Creating a workable cold call list

[slippy62]

We are about to embark on an autumnal sales campaign. Our Market Research team has already prepared a list of 500 real estate companies that need be contacted by our Telesales Team. Their job is to cultivate as many of the 500 ‘Targets’ in to ‘Accounts’ as possible.

I post this in an effort to get clear answers on whether Sugar CRM can help us achieve the following objectives:

1. can we load in company information from an Excel spreadsheet (.csv format also available) and do they go in as Opportunities, Accounts, Prospects, Targets or Leads? The terminology is confusing for a first time user!

2. can we generate a call list that prompts our Telesales Team to call out each real estate company in a methodical and ordered fashion, recording details of the call and scheduling (if appropriate) a follow up? If so, how is this best set up in the application? - - we would be surprised if it was suggested that we had to manually create a call follow up for each new real estate company, or is this the only way?

3. what is the best way to store these companies so that we can send out an initial letter using the Microsoft Word add-in mail merge feature? Would they need to exist as Accounts, or is there some other better way?


… from what we can see, the Sugar CRM application is very powerful but it is fiddly and time consuming to carry out a very frequent, repetitive task (cold calling) – the success and productivity of which relies on the user being able to quickly jot down notes from one call and move on to the next…

Ideas, best practice tips or existing threads that explain how to achieve this would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks.

[Superman]

Sorry for the offtopic, but I wonder about this phrase "cold call".
Can someone give simple explanation what is "cold call"?

PS: I'm Russian therefore I'm not an English-thinking man.

[slippy62]

Cold calling is initiating a telephone conversation with a 'potential' customer - in the hope that what you say on the phone encourages them to eventually buy the product/service you are calling about. The receipient of the cold call is someone that you have never had contact with before. You don't know them, and they don't know you.

[Superman]

Thank you very much for this explanation.

[michaelest]

We use Sugar in a similar manner, but our database has about 15,000 names (working our way quickly to 186,000 names). We typically perform mail merge outside of Sugar, then our staff uses Sugar to perform calls (cold calls) to those we mailed and create a history with the client (schedule call, schedule meeting, history notes, etc.). We also use Sugar to perform our Email Campaigns (we elected to use it instead of DADA mail even though we licensed the pro version - I'm an old Mojo mail fan).

So, our workflow goes like this....

1. We acquire our data via subscription, list brokers and some handy dandy scripts that I wrote.
2. We merge all three data sources in a third party program.
3. There's some manual checking we do on the files (which are in CSV format).
4. The CSV files are used to mail merge (PRINT letters and envelopes - bulk mail, bar coded, CASS'd, duplicate checked, etc.)
5. The CSV files are imported into Sugar as LEADS. We chose LEADS (over targets) because it was easier for our staff to sign on and view the names (get phone numbers, etc.). If you view LEADS as a LIST, you can see the phone numbers to call. You can also modify the List template to show other data.
Note: anticipate how you will categorize your names before you import them into Sugar. We added three custom fields (source, target city, etc). It helps when you need to sort them out in Sugar. It also helps when searching/assigning the names to a staff person. You'll need to create the custom fields in Sugar.
6. We add the leads (by sort) to TARGET LISTS.
7. We create an email campaign and select one or several of the TARGET LISTS to send to.
8. After we see that many people have been opening our emails and clicking through (via trackers), we start calling them.
9. Our staff follows instructions to change the status of the Lead whenever 'something' happens with it.

Regarding your question about "Prompts..." We have it set up to email user upon assignment of a record. So, when we assign leads, the user is emailed (notified). Also, the next time they log in, they have a whole new list of names to pour through.
Sugar does a good job at displaying reminders for meetings and calls.

Our workflow has all new names imported as LEADS, then converted to Contacts or Accounts. It's a logical progression for us.



Misc. Notes:
a. Our staff experience varies. Some of them will take a list of names, call them, make handwritten notes and then input those notes into the computer later. Some of them will do everything via Sugar's interface.
Note: We've installed the Asertiva Firefox Extension for Sugar which some use as well. I customized the plug-in to accommodate our custom fields and include links to some of our web pages.
b. Using the Sugar interface was doggedly slllooooowwwww until we upgraded our hosting service to a Virtual Private Server and I got to tweak the PHP settings. Now it runs acceptably fast- fast enough to be on the phone with a call and enter data on the fly without burdening the tempo of the call.

