CLIP's Tips

If this has ever happened to you, lifehacker.com has An Exhaustive Guide to Saving Your Smartphone’s Battery.

This would also be something to share with any of your crews who are using CLIP2GO to extend the battery life of their PDA’s or Smart Phones.

Here are the first two tips:

Keep it cool and out of pocket: If you’re outside, don’t leave your phone facing the direct sunlight. If you can pull it off without looking like a hyper-aggressive real estate agent, belt-clip your phone, or generally keep it out of your pocket and away from close quarters with your body heat.

Switch off 3G when it’s unnecessary: It’s faster than EDGE or GRPS and can deliver both voice and data in a continuous stream to your phone. It also uses up quite a bit more power. When you’ve got good coverage and plan to mostly talk, or just get occasional email updates, you don’t need such wide wireless pipes. Switch to EDGE/2G usage in your settings, preferably with a widget or shortcut.*

Check out the whole article.

*If you don’t know how to do this, check out your phone manual.

Photo credit: bossco

CLIP Lawn Care scenario last month:

Customer Email:

“I see that you charged me for Aeration and Overseeding this month.  I never authorized that.”

Our response:

“Dear Mr. X,

I am sorry for any confusion and I hope to clear this up for you.  According to our records you signed a contract for aeration and overseeding in April.  I have attached the scanned copy from our records.  Please let us know if you have any further questions.”

His response:  A check.

In my last post about EchoSign, I suggested that you attach signed estimates to the customer record in CLIP.  The above scenario is one of many examples in which having your customer documents stored in CLIP can be helpful.  In this post I will demonstrate how to attach this or any type of document to a customer record.

The benefit of storing documents in the customer record is that you will always have customer documents linked to their accounts for easy reference in the future—much easier than trying to find a contract from last year amidst your computer or paper folders.

This is a great way to store:

• Spreadsheets
• Quotes/Proposals
• Excel
• Letters from Customers
• Signed Estimates/Contracts
• Pictures (see below for tip on storing pictures)

The process:

1.  From the main customer screen click the “Correspondence” tab.

2.  Click the “Office” Tab.

3.  There are two options for adding a document:

• Add File/Scan – Create a new Excel or Word document to attach or use your scanner to add a scanned copy of any document.
• Add Existing File – Attach a document already on your computer or network.  

To attach a document with either option, simply click the button and follow the steps indicated on the screen.

After attaching documents, you can access them from the “Office” tab.

Tip on storing pictures: If you have a lot of pictures to store for a single customer, I recommend creating a Word document titled “John Doe Pictures.”  Paste all of your pictures for the customer into this Word document.  Attach it to the customer record in CLIP.  This will prevent you from having hundreds of files listed in the “Office” section and allow you to add pictures to this document as you collect them.

How do you use this feature?  Let me know in the comments.

Photo credit: schnaars

1.  When forwarding an email conversation to someone who has not been in on the conversation, include a short summary of what has been said and explain clearly why you are sending the email.

2.  When asking questions, do not hide them in your paragraphs.  Ask your question at the beginning of your paragraph.  Or even better, use bullets or numbers to list out your questions.  This makes it much easier for the reader to answer all of your questions.

3.  When asked a question, give a thorough answer so as to preempt further questions.  As emailreplies.com explains:

Imagine for instance that a customer sends you an email asking which credit cards you accept. Instead of just listing the credit card types, you can guess that their next question will be about how they can order, so you also include some order information and a URL to your order page. Customers will definitely appreciate this.

4.  Be as concise as possible.  Don’t just fire off a long email because it is easy to do so.  Take a minute to trim out the unnecessary for the sake of your recipients.

5.  Be descriptive in the subject line.  i.e “Questions Re: the Landscaping Proposal for Mr. Smith” instead of just “Questions”.

6.  Make use of the BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) feature when emailing groups unless it is important that the recipients see the other recipients. Do this to protect the privacy of everyone’s email addresses.

