In this digital age, advisers are overloaded with information (both useful and useless). Often, they spend a lot of time in searching for client data and mails. To organize and boost productivity, here are 21 must-use tools for advisers. I have divided them in five categories:
- E-mail Management
- Social Media Management
- Productivity Enhancement
- Marketing
- Others
E-mail Management
- Unroll.me/Sanebox.com - If you are tired of hundreds of promotional emails that you receive from websites you have subscribed to, use this tool to easily unsubscribe from all of them with just a few clicks and clean up your inbox. But if you still want to continue receiving some of them, combine multiple newsletters into one single email to save your time on reading them.
- Streak.com - If your daily work includes dealing with clients, this tool will do an awesome job of organizing your emails into specific “pipelines” for sales, fundraising, public relations, etc. it’s like having customer relationship management (CRM) system in your inbox.
- Boomeranggmail.com - Schedule messages to be sent or returned later. Write a message now, send it whenever even if you're not online. Track messages to make sure you hear back, and schedule reminders right inside Gmail.
- Mailtrack.io – Get this extension to be aware if the email you sent to your client, boss or friend has been read or not. It will show you which emails have been read, how long ago and how many times. Therefore, you will know when the best time to contact your recipient. Works for Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Opera browsers.
Social Media Management
- Hootsuite.com/Buffer.com/Onlywire.com are great tools to use for scheduling your Twitter posts (you can use it also on Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram). Schedule your posts for 15/30 days in advance so that you can concentrate on other productive work. These sites allow you to not only schedule, but also measure the analytics.
- Snip.ly is a URL link shortener that when clicked offers a customized call-to-action snippet at the bottom. Basically, it allows you to promote your own best content or offers while sharing great content from others.
- Paper.li lets you create a daily newspaper of your favorite tweets and stories and share this paper with your followers. Create an industry-specific daily or weekly newspaper and take advantage of the extra opportunity to connect with and recognize some of your influencers.
- Sales navigator - Most of the times, we meet unknown prospects about whom we don’t know anything. By installing this G-mail Plugin, you will be able to know about their social media connections and view their LinkedIn profile directly in your Gmail. Subscription to additional features will allow you to save contacts as leads and see if prospects are connected to your colleagues and get a warm introduction.
Productivity Enhancement
- IFTTT.com and Zapier.com - Use these tools to automate your boring daily tasks. For example, posting social network updates, organizing your photos, blogging, managing your phone and home appliances. There are hundreds of tasks you can choose from to automate them and make your life easier and more productive.
- Evernote.com/getpocket.com - Save articles, images, videos and other interesting content you found while you were surfing the internet to check them out later. Add tags to organize your content and find them later. It syncs across devices so that later you can find all the information you saved on any of your devices. It keeps all your notes and ideas organized in one place to boost your productivity and save you a lot of time.
- Any.do/Wunderlist - These are apps that remind about your to-do list at the start of each day by making you decide which tasks to complete, delegate or put off, and list the people you will have to connect with to complete a task.
Marketing
- Use Mailchimp.com/Convertkit.com for your e-mail marketing. It’s a sort of permission marketing wherein you are asking for permission from your prospects whether they wish to receive updates on personal finance as it contains an unsubscribe call-to-action also.
- Webex.co.in/gotomeeting.com help you arrange meeting/seminar without stepping out from your office.
- With WiseStamp.com, we can immediately strengthen our brand; get more leads; engage recipients on social; highlight our portfolio and get our brand out there.
- 8card/Camcard are mobile apps for converting physical visiting cards into digital cards.
Others
- With Adobe fill & Sign DC you can instantly turn digital or paper documents into form you can fill, sign & send electronically. No need of printing.
- Use surveymonkey.com or polldaddy.com for taking feedback from your clients/prospects.
- docs.google.com/wufoo.com help you gather data from your clients/prospects.
- Rescuetime.com will show you which applications and websites you spent the most time on. Set goals to help keep you keep on track and improve your productivity. Try Rescue Time and see how you can make yourself more productive!
- Udemy.com/Coursera.org/Khanacademy.org for learning some crash courses like Advanced Excel & Digital Marketing. Believe me friends, Excel is the best software in the world. And digital marketing can acquire clients faster than traditional marketing and at effective cost also.
- ZohoOne.com is a complete set of tools consisting 40 applications for running your business smoothly right from marketing/communication/collaboration within your team members.
Hope these tools will help you enhance your productivity and save time for meeting with clients.
Anoop Nasa is Founder & CEO of Myfinkart Financial Advisors.