the next thing on the to-do list for this client. So it really is incredible. 

Uh, first, let me talk to you about the top CRMs that are out there that you may have heard of, or maybe you haven't. Then we're going to talk about how to know which one is right for you. So the most common ones that I see are HoneyBook. That one is really common for creative, small business owners. 

Another one is a dub Sato. That one is really robust and has a lot of things that you can do. I know a lot of people use it. Another one is 17 hats. It's really, really great. And I also know some photographers who use one called sprout studio. There may be some more out there, but these are the ones that I'm familiar in the creative, small business world. You may have a specific one for you. If you're a real estate agent or. 

Um, in some other type of industry that has a lot of education surrounding it, you guys may have your own industry standards that you all work with, but these are the ones that seem to be the industry standard in the creative economy. So a again at 17 hats, HoneyBook, dub, Sato, and one that's not as popular, but still coming up and coming along is sprout studio. 

I think I heard that. That may be pixie set is working on one as well, which could be cool. Pixie set as a gallery software for photographers. So those are the ones. So I have a lot of people ask me a big question that I get all the time is which CRM should I use? And, and I want to help you figure that out, how to know which one is right for you. 

The easy answer is to sign up for the free trial. And to see which one works well with your brain. Okay. For some people, dub Sato will work really well for some people. HoneyBook will work really well. And for others, 17 hats are see which one works well with your brain, but also start getting in there and trying to build out some automations and see how it works. 

Which one do you enjoy spending time in which one seems to not have the features that you are looking for and the way you can figure it out is by browsing some of the tutorials that they have, the resources that they have. Or by asking the people in the little chat box that's over there. Um, all of these resources, uh, 17 hats, dub, Sato, HoneyBook, they have real and sprout studio. I've talked with them as well. They have really great customer service where you can just type right in the chat box and be like, Hey, I'm trying to do this. Can you help me figure this out? Is this something that's possible in your softer? 

So each program should have at least a two week trial period that you can sign up for. So I would definitely recommend doing that. So that way you can know which one is right for you. Okay. I want to tell you some things that you can do right now in your CRM to make your life easier. Um, First of all, you can go in and set up automatic payment reminders. 

For your invoices that you have put out. So if you don't have this turned on, go in and turn it on. If you don't know how to turn it on type in the chat box, Hey, how do I do this? This is, this was revolutionary to me. I do not have to keep getting, asking people for money. I don't have to keep saying, Hey, uh, just so you know, you haven't paid this invoice. 

I don't have to keep track of it. Be like, because like, I don't have to keep up with who I've messaged, who I've sent an email to who I've texted and said, Hey, pay this, send me this via Venmo or whatever. No, it's all done there in 17 hats, which is the one that I use. And you can use a different one, but it's all there for me in 17 hats. 

And, uh, so I, I send the invoices through there and it will automatically tell them when it's coming up for payment. And it will also automatically tell them when they're past the due date and they haven't paid. So I don't have to be hunting down, uh, payments anymore. If someone does miss all those emails, they make it really easy for you to just send another reminder that says, uh, Hey, your payment is past the due date. So you don't have to have an awkward conversation with someone that's like, um, Hey, I don't think you've paid me all the money that, that you should, and they can, they might come back and be like, I'm pretty sure I have. 

Uh, and then you don't have to be like, well, actually here's what happened. You know, because. They can see it there. They see the invoice there. They know that it's not paid when they click on it. And the way that the emails look, they look like they came from. A legit business because you are legit a legit business. So they did. 

But people are way more. Uh, likely to do that. Then if you just say, Hey, you haven't paid it. So it takes out that awkwardness. So that's something that you can do right now to make your life easier. Another thing you can do is to set up and, uh, uh, an onboarding workflow for your clients. We talked about onboarding a couple episodes ago, so definitely check that out. In fact, I can find the episode number for you. 

That was episode number 78 onboarding clients. So you can check that out. And that is really going to help you. And you can set up a workflow to put all the steps in place. So whatever steps you have to onboard your clients. You can put those right in there. Also, you can set up a booking workflow. So if you are continually struggling, 

To fall, have people respond to you? You're getting a lot of people ghosting you. You can, you can literally set up an automatic email reminder to go out. If they haven't responded after a certain period of time. It really is amazing. You can also send questionnaires so you can get information. From them. Uh, I like to send a questionnaire as soon as they inquire with me to get more information about what types of services they're looking for for my wedding clients and my OBM clients. I send them, Hey, what do you need? What do you want from me? And this helps me to get some information and to keep it all in one place. 

So a booking workflow would be a great thing to do to make your life easier. Uh, automatic payment reminders would be a great thing to make your life easier. And, uh, an onboarding workflow would be a great thing to add. To make your life easier. So you really want, if you're paying for this service, you want to make sure that you're taking advantage of it. I know a lot of people who have CRMs and they only use it to send their payments in their contracts, but then they're not using it for anything else. And you're really missing out on a lot of amazing tools that you can have to make your life easier as a business owner and to take advantage of the things that you have. 

