Since Bankers Advocate has Virtual Offices with teams members in Orlando, South Florida and the Philippines (Jessie and Rachael, our wonderful Virtual Assistance), we thought you would be interested in the tools we use to be in the “Cloud” and communicate with each other effectively:
- Google Hosted Email- At $50 per user/year, we switched to a hosted cloud email via Google Apps. It is very smart phone friendly, spam has been reduced and it syncs well with our CRM (see the next product).
- Capsule CRM- Our Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) is Capsule CRM. We picked Capsule for it’s low cost ($12/month per user), ability to link with individual twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook accounts, Email centric, and it’s seamless integration with Google Hosted email. For instance, every email we receive will show at the bottom whether that individual is already in our CRM and if not a new record can be created with a button click.
- Virtual Assistance from 123Employee- We have used Virtual Assistance from 123Employee for almost a year now and it has allowed our business to become much more efficient by adding or enhancing telemarketing, database entree, basic research, seminar follow-up, etc.
- Websites based on WordPress- We have switched all our web sites to WordPress. The pluses of a site based on WordPress include the ease of which non programmers (most Business Owners) can upload/change everything from blogs,events,videos and link their site to Twitter/LinkedIn/Facebook.
- Dropbox- Dropbox is a wonderful tool to share files and folders to individuals and team members. You are notified immediately on your desktop when a new file or folder is added. Also 3gb is free and you get more space as your clients or friends share the tool.
This has been a brief introduction to some of the tools we use to keep in touch and freely communicate with our far flung team members. Please contact Chris Curtin at 561-882-1331 or chris@bankersadvocate.com for more information.
Indeed a great way of building good business culture and sustaining business success! I recognized the tips and tools you have here to maintain your business at it’s peak and all of it are really effective. Great post! Keep it up!
I totally agree to this!
I have been using Dropbox for quite a while now and I have to say that the beauty of Dropbox is it’s simplicity.
And of course, while most products advertise themselves as being “easy to use” WordPress doesn’t advertise this, this is the reputation it has earned.It has awesome menu options and different great themes to choose from.