Wow! You’d be surprised how fast you can get a solid streak going. Seems like just yesterday I started on this (ok so it wasn’t THAT long ago but still) and already we’re on the 5th video. I also completed day 11 of my fitness streak today too. There’s definitely something to be said for just starting where you are, and taking massive action. Before you know it you’ll have some serious momentum to continue building off of.
Today we talk about the CRM ABC’s. This is the next step you want to take whether you’re just starting out or have an existing database. It can be overwhelming trying to clean up a massive database of thousands of contact records. So we’re going to start with your A players. As they say 80% of your business is generated from 20% of your clients (I’m paraphrasing to make a point). Rather than trying to maintain the whole database right off the bat we’re going to focus on your top clients and prospects and making sure that their records are dialed in, up to date, accurate, and that all appropriate context is in the system.
The number of A’s is going to vary based on your situation. It could be 10, 25, 50, 100, etc. It’s mostly arbitrary but you want it to be the people who really matter. Whether they’re existing clients, or companies on your “wish/hit list” that’s up to you to decide.
After you make that decision, get to work making sure the necessary and relevant data is in the system. This will include contact information for the specific people/decision makers you want to track, prior communications (if applicable), potential referral sources or champions who can help, insight into their problems/needs that you can help solve, etc. Anything that might be helpful with continuing to serve them well, or to help you close the deal should be included.
Once you get these done you’ll have some serious momentum to continue charging through the rest. But no matter what, these should always remain your priority.
The WIMS Guide Video Edition will focus on business topics such as Entrepreneurship, CRM, Marketing, Sales, B2B, Business Development, Web Design, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Artificial Intelligence, Data Analytics, Machine Learning, and much much more. To learn more about Mike Simmons and his company WIMS Consulting, click here.
Today we’re going to cover a brief intro to CRM (Customer Relationship Management) for those who don’t know what it is, and for those that do, I just go into some quick initial steps to consider taking if you’ve been apprehensive thus far. I know it can be tedious to set up and maintain but the ROI is incredible if deployed correctly.
It’s really mind blowing to me how much resistance there still is out there. Frankly, it’s like turning down a superpower. If you want a little help or guidance please reach out! Whether you’re starting from scratch, converting an Excel File/Google Sheet, or you’ve been using a CRM for a while but are stuck in a rut, WIMS Consulting can help you take it to the next level.
In summary, my favorite/recommended platforms are:
Track your leads and prospects from website/marketing, intros from referral sources, lead generation, sales cycle, your existing customers and deal flow, etc.
Sync email, whether Outlook/Gmail
Sync Email Marketing: MailChimp/Constant Contact
Sync Social Media Accounts
Card Scanner app to streamline uploading business cards and converting them directly into contacts.
I’ll make sure to keep adding more and more value on how to continue leveling up your CRM and sales game throughout the year. Much more to come!
-Mike
The WIMS Guide Video Edition will focus on business topics such as Entrepreneurship, CRM, Marketing, Sales, B2B, Business Development, Web Design, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Artificial Intelligence, Data Analytics, Machine Learning, and much much more. To learn more about Mike Simmons and his company WIMS Consulting, click here.
It’s Friday! Already got day 7 of my gym streak knocked out, got it in early today as opposed to the 10pm sessions I’ve been pulling off lately.
Today’s client work was mostly related to government/military contracting as well as the legal industry. Fascinating stuff. I try to bunch project work together by themes/industries as much as I can in order to maintain a consistent and appropriate mindset. It doesn’t always work out that way, but when it does I find it helps create more efficiency as you don’t have to transition from say a law firm to a restaurant instantaneously.
Most important however, I wanted to use today’s post as more of a call to action to all of you. If you’ve got the goal of creating more written and video content surrounding your business I’d love to do some guest posts/collaborations moving forward. I just have a few small stipulations that I list on here. So please reach out to me so we can make this happen!
PS, yes I’m a pacer, rocker, fidget-er even (again media training on the way), it comes out especially when running on pure adrenaline after a wild week too haha. (Man watching these playbacks is awkward…)
Enjoy the weekend everyone!
-Mike
The WIMS Guide Video Edition will focus on business topics such as Entrepreneurship, CRM, Marketing, Sales, B2B, Business Development, Web Design, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Artificial Intelligence, Data Analytics, Machine Learning, and much much more. To learn more about Mike Simmons and his company WIMS Consulting, click here.
First of all, thank you for the feedback from Day 1, it means a lot and I appreciate it! There were a lot of you savages still grinding long into the night of January 1st checking LinkedIn/YouTube and I love to see it. Secondly, my wife has agreed to give me that media training refresher after all. So, when that happens, I’ll record it for you all as she’s a legit pro – and talk about META AF content am I right?!
For today’s message I went in a bit of a different direction as I wanted to highlight some of the other content I launched. I wrote a blog post specifically about Charlotte and offered some tips for how to grow your business here in 2020. Then I also wanted to highlight the newsletter we launched today that goes out to the company list and includes a ton of content. It’s the original The WIMS Guide that typically pairs with the blog and includes some additional content such as event calendar and travel advisory. Check the blog site (wimsguide.com) if you’d like to subscribe and get it, or you can email/text me or comment and I can add you to the list.
