Huge update to the follow-up builder (premium users) NOTE: Your account will be inaccessible between 7-8am Eastern time while we upgrade your account Here is a formal list of everything included in this update: Use as many follow-up steps as you want now! Name your follow-up steps whatever you’d like. Use text messaging as part of […]
Learn how to charge more
Lars and Curt have put together another webinar with some awesome ninja tricks on how to really create value when you present pricing. Be sure to signup to see the webinar, and don’t worry there are several dates to choose from! This month we look at the secrets behind charging more for your services and […]
Get your webmaster to work!
Friends who are ninjas A lot of ResponsiBidders ask us about how to get more traffic to their website. I am not what I would consider an expert on SEO or even website development, but I know enough to be dangerous and I have a lot of friends. One of those friends is Lars Kristensen who I […]
Fall Update
How it works:This update is a significant improvement to ResponsiBid’s “bid-in-person” flexibility. Essentially you can now modify any bid (Commercial or Residential) to allow for any factors that need to be bid in person. You can directly make commercial changes in the call screen or within the customer profile. Also the dashboard now has really meaningful graphs that you can customize to your own preferences to help you see at a glance how things are going.
Here is a formal list of everything included in this update:
1. Commercial overrides after a bid is complete (deluxe & premium users)
2. Commercial overrides from the call screen (deluxe & premium users)
3. Bid in person factor overrides (deluxe & premium users)
4. Improved adjustment area for individual bids— Fixed price overrides. (deluxe & premium users)
5. Smoothed user interface (all users)
6. Faster bid computation (New math engine) (all users)
7. Remove area minimums, house size minimums, and trip charges easily (deluxe & premium users)
8. Improved dashboard (deluxe & premium users):
-Annual graph to show bids/closed bids
– Lead chart to show most leads
– National average comparison for close rate and top 10 performing lead sources
– National average comparison for avg ticket price and top 10 performing lead sources
– Service comparison chart to view how they are performing
9. Mobile friendly dashboard and customer profile (all users)
10. Open certain fine print areas by default (all users)
11. Various stability improvements and functionality refinements (all users)
As you can imagine, we are really excited to roll this out to all users as our Fall release and you can find all of these awesome options in your account right now!Happy ResponsiBidding!
Quick Demo Videos
Learn how to use the new commercial override feature, both within the customer profile and the call screen. This will allow you total control over commercial bids so that you can put your best foot forward when preparing proposals for different commercial applications. Also, see how you can showcase the fine print or keep it out of the way as needed by default.
See how you can now override different elements of a bid that trigger a “Bid in person” response, and how you can fine tune any bid in a really slick and nice way using the package “adjustments” feature… now including a “fixed price” override. See how you can now take off the area or house size minimums, or even the trip charges as necessary.
See the new dashboard features and why you’ll love knowing more about your business than you ever knew before… right at a glance. Understand how your performance has been over the course of the year, and then stack your lead sources up against each other. Who is bringing in the most leads? Who is bringing in the easiest to close leads? Who is bringing in the most valuable leads? Which services are making you the most money? All of these things are now viewable at a glance right on your dashboard!
Canadian Email Marketing Compliance
Going in to law on July 1st 2014 for our Canadian friends is a new rule, that is simply put: “You must have explicit (not implied) permission from the recipient in order to send email marketing to anyone in Canada.”
Unlike the CAN-SPAM act that allows for an “opt-out” option for customers, this new law mandates an “opt-in” system to ensure that you are marketing to people who express they want it… So we will be enabling a new feature on July 1st that you can disable if you’d like, but would highly recommend using. Here’s a video of how it works:
Pricing on your website
Why should I share my pricing on my website? What if my competitors snoop on my website and see what I’m charging?
We’ve gotten that question quite a few times over the last several years, so I wanted to take a few minutes and share some thoughts on that topic.
1. No one can get a quote without giving you their information. Your competitors won’t be able to see your prices, unless they are willing to fill in the form and give you their name, address, phone number and email.
2. If someone gives dummy information, you can “blacklist them.” If you think someone is just messing with you, ResponsiBid has the capability to block that person or IP address from getting anymore quotes.
3. The proposals ResponsiBid generates don’t focus primarily on cost. They sell value. The proposals are really compelling (and totally customizable) so the bid that’s presented is value based (just like you’d give in person), and not cost-centric. So if you have a prospect who is looking to compare prices, the ResponsiBid proposal sells your value, keeping them from comparing you to your competition.
4. The proposals use the same techniques used by some of the worlds foremost authorities on selling. For example, they use: good, better, best pricing— price anchoring— and unique selling propositions to maximize your ability to close more sales and at higher prices. Basically, when you give the customer 3 options, there’s a higher chance they pick one of your options. Win, win, win.
5. Automated follow-up keeps you from becoming a commodity. The automated follow-up emails to your customers ensure that even if you get too busy to call everyone back, you are still looking like a superhero by never forgetting to send an email that you said you would. This keeps your value high, and keeps you from being price shopped as much.
