Using Trello CRM: 4 Easy Steps

Generating leads, contacting potential clients, and scheduling demo meetings to convert these prospects into permanent customers, are some of the major steps that every organization follows while designing a Sales Pipeline. While starting a company it is much easier to manually handle the Sales Data whereas when your business is booming, it is recommended to use Customer Relationship Management Software to automate your Workflow.

Trello, a Project Management tool helps you manage and organize work across different departments such as Marketing, Sales, Operations, Finance, Support, etc. Using numerous informative Kanban Based style Boards, Lists, and Cards. Trello CRM can work as an efficient platform to handle and solve all the Sales-related tasks. Here, you can design different stages for your Sales Workflow, track the progress of each lead and never miss a potential customer.

In this article, you will learn how to effectively use Trello CRM to simplify and boost sales for your business.

Table of Contents

• ‘Introduction to Trello
  • Key Features of Trello
• 4 Easy Steps to set up Trello CRM
  • Step 1: Creating a Trello CRM Board
    • Templates
    • Custom Board
  • Step 2: Designing a Trello CRM Card
  • Step 3: Using Power-Ups and Add-ons
    • Calendar Power-Up
    • Google Drive Power-Up
    • Trello for Gmail Add-on
  • Step 4: Using Butler for Automation
• Limitations of using Trello CRM
• Conclusion

Introduction to Trello

Trello is a popular Cloud-based application that streamlines managing tasks and designing Workflows for businesses or even for personal use. The interactive and informative Cards and Lists in Trello Boards keep you aware of the status of the various tasks, due dates, priorities, etc. Trello also promotes collaboration as team members can add comments, ask questions related to a task or appreciate a colleague’s work through the comments section in the Cards.

This productivity tool is available on both desktop and mobile platforms. For small business teams or individuals, the Free Trello subscription can be an excellent choice to reach their goals and hit all project deadlines. As your business grows, you can upgrade to Business Class and Enterprise Paid plans to enjoy more flexibility, features, and user limits.

Key Features of Trello

Trello has been widely used in businesses for managing design and development projects, by students for tracking assignments, by Sales Teams as Trello CRM, and even for personal use such as event planning. Implementation across such diverse use cases is possible due to some of the most intuitive features offered by Trello:

• Remote Access: You can open your Trello account and check on important project highlights from any location, anytime, and from any device.
• Security: You can be rest assured about the security of your data as it is protected in transit as well as at rest with SSL Data Encryption. With encrypted backup every 24 hrs, storing and sharing data on the platform is completely safe.  
• Trello Cards: Using this feature, you can add different tasks, assign them to a team member, add due dates, project descriptions and attach project-related documents. With just a glance, you can understand the project details and at what stage the project is currently on.
• Trello Butler: Automation of repetitive tasks in Trello is one of the most important features. You can make custom rules for your Trello CRM template and save time by allowing Butler to do mundane tasks such as sending emails for you.
• Power-Ups: These robust add-ons such as Google Drive Power-Up can help you get the most out of Trello. For a free account, only one Power-Up is allowed at a time. You can opt for the Business Plan to integrate Trello with multiple applications.
• Online Communities and Support: If you get stuck with a problem in Trello, you can find most of the answers in Trello Help. You can also Contact Trello professionals and get your doubts cleared by the respective domain experts.

Prerequisites

• A Trello Account.
• Working Knowledge of Trello.
• Knowledge of Sales Pipeline. 

4 Easy Steps to Set Up Trello CRM

To ensure you don’t miss out on any of the business opportunities and stay with potential clients, you can utilize the amazing capabilities offered by Trello CRM to your advantage. Let’s discuss the 4 easy steps which can help you effortlessly set up Trello CRM:

• Step 1: Creating a Trello CRM Board
• Step 2: Designing a Trello CRM Card
• Step 3: Using Power-Ups and Add-ons
• Step 4: Using Butler for Automation

Step 1: Creating a Trello CRM Board

There are two ways to start building the Sales CRM Board:

• Templates
• Custom Board

A) Templates

To use a board with predefined structure from the Trello Template Library, follow these steps:

• Step 1: Login to your Trello account.
• Step 2: Click on Templates present on the left side menu.
• Step 3: Now, in the Find Template Search Box, Type in CRM and choose the appropriate design from the list of templates that appear. In this example, the CRM Pipeline Template designed by Trello is chosen.
• Step 4: Click on the Use Template button. A dialog box will appear asking to choose the Workspace and title for the board.
• Step 5: Fill in the necessary details and Click on the Create Button. A new CRM Pipeline Board will be displayed on your screen containing different stages of a Sales Pipeline such as Leads, Meetings Scheduled, Proposal Delivered, Deals Closed, etc.

B) Custom Board

Instead of a template, you can design a Trello CRM Board yourself by following these easy steps:

• Step 1: Click on the “+” button visible in the top right corner of the header.
• Step 2: Click on the Create Board option.

• Step 3: For your custom design, select the Colour, Title, Workspace, Access Permissions and click on the Create Board button at the end.

You can create Lists corresponding to various stages such as Leads, Deals Won, etc, and add Cards to each List. Here, in the List Leads, potential customers Company A, Company B, and Company C have been added. As you progress in the Sales Funnel you can simply Drag and Drop a Client Card to the current Sales stage.

