About Timo Rein

Co-Founder and CEO of Pipedrive

Sorry for the downtime this past week!

During the past 7 days Pipedrive has been inaccessible for a set of our users on multiple occasions and almost all users experienced the app as slow and unresponsive at times.

We understand the frustration this has caused, and we are very sorry for this!

Before I go into more detail I’d like to point out this is very unlikely to happen again. We’ve learned a lot about the weaknesses of our (now previous) setup, we’ve fixed the issues and put in place additional reliability measures.

Let me explain the reasons behind the outages in more detail. This may be too technical for some, but I’d like to openly share what went wrong and the fixes we’ve put in place.

Our first recent incident took place on January 17th at 6 PM GMT (10 AM Pacific Time). It was caused by an overload of one of our logging facilities, which in turn brought down our application servers one by one. This was caused by a design flaw in our architecture. We fixed this immediately but it took a while before all users could access the service as normal.

During the next following days, two things happened without any connection to the previous outage. First, one of our database servers experienced a physical malfunction. Second, another database server suffered from a storage facility overload. No data was lost in the process as we have multiple sets of backups — but again, the service was unavailable for a set of customers for approximately 30 minutes.

Yesterday around 10 PM GMT (2 PM PT) we discovered a bottleneck in our message broker cluster which caused all the application servers to queue up on accessing the message brokers. Thus no application servers were ready to do what they should have – serve requests. We immediately updated the configuration of the message broker cluster, to prevent this error from happening again.

Finally, today at around 9:15 AM GMT (1:15 AM PT) one of our database servers suffered from a storage facility overload one more (and final) time.

We’ve fixed the immediate issues and in the coming weeks we’ll be migrating our entire database stack to next-generation platform which has proven to be more reliable against negative effects from third party services as well as hardware malfunctions. In fact, we have been building our next-generation database stack for some time already, and it is soon reaching production-ready quality.

Onwards, then. And once again – sorry for these hiccups!

How you can move data between Mailchimp and Pipedrive

Quite a few of you have asked about integration with MailChimp, and we’ve just released a little something that makes it easier to send email campaigns to your Pipedrive contacts.

You can send a Mailchimp campaign to all your contacts but it’s more likely you’ll want to reach a smaller segment such as ‘people that have bought previously’ or ‘customers with custom field “interested in app development services” based in California’. You can use our filters feature to create a segment that’s relevant for the mailing (I’ve blogged about using filters here and here).

Once you’ve set the filters scroll to the bottom of the page and you’ll see a MailChimp button next to the exporting options. Enter your MailChimp API key (that you can get from Account > API Keys & Authorized Apps) in the window that pops open and you’ll see all existing email lists you can add your segment to. Pick the list you want to add the Pipedrive contacts to, and then handle setting the campaign up in MailChimp as usual.

Please note that currently there is no way to create a new email list from within Pipedrive, so if you want to reach a certain type of customers for the first time, you’ll need to create a new empty list in MailChimp first.

How to pull new email subscribers to Pipedrive

Another thing we are often asked is pulling MailChimp subscribers to Pipedrive as new leads. This is something you can do with the help of Zapier. Their platform lets you create connections between the different software you use, including Pipedrive and MailChimp. It’s free to use if the number of tasks needed is small, and subscriptions start at $15 per month.

Start by entering API keys of both services, and follow the steps to specify what fields to import from MailChimp, what are the corresponding fields in Pipedrive and what pipeline stage to add the new deals to. And voila! when someone subscribes to your email list, they’ll appear in Pipedrive automagically in just moments.

Please note that as of publishing post there’s a small issue with setting the value for deals imported via Zapier, which we are investigating.

Using email marketing alongside direct sales is really powerful, and I hope these connections make it easier to do it.

15 lessons from 2012 (and meet our team)

What a year 2012 has been! We’ve made Pipedrive better, added thousands of customers, raised a bit of money and, last but not least, grown from 7 people in January to 15 today. And we haven’t properly introduced the new team members to you. Instead of the usual headshot, accompanied by two paragraphs about pets and hobbies, let us do this in a bit more useful way. Each team member, new and “old” will share one tip, lesson or nugget of wisdom from 2012.

