Articles by Adam Stone
Other than my personal life and hobbies I am all about the system integration and A/V industry. I started in 1981 as a “TV delivery specialist” for the Good Guys a west coast CE chain. From there I started my own big dish satellite installation company which morphed into a home theater installation company in the early 90’s. I got out of the installation business in 1996 and went to work for an electrical contractor as project manager of their residential division where I was exposed to the complexities of old school/analog job costing, estimating, blueprints and project scheduling. Being a long time PC geek and creator of some database driven estimating tools I knew that there had to be a better way to deal with these complex projects. During the course of my employment there I was exposed to Visio as an easy to use drawing tool. After spending some time with it I realized that I could hook it up to a database and automate many of the disparate processes I needed to do to accomplish my tasks. That let to the formation of my current company D-Tools which is the leader in the marketplace with thousands of companies using our design, engineering and business management tools. My direct contact information is on the About tab.
Introduction here: For the most part I have spent the last five weeks in front of my computer, listening to Sirius Radio (The Vault), eating seeds (Art’s Sunflower and Pumpkin) and deconstructing the D-Tools/Zoho CRM system. In tough economic times sometimes the only thing you can do is to fine tune your internal business processes to stay ahead. This has the double advantage of making your company more competitive and efficient and when the economy improves (it always does) you will be in position to immediately capitalize on it. But before you can fine tune your processes you need to make sure you have the right tools for the job.
Introduction here. I changed the title of this series from Explaining the D-Tools Zoho CRM system to Deconstructing the D-Tools Zoho CRM System because I realized that as I was trying to explain it I was tearing it apart an re-configuring it as I was explaining it. Just the act of explaining it made me realize it could be improved. In fact that explains my silence for the past few weeks. I have been deep inside our system trying to make it more reliable, easier to use, easier to explain, more accurate and ultimately more productive for all the users.
Introduction here. As I have stated at least twice now we have a LOT of leads in our system and we needed a solid process to manage all of these leads. In the previous post on Sales Roles I explained how each person on the D-Tools sales team has a specific role and and how we use our Zoho CRM system to manage the job function for each specific role.
As I previously mentioned we have a lot of leads in our CRM system. Without some sort of solid process for managing these leads we would never be able to see the forest through the trees. Good lead management is a critical aspect for our company (really, all companies) because nothing happens without the sale and most of our sales start out as leads. The reality is the future of your company hinges on how you currently manage your leads. You need to plant your seeds before you are hungry.
I just read a post titled “NetSuite parts ways with largest reseller” in Phil Wainewright’s SaaS blog on ZDNet. Our sad story was mentioned in the post as a possible reason for the split. Hard to say, I don’t think NetSuite loses any sleep over how customers are treated. If I had to guess and knowing what I know about the owner of Skyytek I would agree with Phil in that it is more about NetSuite directly competing with their partners with their newly minted “SuiteSucess” consulting division.
We have a LOT of leads in our system. The current count is 11,192 and I archived any lead that was created before 2006 during the last conversion of CRM systems. Thankfully, Zoho CRM handles leads really well. This is the process we use to separate the forest from the trees and allow our sales team to focus on the most productive leads.
One of the luxuries of being the boss is that I can choose what projects I want to get to get involved in here at D-Tools. For the most part all of the core software …
We just got back from the CEDIA Expo (Custom Electronic Designer Installer Association) trade show in Denver. I consider this our “home” show because I launched the D-Tools product line at this same show in …
My good friend and D-Tools Certified Partner Kevin Mikelonis from Process DSG (Dealer Services Group) is giving a free Visio tips and tricks webinar on October 3rd. I have seen some of the stuff that …
In this post I went over some of my history with Middle Atlantic Products (MAP) and how we created the first version of RackTools the Visio based equipment rack design software. If you read that …
I am a big fan of Middle Atlantic Products (MAP) and have been using their products for around 15 years. When I was a system integrator I used to pour over their catalog looking for …
The clever folks at Zoho just came out with a new release of ZOHO CRM, For the most part it is a solid release, they fixed a few bugs and greatly enhanced the usability. You …
