Manage Your CRM with a Data Entry Virtual Assistant
When you see how many hours you free up each week by outsourcing your CRM management, you’ll wonder how you managed without a VA before.
How to delegate time-consuming CRM task management
Most salespeople spend 70% of their week on non-selling tasks –– that’s 28 hours in a 40-hour work week! You’re likely spending too much time manually entering customer data, researching prospects, and other admin tasks.
Just think how many more deals you could close and leads you could prospect with 28 extra hours each week!
If you don’t have an assistant or your in-house admin support is too busy working on other tasks, consider hiring a virtual assistant through a managed service.
Here’s how to delegate CRM management to a trained virtual assistant:
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Give them a document that explains your CRM setup.
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Provide them with CRM clean-up rules.
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Show them how you add and edit contacts.
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Have your assistant add or edit 50 contacts and check their accuracy.
A managed virtual assistant service like Prialto will give you an Engagement Manager who helps create your CRM management system and trains your assistant to use it. Plus, they’ll help you offload additional admin tasks like calendar management, inbox management, and data entry.
Your virtual assistant can add tasks or reminders to your CRM based on email communication between you and your clients.
Here’s how this would look in real life:
- You email a client saying, “I will follow up with you next week,” and you bcc your PA. The PA then knows to add a task for you in the CRM to follow up on a specific day next week.
- Each week, your VA can nudge or remind you about any overdue or upcoming tasks and then reschedule them if needed.
How to maintain a clean CRM system
Keeping your CRM organized and up to date is an essential task.
When you have access to accurate data, your reach-out and follow-up messages will be much more relevant.
But, maintaining a clean and accurate CRM is just another to-do list item and a drain on your productivity.
Here’s how a VA can help you maintain a clean CRM:
- Go through each contact to check the information is up to date.
- Flag missing fields to update them.
- Remove or merge duplicate contacts.
To make the most of your data entry VA’s support, you need to set them up for success. This means sharing clear guidance around your CRM setup and management preferences.
If you choose to work with a managed virtual assistant through Prialto, an engagement manager will handle this VA training for you.
Start by setting clear CRM guidelines:
- Identify key fields you want to include in your CRM. This could include name, job title, company, industry, and contact details.
- Provide clear guidelines on how your CRM categories and labels work.
- Consider the main areas you want to clean up, whether that’s inaccuracies, duplication, or something else.
CRM clean-up is also a great place for a data entry virtual assistant to start. It gives the PA an overview of your contacts and how you use your CRM system. Once they get going, CRM cleaning can be an ongoing background project to use unused time.
How to streamline your CRM page layout
Even with a clean CRM, managing the overwhelming amount of data you need to enter into your CRM is tedious. There’s so much going on in most CRMs. It’s overwhelming and distracting to look at. Plus, it isn’t easy to find the customer information you need quickly.
Time means money, and you have other priorities.
Most businesses use standard page layouts with limited customization. You’re probably not using all of those fields, such as birthday, home phone, or address. There are also a whole host of CRM page features to improve your experience.
Here’s how a CRM VA can improve your CRM page layout:
- Remove irrelevant fields like birthday and home address.
- Turn off unused tabs like dashboards, files, and getting started.
- Use structured fields, including pick-lists like client status or industry.
- Add useful custom fields such as next contact date, referral source, and value.
How to outsource contact note collecting
When you’re on multiple daily calls, it’s easy for key details to get lost in the mix. Especially when you’re reliant on yourself to take notes, talk with your client, and upload notes to your CRM.
To take a few more tasks off your to-do list, let a trained VA handle note-taking from your calls. Here’s how to delegate note-taking to your virtual assistant:
- You share your call details with your VA.
- Your VA will join the call a few minutes early and take notes in the background.
- They will then upload notes to the contact in your CRM.
- Next, they’ll add any relevant tasks or reminders to your CRM.
How to delegate report updates
Monthly, quarterly, and yearly reports stack up. Before you know it, you’re spending more time reporting than selling.
Even if you have a complete reporting system and templates, updating all the figures can be a real-time suck.
Here’s how to let your VA update reports for you:
- Share clear instructions on how to pull a report.
- Provide templates that are simple to fill in.
- Share previous reports that require updating.
When your VA has updated their first report, go through and check that it matches the data in your CRM.
If you work with a Prialto-managed virtual assistant, an Engagement Manager will help you with this training.
