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One CRM that is growing in popularity across the balloon industry is 17hats, and I’ve had the pleasure of setting up dozens of systems for balloon business owners all around the United States. Whether you’re here to learn more about the platform before purchasing, or to learn more about how to optimize your current subscription, I’m so happy to share with you what I think are 10 of the best features of 17hats for balloon businesses: Here's a preview of what we'll cover: #1: 3-in-1 quote, contract & invoice #2: Quote options #3: Workflow from a product #4: Workflow from a drop-down #5: To-do lists #6: Custom fields #7: Zapier integration #8: If/then logic in questionnaires #9: Online scheduling availability #10 Automatically move a project to another calendar #1 Send a quote, contract & invoice together Hands down, my favorite feature. It streamlines things in your process so much! The 3-in-1 documents let your customers approve a quote (more on those later), sign a contract and pay an invoice all from one email. It can all happen in a matter of seconds, rather than days. And it doesn’t always have to include all three documents, either. However, any combination of documents does need to start with a quote, meaning you can send: all three documents a quote + contract a quote + invoice Access this by starting a new quote template and connecting (or creating) the corresponding contract template. Whatever they select in the quote will automatically get filled in the invoice! #2 Quote options You can create up to three different sections within your quotes: Using the standard quote items section, quote out exactly what your customers asked for Using the “choose one” section, let them choose from different options (such as free pickup or delivery) Using the “choose any” section, recommend and upsell some additional options that pair well with their standard items. They may choose some or none of what you include here. Ideas include: Vinyl personalization Greenery weaved throughout their balloon garland Takedown / striking services You can build your quote using any combination of these sections, or with only one type of section. And as we’ve already seen, if you send the quote along with an invoice, anything they select from these choices will transfer into their invoice! Rather listen? I talk about several of these features as a guest on The Bright Balloon Podcast! #3 Start a workflow from a certain product or service Now that we’ve seen how you can build your quotes in creative ways, let’s talk about another thing that can happen from a well-built quote… You also have the option of automatically starting a workflow for a particular item when the invoice is paid. This is especially helpful if you have products or services with special fulfillment processes. Let’s think back to the greenery weaved through balloon garlands… if your customer selects that in the “choose any” section and pays their invoice, you could have a workflow start that reminds you to fulfill this item. For example, this workflow might include two to-do items: Place greenery order for pickup one day before the base date Pick up greenery one day before the base date #4 Start a workflow from a drop-down list Similar to starting a workflow from a product or service, you can start a workflow specific to a drop-down selection your customers choose in your lead capture form. For example, maybe you have a different auto-reply email template and process for wedding clients than you do for birthday clients… or for repeat customers versus new customers. Make this workflow magic happen when you add questions to your lead capture form such as “what type of event are you celebrating” and “how did you hear about us” (being sure to create them as a drop-down selection). In that process, you’ll be able to direct certain answers to start your different workflows. #5 Stay on top of all your to-dos Certainly your balloon decor workflows have to-dos, etc. that lead you through your projects. But there are also plenty of other recurring to-dos for your balloon business, such as: Ordering inventory Taking inventory Paying quarterly taxes Checking on the wear and tear of your frames Updating your website for prices, new products, etc… the list goes on! To keep up with these tasks, you can create to-do lists, such as “inventory to-dos”, “financial to-dos” and “marketing to-dos”, for example. Add one-off items, or (more likely) recurring items here. #6 Custom fields Custom fields for your contacts or projects will become tokens that can really add a nice personal touch to your emails and documents. Now, it’s easy to get carried away with these custom fields (I’ve been guilty myself!), so I’d recommend taking these steps before creating any new custom fields: Know the default fields that already exist Ask yourself whether this custom field will add really useful personalization Ask yourself whether this custom field will save you any copy/pasting throughout your process A few great custom fields for balloon businesses are: Setup time (a great token for email reminders/confirmations & in your quote) Colors/theme (in the description of your various decor products) Personalization (if you have this add-on, use this token in the line item description for your quote) Custom project fields will also populate nicely along the right side of your screen while viewing your project. To get started with custom fields, head to Account Settings > Custom Fields (under Account Templates). #7 Connecting to Zapier Zapier is another awesome tool for streamlining your business. It connects many common business platforms together with automation. Its integration with 17hats will copy new contacts to and from other sources automatically. Helpful uses include: Sending new 17hats contacts to a Google Sheet Sending new 17hats contacts to your email service provider Creating new 17hats contacts based on entries from another web form you have This will mean you no longer have to manually copy and paste your new contacts back and forth across all your tech! #8 Questionnaire options & if/then logic Questionnaires have slowly become my favorite type of document within 17hats! They’re similar to lead capture forms in the way they collect information from your customers (and map that info to your tokens), but they offer even more capability. Questionnaires can also allow for file uploads, inputting related contacts, displaying images and asking follow-up questions depending on the answers you get in previous questions. Good uses for those features would be things like: asking your customers for inspiration pictures / pictures of their space if they indicated that their delivery address is different than their