My own takeaway from 2012 relates to the title CEO. I was thinking, “What’s the most important thing a CEO must focus on?” First, I thought, “Executing!” But it shouldn’t be about this only, because you may be easily executing the wrong things. So, I’ve understood that my most important task is to make sure we (1) make good decisions as a team, and (2) really execute them. At the beginning of the year I started a simple text file to record our important decisions. I regularly open and update it to see whether the team is doing the things we’ve agreed to do, and follow up when necessary.

Here’s what the rest of the team learned (in the order of sending me their tips):

Ragnar Sass (partnerships and HR, co-founder):
I’ve been hiring throughout my career, but 2012 was slightly different. I started to spend 2-3 times more time with each hire. This made our recruiting process slower, but it has paid off. As the company grows it’s very important that people share values and act as one team, not just have a good skill-set.

Martin Kapp (front-end developer):
To me 2012 has meant going back to my developer roots. And going full circle has been useful: I’m now a better coder thanks to my previous role as an architect in a much bigger team.

 

Henri Kroosmann (front-end developer):
This year I’ve learned that you don’t need to have a big team to build something that matters. I joined Pipedrive from Skype, which had gotten to a size where there was a person to do every little thing. In a smaller team you get more done because information doesn’t get lost and you don’t need to spend lots of time on “co-ordination”.

Maxim Wright (customer support):
After my first year here I’ve understood the importance of being personal and personable in addition to being responsive and professional. Almost every question and piece of feedback we receive is unique and the best way to support our customers is to really “be in their shoes”.

Elar Nellis (back-end developer, employee #1):
Working in a bigger group of developers is much more educational/interesting than in group of 2 developers. There is so much to learn from each other and there are many good ideas flying around the office all the time. It’s really motivating to see the product evolve as planned.

Mihkel Pukk (back-end developer):
At times it’s been hard to choose the right path, but the worst thing that can happen is not to choose and leave things as they were. I’ve discovered that while finding the one right answer may be daunting, pointing out all the wrong ones is easy. And so when making important choices I pick one that feels the most wrong and take path opposite of that. That’s what got me into software development this year. It may not be THE right thing, but i’m sure it’s going to take me closer to where I want to be.

Ivan Suhhonenko (infrastructure developer):
Over the last couple of years I’ve come to understand that career-wise the most important thing is the team you’re working with. Result-oriented, highly qualified team is the key factor for any success and as a newcomer to Pipedrive I’m really glad to have found one here.

Andris Reinman (back-end developer):
In addition to joining the Pipedrive team, 2012 been has about experiencing the growth of my 1 year old son. It appears that raising a child is in many ways like working in a startup, you never know what is waiting for you behind the corner. You think that you already knew everything about the kid and then, before you even realise it, he is doing something totally new and unexpected. Might get a bit hurt in the process but by the end of the day, it is a wonderful and exciting experience.

Alex Tsus (customer support):
My takeaway from 2012 as a support rep has been to keep personal feelings out of my work. Even with some really difficult cases and customers (yes, these sometimes happen) it’s always best if I put personal feelings aside and just focus on helping the customer.

Angel Pärn (back-end developer):
This year I’ve enjoyed experiencing the power of mixing three things: a good idea, a great team and powerful tools. And what comes to the latter I’m increasingly assured that tools or technologies are not paramount, they can be picked and built as you go along.

Urmas Purde (customer experience, co-founder):
This year I’ve learned that if your to do list doesn’t fit on a post-it note, you’re trying to do too much.

 

 

Martin Henk (customer support, co-founder):
In 2012 I learned that I can take a lot more stress than I thought I could. This realization came with moving my entire family to the other side of the globe. I had thought my job in leading our support team was challenging enough. But when the stress of relocating a family, dealing with finding a place to live, buying a used car, getting insurance on everything, getting your kids into kindergarten, etc etc. was added on top, I was pleased to learn I did not die. Lesson: don’t be afraid to put yourself out of your comfort zone to move forward in life.

Andrus Purde (marketing):
This year we stared putting serious effort into content marketing. In the beginning nothing much happened, but after six months results started to show and today, 12 months in, inbound marketing is one of our top marketing channels. Do your keyword research well, get started as early as possible and be (reasonably) patient – and signups and sales will follow.

Martin Tajur (design & tech, co-founder):
This may a be a little technical but in my view the main takeaway from 2012 was the beginning of our shift towards distributed data storage. What this means is that you’ll receive all the relevant data as it is created/updated, not just when you refresh the page. This has required a lot of engineering from both our back-end as well as front-end teams, and there’s still lots to do. But it will open up some cool new possibilities, so stay tuned for new useful features sporting these capabilities in 2013.