Are you ready to stop being a commodity, and start selling your real value to your customers? Have you ever had a competitor call you and try to get pricing information from you? Once you start to see yourself as offering unique value to your customers, you’ll find that more and more, it doesn’t really matter what “the other guy” charges. Doesn’t that sound awesome?
May 2014 Update
I’m going to say it: This is the most important update to ResponsiBid to date.
We have been working long and hard to build the most flexible bidding interface possible for the administrator side of ResponsiBid. We finally did it!
How the “Call Screen” works: You can do anything you want when taking an incoming call… all from one screen: 1. Finding a past customer (you will now be able to import all of your customers) and autopoulating a quote. 2. Giving anonymous bids without all of the required fields. 3. Collect all of the info ahead of time for a “visit for bid” person (and follow up specially with them) 4. And of course give a traditional quote (even if it includes or is limited to custom items) right out of the gate.
I made you this video so that you could see how it works.
A few other things to note:
1. Proposals now include the property address.
2. You can now directly access customers into the call screen using an icon on the dashboard.
3. You can now access the customer profile, customer proposal link, and the edit labels screen directly from the internal proposal.
4. New contacts area allows imported customers to exist without existing bids, plus a comprehensive search feature.
5. New followup status for “Visit for Bid” customers.
6. New tabs on the dashboard to view anonymous bids and visit for bids.
7. All pages of bids now available on the dashboard.
8. Allow window cleaning quotes to flag “bid in person” if any storm windows are entered.
9. Notification email refinements.
10. Collect company name for commercial bids.
11. Mass update/delete contacts.
Various bug fixes and improvements.
Keep in mind that this new feature is available only in premium and deluxe accounts.
I can’t wait to hear how this helps your business grow! Happy ResponsiBidding!
Brand New Rules for Email Addresses in Automated Sending
Warning/Update: If you are breaking this new rule, your emails to your customers are landing in their spam folders (or not being delivered at all), due to the adoption of a new technical specification by some email operators like Yahoo! that is going into place immediately. This effects anyone using an email service (ResponsiBid, Mail Chimp, Constant Contact, etc.)
The brand new problem: If you are using an email for your automated emailing that is from your Internet Service Provider (i.e. an email that ends in cox.net, cable one.com, att.com, comcast.net, verizon.net, etc…) OR a free email service (i.e. yahoo.com, gmail.com, hotmail.com, outlook.com, etc…) your automated emails will start going directly to spam folders or in some cases not delivered at all. For example, if your emails through ResponsiBid or Mail Chimp are sent from “5starwindowcare@yahoo.com” they WILL not end up being delivered.
The solution: Always send your automated emails from a domain that you own. (For example “curt@mycompany.com” rather than “mycompany@gmail.com”) If you own a domain, make sure to setup your email accounts and start using them. Not only is that an email best practice, but now you will actively be punished if you don’t in your e-blasts or automated email followups.
This is going into effect starting now, so PLEASE… for the love of milkshakes… make sure to make these changes as soon as you can.
Read more about this issue and trend
Click here if you want the super technical stuff
April 2014 Update
Wouldn’t it be cool if you could taylor any of the automated emails you want to match your customer’s situations? Now you can.
How it works: Simply click on any step of a running followup sequence or any sent email in your followup history… Then the magic begins!
I made you this video so that you could see how it works.
Keep in mind that this new feature is available only in premium accounts.
I can’t wait to hear how this helps your business grow! Happy ResponsiBidding!
March 2014 Update
Our users have been begging to get the sleekness and automation of ResponsiBid into other services, and this month premium ResponsiBid accounts can add in a bid to their proposals for whatever they want.
How it works: Essentially you can now modify any bid by adding in an existing module or you can select the new “custom item” module. This will allow you to add things to the proposal that ResponsiBid can’t give automated bids for. Think of it… you could add maid services, garbage can cleaning, or any other items you’d like to a proposal, including any upsell you’d like.
I made you this video so that you could see how adding items to a proposal can now be done.
This video shows you how to add multiple users to your account.
Keep in mind that these new features are available only in premium accounts.
Here is a formal list of everything included in this update:
1. The new add service button found in the bids on file section of a customer profile (premium users)
2. The new custom service module found when adding a service to a proposal (premium users)
3. Increased time zone robustness (all users)
4. Increased “call out” on proposals to ask prospects to select the package they’d like. (all users– editable by deluxe and premium users)
5. Added the left and center alignment options in the email editor within the followup builder (premium users)
6. You can now add multiple users and sub users (premium users)
7. Various new permissions added for sub users (premium users)
8. Various user interface improvements in the lightbox (premium users)
9. Various stability improvements and functionality refinements (all users)
As you can imagine, we are really excited to roll this out to all users as our March release (we were so excited we couldn’t wait for March to come) and you can find all of these releases in your account right now!Happy ResponsiBidding!