The Business.com Market Expert team is a community of entrepreneurial business decision-makers and leaders, just like you. They share their knowledge and expertise with our community in an effort to create a vast pool of information to be utilized in the running and growing of our businesses and careers.
This month, has asked the Market Experts to share their most utilized business tool, and why it is so essential to their everyday working life. Below are the platforms and apps that they can’t live without.
From increasing productivity to lead prospecting and nurturing, the below platforms are tried and true, and in some cases, totally free. Which ones are you utilizing?
LEADFUZE
Use the tool every single day as it helps us quickly find our ideal prospects and get their email and other social profile data. This way we can send them a cold email campaign, connect with them on social channels, and just get conversations started. From there, we hand over those leads to our sales team.
Previously scaled a seven-figure digital marketing agency using these tactics and LeadFuze was born from that strategy.
GMAIL WITH RAPPORTIVE & STREAK
A huge advocate of using Gmail with Rapportive (when it works) and Streak. Do a lot of community building so Rapportive is a must. Need to know who to talking so know how to personalize messages, since that’s a key component to my one on one community building.
Speaking about productivity, Streak is fantastic. It lets you see if someone’s read your email (and if so, where they were logged in from; for example, they checked it in Greece or Palo Alto) and gives you snippets (or canned responses). It also lets you snooze an email. Say you sent out an email to someone and they tell you to get back to them on December 1st. You can hide the email from your inbox and it will pop up on December 1st. Since I live in an inbox zero world, why should I have emails in my inbox that are not actionable today? Streak is also a CRM and it’s a pretty good one for companies utilizing Google Apps!
GOOGLE DOCS
Can’t imagine operating online without this tool. Use Google spreadsheet and Google Docs to streamline my content creation process. From brainstorming ideas, to having content published on different platforms and formats, it all happens on Google Drive for me and my team.
Google Docs is most utilized business tool because it allows me to share documents with my clients regardless of their geographical location. As a resume writer, the best way to write about someone’s experience is by doing it with them. By using this tool, can share screen, therefore, client can view their resume, LinkedIn Profile, elevator speech, bio, cover letter or any other piece of written communication in real time as we work on it. The result is that the content is completely accurate, and it gives me room to discuss the skills and knowledge behind each accomplishment deeply.
An additional advantage is that all changes go automatically to the Google Cloud, so I don’t have to worry about saving the document, backing up the data, or sending emails back and forth with my clients. I only send one email with a link that leads to the shared document, and we can both make changes to the document on the cloud on each of our ends.
This tool requires zero previous technical knowledge and my clients don’t even need to have a Gmail address to access it. Thanks to this Google Docs, can run my business from home and can serve people all over the world.
HOOTSUITE
Hootsuite is one of Saper Law’s most utilized business tools. The convenience and ease of publishing content across all of our social media networks through Hootsuite saves us time and allows us to reach more of our followers on a routine basis, thereby keeping us connected to our clients.
OROCRM
Most utilized business tool is OroCRM. We appreciate using OroCRM as an open-source CRM that is focused on B2B like ours, and it integrates with MailChimp and other software we use to increase efficiency.
BASECAMP
Don’t know how I would function without calendar reminders and Basecamp. When I know I need to follow up on anything (email, check-in with a team member, etc.) I immediately put a reminder on my calendar so I don’t forget. It is such life saver! Basecamp is also great for managing my team, and having conversation threads for each project in one place for convenience.
NUTCACHE
Nutcache is my most utilized tool as I manage all of my to-dos there, collaborate with my team/clients and also consider it to manage my invoices. This is a handy tool for me to have everything at one place and stay organized.
VENNGAGE
Every single day most of the day use Venngage. Although it’s an infographic design tool, use it for a lot more than creating infographics. Use it to create charts, pictograms, blog headers and social media image posts. As a digital marketer need to make sure that am engaging my users and readers with great content on a daily basis!”
Resources: Expertonline360.com