 

We won’t be taking a collective break over the upcoming holidays, but in case we don’t see you before – Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Sync your Google calendar and contacts with Pipedrive


(drumroll) Let me proudly announce a two-way integration between Pipedrive and Google Apps. It’s now very easy to keep your calendar events and Pipedrive activities as well as Google contacts and contacts in Pipedrive in sync. You can also sign in to Pipedrive with your Google account.

Calendar Sync

If you link your Google Calendar with Pipedrive all entries in your Google Calendar will be displayed in Pipedrive activities, and vice versa. All changes you make in either software will be reflected in the other as well. (There’s even a workaround to extend this to Outlook, see below).

Let me walk you through how to turn the sync on. First, go to ‘Settings‘ and without navigating further, select ‘Google Calendar‘ tab. Click on ‘Connect your account with Google‘ link and follow the instructions.

Once you’ve connected you Google account, go back to ‘Google Calendar‘ tab and click on ‘Enable Google Calendar sync‘.

You’re then prompted to specify the calendar which you would like Pipedrive to be in sync with. For example, you may not want Pipedrive activities to appear in your general calendar, but in the calendar you’ve named as Sales. Hit ‘Save‘ after you’ve made the selection from the drop-down.

Now your Google Calendar sync is activated, and all activities you create in Pipedrive will be synced to Google Calendar, and all Google Calendar events will be synced to Pipedrive. Note that we don’t export current activities to Google Calendar automatically — you can upload undone Pipedrive activities to Google Calendar yourself by clicking the ‘Upload unsynced activities’ button.

If you would like to connect Pipedrive with Outlook calendar, then there’s a way to do this, too. It takes one Google account, and a Google  Outlook sync software download to make this work (here’s a place to read about it, and get the download). This way you can set up a data flow which looks like this: Pipedrive ⥂ Google Calendar ⥂ Outlook Calendar.

Contact Sync

Setting up the sync for contacts is very similar. Click on ‘Enable Google Contacts sync‘ and again, make sure to choose whether you want to sync Pipedrive contacts with all your Google contacts, or a specific group of contacts.

After you hit ‘Save‘, your Google Contact sync is activated.

Pipedrive will import Google contacts (all or a specific group) along with their default fields, and look for matches in Pipedrive contacts (we use e-mail addresses, person name and phone number to find identical contacts). Pipedrive contacts that were not found in Google contacts will be exported to Google contacts. From this point forward, all contacts you add to Pipedrive or Google will be in sync.

Sign in with Google account

And finally, you can now continue to use your Pipedrive account name and password for logging in, or sign in with Google instead.

If you’re using Google Apps, this integration should remove a bit of hassle from your day. As always, feedback and comments welcome.

Learn to manage your sales pipeline in 4 minutes [video]

Many of our customers say that the main reason why they’ve started to use Pipedrive was that our software helps to improve their sales processes.That it helps people understand the basics of sales pipeline management without having to read a book about it or taking a costly course.

Which is great, but we have a feeling that if we explained the principles of sales pipeline management better, our software would be even more useful. And by the same token, if more people knew about the power of sales pipeline management, more people would want to use tools like ours. So we’ve created our first ever piece of video advice which gives you the basics of sales pipeline management in 4 minutes. Feel free to pass it on to any colleagues or friends that need to sell more, but that could use a solid methodology like this.

We’ll make more videos about sales pipeline management soon, and we’d love to get your input. Please let me know in comments if you (or any of your team members) have any questions relating to sales and/or sales pipeline management. We’ve worked in sales for more than 15 years, and we can answer by replying to your comment or even shooting a whole video in reply.

Use pipeline metrics to become a better closer

As a deal maker, you probably know how well you close. In other words, you may know:

  • how long does it take to get a customer,
  • what percentage of the people you contact you close,
  • how large are the deals you close, etc.

I’ve seen that these kind of numbers make up a formula of success, predicting sales results, and shining a light on what is possible with improved effort and skills. NB! In case you’re starting out as a deal maker, you may want to read about the things you should monitor and improve in order to close more business.

Today we’re introducing Pipeline metrics in the Statistics section – a functionality that helps you see how good of a closer you currently are, and what you need to improve to become a better closer.

Let me walk you through what’s new. Go to ‘Statistics’, and click on the ‘Pipeline metrics’ tab.

