Jan 2010 Experiment: Heap CRM

For the month of January 2010 we’re going to experiment with a customer relationship manager (CRM) called Heap.

Since this is our inaugural experiment at ORE 101 here’s a quick overview of how our experiments work:

What Our Monthly Experiments Are Designed To Do

Each month we choose an online service or product that we’re going to try out over the next 28-30 days. These products/services are chosen at random though we are open to suggestions (let us know what you want to see put to the test in the comments below.)

After the experiment has been chosen we keep you up-to-date on how useful the product/service is for our businesses and whether it’s worth trying and/or paying for.

About Heap CRM

Now that you know how we hold experiments, let’s explore more about our first experiment of 2010: Heap CRM. Heap is a web-based application that allows you to import your leads, opportunities and customers.

You can also create email and event templates to help automate the process of working with clients, save messages, add files from Google Docs and bring it all together with a calendar. Heap is not all that much unlike the hugely popular CRM web app by 37Signals called Highrise HQ but it’s stacked with significantly more features.

Leads, Opportunities and Customers

Your database of contacts serves two purposes. First, they are your contacts and you can use custom categories to determine what group works best for them. Second, they can be used to spin-off as leads, opportunities or customers (or all three). Erion Shehaj does a great job of explaining how to use this to your advantage by classifying contacts as follows:

• Leads (90 Days+ From Buying/Selling)
• Opportunities (60 Days or Less)
• Customers (30 Days or Less)

This allows you to keep track of your sale pipeline so you can see what part of your business needs the most work. As Erion explains:

“Your 30, 60 and 90 day pipelines are the food, water and air for your business. In other words, if either one is neglected and becomes scarce, your business’ future prospects aren’t looking too good. If your customers section is vibrant and deals are closing, but your opportunities pipeline is weak, you’re headed for a drought in a few weeks. If your leads pipeline is not being fed, the whole system comes to a screeching halt.”

Email/Event Templates

This is pretty self-explanatory but here’s a quick overview: Your email and event templates are crafted by you to suit your follow-up style. You can reuse these templates again and again in order to streamline your workflow with each client. See an example workflow for an Opportunity buyer below:

Real Estate Buyer Follow-Up

So that’s what we’ll be playing with for the month of January. You can come along for the ride as Heap offers a 30-day free trial for their CRM web app which is $9/month per user afterwards (no credit card required for the free 30-day trial). If you have questions about Heap be sure to leave them in the comment box below and we’ll dig into the app until we find an answer.

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