Zoho CRM - BASIC

ZOHO CRM, THE BASIC

This time we will discuss about the Zoho CRM application from the basic point of view. The entry point is the free license provided by ZOHO CRM for 3 users. Big enough for a small business to handle their clients and sales as a start. In order to login into the system you need to register a 14 days free trial with Google+ or Zoho credentials. The free trial will bring you to the Enterprise license. Discussion about application level of license will be captured next time. Lets review what you will get with the basic free license of ZOHO CRM

The home page screen will be shown as picture below after you logging in.

On the top bar, left area, there are menus to assist your purpose to use CRM. Mainly, we can use menu of Leads, Accounts, Contacts, Actions, Deals and Reports;

• Feeds menu will show your and team activities to post deals to the system.
• Campaigns will show you all efforts to generate leads thru campaign projects. 
• Visits will show you how many visitors come to your business website, adds or social media.
• Documents will be a repository of all sales and marketing documents

Right area of the bar, will show you what license you are on, search button (magnifier icon), system notification (bell icon), post item (add sign icon), calendar, setup (tools icon) and login credential.

In the middle main screen you will get 4 quadrant. Those quadrant can be modified to fit your requirements. But for a start here's what you get  ;

1. Open Task : List all open tasks or actions as your activities to be completed as due
2. Today's Lead : List all new leads you can captured today
3. Closing This Month : List all closed or won deals this month
4. Free

If your business have few customers already, you can start to post your accounts and contacts. But if you haven't then you can start to post you new leads. Leads are you correspondents to accept your offer. If they receive your offer then the lead can be upgraded into account. If they don't accept then it will remain in lead level.

In order to take your offers, the leads may need to be contacted, called, visited or presented your product (eg. demo). All activities related in between can be posted in by add post a task. You may need to mark if its a call, meeting, email or product demo in order to manage your progress on the particular lead.

Under Lead menu you can select particular lead you need to check. Inside the lead page you can capture all information about the lead, product you offered and activities related to promote the product. Feel free to populate information as much as possible. Winning deal is more guaranteed if you know the lead better.

In the following page we will discuss in more detail about posting leads, its credentials, activities related and what you can get in the Enterprise paid license.