Data coach manages his day-to-day business on Bigin

The Customer

After working as a software and data engineer for some time, Lennard Timm decided to form his own business and help other businesses create a robust data strategy. Since 2019, this prolific data coach has been helping startups curate better data strategies and repair data loopholes for business growth. Talking about his consulting business Lennard said, "I felt there's much more benefit in me helping people to collaborate and work at a high, strategic level than just me sitting there and implementing some software. I also happen to enjoy it much more." He added, "Now I'm working with startups helping them implement more mature data practices on their data analytics teams—making sure that they're fully leveraging the data they're collecting to create a better data strategy that they can use to support their processes."

The Challenge

What made Lennard look for a CRM for his business? "My initial motivation was, that most of my conversations happen either through LinkedIn or email. I wanted to see the conversation in one place, so it would be easier for me to keep track of things and follow up."

Lennard wanted a better view of his business communications. He wanted to see when the conversations had happened and about what. He also wanted features like sales pipelines, to have a better view of his leads and sales stages. Additionally, he wanted reminders to keep him on top of follow-ups with clients.

Before Bigin, although he kept a history of conversations by maintaining an archive, it didn't give him the insights he wanted at the right time. For example, without reminders or a view of deal stages, it was difficult for him to find out if he hadn't heard back from a person for some time after the initial conversation. Also, he had to keep track of due follow-ups manually, after a project had ended.

"I wanted a good system to help me accomplish this, not the Excel sheet or keeping notes somewhere. I also wanted to establish a better process for moving deals through stages. I have a different use case and I was looking for a rather simple CRM," says Lennard.

Before looking for a CRM for his business, Lennard was managing with Apple Notes. He had to write down the information of each lead, as it came in, to keep track of it. Moving a lead from one stage to another was also a time-consuming manual process—and it left room for manual errors.

As an entrepreneur, it was important for him to find a product that would be simple to use and didn't complicate his process. He wanted a sophisticated system that would formalize his business process and allow him a good view of his data.

The Solution

"Bigin ticked all the boxes and was easy to use, and had a modern UI."

Once Lennard saw how easy it was to move the data and keep track of things on Bigin, the decision was made.

According to Lennard, he had thought about several other CRMs (Nutshell, Pipedrive, Copper, Insightly, Zendesk Sell) before choosing Bigin. He says, some of them looked interesting, but most felt too complex and more geared towards teams of people collaborating, rather than a single-person business.

Lastly, Lennard says that it was the simplicity of the UI in Bigin that won him over, "Since the UI was easy to navigate, I didn't have to worry about messing up the data or not finding it at the right time."

Previously, the lead gathering process was a manual, laborious process. Lennard had to extract the lead data from LinkedIn forms in CSV format, pick out each of the new leads' details, and put them in his notes. With Bigin, he's automated an alternative to this process. To collect the leads automatically, he uses Zapier to connect to Calendly and LinkedIn lead forms. When someone books a meeting with him on Calendly, or new leads show interest on LinkedIn, it automatically shows up as a new entry in the qualify stage.

Now, all his communication is in one place. He has a clear view of each of his leads, which helps Lennard to follow up with leads that have been silent for a while. Using reminders, he reaches out to customers for follow-ups after projects.

He was also able to customize Bigin according to his needs, from adding lead sources to changing the module and field names.

He's even integrated his email with Bigin, which helps him send emails to prospective clients and keep track of conversations. Using email insights, he's able to predict if a lead will convert sooner or later. He says "I track when they open it and if they open it immediately, which can be an indicator that they're interested. Also, if they open it a few days later, then I don't expect the deal to go quickly." Using email insights Lennard gets added insights into what's happening with his customers.

Apart from keeping track of conversations and saving time, Bigin has helped Lennard gain a cleaner view of his data. With enhanced search, Bigin makes sure he finds the right data at the right time.

Previously, Lennard had to cram all of his data into Notes. Not only did that not offer a proper view of the data, it was time-consuming and confusing to find what he needed quickly.

Benefits and ROI

According to Lennard, saving time has been the biggest benefit so far:

Since the information flow has been taken care of by Bigin, Lennard can invest more time in understanding how to grow his business. He's more focused on his processes than day-to-day data management. He can now spend that time in lead nurturing, coming up with new data strategies and reaching out to potential clients.

Promptly following up with potential leads increases the chances of conversion. Now that Lennard has the information about which leads to follow up with readily available, he doesn't lose time looking through leads that have been cold for a while.

He also says that in the Deals view, moving each deal towards the Won column is a "motivating factor." This view also affords him a picture of how much value he can derive from each deal, and that helps him predict a view of the coming months.

Since there was no complicated implementation process or training required, Lennard was able to leverage Bigin from day one.

Reminders keep him on track for following up with his past clients about completed projects and building a relationship with them.

"This is something that I didn't think about when I set out to find a CRM. But in the process of working with this I've realized that I also need to put some focus on how to nurture prospective clients and what I have to do to make sure more leads convert."