Like some of you out there, I’m concerned about the way I am managing my dealflow at Producteev. SalesForce is really complicated, and expensive. And there are not a lot of alternatives out there.

You get in touch with potential clients and partners all the time, and there are no simple ways to keep track of them, or just follow-up after a couple of days / weeks / months.

I’ve always said to myself that most of it is what a task management app should be able to do : tag deals, set deadlines and reminders for follow up, set priorities, potentially assign leads to co-workers, and that would be pretty much it.

Wrong. A big part of it is the way you integrate those leads into your workflow. Most of the time, you get in touch with potential clients/partners by email, so you basically need a top email integration. Thanks to the email to task feature on Producteev, you can do just that.

Here’s the flow I am using, that worked tremendously well for me in the past weeks.

1. Bcc task@producteev.com to your first (or even second…) email to your potential client or partner

Like I said, you need to be able to collect the task without leaving your email client so it’s not creating any friction in your workflow, for this, just bcc task@producteev.com to that first email

If you feel like it, you can add tags to the email subject, Producteev will understand them and automatically process the task, example :

Email subject : Producteev Applications for LeWeb (next month ##biz dev 5*)

It will set a deadline for next month, assign the ‘Biz Dev’ label (that will let you look through your leads / deals when you need to), and 5 stars of priority

2. Find and manage your new lead on Producteev

 

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As expected, Producteev will automatically process your email as a new ‘task’, and you’re good to go! 

You will get an automatic reminder a month from now to follow up, and even have the full content of this email as a note

3. Track and Follow up

If you click on a label, from the left side panel, you’ll have access to all of your tasks labeled ‘Biz Dev’ or ‘Sales’ or whatever name you picked!

Easy to keep track of things.

 

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4. BONUS for Google Apps Users

 

Turn your email into tasks in one click by installing our Gmail Contextual Gadget for Google Apps here. Amazingly simple, and exactly what you need, to fuel those biz dev emails automatically to Producteev.

 

To sum it up : Bcc task@producteev.com to your sales emails, tag them with a deadline, a label, a priority, etc. And you’re done. You won’t forget about any follow-up anymore.

PS1: Producteev is free for individuals and pairs, so go try it out now!

PS2: More info on our Natural Language Processing feature : http://support.producteev.com/entries/245069-natural-language-capabilities

 

 

Business Development and Sales use case written by Ilan. Fire up your questions if you have any!