When I co-owned a direct-selling company I was responsible for “inside”–sourcing, receivables, payables, inventory, order processing. You get the drift: If it wasn’t sales, recruiting or design, it was mine. We used Quickbooks and, once I got the hang of if (and I did get some wrinkles because of it), I loved the program. That was five years ago–centuries in software time.
Earlier this week I got to sit down virtually with a senior product developer from Quickbooks to see what the newest version can do. I admit to being dazzled. Intuit has taken care of some of the issues that kept me up nights. For example, what a pain in the neck it was to change prices on 250 inventory items. The company has figured out a way for users to deposit checks virtually and have all the information show up in the appropriate places.
But I want to talk about somethings came late in the conversation . . . strategic thinking and marketing. As After 55 entrepreneurs, we usually don’t have a lot of staff or support AND we usually have extremely full lives in addition to our business. This leaves precious little time to step back and take a look at our business on a regular basis and make strategic decisions. Here are the two features that I think make the program amazing: Company Snapshot and Marketing Center. I’m going to tell you why I am impressed by these, and then I urge you to explore the site and see if they make equal sense to you.
Company Snapshot
On one very colorful page there are graphs to tell you the TRUTH about your business. Comparisons to previous months/years, cash flow or any of a number of completely customizable charts that are important to your business. With a mouse click you get a great-looking page that you can print or send. When I think of the hours I spent crafting a weekly report for Peggy . . .
Marketing Center
The thing we struggle with most is marketing and keeping track of customers. In this new edition there is an area called Marketing Center that takes all the angst out of maximizing customer relationships. Click the report that tells you which customers have ordered in a specific time period or by sales level and then select an e-mail template to say Thank You, We Miss You or to send a coupon, customize it and send it off. It even tracks the resulting sales from these e-mails. Omigosh! What difference would you see in your business if you could have just this feature alone?
Let’s be very clear here–I got to hear about this new edition because I write this blog. They walked me through the features and said they hoped I would write to you about it. I am telling you all this, not because of any obligation, but because I loved the program years ago and I am truly, truly impressed with what I saw. Will it work for you? Depends on the size of your business, but it is definitely worth your time to take a look.
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