8.  DON’T TYPE IN ALL CAPS.

9.  Don’t forward cute pictures of kittens to everyone in your address book.

Photo credit: clevergrrl

Looking for more ways to “bring home the bacon?” Here are some more ideas for how to apply the 80/20 principle in your business:

• After finding your top 20% most profitable customers, visit their properties and suggest any improvements you see.  You are likely to get a high return on investment.
  • Example: I joined a mowing crew for a day last week.  While on the job, I noticed three customers with various things that could be improved on their properties (i.e. apply fertilizer and weed control, trim bushes, etc.).  I spent 10 minutes calling them and have one new job lined up already.
• Think about what 20% of your job produces 80% of your unhappiness at work.   Brainstorm for 15 minutes about how you could automate, eliminate, delegate, or outsource these responsibilities.
  • Example: Although I can do it, I realized that doing equipment repairs in the Spring myself is a real drag on my momentum.  I have decided to outsource this to a mechanic for at least the months of April-May.  I would rather spend the time selling or training.
• For the next two days, keep a log of what you do.  Update this log every hour with what you accomplished during the previous hour.  After the two days, pick out 3 activities that were most effective toward reaching your goals (greater customer satisfaction, working less hours, more sales, etc.).  Write down what these activities are and increase the time you spend on them.  Why waste your time on the least effective things?
  • Example: I found that by tracking my actions for the last two days that one of the most effective things I did was to mind-map (more on this to come) about this blog to generate new ideas.  Within thirty minutes, I generated dozens of ideas which will help achieve my goal of helping you, the readers.

  Do you have any ideas about how to apply the 80/20 rule?  Please share by clicking on the comments icon on the top right hand side of this post.

Happy dog picture by: waimeastyle

This year, one of my favorite and most frequently used productivity services is reQall. It became a perfect solution to a common scenario for me:

Does this scenario ever happen to you?  You are driving down the road, a great idea hits you but you are in the middle of traffic and can’t write anything down.  You arrive at your destination 10 minutes later and the thought has archived itself in the recesses of your mind.  What about when you get a call from a customer or coworker while you are on the road?  By the time you’ve reached your destination, do you still remember what it was they wanted you to do?  I know I don’t.  Well I’ve discovered a free service that will be of value to those who struggle with the same issue.

With reQall, you can record a voice memo on your phone, and within minutes that memo will appear transcribed into writing in your email inbox. ReQall’s simplicity is what makes it so effective. Here’s how to use it (once you have registered):

• Call the service from your phone.
• Say, “add,” and then say your message.
• The service will then transcribe your message and send the written message to your email.

Beyond this functionality it also has the ability to:

• Set up and remind you of appointments
• Create shopping lists
• Create to do lists
• And more…

Check it out:  www.reQall.com and sign up, it’s free.

reQall is a trademark of reQall Inc.

Over the weekend, I decided to post a link to one of my favorite blog posts.  Do you ever feel like you need a nap but know that you should be getting things done instead?  Try some of these tips for increasing your energy throughout the work day.

Here’s a sampling of the ideas posted on Leo Babauta’s site.  Click the link at the bottom for all 55.

1. Change your socks for refreshment.

It’s an amazing trick. Bring a change of socks to work, and change your socks midway through the day (say, after lunch). You’ll be amazed at how much fresher you’ll feel. This trick is especially handy on days with lots of walking — like during a hike or family outing to the amusement park.

8. Eat lots of berries.

Especially berries that are blue, red, or purple. The color comes from anthocyanins, a powerful antioxidant, that boosts energy. Any kind of berry will contain tons.

9. Wear brighter colors.

This trick is related to the mood you project to people, and the reciprocating mood they project towards you. If you wear dark, somber colors, you project a dark, somber attitude, and people will respond to you with a somber attitude. If you wear bright, happy colors, you’ll get that attitude projected towards you, which will boost your own mood and energy levels.

32. Choose protein over fat or carbs.

Foods with lean (low fat) protein help you feel fuller for longer. It also prevents blood sugar spikes, giving you more steady energy. Lean protein foods include fish and other seafood, lean pork, or chicken breasts (”white meat”).