There is a drop-down for selecting the pipeline that is displayed (in case you have created multiple pipelines). You can use built-in and custom time filters to see the metrics in regards to a desired period.

A header familiar from a pipeline view of deals represents your sales stages. Even though some of the numbers around it are easy to understand, I’ll break them down one by one:

  1. New deals‘ — the number of deals that were added to pipeline during the selected period. The more you fill the pipeline with fresh deals, the more chances you’ll have for closing more sales. Of course, one should look for a balanced effort of filling the pipeline, and working with deals already in it.
  2. Moves between stages‘ — this number displays all the moves from one stage to another during the selected period. It adds up both forward and backward moves, and gives some idea of the “hustle” during the period. If the number is close to zero, we can conclude that open deals have not progressed much further — the bigger the number, the stronger the momentum.
  3. Average age of deals‘ — this is the average age of all deals (open deals as well as closed deals) by the end of selected period. In other words, how long they’ve been in pipeline. If you can close deals faster (read: win AND lose faster), then you free up time for working with other deals, and bring in the commission faster as well :) .
  4. Deals left open‘ — the number of deals that are still open (if the selected period ends with today), or were still open when the selected period ended. This basically gives you an understanding of the potential of your pipeline in regards to future sales. For example, if the period selected is ‘This month’, then you can see how many open deals you still have in your pipeline (since the period ends today). If the number is too small, then it calls for filling the pipeline with fresh deals.

  1. Deals lost‘ — the number and value of deals you marked as lost during the selected period.
  2. Deals won‘ — the number and value of deals you marked as won during the selected period.
  3. The numbers below pie chart display the conversion percentages at which you won (or lost) deals during the selected period. Of course, the higher the winning conversion, the more of the open deals you are able to successfully close.

  1. Stage-to-stage conversions are drawn on the pipeline image to show what percentage of deals you were able to move from one stage to the next and not lose them. For example, if you moved 10 deals forward from one particular stage — 6 to ‘lost’, 3 to the next stage, and 1 to ‘won’ — then stage-to-stage conversion at this point is 40% (note that won deal “steps through” all remaining stages in the pipeline on its way to ‘won’ status). If you can improve these conversions, then your overall winning conversion will go up as well. Stage-to-stage conversions are extremely helpful for locating bottlenecks in the process, and literally tell you where and what you should be better at in order to close more business.

I do hope pipeline metrics either provide an expected monitoring functionality to Pipedrive, or mark the start of you becoming more aware of how well you close (in case you have not monitored your metrics before).

Stay tuned!

Big improvements coming – starting from navigation in the app

Earlier this year we started to take Pipedrive to the next level — in underlying technology, ease of use, new features, integrations, design. All in the name of serving you the best we can, and giving you a better tool to do your job. The first updates that meet the eye are to do with navigation in the app.

I’ll walk you through the areas that got updated.

Navigation

Overall, the biggest difference is that the new top menu looks slightly different, and that there is no more footer bar. Here’s the side-by-side comparison of the old and the new navigation (click on the picture to open a bigger one in a new window — I refer to the numbers on it in the following list):

  1. Pipeline‘ and ‘Deals‘ are now both accessible by clicking ‘Deals‘ on the new menu. A click on the ‘Deals’ menu item takes you to the pipeline view of your deals. There’s a switch to the left of ‘Add a deal’ green button below the top menu — you can use this to change between pipeline and list view of deals (see the picture below).

  1. Organizations‘ and ‘People‘ can both be found in ‘Contacts‘ (with a drop-down).
  2. Activities‘ now appear in the top menu — a click takes you to a dedicated page which gives you more vertical space to work with “to-do’s”. The number on the icon displays today’s date. Note that a familiar counter still works for you, showing the number of your overdue activities on a red badge.
  3. You can go to ‘Settings‘ by clicking on the user icon at the top right corner of the screen (find ’Settings’ in the drop-down).
In the same drop-down, you can
  1. Add users‘ (and then by selecting ‘Users’ on the left navigation panel, in case you’re an admin user yourself), and ‘Tell a friend‘ about Pipedrive.
  2. switch to another account, in case you are using multiple Pipedrive accounts (look for ‘Change company‘ in the drop-down).
  3. reach ‘Help and feedback‘ box to post a question, or report a bug. If you need assistance with any of these updates, just ask a question and we’ll help you get going.
There’s a white flag to the left of user icon — this is where
  1. Notifications‘ can be found. A blue counter shows you the number of unread notifications on people, deals, organizations, and users you follow.