Stuff we live with:
a. Importing is a bear. We are unable to import more than 1000 records at a time without 'something' messing up (although I think I'm close to figuring out how the planets need to be aligned in order to import more successfully).
b. Exporting data can be a bear. I usually do a mySQL dump to get large amounts of data back out of Sugar.
c. Look in the forums for other prevailing issues. What people are talking about is the rest of what we live with.

[tclevela]

Michaelest, can you elaborate how you get your leads into the target list?

I'm trying to setup a target list for the first time and you would think there'd be a link to select people from the contact list or leads to add to your target list. I'm guessing you could export your lead list and then import them into the target list...

Can you elaborate?

Thanks for the great info on your process.

Regards,

tclevela

[slippy62]

Michaelest,

Many thanks for your comprehensive response. I have now configured Sugar with an emphasis on Leads that will then be converted to Accounts (when we close the deal on each company). It seems that by playing about with a test Lead, adding phone calls that have either taken place (Outbound - Held) or need to take place (Outbound - Planned) cover the scenarios we will experience. The History on each lead is very powerful too and we will create email templates to use for certain key stages during the sales process.

One last question, and something that we are really disappointed not to see in Sugar - - that of being able to schedule Calls en mass to more than one Lead at a time. We want to create a Campaign that is Call based, not email based. I want to be able to assign my Sales Team 40-50 Leads per day and have them call each one... Sugar should be able to do this, but I guess the only way is for them to start at the top of their Lead list and create the Call entries manually?

Also, in your opinion, what would be the best way to load in new Leads, and distinguish the difference between those loaded today, and those loaded yesterday for example? A custom field?

[michaelest]

Tclevela: To Add Leads to a TARGET LIST
We import the information as leads, then:
1. Click on CAMPAIGNS tab -> go to CAMPAIGNS module
2. Click on CREATE TARGET LIST.
3. Open the target list (double click on it)
4. At the bottom of the screen (in the subpanels area), click on the chevron (the stacked double caret ^ ) to expand LEADS subpanel.
5. Click on the SELECT button.
6. Find/sort -> add your leads to the target list.
(Note: 20 at a time sucks. Go into your Admin->SystemSettings page and up your "Listview items per page to 100 or more (you may run into problems if you try to list and add over 300 - we had some issues on our old shared server. But try it first before ratcheting down).

That's it.

[michaelest]

Slippy62,

1. Go to Admin->SystemSettings page and adjust the Listview Items per page to 50 (or whatever you assign to each user at a time).
2. Click on the LEADS tab -> go to leads module.
3. List leads (either all leads, or via search/sort).
4. Click on the checkbox to select all of the listed leads.
5. At the bottom of the screen, in the Mass Update panel, click on the SELECT button near the Assigned to: field.
6. In the pop up window, select the user you want to assign leads to.

From the user's point of view...
1. Log into Sugar.
2. Click on LEADS.
3. Click on the ONLY MY ITEMS checkbox in the Basic Search area.
4. They can either call off the screen, or print out the page and call. History/Activities can be added on the fly or written down and entered later.

good luck.

- Michael

[slippy62]

Hi michaelest,

Thanks once again for your reply. We now have everything working well, including mail merge which strangely was turned off by default. By exploring the System Settings option, I notice that you have to tick the box to enable it by default. You would think that it would be the other way around on a standard install. Anyway, on to my final question:

Once we mail merge out our first letter (introducing our company and our services), it would be nice to BATCH UPDATE all Leads with a note that says we sent the letter out, on what day, and something about what the letter contained (attaching the template would also be a nice touch - so we could go back and see the contents of the mailout if required).

I notice that on an individual record it is possible to add a note, together with an attachment - but clearly if we mail out 500 companies on one day I want a quick way of updating all 500 with the same note.... do you know of any way to do this?

It seems a fundamental requirement to us - - by again it may be something that has been overlooked. Our comments on SugarCRM overall are positive, however there are some aspects of the system that are missing - in particular the options to Mass Update are limited. We also use Kayako support suite which has an excellent set of Mass Update options - making pretty much anything possible with Support Tickets - perhaps SugarCRM should take a look at that for inspiration ?