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Having tried it out for just a few moments, I certainly see the value. Good work. That said, I do have a couple of snap judgements that I hope you don't mind
by ColinD 15y ago
Having tried it out for just a few moments, I certainly see the value. Good work.
That said, I do have a couple of snap judgements that I hope you don't mind me sharing.
1. The interface is simple to use, but when I closed a deal it immediately disappeared from the list. While it makes sense for a non-active deal to leave the list, it is a hinderance to me using the platform. In my business, "closing" a deal means receiving a purchase order. But the deal isn't done until I've completed my end of things (bringing in the product, shipping it, receiving payment). It would be nice if closed deals didn't disappear from the list for a day or week or month or whatever. It's nice to see the team's successes as well as the stuff still open.
2. It would be AWESOME if there were a way to add/edit the progress bar. In my business it would be useful to have "lead" "pitch/quotation", "negotiation", "closed", "processed" "shipped and invoiced" and "payment received." Tracking the whole process linearly from start to finish is something I would certainly pay for.
2. Piggy backing #1, it would be super helpful to be able to attach files to deals. Most of my company's projects take place via quotes that come via XLS and PO's that come via PDF. Being able to attach the files along the way would mean my GMAIL account wouldn't have to be the repository for quotes and orders.
2a. Tagging deals would be super useful. If I could tag a deal with the salesperson's name or "new customer" or whatever and search/sort by tag, that would be a great feature.
3. The reporting is nice, but I hope that a lot more filters come in the future. It would be nice to search/sort by customer, $ value, deal status, etc. and then run reports on that information as well. For example, it would be nice to pull all the deals we lost from customer XYZ between $5k and $10k and compare that number to the deals won in that range. Were are margins too high on the lost deals? Is there something else we could have done?
4. I don't know if you guys are enabling multi-user accounts but I'd gladly pay 5x your current monthly cost (or more) if would allow my account to have 4 user logins where each user could modify/edit a deal. We have a salesperson, a quoter, a purchaser, and a processer. If each person could access the same dashboard and update their part of a deal that would be fantastic and would no doubt improve our work flow.
5. I'd pay even more if I could add checkbox/lists to each piece of the status bar. So "Pitch" would have a checkbox for "emailed quote" and "2 day follow up" and 4 day follow up"...whereas Won might have a checkbox for "received PO" and "created invoice" and stuff like that. I realize that is sort of moving away from the simplicity that the app delivers on right now, but once again it is something I would pay a lot more $$ for. Aside from improving our current work, having checklists would help standardize our processes to make it easier to train new people.
My team of four is CONSTANTLY in the dark about where everyone else is on a certain project. Task lists and project managers don't work because they are either complicated to use or don't have a linear flow like your tool has.
Yes, a lot of these things can be addressed through other CRM systems and Quickbooks, but the opportunity I see here is for dead simple deal tracking and data extraction. Highrise, Salesforce, etc. are good tools in their own way, but a STRICT focus on pipeline, tracking, and highly/quickly customizable reporting would be great.
I realize that I've broken the cardinal rule by suggesting you add MORE stuff when the goal is simplicity. But the things I've posted are the things that occurred to me right away when I signed up, started using it, and started saying "would I pay for this? How much would I pay? And if it had x, y, and z, how much more would I pay?"
- andrewdumont 15y agoThanks for the feedback, super helpful -- it's exactly the reason why we wanted to roll out in a private beta. The short of it is that we're sacrificing a lot of this to save simplicity right off the bat. Frankly, it's the main competitive advantage to all of the many other tools out there, we believe. That said, there are a few of your requests that we're actively working on. In particular, points 2 (add/edit progress bar), 2 (we're working on file attachements now), and 3. Stuff like multi-user accounts and deal checkboxes are unlikely. We are looking to add reminders, however. Again, thanks for the awesome feedback.