On here I give a rundown of some of the content from the newsletter, and rather than be redundant here I’ll just throw some links and let you listen to the rest. If there’s anything I can elaborate on or something you’d like me to talk about in the future, please let me know. Onward!
-Mike Simmons
The WIMS Guide Video Edition will focus on business topics such as Entrepreneurship, CRM, Marketing, Sales, B2B, Business Development, Web Design, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Artificial Intelligence, Data Analytics, Machine Learning, and much much more. To learn more about Mike Simmons and his company WIMS Consulting, click here.
Happy New Year and welcome to the new decade! After about 50 takes I figured what the heck, let’s just launch this thing. It’s raw and vulnerable, warts and all. Clearly I need a media training refresher from my wife who is a former TV reporter. But that’s ok, the polish will come later with practice and reps.
Without further ado, coming to you from the WIMS, Inc. War Room it’s The WIMS Guide video edition! I’ve procrastinated for years now on doing video content as surprisingly, it may be the one area I’m a little self-conscious. But that’s also why I needed to just put myself out there and DO it already. So here we are.
I definitely cringed a little (ok a lot) watching the play back, but I will absolutely get better. I’ll begin conveying my thoughts my clearly and concisely. But if you could give your boy a little grace here in the beginning, I’d appreciate it. Or don’t, feel free to roast me too I can take it.
As the blog this is meant to be about the never ending/ongoing journey of business, entrepreneurship, professional development and much more. I’m going to try to provide you with as much value as I can through the insights gained from running my companies, WIMS Consulting, EolianVR, and ARRE (along with perspective and experience gleaned from dozens of clients across a variety of industries and sizes). But I also want to learn more from you too, and even build a community around our shared insights and experiences.
My goal isn’t to build a Gary V or Grant Cardone or Ed Mylett style vlog. It’s to just force myself to get better, get out of my comfort zone, and try to serve my community in any way I can. That’s really all I can hope for. It could last a week, or a decade, we’ll see…
Here goes nothing!
The WIMS Guide Video Edition will focus on business topics such as Entrepreneurship, CRM, Marketing, Sales, B2B, Business Development, Web Design, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Artificial Intelligence, Data Analytics, Machine Learning, and much much more. To learn more about Mike Simmons and his company WIMS Consulting, click here.
ARRE (Augmented Reality Real Estate) recently launched a new website (still in development but the landing page is ready to rock and live). Check it out here.
At ARRE our mission is to help you “Close Faster” by helping you “Streamline Deals from Concept to Capacity.” We provide a complete, firm-branded solution, and act as your partner with a relatively quick on-boarding process, to allow you to begin using augmented reality to accelerate the rate at which you convert your commercial real estate asset into revenue.
Have you seen the ARRE 2.0 Launch Preview Video yet? Let your imagination run wild as you see just the tip of the iceberg of what ARRE can do. The immense collaboration possibilities demonstrated by Debra (the Real Estate Developer), Brock (the Broker), Gena (the General Contractor), and Archie (the architect) alone are incredible. Couple that with the ability to walk prospective tenants through your building before a shovel strikes the ground (whether they’re a local firm, or a company based in Europe, China,, or anywhere else in the world) and you’ll start to see how we’re really onto something that just might disrupt the Commercial Real Estate industry for the better.
ARRE is hardware agnostic, meaning we work with just about any device our clients are using. While we prefer the HoloLens (and soon to launch HoloLens 2), Magic Leap, or the HP Mixed Reality Headset, we also understand that some aren’t quite ready to fully dive into the world of augmented reality and virtual reality just yet. Therefore, we also deploy our tech on web based platforms, as well as the phones/tablets such as the iPhone/iPad.
ARRE includes the hardware, software, setup, support, storage, and ongoing rendering services you need to start using AR to accelerate sales and development within 48 hours from signing up.
Whether you’re a commercial/industrial/mixed use real estate broker, developer, architect, general contractor, engineer, or otherwise let us show you what we can do to help bring you and your company into the future. Visit https://www.augmentedrealityre.com/ or send an email to [email protected] to schedule a demo.
Industry altering advancements in the augmented reality, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and machine learning space continue to be released at a rapid clip. It’s almost impossible to keep up, even for tech nerds like ourselves. Because of this, the team at Eolian decided it would be worth taking the time to highlight some of the most earth-shattering updates, curate those that are the most relevant in our area of expertise, and even add a little insightful context so you can convert them into action items when appropriate. We’re calling it “The Eolian Report”. This is the first of hopefully many editions and we hope you find tremendous value out of it.
The industry is moving so fast and adoption along with it. It won’t be long before you look around and notice how widespread and rampant AR, VR, AI, and ML use cases are being implemented all around you. Don’t blink or you might get left behind. We would love to convert everyone into believers but for the purpose of this we will do our best to remain objective and hope that the facts and trends will speak for themselves.
Full disclosure: we are also working on developing some incredible applications and have launched a few in our core verticals of military/defense, healthcare, and real estate. So, we may share some of our major milestones as well.