Along with these navigation updates,

  • some familiar top menu icons got refreshed,
  • we added new icons for activities, and notifications,
  • ‘Search’ area moved towards the center of the screen, closer to other menu items, and
  • menu, search and notifications’ drop-downs got brushed up, too.

Activities page

Out of all these current updates, I would like to point out a separate page for activities — a lot of you have been asking for this, and we’re happy to deliver. Instead of appearing on a sliding footer bar, activities can now be viewed on the whole page, giving you more vertical space to work with them.

Other updates to follow

That’s it for now! Like I said, we are dedicated to building Pipedrive into the best possible tool for you to do your job, and to achieve this, we will introduce more substantial under-the-hood and visible updates in weeks and months to come.

Stay tuned.

We’ve released Pipedrive for iPhone

Can I use Pipedrive on my iPhone? has been the most frequently asked question for some time now. So let me proudly announce that version 1.0 of our iPhone app is now ready to download.

Get Pipedrive for iPhone

Pipedrive for iPhone is a companion to our web app – you can work with your customer data the second you log in via mobile.

Pipedrive mobile app version 1.0 brings the following to your phone:

  • Your pipeline(s), and all deals (to view, edit & filter)
  • Your contacts, i.e. people and organizations (to view & filter)
  • Your activities (to view & edit)
  • Search for people, organizations, and deals
  • Switch between different accounts (in case you have multiple accounts)

There are many things you can do now on the go, among these you can

  • use phone numbers and e-mail addresses in your Pipedrive database to place calls, send text messages and e-mails,
  • look up previous activities regarding deals, people or organizations, add new ones, and
  • add new deals on the go, or save changes to existing ones (move them forward in pipeline, mark as ‘Won’, etc.).

Let me give you a quick tour. I’ll break it down for you by 5 sections you can find on the main navigation bar at the lower bottom of the screen.

Pipeline

After you log in, pipeline is where the app takes you first. By default, you are taken to the first stage in you pipeline. By swiping right to left, you can see the 2nd stage, then 3rd, and so on.

By swiping to the leftmost screen in the pipeline, you reach pipeline settings which you can use to

  1. select another pipeline (in case you’ve created more than one in the web app), and
  2. select another user.

There’s also a button (3) to refresh your pipeline (it is automatically refreshed every time you log in) – you can refresh pipeline stages separately as well with a swipe down move.

In the pipeline, you can

  1. see the Summary for each deal (by tapping on it),
  2. see the activity timeline, and schedule new activities to deal (by tapping the activity icon at the right side of the dealbox – yellow triangle, or red, green or transparent arrow icon), and
  3. add a new deal (by tapping the ‘Plus’ button at the top right corner).

The activity icons stand for different statuses (pretty much identical to the ones in the web app):

  • Yellow triangle – no next activity is scheduled
  • Red arrow – activity is overdue
  • Green arrow – activity is today
  • Transparent arrow icon – activity is scheduled for future.

Once you enter deal Summary page (by tapping on the deal), you can see the

  1. related person & organization – with the relevant detail page just a tap away,
  2. owner of the deal,
  3. deal value,
  4. stage name (pipeline name in the brackets) – you can change the stage by tapping,
  5. deal age,
  6. mini pipeline showing the stages the deal has been in with respective durations,
  7. (as you scroll down, you see) status of the deal – you can change the status to won, lost, or delete the deal,
  8. details button – by tapping, you can see deal custom fields you’ve created in the web app,
  9. products button – you can see products attached to this deal, if you’ve enabled this feature in the web app settings, and if there is a product attached to this deal, and
  10. activities button – a tap takes you to the timeline of activites with this deal.

From the pipeline, you can add a new deal to pipeline by tapping on the ‘Plus’ button at the top right corner of the sreen. A window opens which lets you

  1. choose organization and person new deal is with,
  2. add deal value,
  3. add deal title,
  4. determine visibility settings for this particular deal,
  5. assign the deal to someone else in your team,
  6. select deal stage (default will be the stage name you were watching when you pressed the ‘Plus’ button).

Lists

This is the place where you can find all organizations, people and deals in you Pipedrive database (Products list will be visible in later versions).

