Financial PlanningIt is always great to know that your service is sort after, used, reviewed and recommended by other users, businesses and people. And when we came across the detailed write-up and recommendation to 'Take a look at Zoho CRM' in a recent article titled 'Special Report: Your Practice Management Questions Answered ' on financial-planning.com, we were thrilled.

'Financial Planning' is dedicated to the needs of independent financial planners, whose primary concerns include building relationships with clients and their practice, that is building and managing their business, mainly client's portfolios. Thus, addressing Customer Relationship Management is essential as in any form of Business.

The extensive part about Zoho CRM comes as a response to one of the questions (located around the middle of page 5) the article addresses which is 'How can I start using CRM software, cheap?'. It provides a good perspective to any Business interested in using a CRM, to get an idea if Zoho CRM would suffice for managing their customer interactions and relations. Here is an excerpt from the article:

 As you may have gathered, both the Professional and Enterprise editions of Zoho CRM offer a great deal of value. There are plenty of fields, a great deal of functionality and very good granular security. What sets Zoho apart from some of its competitors, however, is the breadth of its offering. While the Zoho CRM Professional edition is very robust and a great value for the money, it becomes substantially more effective when used in combination with other Zoho offerings. To give you just one example, combining Zoho CRM with Zoho email and Zoho Docs gives you robust CRM, integrated email that includes email storage, plus an integrated online entry-level document management solution at an unbeatable price. Add Zoho Business (email hosting plus an Office suite) and you have a fully functional online set of productivity applications, including calendaring functionality.

Joel BruckensteinMany thanks to Joel P. Bruckenstein , CFP, publisher, Virtual Office News for that wonderful write-up about Zoho CRM. It is not easy to get feedback or even small comments from users and it is hard to know where we stand from the outside without them. We hope we see more such reviews in the future so that we can improve on our drawbacks and continue to work towards providing excellent, affordable CRM .

Headphones & Hearing problems

Jan 25 2010 03:24:14 AM Posted By : Rajesh
Comments (2)

People constantly keep listening to Music, Video, Radio on the move. With the advent of media mobile phones and iPod-everywhere phenomenon, listening to audio via Headphones on the move has increased. Infact it has become habit to many people who travel to office by Bus, Trains, Tubes and even Car. In Chennai, every time I stop at the traffic signals I see almost 40% of the people with headphones / earphones on the move.

Yes, it is good to listen refreshing music or favorite albums or news. But did many of them realized that by using headphones regularly, they are actually doing more harm to their ears than the Global Pollution? One of our team-mate who used to listen music for more than 4 hours a days is now suffering with pain. Scanning revealed that the nerves joining the ear drum has weakened. Lucky, that he can still hear. He is under treatment and is not using cellphones, desk phones and even stopped listening to any sounds at all. Stuffs ample cotton in his ears now !


Studies show that ear-phones tend to heat up the ear canal and thus the harm starts slowly. Listening for 1 or 2 hours max is recommended. Anything more than this duration will definitely pave way for future troubles. Another team member informed me that his doctor advised him to avoid cheap headphones and settle for Professional grade headphones, that too for 1 hour listening. Cheap headphones are not tuned properly to match sensitiveness of ear drums, and thus tend to create hearing problems soon. So next time, when you want to listen music through headphones, invest in buying a professional make, and make sure you use them for 1 hour per day and not more than that.


- Rajesh





Zoho CRM's Pongal Wishes!

Jan 12 2010 07:17:12 AM Posted By : Rajesh
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Here comes Pongal - The festival of Harvest from 13 Jan 2010 to 16 Jan 2010.


Our warm Pongal wishes to everyone!


Thai Pongal wishes




 























- Team Zoho CRM

Happy Holidays!

Dec 23 2009 03:51:58 AM Posted By : Victor
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Deal your Leads and lead your Deals - Web Forms

Dec 09 2009 05:15:37 AM Posted By : Hari
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The very basic purpose of any business is to create and keep a customer. For example, this blog's ultimate motive is to arouse your interest in CRM, hopefully enough to drive your instincts to click on one of the hyperlinks to Zoho CRM, thus creating a Lead, possibly a future customer. This is the Genesis of the Sales process.

Supposing that the contents presented here successfully get a fair share of you to click on a hyperlink and impress you further to fill in our web forms, like for a product demo. We will have to deal with each one of you, our valuable Leads, effectively, to keep you with us.

Now, it would be a tedious process if we had you send us an email to a specific address, go through each one of them individually and later organize the information based on your input. As much as we are ready to go through any cumbersome task to track and retain you, our Leads, it would be more beneficial to allot time to focus on the core of our business, which is to understand your needs and convince you that our product can help you fulfill them.

Thanks to CRM web forms, all the information you provide automatically get stored in Zoho CRM's Contact management module. Tracking and categorizing is thus automated and we can divert the time and energy saved in keeping you engrossed with the usefulness of our service.

Similarly, you can easily create web forms using the Form Builder in Zoho CRM with fields corresponding to your business needs. Then use these forms anywhere on the web in different locations and all the information filled in will be automatically recorded in Zoho CRM modules.


Zoho CRM Form Builder

During creation, you can select and configure your forms with handy options like Case Assignment, to validate generated cases, ....


Case Assignment - Form Builder

....Email Notification, to automatically notify selected staff whenever a visitor submits information and more.

Email Notification - Form Builder

This is just one fruit out of a basket of features available in Zoho CRM. Winning or losing in business is directly related to how information is gathered, managed and used, keeping customer satisfaction as the goal. At least they should not be dissatisfied because on an average dissatisfied customers berate their ill feelings to 7-10 people (they don't even know well) while satisfied customers recommend a company to 3-4 of their pals. So, take charge and handle your business more effectively with a good affordable CRM. See, we have given you enough hyperlinks, hopefully stirred your instincts and the Sales process evolves.


