The Finance Shop keeping you in touch with your clients through the Coronavirus pandemic

With the integration of email in TFS 13 and the introduction of SMS in TFS 12, it has never been so simple to ensure you stay in communication with your prospects. This article highlights some of the ways you could be using TFS to ensure you are utilising TFS to manage the application process from prospect through to client.

Click on the links below to jump to the relevant section;

Capturing a prospect
Setting a followup for the new prospect.
Convert the quote to an application.
Submit the application.
Keeping your client updated.
Requesting a vendor invoice

Capturing a Prospect 

You receive a telephone call from a potential client and you create a quote using the Quick Calculator function  or F11.

when you click Save you are offered the option of creating a new Client/Prospect.

Enter some basic information about the prospect.

Enter the prospects mobile and email address as this will allow you to communicate via SMS and email from TFS.

If required you can create a contact for the prospect. When you have finished click on the Finish button.

The quote is then allocated to the new prospect.

Email the Quote

Once you have created the quote you can email it to your new prospect direct from TFS using Smartlodge.

Click on Email Quote(s) 

Select the quote and click Next.

Specify the report content and click Next 

When you come to email recipients screen select the contact that you want to email and click on the To button

An email will then be created with the quote attached to it

You can then select a template by clicking on the  button against Template. You will then see the available quote email templates.

A comment will be made against the prospect 

Setting a followup 

To ensure that you don't let your prospect slip past use TFS to assist you. Add a comment to the newly created prospect and set it to create a follow-up;

Create a followup and link it to the quote

When the follow-up is due TFS will show a reminder with a link to the quote

When you click on the Select Quote button the prospect and quote will be loaded.

Converting the quote to an application

When the prospect is ready to move forward with the application go to the Client \ Quotes screen and select Convert

Click on Yes to convert the quote to an application.

You can then go an edit the goods record to put in the relevant information. If you record the vendor and the contact you will be able to email them from the system.

Submit the application

When you are ready to submit the application (Non-electronic submission) you can use Smartlodge

Choose the reports that you wish to include

If required select any client linked files;

Select the financier contact;

When the email is shown you should then select the template that you wish to apply to the email;

Check the details are correct 

When you click send a comment is created 

Keeping client updated

You could now send your client an SMS to let them know that the application has been submitted. SMS messages can be sent from the Communicate option in the Client / Contacts screen.

You can also select email and send them an email

At this point, you could create a follow-up for yourself for any emails that you send that require client actions.

As your application progresses you can update the client via SMS or email as required.

Requesting a Vendor Invoice

If the application requires a vendor invoice you can use the communicate option to send the request or you could go to the Application Service Providers screen and click on the email icon next to the contact;

If you have a template for this then select it;

Wherever you see a mobile number, you can now SMS your clients and contacts directly from TFS

When you clcik on the SMS symbol the communications dialog will open

1. Click on the number that you want to send the SMS to.
2. Click on the Add to Recipients button,
3. Type your SMS message.
4. Click OK.

You can see all SMS messages that have been sent in the Client SMS screen in the CRM section.

Smart Campaign

The Finance Shop The Smart Campaign application allows users to create and manage marketing campaigns to entities in their TFS database. This article gives a high-level overview of how to do an email campaign.

There are several steps to using a campaign.

 2. Specifying your criteria - Click here to expand...

When doing a campaign you specify the criteria of the records that you want to include in the campaign. There are two main types of criteria;

All Entities Criteria - This type of criteria relates to all types of entities including clients.

Clients and Prospects - This type of criteria relates specifically  to clients

These criteria options are applicable to client and non-client entities.

Where you see a + next to a criteria selection, you click on it to see sub-criteria options.

To add a criterion follow these steps;

1. Click on the criteria that you want to add.
2. Click on the >> button to move it to required criteria.
3. Specify the criteria matching requirements. Note these vary dependent on the field that you are adding
4. Select the option.
5. Click OK.

The criteria is then added to the Required Criteria.

This will limit the entities to only those entities that have the Marketing Format of Email set to YES in the relevant entities Marketing screen.

A good criterion to set in conjunction with this one is Email is not empty.

This will ensure that those entities who are set to receive email marketing collateral will only be used providing that they have an email against them.

Key Criteria options

The image below shows the criteria selections available for clients;

The image below shows the criteria selections available for All Entities

The following is a list of commonly used criteria options;

All Entities

	Participation You may often have entities set up within your system who can have multiple roles e.g. you have a client who is also a vendor for other clients. You may be doing a campaign were you want to target a group of clients \ entities who are vendors. This refers to those entities who In the entity marketing tab the Marketing Format, Vendor is set to YES.
	Product Requirement Profiling You can specify in the entity marketing tab the types of financial products that the entity is involved with.
	Address The address criteria allow you to target entities based on things like the state \ suburb that they are located in. An obvious one if you are doing a mailing campaign is to check that the Address is not empty.
	Telephone The telephone criteria is used to isolate entities whose telephone numbers and email addresses are not empty.
	Entity Role This allows you to specify the types of entity that you want to include \ exclude. If you want to target multiple roles you can use the optional criteria.

Client and Prospect's Criteria

	Broker This allows you to select all the clients who belong to a specific broker
	Client Type This allows you to target specific types of clients
	Date Client Created This allows you to target clients who were added to the system within specific time frames. So, for example, you may want to target all clients who were created in the previous year who may have new business.

Optional Criteria

Where you have 2 or more groups of criteria where an entity must fit at least one 1 of the groups to be selected you must add them into the Optional Criteria.

In the example below the Entity Role of Vendor/Supplier has been added to Optional Criteria Group 1.

 When you click on the Preview tab you will see how many entities have been included as a result of the specified criteria

 Click on the Dropdown button and select the next unused Optional Criteria Group (There are 10.) and then add the criteria to it.

 When you click on the Preview tab you will see that the number of entities has increased.