Since Bankers Advocate has Virtual Offices with teams members in Orlando, South Florida and the Philippines (Jessie and Rachael are our wonderful Virtual Assistants), 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 Google hosted cloud email via Google Apps. It is very smartphone friendly, spam has been reduced and it syncs continuously with our CRM (see the next product).
- Capsule CRM – Our Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) is Capsule CRM. We picked Capsule for its low cost ($12/month per user), ability to link to 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 simple 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 management, basic research, seminar follow-up,etc.
- Websites based on WordPress – We have switched all of 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 or change 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.
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Man! Those were extremely useful tips (Cloud Tools) Chris – thank you for sharing!!
Paul
Great share,will be lot useful for now.I hope more people discover your blog because you really know what you’re talking about. Can’t wait to read more from you!
I can see that your communication with your other virtual team members are working smoothly thanks to the tools you use. This should really be useful. Awesome post. Thank you for sharing this Chris!