Nimble CRM for Solopreneurs

Nimble CRM Introduces Workflows and You’re Gonna’ Love Them!

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Let’s start by stepping back a bit. For several years now Nimble has offered a way for you to create and to track business opportunities or deals. This includes creating the deal, associating it to a contact or company record, tracking the deal through a pipeline (your process for closing this deal), and generating forecasts based on your pipeline(s).

What sets a deal apart from what we will be discussing, workflows is …

  • A dollar value
  • A percentage chance of closing that is used to calculate the weighted deal value
  • A projected close date
  • A deal record where various related engagements and activities are tracked

There are challenges …

While deals by themselves were great, there were some shortcomings and these are related to what comes before you have a valid opportunity and what might come after the opportunity is closed or converted. For example, neither of these scenarios are typically associated with a dollar value. That is unique to the deal.

My background is the electric sign industry. Like many, if not most, industries, you want to be able to track leads and leads will go through their own qualification process before they are converted to a deal. 

Therefore, my workaround might be to make the lead process the first few stages of a deal process. As deals have a dollar value, I need to set that as zero initially so not to skew the forecast. Once qualified, edit the value and assign the percentage chance of closing the deal.

Now, then. After I sell a sign, it has to go through various stages of approval, manufacturing, and installation in order to complete the order. This too is a process. How could I do that? One way might be to build a separate deal value pipeline but with no values. Incidentally, this could also be a potential solution for tracking leads as you can create multiple deal pipelines in Nimble, each with its own stages.

We’re making progress!

Fast forward to a few months ago and Nimble releases lead pipelines that are completely separate from deal pipelines in addition to allowing you to easily convert a lead to a deal. You can even import contact records and assign them to your leads pipeline at the same time. You can have multiple lead pipelines and contacts can be associated with more than one.

Awesome! But what about my process after the deal is sold or any other process that I might use in my company that are not even deal related at all. The answer is that Nimble has just rebranded the leads pipelines as part of the family of workflows. Watch the video!

 Summary of workflow benefits …

Relate Workflows to Contact Records – Associate workflows with people and companies to get a 360-degree relationship overview, including history of interactions, calendar events, attachments, custom field information. 

Manage Business Workflows Across Departments – Think beyond sales and create multiple workflows to track repeatable business processes from a variety of outreaches, including; hiring, influencer marketing/PR, fundraising, professional network building, etc.

Use Pre-Built Workflow Templates or Create Your Own – Save time by utilizing ready-to-use workflow templates with pre-defined stages and fields designed for many common business use cases. Templates can be easily modified or new ones can be created from scratch. 

Visualize Contact Workflows in Spreadsheet/Board Views – Progress leads and contacts from one stage to the next either on board or spreadsheet list views. Use in-line editing to make quick changes to the information you’re tracking on your contacts. 

Manage Workflows from Anywhere You Work – Streamline processes by adding contacts to workflows from your email inbox, any website, web forms, social media, business apps, or via Zapier/Integromat or Nimble’s API.

Personally, I think that workflows are a game changer since the possibilities are virtually endless. I’m starting to work with a client right now who tracks almost all of their processes on a variety of spreadsheets. There will always be a need for these where calculations are a necessary part of that sheet but, if not, they might be saying “hello workflows!”

Are you interested in learning more? Book a free 30-minute Zoom consultation with me.

Craig M. Jamieson

Craig M. Jamieson

Managing Member at Adaptive Business Services
Craig M. Jamieson is a lifelong B2B salesperson, manager, owner, and a networking enthusiast. Adaptive Business Services provides solutions related to the sales professional. We are a Nimble CRM Solution Partner. Craig also conducts training and workshops primarily in social selling and communication skills. Craig is also the author of "The Small Business' Guide to Social CRM", now available on Amazon!
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