billing address, have follow-up questions for that additional address #9 Multiple online scheduling availabilities Having different sets of availability in your online scheduling setup is nice for things like Grab & Go Garlands and decor consultation phone calls. This can really help you organize and plan your days. Say, for example, you only offer your Grab & Go Garland pickups on Thursday and Friday afternoons. That would be a separate availability schedule from your decor consultation availability which might be from 9am-11am every weekday (for example). Then there are many other options regarding the timing and approval process for these online bookings, too. #10 Automatically move a project to another calendar If you appreciate a color-coded calendar as much as me, this one is great! It will allow you to know at a glance what your project schedule is like on any given day. It starts by sending new contacts to your “inquired clients” calendar (or some other name like “pending” or “potential”). This is done in the settings of your lead capture form or online scheduling. Then, as you can see how in the image above, this workflow prompts me to send a quote, and once it's paid, an email is automatically sent… and after both of those things are done, clients automatically move to my "booked clients" calendar. (This is actually a sneak peek inside my course, 17hats for Balloon Businesses!) Now, when someone else asks for my availability on that same day I will quickly know that I’m already booked and will need to find another time to work with the new customer. Final notes: The availability of these features will depend on your subscription level. But I whole-heartedly recommend their premier package if you’re serious about streamlining your balloon business with 17hats. Two major reasons are: way more workflow capabilities being able to take payments through online scheduling Wanna learn more? Surprise! I’ve actually got seven more of my favorite features of 17hats included in this free download. If you find that you’re ready to give the platform a try, feel free to grab my referral link to get up to 50% off your annual subscription!

There are so many settings and features in this powerful CRM that it’s easy to miss some here or there. In this article, I’ll share with you what I’d consider to be the three most underutilized features in 17hats. Even if you’ve got some workflows running smoothly, you may not be using the platform to its full potential. Use of these features can help you stay on track with all aspects of your business, and get some high-level insight into the different types of projects you’re completing with your customers. Plus, I’ll explain how all of these features work together to help you discover these insights and take action based on what you find. Here’s what we’ll cover: To-do lists Tags Recent client activity First off, the to-do lists I love these for keeping track of all the recurring tasks in my business. Things like paying bills, updating my website, checking in on my lead sources, managing my email list and more. And these tasks can be set up to repeat at various daily, weekly, monthly or yearly intervals, making it really easy for you to stay on top of all the things you need to do as a business owner. Also see: Steps to track lead sources They can also be organized and placed onto separate to-do lists. I currently have lists for marketing items, financial items and miscellaneous items. Other to-do list ideas could include inventory and personnel items, for example. The last thing to know about the to-do list section is that you can also view and manage any to-dos taking place in your workflows from here. They will automatically populate on the top, under “Due & Upcoming”. Next, let’s talk tags. Tags are such great ways to add little bits of information to your contacts and projects. I especially love adding tags to any drop-down questions I ask in my lead capture forms and questionnaires. Then, depending on what my customers select in that question, I can have a different tag applied. As an example, while I set up the 17hats accounts of my balloon business clients, one of the questions on the lead capture form is typically “what are you celebrating?” I prefer to make this a drop-down type of question because I can then have a project tag automatically applied that correlates to the type of event the customer selects. By doing this, my clients will now have the ability to search on their projects to find how many weddings, birthday parties, baby showers, etc. they are decorating for. If they find they are doing a lot of decor for any particular type of event, I always like to encourage they express that in their marketing so that prospective customers will know that my clients are proficient in their customers’ needs for that type of event. Tags can also be applied in the settings of your lead capture forms, your online scheduling and in your workflows. Tags to use in these areas might include “inquiry” and “booked” versions of the type of project that’s running. Thinking back to the balloon businesses I work with, an example of this type of tag implementation would be a “balloon decor inquiry” tag being automatically applied through the lead capture form. Then, as the workflow progresses and the lead becomes a customer by paying an invoice, a tag such as “booked balloon decor” could be automatically applied to the project (and contact). With these tagging systems in place, you can then utilize your to-do lists to get reminders to search upon these tags and get some insight as to how many “inquiry” versus “booked” jobs you’ve had, therefore finding a conversion rate. The third of the underutilized features in 17hats... ... to consider using is in the lower right of your Dashboard (under the weather widget). It’s a small section labeled “Recent Client Activity” and in the top right corner of that section, check out the “See All Activity” link to open up a ton of insight into the documents and bookings you have with your customers. See what’s been sent, paid, signed, etc. and filter by project or customer name, dates and even those tags you’ve started implementing. In the balloon business example, if tags that correlate to the type of event have been incorporated, now you would also be able to see all the invoices paid that have that tag attached. And then you’ll not only know how many baby showers (for example) you’ve done, but also how much income it meant to your business. Add this sorting task to a to-do list and complete it for each event type every so often to really know what types of events you should be sure to boast in your marketing. ____ >>>> Want more on 17hats? Grab a free download that talks about 17 of my favorite features!

