5 One Handed Tasks Every Small Business Owner Should Be Able To Do

Think back to when you first thought about starting your business, or maybe you haven’t even started yet.

What was the goal? I know for me it was this:

1. Financial Independence – I wanted to make money my own way, without answering to someone else, and without having a cap on my potential to earn
2. Location Independence – I wanted to do it from wherever I chose to, be that Australia, on a beach in Thailand, or living across Europe for 3 months

The newest Ninjodo update enables me to do that and I’m sure it will do the same for you.

Laptops enabled entrepreneurs to be more location independent, but we all know there is an even better solution…Smartphones.

Smartphones give you, even more, freedom to manage your business remotely than ever before and it’s estimated that by the year 2018 (not that far off now), 8 out of 10 email users will be checking their email from their mobile CRM.

This tiny little thing that’s crept up on us over the past decade is now incredibly powerful and allows you to do so many things with just one hand.

Scroll Facebook, read articles, do your banking, take photos, shoot videos, shall I go on?

But…when I look around at what’s out there for us small business people, the landscape looks pretty bleak.

Business isn’t run from behind a desk in some corporate office anymore, especially small business. It’s run from home, in our cars, in cafes, in co-working spaces, airports, literally anywhere.

That’s why we’ve made a huge update to Ninjodo. Not just so you could use your favorite CRM from anywhere in the world, but that you could do those essential small business tasks that matter most, winning business, providing a kick ass client experience and saving time.

So…

Here are 5 things you can now do one handed using Ninjodo’s mobile CRM update

The mobile CRM version of Ninjodo has been active for a couple of weeks now and here are just a few of the situations I used it in to save time and grow my business.

#1 Schedule your next appointment or meeting with someone and send them an invite

As a CEO of a small startup you basically do everything. I handle sales flows, customer requests, finances, etc. But the biggest part of my day consists of having meetings with potential new clients. It’s easy to do this when you’re at your desk, but much harder when you’re out and about or in transit.

It’s so awesome to be able to schedule an appointment while I’m between face-to-face meetings or even running errands. Plus an invite is sent automatically to the other side and it all feels really professional.

I recently had a situation where I handled a few client meetings while going to the airport. Talk about two birds with one stone.

#2 Add important notes from the meeting or appointment before you forget

Don’t you hate it when you’re best ideas of what to say are never when you’re on the phone with a lead or customer? By the time the meeting rolls around you’ve probably forgotten about it.

I was recently waiting at the airport. You know how it is when you’re just waiting, you have a lot of time to think. While I was sitting there waiting, I remembered a few things that could really help the outcome of the next client meeting I’d scheduled earlier.

Before I had time to forget or get distracted, I pulled out my phone, jumped into the client’s record and added my thoughts as a note. The information is now sitting there waiting for me to see and use when I jump on the phone with that client.

Just think about it, you can do this from anywhere. You can do it while grocery shopping, driving (well in between driving I hope) or even while you play basketball with your mates. That’s the power of a mobile CRM.

#3 Look up addresses/maps/phone numbers for your next appointment

So, back to the airport story. I knew I had an important client meeting when I got back. I planned it all nicely and would have plenty of time to prepare myself for the call. Unfortunately with a delayed plane I got stuck in rush hour traffic on the way home and wasn’t going to be able to research anything or prepare for the call from my desk.

Ninjodo mobile CRM update to the rescue. Tananan!

Rather than just winging it and hoping for the best, I pulled over, grabbed a coffee and again pulled out my phone. I opened the client file again and had time to review our past conversations, opened their website to get a feel for their business, and yes even refresh my memory on the note I’d added earlier. Doing all this meant I was prepared for the call, and could really offer some great value, all while enjoying a nice coffee.

And the kicker, by the time the call had finished, the traffic had cleared up and getting home was pretty quick. Bonus!

For those situations when I’m driving to be onsite with a client, I don’t need to remember their address, I simply open their contact record, click on the “View on Map” link, and the phones GPS launches. Seriously business takes on a whole new form when you’re detached from your desk.

#4 Send important emails right when it counts right from your mobile CRM

I can think of two examples where this one really helped.

The first one was when I’d received a call from someone I hadn’t heard from for ages. We’d discussed doing few points in our last discussion, specifically I’d given him a quote on something, and now, 6 months later he was ready to go out of the blue. He was ready to roll now but I wasn’t going to be back at my desk to find out what the quote was for or even for how much.

Lucky, I was able to just open his contact record on my phone, do a quick keyword search for what we’d discussed and bam! I had the information I needed to send him.

When someone is ready to pay you, you do everything you can to make it easy for them to do so.

The second example was when I needed to get some setup information and onboard a new customer. This was not the type of email you want to be writing on your phone from memory.

Fortunately I had 3 really cool Ninjodo things I could combine:

1. Email Templates
2. Forms
3. Mobile CRM Access

Because this was something that happens regularly, I’d created an Email template in Ninjodo for it. For those of you not using email templates they are the single biggest area you can cut down your admin. Any time I have an email that I need to send on more than one occasion, I create it as an email template. I can then send that email (and edit it if I need to on the way) to anyone, anytime, in just a few clicks (or taps).

In this case, onboarding a new client, it welcomed them into the Ninjodo family, thanked them for deciding to join, explained how to get help when they needed it, provided all my contact details if they needed to contact me, and provided a link to a Ninjodo form which asked some questions and gathered information I needed.

If you haven’t had a chance to look into using forms in your business, I recently put together a guide which you can review here.

So once again, I got out my phone, opened the contact record, selected my email template and hit Send. Easy peasy. I get to keep going with what I’m doing, and the client doesn’t have to wait, they can get stuck into things straight away.

This not only saves me time, it respects my clients time, and keeps my communication professional and on-brand.

Seriously, how professional does it look sending an email which has iPhone branding at the bottom instead of your own?

#5 Get Prepared: Check new leads out on LinkedIn before heading into the meeting

One of Ninjodo’s features I’m especially proud of is automatic data fetching, or what we call Ninjodo Smart Search. Meaning, when you create a new contact or a new lead, Ninjodo goes out and searches where that data is used on the internet and sucks it into your account to build a full contact record for you.

Most of the time you’ll get back social media profiles like LinkedIn and Twitter as well as photos and company information. This is super useful when you need to quickly research your prospective lead before speaking. You can easily check them out on LinkedIn and their website ahead of time, a step that many people skip yet often dramatically changes the outcome of your sales calls.

So these are just a couple of ways I’ve been using the new Ninjodo mobile update to help me, for you, possibilities are endless!

You are basically getting a CRM on the go. It’s like, you take a coffee to go in one hand and in your pocket, you have a CRM to go.

Now rather than go on about all the other things you can do, I’ll simple list a bunch of them here and let you log in and see for yourself:

• Real-Time Alerts
• Access All your Notifications
• Create & Manage Tasks
• Add notes
• Send Emails
• Plan your day/week
• Access all your records
• Update workflows (including new deals when converting sales leads)
• Change deal status
• Record Expenses on jobs as you incur them

If you want to start crushing small business one-handed, there are only 2 simple steps you need to do. Two simple steps to run your business from anywhere are:

1. Go to your smartphone browser and type ninjodo.com (or just tap the link if you’re reading on the phone)
2. Log into your Ninjodo account and start checking things out

And that’s pretty much it. A lot of hard work has gone into creating this updated version just for YOU. If you like it, suggest it to a friend. And of course, we are always there for whatever you need.

If you haven’t got a Ninjodo account yet, you can check out more about things here or get started for free here and give things a go yourself.