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Posts Tagged ‘Review’

Infusionsoft Double Your Sales Promise Review

March 10th, 2010
NOTE: This post is one section of an extensive review of Infusionsoft.

Infusionsoft Double Your Sales Promise Overall Grade: B+

Recently, their focus may have shifted. But, over the last year, Infusionsoft has talked a lot about their product being able to Double Your Sales. Is this true?

Actually, it is true for many small businesses. If your business fits into the following, you have a good chance to Double Your Sales with Infusionsoft:

  • If you have revenues less than $1M. Obviously, it’s easier to grow your business from $200K to $400K than it is to go from $10M to $20M in a short time.
  • If you have a good product or services and a clear, differentiated strategy. If you have a poor or “me too” product, then doing a better job of communication and follow-up still won’t help.
  • If you are willing to spend your time and/or money to improve your marketing or follow-up. Sometimes, people allow themselves to believe that all they have to do is spend $200-300 with Infusionsoft and their sales will improve. Of course, this won’t happen by itself. It takes a real effort to realize the potential of Infusionsoft.
  • You’re an established business and already have a list of customers. Startups can still benefit from Infusionsoft, but it’s going to take longer and cost more.

Infusionsoft has a famous case study where they were able to double sales in only 72 days — All About Spelling. This company had a good product, was established and had a contact list of almost 6,000 customers, and had revenues of  $200-300K when they started. The one thing that isn’t always pointed out is that Infusionsoft supplied some of their top people to provide consulting help. All About Spelling may have paid for some of the improvements to their website, but they didn’t pay for the top consulting help.

Doing better at attracting leads, building your contact list, and following-up will help any business, and Infusionsoft is very helpful in facilitating this process. Plus, Infusionsoft will help with your education-based marketing programs.

The key is to provide value to your prospects and customers. I know this is obvious, but I talk with people all the time who have the idea the technology like Infusionsoft is the secret. Infusionsoft is a good tool for many companies. But, you have to know your customer, provide value, and communicate clearly. At GreasedSkid, we help Infusionsoft clients accomplish exactly these goals.

So, why a B+ instead of a higher grade? Some of Infusionsoft’s marketing reinforces the idea that if you just buy the product, your sales will quickly double. As described above, it can. Just be prepared to do the needed work!

Clarke Bishop Infusionsoft , ,

Infusionsoft Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Review

March 5th, 2010
NOTE: This post is one section of an extensive review of Infusionsoft.

Infusionsoft Integrated CRM Overall Grade: A

The best thing about Infusionsoft is that it integrates together most of the tools you need to run your small business. If you or your employees regularly speak directly with customers, then having a good CRM system becomes invaluable.

Infusionsoft’s CRM has all the things most small businesses will ever need:

  • An individual record for each contact
  • The ability to associate contacts with companies
  • Tracking of tasks and appointments
  • Capture of contact history — Emails, phone calls, notes, purchases (If you use the Infusionsoft shopping cart), etc.
  • Import contacts from other systems
  • The ability to add custom information to each contact or company
  • Calendar
  • Send email directly from the CRM screen
  • Opportunity management (With the $299 per month Deluxe version). Track specific sales opportunities through your sales pipeline.
  • Billing and Invoicing  (With the $299 per month Deluxe version). Create orders and invoice clients.
  • Integration with Outlook. You can use Outlook for many CRM functions and still have all the information stored and sync’ed with Infusionsoft

In my work with Infusionsoft users, I have not found any feature gaps or problems with the CRM functionality. There are other more flexible systems available, but they are also more expensive!

You can use the CRM for your support team or your sales team.

The only time I would say Infusionsoft’s CRM is not a good fit if you have a large number of users. Beyond the 2-5 users that come with their packages, each user adds another $59 per month. If you have more than 25 support or sales users, you’ve probably outgrown Infusionsoft.

Clarke Bishop Infusionsoft , ,