Customer Profiles: Lisa Wood of Sprout New Media
Designer Lisa Wood of Sprout New Media
Organization Profile: Organization Profile: Founded in 2008 by Lisa Wood, Sprout New Media offers businesses personalized design solutions and solid website development. Providing the tools to help businesses grow, Wood assists those starting out, starting over, or who just need to refresh things. Her mission when creating Sprout New Media was to help creative people have a web presence that reflects their unique personality and vision, and allows them to compete in the online arena.
Summary: An entrepreneur running a solo operation, Wood understands the need for tools and solutions that allow her to conduct her business both effectively and efficiently. Relying on multiple applications designed to service the small business market, she runs her company in an automated and well-organized manner. Using the solutions to operate numerous aspects of her business including customer management, invoicing, and email marketing, Wood is able to better focus her time on closing more deals and running a successful "one-stop shop" web design business.
Website: Sprout New Media
Batchbook Enables Sole Proprietorship Web Design Business to Strive within the Small Business Market and Help Clients Do the Same
Entrepreneur and small business owner Lisa Wood founded Sprout New Media in 2008 and has been running the business as a solo operation ever since. Today, her business helps other small businesses and fellow entrepreneurs with web marketing, social media and coaching, and consulting services. A self-proclaimed "one-stop shop", Wood specializes in creating beautiful, easy-to-navigate websites and blogs that are search engine friendly and future-proof. She offers her clients personalized design solutions and solid website development that reflect their unique personality and vision, and allows them to compete in the ever-growing online arena.
As business began to grow, Wood began experiencing difficulty keeping up with the ongoing conversations she was having with clients and other professional associates. She also had trouble finding and maintaining a customer management system that met her particular business' needs. After several failed attempts using other solutions, Wood learned of BatchBlue's web-based social CRM software for small businesses, Batchbook, and decided to give it a go. She scheduled an onboarding session with one of BatchBlue's specialists and quickly began seeing the pieces of what she was missing in other systems fall into place.
Immediately upon using Batchbook, Wood noticed how comfortable she was incorporating it into her workflow.
"I use my Batchbook account regularly to keep track of my conversations. With a quick search through my emails, I can locate my top priority items and forward them directly into Batchbook. This allows me to see all of my conversations in one location, helps me to remember key action items and keep track of new business leads and prospects. Now, I can manage my contacts and track communications more resourcefully," said Wood.
One of the features that Wood likes best about Batchbook is its ability to integrate with many of the solutions she uses, such as Facebook and Twitter. Using the social media integrations, she conducts searches on her clients across various social network platforms. This allows her to follow her client's conversations for a more personalized understanding of what they are talking about and discover what others are saying of her client's.
"Having the ability to check-in on the chatter taking place on my client's social media platforms from within the Batchbook dashboard allows me to stay focused on my client's projects. This is a big time-saver for me and enables me to better produce the kind of end results to meet their expectations."
Wood also relies on Batchbook's integrations with other small business services she uses including FreshBooks, an online invoicing software, MailChimp, an email marketing service, and Gmail. These integrations allow her to view client billing history, sync contact lists with outgoing e-newsletters, and better manage contacts within her email network. In addition, Batchbook's SuperTag feature assists Wood in categorizing information that is beneficial to her business. These include whether someone is a new contact or business prospect, whether or not contracts were received for that person and when they were filed.
"It helps me to close additional deals and sales because I am now more attentive to my follow up. Since using Batchbook, no information has fallen through the cracks and all of my projects are on schedule as much as possible," said Wood.
Wood finds that since incorporating Batchbook into her business she is more attentive to her accounts and has no more messy, hand-written notes scattered about her desk. She is also frequently finding new ways to incorporate the CRM solution into her workflow. To Wood, the greatest benefit to the solution is having all the information needed to run her business in one central location. As a web-based software, she can also easily use Batchbook to access her client's information from anywhere which saves her time and mental energy by eliminating the fear of being without project information when on the go.
"What sets Batchbook apart from others is that they truly listen to their customers, which for a small business owner myself, is essential," said Wood. "A customer requests something, be that a recommendation on a new integration or feedback on how certain features can work better, and BatchBlue sees to it that it is done. The solution is very well put together and thought out. Its integrations are excellent for any business owner, and it is constantly evolving into something better, improving on an already great product. The company's customer service is unmatched. Users get real people and real responses!"
