Development

Development

“Partner” flag removed

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Not every contact you meet will be a potential customer. They could become a supplier or someone that can introduce you to other people.

For these people, I thought a flag that said partner would be the solution. However, this gives partners a contact status. And how can a Partner also be a “lead”?

Having used Candid CRM for a couple of days, I now realise that “Partner” is not right, and the solution is obvious. Creating contact types of “Introducer” and “Supplier” solves the problem and will work with all the other reports and charts I intend to create.

The partner flag also looked wrong on the contacts screen as a filter. You have “partners”, “non-partners” and “both”. This is messy and confusing for the user.

“Partner” flag has gone, I am now trying the new “Introducer” and “Supplier” contact types and will add them to the user setup process if they work for me. If they don’t work for you, then you can delete them.

Another contact type I am considering is “Past Customer”. We all have customers that we have not heard from, but these should be treated differently from potentially new customers.

Development

One-2-One! It’s the only action that matters.

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There are lots of rules to getting the best out of networking. Mike Stokes book Positive Networking should be every newbies guide. But for me, the number one, is to get a follow-up one2one. The chances are high that you are not going to sell anything in the meeting. Your best chance is to have a one2one shortly after the meeting. Mike is probably laughing at me now! It took me ages to get to get this. Why? Because I used to fix computers, people will always ring the person they remember when their laptop won’t start up or their data disappears. For bespoke software, I have to follow the rules!

But most CRM’s, including Candid CRM, do not have a feature to monitor one-2-ones. Somewhere that the user can state they have have had a one-2-one.

Candid CRM has a last contacted time, but you have to add a note that is a contact type such as email, phone, text etc.

What I want to do is to go to a meeting, add everyone to Candid CRM, preferably by scanning business cards, and then later, go through each contact and follow up. Once I have had a one-2one I want to mark the contact as having a “One-2-one” or “Not Now”.

“Not Now” may seem alien from what I have just said. But their will be people at a networking event that you don’t gel with, are not in your area, or could just be a member of the networking event team. Yes, you should email to say that it was good to meet and that you enjoyed the event. But, you won’t be having a one-2-one, not now anyway!

So, Candid CRM is going to have a one-2-one in the main menu, this will list all contacts that have not been marked as “One-2-One” or “Not Now”. The user will then be able to click a button that will ask for details, a note or reminder. “One-2-One” will ask for a date, but there is no reason for “Not Now” as the current date will be sufficient.

Using this information, I will be able to produce reports and/or charts of contacts that have, or due to have a one-2-one. These reports will make interesting reading when checked against sales and referrals, this alone should prove that one2one’s are worthwhile.

Development

This is why you have beta-testers!

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James MacArthur is always my first beta-tester. He is a web designer and owns The Web 4 Less in Clevedon. James has been a business partner but is also my friend. An honest friend that tells me how it is. That is what I need from a beta-tester.

He signed up, went to add his first contact and got the error shown. This is an “Unhandled Exception” error, which basically means, something has happened that I did not code for!

Am I upset, yes, not because James found it, but I did not find it first. I am pleased James found it, better him than a paying user.

So what happened and why did I miss this? When you build an app, you start with no data. You write the code to add data to the database. However, when a new user signs up, there is no data, and since creating the code, additional functionality, database fields and new logic has been added.

I missed this because I have a routine that clears out my user, deletes contacts, actions, note etc. What it did not delete was “contact types” (Lead, Customer, etc) because I did not want to set them up again. When James signed up, these contact types should have been automatically created, but a bug prevented this!

Releasing a new product is an event that happens one or two times a year. However, this is something I should know and should have tested!

James is now up and running, and the embarrassment I felt has diminished. I have added two more beta-testers today. Lets see what they report.

Development

Functional Coding Complete!

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A big day today, I finished all the coding that makes Candid CRM usable. This does not mean that Candid CRM is finished, it just means that I can use it as well as my beta-test team. The version I sent live today is the first version that does not have the pre-release warning. This means that the data that is entered by the users is safe, a big step!

Remaining development tasks generally revolve around the dashboard. Charts showing statistics regarding contacts, their status, and the products they are interested in. Other information such as last communication and last viewed date will also be used to encourage the user to keep making contact with their potential customers.

The only other, rather urgent, development task, is the background job that will send emails to users telling them what actions they have for the day as well as birthdays and a list of “neglected” contacts, maybe some some states to help motivate the users, such as actions completed in the last year/month etc. The background job already exists, it handles password resets, welcomes new users and monitors database usage (we don’t want to run out of space!).

There are still a lot of non-coding jobs to do. Setting up Stripe to accept payments, complete with voucher codes to help promote the app.

There is still the privacy policy, terms of service, and the website to update. AI will be assisting here. I have templates that I have used in the past, but letting AI read and update the documents makes sure I am protected. Plus, cheaper than solicitors in this early stage.

My first beta-tester is my 29 year old son. He is starting a security company installing alarms and CCTV later in the year. Let’s see if he can sign up and create his first contact!

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