Execute better using Salesforce.com, Basecamp, and Quickbooks

During both of my last two online coaching sessions, my client has asked me about the way I have setup my own web browser, Firefox.

Specifically, they wanted to know how I could have over 20 open Tabs at once and still remain sane. The ability to have multiple pages in your browser be seen as Tabs instead of unique windows has been in Firefox for a few years and came to Internet Explorer and Safari more recently.  Each Tab indicates a unique web page and with all of the various on-demand apps, sites, and pages I make use of, having 20 open pages seems to be the rule nowadays, not the exception.

Tree Style Tab Add-On for Firefox

I am one of those people who “get’s nervous” — my words — when I have many things open and cannot easily discern or navigate them. This is why I moved to the Mac and this is why prior to this Add-On I would only have as many Tabs as I could horizontally stack and still read, usually about 4-7, depending on page titles.

So, try this in your Firefox and let me know how it helps you.

Tree Style Tab Add-On for Firefox.

Additionally, here are a few additional tips for Firefox:

• By default, the Tab bar will be organized horizontally at the top like Firefox does without it. Change it to organize them vertically to get the productivity gain.
• When you have multiple tabs open, the first 10 are attached to keyboard shortcuts CTRL/+0 through CTRL/+9 so you can move between the tabs quickly.
• When you want to navigate Tabs in context rather than by number, you can use CTRL-TAB and CTRL-SHIFT-TAB for next Tab and previous Tab respectively.
• Now that you can handle many pages as Tabs at a glance, you might consider bookmarking an entire set of pages as Tabs such as “Shopping” instead of just Amazon.com or WhatSheBuys.com.

How you store your client information inside Salesforce.com makes a big difference. One area where this is very clear is Accounts and Contacts. Salesforce began as a business tool and therefore focused on business to business (B2B) relationships. Therefore, the Account object is oriented toward a business or company by default.

These relationships look like this:

ACCOUNT (i.e. Acme, Inc., www.acme.com, 1-800-ACME-INC)
|
|
----- CONTACT (i.e. Joe Smith, joe@acme.com, 555-555-1212)
----- CONTACT
...

This works great when there is a company such as a company client, vendor, or partner and it has employees that are related to it.

However, what happens when the client is an individual person such as someone who bought one of your e-books or a t-shirt? What happens when you are a nonprofit that relates to individual as well as institutional donors? (more…)