Techno Granny's Talk Cast about Zoho CRM

Oct 27 2009 08:59:42 AM Posted By : Gopal
Comments (1)

Recently, Joanne Quinn-Smith of Techno Granny Show talked about customer relationship management domain and specially spent some time (~10 min) on reviewing our Zoho RM service. In her talk cast over TalkShoe, she also reviewed about our other services.


 The Zoho Office Suite is a Web- based online office suite containing word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, databases, note-taking, wikis, CRM, project management, invoicing and other applications developed by ZOHO Corporation(formally AdventNet Inc.), an Indian-based company[1][2][3]. It was launched in 2005 with a web-based word processor. Additional products, such as spreadsheets and presentations were incorporated later into Zoho. [4]
Zoho applications are free to use at the entry-level and require a fee for more extensive or professional use. 

Zoho CRM aligns your Sales and Marketing by integrating sales with campaigns, leads, sales pipeline, forecasts, etc. Award-winning, complete CRM solution. Zoho CRM offers all the modules and tools that you might need to run your sales & marketing.

URL: http://technogrannyshow.blogspot.com/2009/10/technogranny-comparison-of-salesforce.html

You can listen her talk cast (mp3 format; 28.15 min.) or download from TalkShoe.

By the way, Techno Granny Show is mainly focusing on the IT related education to baby boomers:


 The Techno Granny Show was intitated to bring baby boomers and beyond up to snuff with 21st Century technology and in the process found some great friends across the ocean and not in the same generation. Now Techno Granny is committed to providing technology information from developers and users and try to translate it always in simple to understand terms.

Thank you Joanne for taking time to review our CRM service and introducing to your audience!

Gopal

A day in the life of a Sales Manager

Oct 22 2009 06:40:12 AM Posted By : Victor
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This video is focused towards illustrating the life that a Sales Manager lives each passing day.
A challenging yet interesting kind of job that is fun if tactfully handled and adventurous if skillfully tackled.

Watch to find if this is you!


Zoho CRM can help you manage this phase of your life's adventure skillfully.

Automate your sales activities with Zoho CRM.

Zoho CRM's Diwali wishes!

Oct 15 2009 05:08:28 AM Posted By : Rajesh
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Here's a wish, specially for you

And hoping sincerely, it really comes true

May lights, sweets and everything bright,

Ignite a start, with evil destroyed,

Let the festive spirit grip your souls,

With joy, prosperity and happiness untold..!!

WISHING YOU A VERY HAPPY DIWALI..!!



 

Deepavali is a Sanskrit word - Deepa meaning light and Avali, meaning a row. It means a row of lights and indeed illumination forms its main attraction. It symbolises that age-old culture of India which teaches us to vanquish ignorance that subdues humanity and to drive away darkness that engulfs the light of knowledge. Deepavali, the festival of lights even to-day in this modern world, projects the rich and glorious past and teaches us to uphold the true values of life.



warm regards,
Team Zoho CRM

Driving fast

Aug 21 2009 04:24:10 AM Posted By : Rajesh
Comments (2)

There were a couple of posts in our internal blog discussing the effects of driving fast. 

Do you think by driving fast, you prove that you are a great driver?
Do you think those who drivers fast are actually rash drivers?
Do you think if one has the control over his senses, can he become a good one though he drives fast?
Do you drive fast, just for the kick of it?

So many discussions and even there was a post about youtube videos whose subject deals with fast driving. The discussions pointed out that people consider those who drive fast as "rash" drivers generally. And there are drivers who have fine senses that help them drive fast and avoid accidents at the same time. I guess that is a gift only a few possess.

Generally speaking, the major root cause of accidents is SPEEDING. Even if you drive with complete control with all your senses awake, accidents may happen from external sources. In India, with the advent of world class express highways driving has become a pleasure as well as risky in few cases. I've seen some nuts who drive zig-zag inside a convoy scaring others and risking everyone's life. And some drive slow in a speed lane, thus blocking other vehicles coming behind. I usually drive to my home town which is 7 hours from Chennai, in my compact hatchback - Suzuki Alto. It is pretty basic with a 47 bhp petrol motor. In certain terms, the motor is just intended for city driving. But it can reach about 100kmph safely and pushing a bit further it reaches 120kmph. Beyond that, the car becomes unsteady. I've driven my car in all sort of speeds. Once I tried a 110kmph constant speed, then a 80kmph speed, and then a varying 60-80kmph speed. The results were good. During the 110kmph drive, my vision became narrower and whole body was very alert. There was thrill, and at the same time I had to be very cautious about zebra crossers and 2 wheeler nuts. The 60-80kmph was more of a lazy drive which created a back-ache because of long drive hours. The constant 80kmph gave me no super-duper thrills, yet it did not cause much discomfort. I was relaxed, had better control and wider visibility.

A good driver has the ability to drive a vehicle in such a way making the passengers feel safe. He also possess the art of comfort driving. This means no sudden braking, no sharp turns, no thrusts and very calculative driving that doesn't make the passengers move from the seat. It takes time and patience to develop such a skill.

Do not drive fast always, but only when it is required so. Keep improving your driving skills such that it makes people love to travel with you happily!


- Rajesh Sundaram



After SETUP, what's next?

Jun 19 2009 11:42:54 PM Posted By : Rajesh
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The next thing we are working on the UI front is - unified visuals in detailed view for all themes. This unified visuals will help in more readability and reduce page clutter.  Additionally we are analyzing the User management module in Zoho CRM. Our focus is to simplify the subscription purchase and managing users in the CRM system. Will post more details later. :-)

- Rajesh