By tapping on any of these lists, you are taken to the list view of existing organizations, people, and deals. This is also the place to add new organizations and persons. There’s a ‘Plus’ button (1) on the title bar for adding new items. Every organization, person, and deal has a detail page (2) that you can view here (to access phone numbers, e-mail, etc.). By tapping on phone numbers, or e-mail addresses, you can place calls, send SMS-s, or e-mails.

In addition, by tapping the the ‘Filter’ button (3) at the top right corner, you can switch on filters you’ve created in the web app.

Activities

To view all your activities, tap on the ‘Activities’ on the main navigation bar at the bottom. You see the activities categorized by overdue, today, and future dates.

To add a new activity, tap on the ‘Plus’ button at the top right. You’ll be asked to select the activity type, and then you can enter other data (associated deal, person and organization, date and time, add notes, etc.).

Search

Search helps you quickly find a deal, person, or organization from your Pipedrive database. This way you can access the detail page of these items, and take action.

Search is possibly the quickest way to find anyone‘s detail page in your database, make calls, and send SMS-s or e-mails, for example. Just tap on phone numbers, or e-mails, for these purposes.

Account

When you tap on ‘Account’ on the main navigation bar at the bottom of the screen, you can log out (1) from the app. For all Pipedrive customers using multiple accounts, this is also the place to switch between accounts (2).

There you go! This was the quick overview of version 1.0 of Pipedrive for iPhone. I do hope this helps you do more good things for your business while on the road! Email us or comment below if you have any questions or suggestions, or when you need help with the app.

Download Pipedrive for iPhone

P.S. We are working on bringing out the Android app in the coming months. Users of other platforms will have to wait a bit longer to use our mobile CRM. Also, the iPhone version works on iPad as well.

Google Maps now in Pipedrive

We’ve wanted this all along, and now it’s here – Google Maps integration with Pipedrive. From now on, you’ll be able to

  • save an entire address in a single field in Pipedrive,
  • display it on a built-in map,
  • look up nearby organizations, and
  • filter your data based on automatically generated meta info (City, State, etc.).

Google Maps in PipedriveWhat good does this integration do? First, you can enter addresses so much quicker in Pipedrive, with an auto-complete to help you in the process, too. Second, you can see the location of an address on a built-in map without leaving the application. Third, with a look-up of nearby organizations, Pipedrive will be able to help you with planning a day route to meetings, should you have many of them in one area.

Let me show you how it all works.

Creating a single field address

I start from saying that it will be possible to continue using your current custom fields for storing addresses – and just as easily, you can start using a single field address. I believe it’s worth noting that you can add single field address to people, or deals, too – it all depends on your preferences.

First, go to Settings > Customize fields. Let’s say you want a single field address for organizations. Click on the ‘Organizations‘ tab, and then click on ‘Add a field‘ button. (There’s an entire post on adding custom fields for more detailed explanation, so I’ll be brief here).

Next, select ‘Address‘ field, click, and name the field – let’s say you type “Address”, but you may want a different name depending on your purposes, and language preferences, of course. And you’re done!

Saving and displaying an address

Now go and open any organization detail page, and you can save its address. As you start entering a street name, options will appear (very much the same way we’ve gotten used to looking places up in Google Maps in a browser) – all you have to do is select the right one, and save it. Pipedrive allows you to save everything starting from suite and house numbers.

If you click on the saved address, a window will open which displays its location on the map. At the bottom left corner of the window there’s a ‘Show nearby organizations‘ button. Clicking this will show other organizations which are located in the area (default radius for ‘nearby’ in Pipedrive is everything within 2mi / 3.2km). This view can be useful for planning daily routes in case you’re going to visit multiple companies in the area.

Converting existing data to a new address field

As you may have noticed on the screenshot, the address now appeared on multiple fields created before to store it, AND on the newly created single address. Do you have to manually enter addresses of ALL organizations like this? Big no. We’ve created a converter that will take all the data you have on your separate address fields (street, city, state, postal code, etc.), and put it into a single field you’ve just added. This way, you can convert thousands of addressess in one go. I’ll walk you through it, there are only 2 steps.

First, go to Settings > Customize fields, and click on an ‘Organizations‘ tab. Notice the yellow area just below the fields – there’s a green ‘Convert your existing data to new address field‘ button. Click on this.