(Personally, I have been trying #32 for 20 days now and my energy has skyrocketed.)

39. Purge low-value tasks from your todo list.

If you have a ridiculously long todo list that is impossible to get all the way through, you’ll feel tired just thinking about the todo list. If you want to actually cross off tasks from your todo list, you’ll need to throw out the crap tasks that you don’t want/need to deal with. Either delegate those tasks, move them into a second “nice but not critical” list, or just admit that they’re probably never going to get done and move them to the “maybe/someday” list. Shortening your todo list to just the most critical, must-do tasks will give you the “energy” to start knocking out those tasks.

Here’s all 55: http://zenhabits.net/2009/05/55-ways-to-get-more-energy/

Feel free to comment below if you have any other energy boosting ideas.

The Scenario

Your email:

Hi Mary,

Joe is driving me crazy.  I have talked to him multiple times about the complaints at the Omni Building but he hasn’t improved the service at all.  I am thinking about firing him next time he comes in.  Give me your thoughts.

Regards,
Jon

You hit send and as you press the button you notice that you addressed the email to Marty (Joe’s best friend) instead of Mary your office manager.  “Uh-Oh!”

Or what about this scenario?:

You send an email to a client with the words, “…is attached” and you hit send, forgetting to attach the file?

The Solution

We all make stupid mistakes in emails.  This year, I discovered a trick that has saved me from those scenarios many times: have your email program delay sending items until three minutes after you hit send.  Here are the steps to set it up in Outlook 2007 (Similar in different versions as well):

1.  Select Tools > Rules and Alerts

2.  Click New Rule.

3.  Select “Check Messages after Sending” then click Next.

4.  Click Next Again.

5.  A message box will pop up telling you that it will be applied to every message you send.  Click Yes.

6.  On the next screen, click the checkbox next to the last option (defer delivery by a number of minutes).

7.  In the bottom part of the window, click “a number of.”

8.  Enter 3 minutes then click ok.

9.  Click Next.

10.  Click Next again.

11.  Here you can title your rule something like “Don’t Send Stupid Emails” as it was put by The HowToGeek

12.  Click Finish.

Outlook will now wait three minutes after you click send to actually send it.  If you realize that you need to change something within those three minutes, just go to your outbox and change or delete the email.

Do you have any tips on how you prevent yourself from making stupid mistakes?  Feel free to share them in the comments.

Source:  How to Geek

A few tips I have found that our users appreciate.

Keyboard shortcuts:

Function	Key(s)
Insert Time and Date stamp into any text field	CTRL + D
Change any Date Field in CLIP to Today	T
Move date forward 1 day	+
Move date back 1 day	-
Select All Text	CTRL + A
Move to the next field in CLIP	TAB
Move to the previous field in CLIP	SHIFT + TAB

 

Have any other shortcuts that you like to use.  Please let us know with the “comment” button below.

Photo Credit: Andrew

Do you ever want to get a message out to your customers quickly but don’t have the office staff to get it done on the phone?  There is always email, but it is rare for a company to have email addresses for all of their customers (more on that to come).

Recently, during the spring monsoon weather, I wanted to update my customers on our delayed schedule due to the rain.  At the time, we did not have a receptionsit so I needed another option.  This is where DialMyCalls.com comes in.

DialMyCalls.com is an inexpensive service that will call any list of phone numbers and play a message that you have recorded when someone (or the voicemail) picks up.  It worked splendidly for us and took no longer than an hour to set up for the first time.  It cost us $13.00 to send the message to about 200 customers.  Although I had been worried about having unhappy customers from sending out a recorded voice message, we received nothing but positive feedback.

Here’s the basics of how it works

- Sign up online for a free account.

- Purchase credits based on how many calls you expect to make (Pricing here)

- Upload an excel sheet with the customer phone numbers (only minutes to create in CLIP using custom reports)

- Record a message using your computer or telephone.

- Choose whether to send the message now or wait until a specified time.

Dialmycalls Review by Lifehacker

www.DialMyCalls.com

Let me know in the comments below if you have any other time saving tips for getting messages to your customers.