The advantages of using 17hats quotes in your business Using 17hats to run your business with lead capture forms, online scheduling, quotes, contracts, invoices and more can really streamline things for both you and your customers. And one of the most beneficial pieces in this streamlining toolkit is 17hats quotes. But what’s the difference between sending a quote and an invoice when you’ve reached the billing part of the process with your customers? There are a number of settings and capabilities that the two documents share, but a few key differences that almost always make a quote the better option include: Having a “standard” quote section, a “choose one” section and a “choose any” section Allowing customers to be able to choose a quantity of an item in the “choose any” section Being able to send a quote along with other documents (contract and/or invoice) Let’s examine these differences between 17hats quotes and invoices. Why would you use the "choose one" section in a 17hats quote? This section is great for allowing your customer to choose between things like: Delivery or pickup Installation and breakdown or installation only Different product/service package levels Different designs of the same product they’ve requested As noted by the name of the section, customers will only be able to choose one of the items listed here, so you’ll want to be careful that you’re giving your customers enough options that fulfill the needs of their request. Why would you use the "choose any" section? The “choose any” section is perfect for listing some complimentary upsells that your customer might also like to consider adding to their purchase.They can then choose any of those upsell items or choose none before accepting the quote. Adding “choose any” items can also eliminate some of the back and forth emails in order to get the invoice just right. You can just give your customer some final choices about what you offer on the quote when they’re already in payment mode. Another unique thing about this “chose any” section is that it’s the only place that can allow your customer to also select the number of units they’d like of any particular item. A great example of this type of item for decor businesses might be centerpieces, because they’re usually small enough and easy enough to put together for their order, even if you weren’t sure your customer would request them. And no, you are not required to add items to all of these sections - only one! But what happens if you just don’t have a need for your customers to be able to choose anything on your quotes? Should you just send an invoice instead? I’d still opt for no, because (as we’ll see in the next point), starting with a quote will also allow you to send other documents along with. And even if there are no choices to be made on the quote, your customer can still have the chance to accept the quote and confirm their interest in doing business with you. Need a step-by-step walkthrough of how to use all of your 17hats features? Grab this checklist. What if you don't use contracts in your business? Well, I’m not a legal expert and am definitely not giving any legal advice here, but I certainly think you should take the time to get yourself set up with a contract that protects you and your business. Even if you don’t go as far as a contract written up by a lawyer, you might even consider starting with a checklist of notes that you want your customer to be aware of and agree to. Whatever type of agreement language you come up with, you can include it between your quote and your invoice for your customer to complete with just a few clicks. And as a last resort, you are able to skip the contract / agreement entirely and still benefit from the features of a quote by including only the invoice along with the quote. In any case, whatever your customer selects on their quote will transfer onto their invoice and you can benefit from having both of those documents taken care of through one email. ____ So what do you think? Did this spark some ideas for what you could include in the options of your quotes? I hope so! And I’d love to help you use these features to your advantage. Check out my #stopthescatter Setup Service and Account Review Calls to see how we can work together on utilizing quotes (and all the powerful features) in 17hats!