A window will open (Step 1) which displays two columns – on the left you’ll see the fields you’ve created, among these are also the ones you’ve used to to store addresses. On the right, you’ll find the components that make up the new single field address. All you have to do is drag the address fields you’ve used so far (on the left column), and drop them on respective fields on the right. Map them one by one.

After you’ve completed this step, click on the ‘Next‘ button. A window will open (Step 2) where you’ll be asked to choose a destination field. Let’s assume you want your old data appear on the newly created ‘Address‘ field, so select this, and click on the green ‘Ok, convert‘ button.

This will start the process of converting all your existing data on separate address fields to a single field address. Depending on the number of addresses you want to convert, it can be an instant, but it can also take considerably more time. We will notify you by e-mail once the conversion has been completed.

After you get a confirmation e-mail that your addresses have been converted, please do some random checks on your data. Once you see that addresses now appear on single fields, you are free to either keep the old separate fields (which does not make much sense ☺), or delete them (which is why the new field was created for, really). For deleting, please go back to Settings > Customize fields, click on the ‘Organizations’ tab, and tap the red X at the right end of the rows you want to delete. NB! If you’ve created filters based on addresses, make sure to read through the full post.

Creating new filters to replace old ones

I know some of you have created filters to create lists of organizations based on addresses (for example, all organizations with addresses in the state of California). In case you delete the old separate address fields, there’s a need to re-create filters you used so far as they don’t work anymore. Again, there’s a detailed post on how to create filters, and one on how to use cross-item filters.

To create address based filters for your companies, go to Organizations in the menu bar, and click on drop-down ‘All organizations, unfiltered‘ at the upper right corner of the screen – there’s a ‘Create a new filter set‘ option, select this.

Let’s say you want to filter out all companies with addresses in California. For this, after naming the filter, click on the plus button to open up a drop-down of all fields default and custom made for organizations. Click on ‘Address‘ (as this is the name of the new field you created).

Then you’ll be given a drop-down to choose from a list of components included in the single field address. Choose ‘State/county‘, and write “California” in the text-box. Then hit ‘Save‘.

And you’re done! You’ll see the list of organizations with addresses in California when you open this filter under Organizations. This way, you can re-create all filters you used with your separate address fields.

Wow, I just realized it’s a really long post ☺! All in all, I hope that Google Maps integration will be one of many steps towards making Pipedrive more enjoyable and useful.

Stay tuned!

How to make money from hearing “NOs”

I started my sales career, selling books door to door one summer. With 14-hour work days, knocking on doors of strangers, it was not the most glamorous of jobs, nor the easiest, but it sure was a good way to learn to sell.

Nothing built my confidence more than receiving an order, or even better, receiving multiple Yes’s in succession. On the flipside, getting a streak of No’s diminished that confidence level pretty fast. All it took was one bad day to go from a feeling of “I can sell to anybody” to “Nobody’s buying and I wonder if anyone ever will”. The latter is the worst emotional state I’ve ever experienced when it comes in sales. When it’s a slump, it’s a slump.

The good news is that there’s a workaround that has helped me keep my head up at the toughest of times: put a price tag on your key sales activity. On average, I sold $375 worth of books each day. To do that, I started 65 conversations, which resulted in about 30 proper conversations (read: when I was not slammed the door on after the first sentence). I put the two together and calculated the “value” of each attempt. I then knew that with every conversation I literally made $12.5 ($375/30).

So, using a bit of math, I had a ‘trick’ to avoid really intense low-points, like zero days. At the end of a no-sales day I had a good reason to conclude that I had made $375, but it just hadn’t materialized that day . What kept me going was the knowing after every freaking “No” that it was worth some dollars. This simple technique has served me and sales people I’ve coached well during the dozen years since my summer of door-to-door sales. If you haven’t yet worked out the value of each “No”, here’s how to do that.

  • First, calculate average daily sales revenue from your monthly revenue target. For me it was $375.
  • Next, count or calculate how many sales attempts you do every day. I used the 30 “proper” conversations figure, not the 65 attempted conversations to keep the numbers as real as possible.
  • Last, calculate the “value” of each attempt. For me, it was $12.5 ($375/30).

  • As some of you already know, we’ve created some tools to make this easier. The Sales Pipeline Calculator helps to get to the number of calls or meetings you need to make to reach your sales goals. And the don’t-take-yourself-too-seriously NO Calculator visualizes the amount of NOs you have to hear each week, month and even during your whole lifetime.