Contacts & CRM: Sorting Contacts

Groups

Pearl allows you to create Tags to make it easier to keep control of large number of contacts.
 
To view or edit the list of Tags, click Contacts - By Tag from the main menu. Tags can be assigned sub-tags, and contacts can be placed into more than one Tag. You may, for example, have four main Tags: Customers, Suppliers, Business Services, and Staff. You can subdivide your Tags as much as you like, but bear in mind that a lot of information is already held in the contact database elsewhere.
 
Whether a customer is retail price or trade price, for example, is stored as a searchable setting elsewhere in the database so Tags should not be used to differentiate between the two.
 
You can also set custom fields, which will allow you to display a list of contacts where the custom field is a certain value, regardless of the Tag. Generally if you select a main Tag anywhere in Pearl, the sub-tags will also be displayed - aside from within the email marketing system. 
 
A contact can be in multiple Tags. The contact is not duplicated, they are simply linked to more than one Tag. When in the contact edit screen, hold down Ctrl when choosing Tags to select more than one.
 
To move contacts between Tags, open the contact details screen for the contact and select one or more Tags in the "Tag" tab. You can update the Tag of multiple contacts at once from the CRM screen:
 
  1. Select the contact(s) required with the tickbox
  2. Choose to "add" or "move" the selected contacts to a Tag using the options on the left hand side of the screen
  3. Click the submit button

Statuses

In addition to the other ways of sorting your contacts, you may set a status. The statuses you have to choose from are editable; click Contacts - Setup - Contact statuses from the main menu to add more statuses. These could be used to categories customers in a single Tag into different stages within a sales flow. For example, the statuses could be set as:

  • Not yet contacted
  • Good potential
  • Unlikely
  • Closed

"Not contacted" reminders


Each status can be set a "remind days". Whenever you edit a contact, raise an invoice, or add a note, a contact is "touched". This updates a field which tells you who, how and when the contact was last spoken to. If a contact is on a status that has been set to 7 days, and the contact has not been touched in 7 days, a reminder apears at the top of the screen.

Reminders only appear for contacts that you own, or for contacts that have no owner. You can manually "touch" a list of contacts in bulk using the tickbox at the left hand side of the CRM contact search results screen.

Price lists

Pearl has a powerful price list structure, allowing you to set up as many price lists as you need. Perhaps you are a large retailer of electronic equipment selling to the end user online, as well as selling bulk orders to stores for separate, onward sale to the end user. The end user would be charged at retail price, whilst the stores would be charged at trade price. Note that this has nothing to do with the price at which you buy products, which is the cost price.

If a contact is set to trade price then when a sale order/quote is created for them, the trade prices will be used. If no trade price exists for a product, when creating an order this product will be hidden. When a user logs in to your website, all prices will be displayed using the correct price list.

Owner (contact manager)

Each of your contacts can be assigned to one of your members of staff. This is done either in the contact edit screen (for a single contact) or using the batch update tool in the CRM screen. If you are assigned as the manager for a contact then you can find all your contacts using the main menu "My contacts" link.