While we are biased on the subject and feel that everyone should at least be exploring the potential implications and use cases for their own businesses we completely understand the delay and skepticism. Because of this we’d love to hear from you all to see where your mindset is on the matter, whether positive or negative. Perhaps you’re a hardcore skeptic. Or maybe you have tried launching an AR strategy and it fell flat or never made it off the ground. Maybe you have been thinking long and hard about it but have yet to pull the trigger. Better yet, hopefully you’ve built and launched a program and it’s been achieving a lot of success and on the way to massive ROI. Either way please reach out and let us know!
-Mike Simmons, CMO
Now without further ado, time to check out some of the latest developments in the space:
General Business
Tesla Patent Application Mentions Augmented Reality Safety Glasses
Healthcare Augmented & Virtual Reality Market: Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecasts 2018–2026
http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/4060124
Global Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) in Healthcare Market Extensive Study of Future Value Chain on Regional, Drivers and Technological Advancements Outlook 2018–2027
Technology Innovation in Virtual Reality in Healthcare Market to See Rapid Growth in Coming Year — Leading Players Are Google, Microsoft, Daqri, Psious Industry Analysis
http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/4053337/
Commercial Real Estate
With Augmented and Virtual Reality, Tour Your Office Before It’s Built [We have a platform called ARRE (Augmented Reality Real Estate) out that can help you do just this and so much more!]
Landlords Look To Curate Tenant Mix So Companies Can Financially Benefit One Another
The augmented reality and virtual reality company that I’m a co-founder of, EolianVR, (DBA: “Eolian”), recently launched our Augmented Reality Real Estate platform (ARRE) specifically geared toward the commercial real estate industry. ARRE is an end-to-end system, complete with a platform, application, hardware, software, storage, and support that commercial real estate firms need to easily and immediately begin showcasing and visualizing large scale real estate assets in augmented reality.
This is a game-changing breakthrough for the commercial real estate industry as potential clients, investors, partners, and brokers, etc. can take a walk through a skyscraper, or 20 story office building, even before a single shovel (or excavator) strikes the ground. Architects can share their vision, make real-time adjustments, and determine the implications of said changes (i.e. total square foot change of the building, etc.) relatively quickly, in order to make sure a project remains within the necessary specifications, all before the project enters the tangible world.
You don’t like the color of the painting on the walls? We can change that. You prefer the reception desk be on the other side of the lobby? Done. You want to see a sliding glass door entrance to the building rather than revolving ones? You got it, just give it a minute. This is accomplished by leveraging technology such as the Microsoft Hololens, the HTC Vive, along with additional complementary & proprietary AR/VR hardware and software.
One can imagine the cost savings realized from a more efficient and streamlined project timeline. Think about less time-consuming walk throughs, change order processing, a simpler permitting process, along with countless other efficiencies that will be gained. Not to mention 3D building models are now rendered obsolete as in an augmented world, you can make real time digital changes to the building without having to spend thousands of dollars updating the model. How much money is lost (chalked up to customer acquisition/cost of doing business) right now just from things like lost efficiency from shuffling people around to your properties and making changes after they’ve already been built, $5,000, maybe $10,000 or even far more?
Take a moment to imagine something with me:
An investment firm’s key decision makers are sitting around their boardroom table in China while taking a tour of a proposed commercial building in New York, all while being able to make real time recommendations along the way (yes, they have headsets on). If they like what they see, they can then make a real-time offer from across the world. Once agreed the real estate developers can pass along their standard virtual contract, with certain covenants to be determined. While the lawyers review it, an initial deposit (binding or not) can subsequently issued via Bitcoin or another preferred form of crypto-currency (or even good ol’ US dollars if desired via an embedded payment processing application) which is deposited into an escrow account (also embedded in the application). All of this can happen in real-time, and soon enough will be how most large scale business transactions will be conducted. Within the next few years companies will be able to transcend international regulatory and currency barriers and just get down to business with the help of block chain technology. Of course, I’m simply summarizing for brevity’s sake, but things like this are just the beginning.
While the first iteration of ARRE is currently live and operational, subsequent editions and updates are subsequently being perfected as well that will leverage the latest and greatest technology to continue streamlining the commercial real estate industry as well as making it significantly more transparent.
One of Eolian’s core missions and mantra is focused on “Building New Worlds” and the launch of ARRE is certainly going to help us do just that.
About Eolian: Eolian is a software development and marketing production firm capable of conceptualizing and building Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) applications with practical uses in four main industries: Real Estate, Military, Healthcare, Education, and Marketing. Drawing from a combined 30+ years’ experience in software development and marketing, the team develops and deploys applications on the following VR and AR HMDs (Head-Mounted Displays): Microsoft Hololens, HTC Vive, Gear360, PlaystationVR, Google Cardboard, and Meta2 among others. Members of the team have already built applications such as interactive VR tours, interactive VR simulators, room-scale interactive trainings, hologram trainings, and much more. Eolian is also developing additional use-cases for additional industries such as: Travel/Tourism, Events/Venues, Golf Courses/Country Clubs, Action Sports, and Non-profits among others. For more information, please visit www.eolianvr.com.
