Hi @Chelsea Burgess! Welcome to the Karbon community.

I’m working on this problem right now with our firm. I do not believe that Karbon will double-up the contacts if you have one in with the same name. Practice Ignition should add work items to the existing client if it’s found in Karbon.

We also have a sales process work item that we kick off when we have a prospective client, so we kick everything off by adding a contact in Karbon and then the sales process work item.

Does that help at all?

Hi @max 

Thanks so much for your input on this.

That makes sense. I will have to test the contact import because we have one that was created before hand and then once the client signed, PI created a new client so we have 2 now.

Do you happen to know if it’s possible to have PI create clients once proposals are sent rather than signed? It’s a thought I have had but could be a problem if they don’t end up signing on. 

I like this idea of a sales process work item. What sort of items do you add to this if you don’t mind me asking?

Thanks,
Chelsea

Hi @Chelsea Burgess 

I agree with @max Karbon will not double up if the name is exactly the same but we have found that we are not great at making sure the name matches exactly.  We also do not want the contact set up if we do not end up closing the deal.

We use an internal contact called Potential Clients as a place to park these kind of emails, we have one set up for each team to limit the traffic on the timeline.  Once the proposal is accepted we have an onboarding task that directs a member of the team to tag those emails to the correct contact (and ideally remove from the Potential Clients timeline).

It is admin heavy, but it keeps emails corralled and out of the way until they are needed.. 

Here’s my draft sales process. Each of these steps are represented in the Karbon work item as a task (or automator):

This is a prototype, so we are planning to test it in the coming weeks and make adjustments as necessary.

A few key steps:

1. We are using Typeform to gather basic information and Calendly integrated to schedule the discovery call
2. Zapier takes the information entered in Typeform and creates the folder in our document management system and the contact in Karbon and adds the sales work item for tracking

You can also assign the emails to My Week and clear them from Triage.  If they sign on, you can tag the email in My week and move to done.  If they decide not to sign on, you simply remove from my week or move to done.

You can add the contact as a ‘potential’ as a category and then if they sign up, change it to ‘client’

If you are really clever, you can get a zap to do this for you in zapier (I’m still working through this at the moment!)

I think there’s a way to share Zaps once they are created. I can take a look if anyone is interested.

I don’t think I thought about updating the contact from prospect to client or prospect - lost client types. I’m going to add that to my process map.

Wow!

Thanks for all the feedback everyone. This is a great way to get some recommendations from people and see what other people do. I’ll take this info to my firm and see what works best for us! 

@max
Does Zapier take the contact details from TypeForm and enter them into Karbon in the appropriate spot? (email address, phone number, address etc.) or are you saying it simply creates the contact for you in Karbon once they fill out the TypeForm as a potential client?

@Coral 
Yes that would be so amazing if once they sign up, Zapier can auto move them to the client. Let me know if you have progress in that!

There are some nuances to what can get entered, but generally, the data collected from TypeForm can be entered to fill out the client profile with phone numbers, email addresses, and addresses.

@max 

That would be ideal! Do you happen to know if it’s possible to do that from PI as well?

I use GoProposal, and I know it works for that. I don’t know about PI. I test PI a few months ago but didn’t get as far as testing the integration before I decided not to use it.

Connect up your PI and Karbon to Zapier and you’ll see what information comes across.

We love how PI creates the work orders in Karbon based on the service items that are selected in the proposal but that is as far as we have pushed the integration so far.  

I am going to challenge my team to dig deeper into the Zaps - like @max suggested trying it is key.  I will share results once I can get them to give it a shot!

I use Zapier to change a contact in Karbon from Prospect to Client (contact type in settings), totally works. 

I would wager you can get a zap from Typeform to set up a “prospect” client type in Karbon.  Then a zap when Ignition proposal is accepted, changes the Karbon client type to “client” (I know that 2nd part works).  I also have a zap to create a contact in Google contacts once the prospect becomes a client.

I do, however, get challenged when I create a Contact in Karbon based on someone reaching out via email.  The actual name of their business is often different than they say it is when we get to QBO (and therefore Ignition client name).  I wonder if I could use Zapier to look for the email address in Karbon and then have it change the associated Karbon Org Name = the Client per Ignition (and QBO).  Might be a project for the near future.