So. Those are just some things that you can do beyond that. The most, like the best thing that I have, that, that it does is it maps out the entire client process with me. So the entire. All of the steps from them being onboarded to me, off-boarding them as a client, I have different phases where it says first you're going to send. 

You know, they send you an email, it sends an email automatically back then it sends a questionnaire to them after a coup a couple of weeks. And what's really cool is you can set your project date. So let's say it's a wedding. You can set the project date. You know, April. Uh, April 16th, that's my birthday. So I'm just going to use that. 

Um, April 16th, you can put, say the project is on April 16th. And you can have it set up to where. One month before the project, it sends them a questionnaire or sends them an email automatically. You don't even have to think about it. So, one thing that Stephanie and I were struggling with Stephanie is my business partner. Uh, we co-own Stephanie and Christi Photography. 

One thing that we were struggling with was keeping track of our engagement sessions. And so what we did was we decided to create an engagement session workflow. So whenever we get a date on the calendar for an engagement session, we create a project for our client and our clients portals that engagement session. 

And automatically when they have that, it sends them. Engagement session, location ideas. So I don't have to remember, Hey, did we send them the location ideas? I can't remember. It sends it automatically. And then it set up to where to, uh, I think it's three weeks, actually three weeks before their session, it automatically sends them an email saying, preparing for your engagement session and it gives them style tips, um, things about timing and, and it also puts our phone numbers so that we can. 

Uh, they can text us if they need us. So everything they need to know about the engagement engine, it sends out automatically two weeks before we don't even have to think about it. I also have it set up to where the day after the session. So if the project date is April 16th, then on April 17th, they would automatically say, thank you so much. 

We had a blast with you yesterday. We're getting to work, editing your images and you can expect them in two weeks. So I don't even have to go back and tell them that it automatically does it. And then it will have a task pop up on my dashboard that says, edit the engagement pictures. And so then once I have that checked off, like I know, oh, I need to be editing the engagement pictures. This is what I'm doing. Like, it keeps everything. So, so, uh, in place it keeps everything so organized so that when I go on my dashboard, it tells me for this project, you should be doing this for this project. 

You should be doing that. Okay. It's amazing. And then it'll ha once I check off the edit photos box, then it will say, uh, now it's time to send them their gallery. And I have a template already ready to go with all the information about how they download the images, how they can order prints, how all of this stuff, where all I have to do is drop in the link to the gallery and send that to them. 

And then I can automatically have it ask if they want an album or I can have it automatically. You know, two weeks later, ask them for a review so I can send them a questionnaire automatically. It is crazy. You can do so many things to make your life easier in the CRM. And that's why I love him so much. 

Just a little tip for you. This happens a lot. You may have projects where you get behind on tasks. So what I recommend doing is once a month, having a CEO day for yourself, where you go in and you. Uh, audit. Do an audit of your workflows, make sure they're all good. Make sure there's no new steps that you need to add and make sure that you're up to date with all of the tasks, remove any projects where someone didn't book and they're just having tasks pop up. 

Oh, another way you can prevent that by the way, this was huge for me. Here's a hack. I used to just have the entire process mapped out. So when a client would reach out to me, even if they didn't book. It would still be sending me reminders of like, you need to sit in their gallery and I'm like, well, they never booked, so I don't need to send their gallery. So what I did. 

I was, I broke down my process into phases. So I have a booking workflow. So, if they're not booked, then they don't get the rest of the steps, but I have it to automatically trigger the workflow of the onboarding workflow after they booked. So once they booked, they move into the onboarding workflow and it's amazing once they're fully onboarded, then they move into the project workflow. 

And then once the product is complete, they move into the offboarding workflow. So breaking it down in phases was one hack that really, really helped me. You might be thinking, wow, Christy, this is a ton of information. That's all really overwhelming. I don't know what to do with that. Well guess what. 

I have a service for you. I can help you get your CRM set up. It's one of the packages that I offer as an online business manager, we can do a VIP day where I go in and set up your complete workflows and get you set up with that. If you need monthly support beyond that, that's also a service that I offer as well. 

But if you're just like, you know what, I want some help getting set up in my CRM, this is really confusing. I don't know how to get the most out of it. Gimme a holler reach out to me. Let's chat about it. I do offer VIP days to set up your CRM. So you can go to christijohnsoncreative.com/contact. Reach out to me there and let's get you set up. I really hope this, this episode was helpful. Tell me, uh, what are you going to do? What is the next, uh, what is the next thing that you're going to add on to your CRM? 

What is the top tip that you're going to take away from this episode? Let me know, tag me on Instagram. That really helps by the way, I don't do this a lot and I should. If you will. Write a review for me in your podcast player that you like. It really does help a lot. Um, if you could write a review and like screenshot it. So I know you did, that would be incredible. It really does help it out. Give me a five star rating, write a review. 

And contact me to tell me what your top tip. That you took away from this episode is, and what you're going to do in your CRM to get the most out of it, to help make your life easier. All right, thanks so much for listening. I will see on next week. Hope you have a good one.