@miles
I am starting with the assumption that you don’t have a Premium Subscription so don’t have access to "Custom Fields".
So here is my updated suggestion based on what you have outlined so far;
Setup the following
Projects;
Prospects – This hold tasks for each prospect/potential client.
Prospect_Template – This project will hold some template Tasks that your team members will use when a new prospect calls or emails in.
Followups – This Project will be used to hold the Sub Tasks associated with Following up the Prospects.
Proposals – This Project will be used to hold the Sub Tasks associated with creating the proposals for each Prospect.
Closed – This is an optional project you could move the prospect to this project and put it in a relevant section based on why they are no longer a prospect, eg successful transferred to your other system, too expensive, date not available. The other option is just to complete the task in the Prospect Project.
Add the right members of the team to the above projects as members and make sure you setup the notifications properly to ensure that the right people are notified when tasks are updated. Suggest you make yourself a member of all project and get notified whenever a new tasks is added.
Conventions & Definitions:
You will need to define what information you need your team members to always try and capture when a new prospect contacts them.
Naming conventions for how your Tasks will be named for each prospect, followups and proposals so that it is easily identifiable when you look at the Projects. eg First Name Last Name. each Prospect to have a subtask of the initial call/email with the date and time as the Name.
Ownership and Assignment rules, do you assign a prospect to a specific person or is just the actions associated with the prospect that are assigned.
Use of Emojis and or Tags, to visual represent the prospects. I must confess this is the part I do struggle with but I can definitely see the value in using emojis etc.
Workflow:
Define a workflow that your team will use for each new Prospect. How a prospect moves through the different phases, how you find the latest information on what is happening with a prospect etc.
I would probably run a bit of a brain storming session with the team to try and work through some scenarios, as this may influence your project structure etc.
So with all of this in mind and using some of your scenarios as a guide, here is how I would see this working;
Prospect Calls, emails in.
Step 1:
Team member duplicates the New Prospect Tasks that is in your Prospects_Template for this Prospect and completes all of the information defined above. That tasks is then added to the “Prospects” project, and removed from the Prospects_Template project.
Step 2:
Sub Tasks are then added to that Tasks relating to Followups and Proposals using the above definied standards. Those Tasks are then Multi-Home into the other Projects (Tab + P) suggest you have some sections in those project like “Next Two Days”, “Next Five Days”, “Next Week”. Someone will need to own review this project and moving the tasks into the correct sections as you go. Or potentially use Priority or Value or Likelihood to help categories or prioritise those tasks.
Assignees and Due Dates are set based on what has been agreed.
Prospect Calls back;
So how does @Miles or one of the other team know what is happening if the prospects calls back;
Step 1:
The Prospect project can be sorted by Alphabetic order so you can quickly find the Prospect and then based on what you agreed up front to always capture you will see what was said in the initial call, all of the past, present and future followup sub tasks will be visible and anyone can see what additional commentary has been made.
You will be able to see when the next Follow up call is due and if the Proposal is underway and who it is assigned to. You or team members can then adjust the due dates or make commentary based on what the new interaction with the prospect is.
What is Happening and when;
Now using the Followup and Proposal Proejcts you will now get a view of the work that the team now have. Eg. How many followups are needed to be done, are they all being assigned to one person, is someone not doing there followups etc.
Proposals, how many are on the go at the moment who is doing them etc.
Anyone needs to be able to see what the last task or interact was.
Yes they can because each prospect has just 1 main task with the relevant subtasks which detail the interactions with the prospect.
Anyone needs to be able to respond.
Yes because they have the information they can respond and update the task with the comment, change dates etc. The tasks owner will be notified of those changes so they are aware.
Hopefully the above is helpful…
If you do have premium subscriptions you can then utilise Custom Fields to potentially replace some of the projects and make it easy to report on, track or identify where the Prospects are at.
Regards
Jason.
