We love leveraging tools in our business if they make our lives easier. As we begin working with new clients we often get asked for our recommendations on what tools to use. We’ve previously written about the Infusionsoft tools we rely on but, there are so many others tools we use to run our productized service that allow us be effective as a remote team.
As I started putting the list together, I realized it was pretty extensive and wanted to share. Below you’ll find the 36 tools we use to run our productized service broken out into some hopefully helpful categories.
Team & Client Communication
Slack – This is our central point of communication internally as a team. We have a few key channels for our business that are critical to our daily effectiveness including #daily, #knowledge-share, #general, #help-and-feedback, #management-and-admin, #marketing and #random.
Zoom.us – This is our primary team conference tool. We use it internally for team meetings, sales calls, client strategy and kickoff calls and even our weekly client group calls. We love this tool compared to other meeting tools (We’ve tried so many!) as it seems to be the most stable and consistent.
Teamwork Projects – This is our current project management tool that we use for both internal projects and managing client projects and communication. I’ve tried a lot of project management tools and Teamwork seems to continue to innovate and listen to customers. I personally would love something a bit more slimmed down but for our current service delivery, this has been the best tool hands down.
Teamwork Desk – Since we use Teamwork Projects we adopted Teamwork Desk as our help desk tool which has been an integral part of our communication with our clients. We previously used FreshDesk which we also loved but Teamwork Desk has almost as many of the same features and makes integrating with Projects much easier.
ScreenHero – We used to use this tool a lot more for quick one-on-one internal screen shares and chat. It was purchased by Slack a while back and it seems like they’ve forgot about it. It they integrated it better it would be amazing but continues to be buggy and unstable. When it works though, it’s great. You can collaborate with teammates and control their mouse on their computer to help guide or have them take the wheel.
SOP Documentation & Storage
Google Docs & Drive – We’re very big in to systems (can you tell by the name?) and standard operating procedures. Ask our clients. 🙂 We use Google Docs and Drive as the main hub for all things process documentation internally which we’re using on a daily basis.
Dropbox – I probably use this more personally than for business but I store a lot of our business files that we use on a daily basis in my dropbox (as well as Google Drive) for easy access.
Marketing Automation & List Building
Infusionsoft – Seeing as how we support online entrepreneurs using Infusionsoft, it should be no surprise that it’s our go to marketing automation tool. We use it internally everyday to run and automate our own business as well as building sales funnels and marketing automation for our clients. If you want to get started with Infusionsoft, contact us as we have some special deals.
Contactually – I’ve tried a lot of CRM tools as staying in contact with my contacts is very important to me. This has been the best tool, hands down to stay in touch with the people that matter most to you from friends, family, prospects, mentors and advisors. We even use it’s pipeline tool for sales leads at this time.
SumoMe – We use this tool to collect email addresses on our sites. Super easy to use.
ConvertFlow – ConvertFlow turns your website into a powerful marketing channel by showing targeted calls-to-action to the right people, at the right time. It integrates with Infusionsoft so you can essentially create on-site marketing funnels with target calls-to-action. Super sweet tool we’re just diving into.
LeadPages – We use LeadPages to create quick and high converting opt-in pages and webinar registration pages.
ClickFunnels – In many ways an alternative to LeadPages, but, I think it’s a different product in many ways as well. We use ClickFunnels for a handful of clients and for a few areas in our own business for simple funnels and soon to be mini membership areas.
Team Management & Hiring
Hubstaff – Time tracking and payments for remote teams. Pretty simple and a no brainer in my opinion if you have a remote team.
Google Calendar / Busy Cal – We use Google Calendar for our scheduling both individually and for team / client calls. I personally love the Busy Cal app on my mac (which integrates with Google Cal) for many reasons such as the view options and keyboard control efficiency.
Upwork – One of the places we find new team members and contractors for specific tasks when needed.
Craigslist – We’ve had luck finding some team members here as well. When used right, I highly recommend it. There is a really good blog post that talks about it here.
Productivity
LastPass – LastPass remembers your passwords so that you can focus on the more important things in life. That’s exactly what it does for me personally and our clients share their logins this way as well.
Text Expander – How people live without this tool amazes me. Speed up your workflow with quick key command snippets that auto expand into full text. I use this for bios, URLs, etc.
Alfred – One of the most critical apps on the computer. Think of it like spotlight on steroids. It saves me literally weeks of my life every year with all the built in shortcuts. Thanks to @noahkagan for the recommendation years ago.
RescueTime – This app lets me understand my daily habits so I can focus and be more productive.
Helpful Chrome Extensions
The Great Suspender – Saves computer power by turning off tabs you haven’t used in awhile. Another no brainer.
ListGoal – A great little extension my by buddy Bryan Harris of Videofruit that lets you create a little “coach” on your list building efforts as you open new tabs.
Followup.cc For Gmail – The best tool you can use to never forget to follow up with someone. It lets you see when people open your email and now even has some automated followup.
Gmail Offline – Use Gmail on the go or when you want to be productive.
Video Services & Hosting
Jing – Quick and easy way to record screencasts under 5 minutes and share with your team or clients. They get uploaded to Screencast.com with a quick shareable link.
Screenflow – The go to screen recording software when we’re looking for more professional videos for our clients or training courses.
Skitch – Take screenshots and add annotations with ease to send to your team/clients or use in SOP’s.
Vimeo Pro – Simple hosting for videos that we use on our website or for training courses.
Misc. Services and Apps
Unlimitly – A simple service that provides unlimited graphics. We use this for our blog post artwork.
Keynote – If I’m speaking or making a presentation I always use Keynote for Mac.
Edgar – A quick and easy to way to create a queue of your content to be shared on your social channels.
Infusionsoft Payments – We’ve used merchant gateways like Authorize.net but Infusionsoft Payments is built in to Infusionsoft and works very similar to Stripe.
F.lux – it makes the color of your computer’s display adapt to the time of day, warm at night and like sunlight during the day.
That’s it! Those are the 36 tools we use to run our productized service business every single day.
What tools are you using? Click here and let us know on our Facebook page.