Step 2: Designing a Trello CRM Card 

Once you have added a Card to a list, you can customize it further to your advantage by using the following attributes:

• Description: In this field, you can add the necessary details about the interaction you had with the client. For example, if a customer contacted you through an email, then you can save the mail content here. 
• Add members: This helps you assign Sales Reps to particular customers and monitor each leads’ progress in the pipeline.
• Labels: You can categorize Cards in a List using the color-coded Labels to get a brief understanding of the tasks or the Card’s status without opening it. Categories such as Hot, Warm and Cold can be made for the Cards in the Leads List.

• Checklists: In each stage of the Sales Pipeline, you may follow a bunch of subtasks for each client. With Checklists, you can add these subtasks and stay updated on the situation with every customer. With a paid Business Plan in Trello CRM, you can assign individual subtasks to other members or even create a new Card separately from it.

• Dates: It is important to hit deadlines and plan your work according to project priorities. The Dates feature lets you add a start date, end date, and a date for the reminder before the said deadline. You can even add due dates to the subtasks in Checklists but you have to upgrade to a Business Plan for it.

• Attachments: You can attach necessary documents such as Presentations, Spreadsheets, Word Documents, etc., related to the clients.

Step 3: Using Power-Ups and Add-ons

You can use the following 3 free tools to make your Trello CRM more fluid:

• Calendar Power-Up 
• Google Drive Power-Up
• Trello for Gmail Add-on

A) Calendar Power-Up

This Power-Up allows you to see all your cards with due dates in a Weekly or Monthly view. You can also update the due dates for the cards by dragging and dropping them. Managing and organizing your weekly meetings becomes simplified with the Calendar Power-Up designed by Trello as you get an overview of all that is scheduled for you and your team. 

To add this feature do the following;

• Step 1: Click on the Show Menu option and Click Add Power-Up.

• Step 2: The Power-Ups window appears, in that, type Calendar in the search box and click Add on the Calendar Power-Up.

• Step 3: Click on the Calendar Power-Up option which appears next to the Show Menu button.
• Step 4: Here, you can switch between Weekly and Monthly views, change Card details by clicking on them and change the due dates by dragging a Card to a particular date.

B) Google Drive Power-Up

The Presentations on Google Slides, Sales Documents on Google Docs, and the other customer details in Google Sheets can all be directly uploaded to a card from your Google Drive using this Power-Up. You can Add this Power-Up in a similar fashion as discussed above and refer to Google Drive Trello Integration for more information.

C) Trello for Gmail Add-on

The interaction with customers on Gmail can be directly added to your Boards in Trello CRM using this simple and free Add-on. You can select the specific Board and the List in it to which you want to add a new Card. Now, you don’t have to search through emails for specific leads as this process instantly adds the Card to Trello. To know how to install and use this brilliant Add-on just visit Gmail Trello Integration.

Step 4: Using Butler for Automation

You can use Butler to automate tasks such as emails for follow-up on various contacts after a particular period of time. This way you don’t miss out on any potential client and also save time. For example, every time a Card is added to the List ”Customer Feedback”, you can set a rule to send an email with a pre-defined text.

To set the Email Automation process follow these steps:

• Step 1: Click on the Automation button present next to Show Menu and Select Rules.
• Step 2: Click on the Create Rules button and Select Add Trigger.

• Step 3: Select “when a card is moved into Customer Feedback list” and click on the “+” button.

• Step 4: Click on Card Content, scroll down and fill in the details such as email address, subject, and body of the mail.
• Step 5: Click on the “+” button next to the email address box and then hit Save. 

Limitations of using Trello CRM

Trello with its focus on the Kanban-based Boards and Trello Cards has become a unified solution for all the Project Management use cases. However, you may face some challenges while using this tool:

• For simple projects with small teams, Trello is the best tool for Task Management. Although, for complex projects with large teams and a growing customer base, using Trello CRM can be a tedious task.
• Lack of automated Data Transformation is observed in Trello. You have to manually update and clean the data while performing data transfer from other applications to Trello. 
• The integration capabilities with other platforms are limited in Trello CRM.

Conclusion

In this article, you have learned how to use Trello CRM to the fullest extent for your business. You can create custom Trello CRM Boards or choose from the templates library. The Labels, Checklists, and Dates options keep you aware of the important deadlines. With different Power-Ups, it is much easier to bring data files from other popular applications like Google Drive and Gmail to Trello Cards. With Trello CRM, everyone in your Sales team stays updated about their roles and the project status. 

As the business picks up speed, the incoming leads increase at an astonishing rate. This in turn generates a tremendous amount of data and manually handling all this Client data across all the applications in your firm becomes a challenging task. Apart from the Sales Team, you would be required to spend a segment of your engineering bandwidth to Integrate, Clean, and Transform this data to generate some meaningful Reports for further Business Analysis. All of this can be made effortless by a Cloud-based ETL tool like Hevo Data.

Hevo Data, a No-Code Data Pipeline helps you transfer data from various Data Sources like Trello into a Data Warehouse or a Destination of your choice to be visualised in a BI Tool. It is a completely Automated and Secure Service that doesn’t require you to write any code!

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If you are using Trello CRM in your enterprise and searching for an elegant tool that provides a hassle-free alternative to manual Data Integration, then Hevo can comfortably automate this for you. Hevo with its strong integration with 100+ sources & BI tools (Including 30+ Free Sources), allows you to not only export & load Data but also transform & enrich your Data & make it analysis-ready.  

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Do check out the pricing details to understand which plan suits all your business needs.

Share your experience of using Trello as a CRM with us. Let us know in the comments section below!