Task management is a skill that can often be overlooked. But good task management shows professionalism and dedication. And sometimes, that all-important follow-up can be the difference between failure and success.

We recently introduced lots of improvements around Task Management in Membrain, making it easier for you to keep on top of your day and increase productivity. And we've got one more up our sleeve... Tasks are now available on Membrain's mobile app - Membrain Go!

Read this blog post about increasing your productivity with Membrain's Task Manager

Membrain's Mobile app - Membrain Go - is already a powerful resource for any sales professional, giving you access to Sales Projects, Prospects and Companies, as well as your Sales Inbox and Sales Calendar where and when you need it.

And now, with the addition of a brand new dedicated Tasks area, you can keep on top of what's important, right from your mobile phone.

So what makes Membrain's Tasks stand out from the crowd? Well, here's just a few features we think you're going to love:

Tasks are cleverly grouped to help you prioritize and show you at a glance what's due today, overdue, due in the future, and already completed

Track tasks you've assigned to a colleague so you don't need to worry about things that might slide

Complete a Task with one click from the main Task list, and see it move to the Completed area. Who doesn't get encouragement from a completed check list!

Spot what type of Task each item is, with Membrain's customizable activity color-coding

Ready to start using Tasks on Membrain Go?  Great! Get the app today from the Play or Apple Store.

And don't forget to read our help center article to find out all there is to know about Membrain Go today.

You spoke and we listened. Fast forward through months of intense brainstorming, full-on feature development and an unhealthy amount of coffee and... it's finally here! The all new Sales Inbox for Membrain.

Email and Sales come together in Membrain's Sales Inbox like never before, with a mountain of new and improved ways to manage your mail. And now introducing Sent Mail Insights - a brand new analytical view of how the world interacts with the email you send.

Membrains Sales Inbox has one thing that separates it from your standard email client. It works alongside your Sales Projects and Prospects, connecting them seamlessly and helping you communicate effectively, with Sales taking center stage.

Recently, we've been working hard to bring you an even more powerful email experience. We've made things much faster, sleeker, more intuitive. Here are just some of the highlights:

Customizable Views

With just one click you can completely change how you view and work with your email. Use one of our unique filters designed to help you focus on Sales Project or Prospect related email - filtering out the non-important mail that can clutter even the most organised of mailboxes. Or create a personalized view based on top senders, company, sales project, plus lots more.

Sent Mail Insights 

Understanding what happens to your email once you hit that send button is a game changer. Seeing information such as when your mail was read or if/when a link was clicked can give you that edge you need, providing you with inside knowledge about your communication with contacts and prospective clients.

A Fresh New Look

A whole lots changed, and we really hope you feel the difference. Read more about the improvements we've made in this Help Center article Membrains Sales Inbox. 

We are super excited about Membrain's new Products feature which was recently launched with great anticipation. "Products" offers a solid database where the services, products or offerings you have as a company can be managed and tracked, along with their unique pricing structures.

Furthermore, when we take Products and combine it with Membrain's intuitive Dashboards - the reporting possibilities are no less than spectacular.

Already we've seen some impressive use-case scenarios out there, with all kinds of creative ways to show, segment and sort data, and display them in full-colour charts and graphs. So I thought I'd share with you a Top 5 list of the most powerful dashboard graphs we've seen so far.

Check out these examples on how you can use Products and Dashboards to get detailed and insightful reports on what's making your business thrive.

1. Revenue by Product and Expected date

This forecast graph shows us when we can expect to see revenue coming in, and from which Products. Hovering over each section in the graph gives you additional insight into your graphs. Interesting to see Licencing (a recurring cost) is making up most of the revenue in the later months of the year, with almost no new sales forecasted.

2. Quarterly Product Revenue by Sales Project health

Not all deals will be won, so looking at the health of the pipeline, as well as the expected revenue is a wise move. Here we see quite a large chunk of Q1's expected revenue is showing as unhealthy with red flag warnings. Time to take some action and save these projects before they fall out of the pipeline.

3. Revenue from Products by your own Custom Fields

Want to see some figures based on your own process? No problem. Being able to incorporate your own Custom Fields into these reports is eye-opening. See revenue by Industry, Source, Partner or any other specific datapoint you track in your business. Here we see the Telecoms Industry makes up 20% of all sales for GSX-900s.

4. Value by Sales Project owner & Product 

This graph is a great way to see who in your team is bringing in the most revenue, while at the same time, show which Products are attributing to that total. Here we see Margo Robbie sold 72k worth of GSX-900's, making up 42% of her total sales.

5. Value by Product and Sales Project Owner - This is, in fact, the exact same graph, just flipped on its head to give you a totally different angle to whats in the Pipeline, and who's put it there. Here, we see Product Value by Product Name and segmented by Sales Project Owner. Just two mouse clicks gives you a fresh perspective on the same data set. When we look at Margo Robbie in this graph, we see her 72k of GSX's, and also that this is 19% of the total revenue coming in from GSX sales.

These graphs are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what you can do with all the data you have about Sales Projects, Companies and your Team - and now using the new angle Products brings. 

Ready to build your own customized Revenue Dashboard? Great! Let us know if you would like a personalised walkthrough of how you can use Products with The Dashboard to improve your reporting and revenue forecasting.

Or take a look at the Products and Dashboard help center articles to get started today!

Good Task Management is at the heart of any highly productive Salesperson. And in this day and age, we all strive towards increased productivity, even if that means simply getting to the bottom of a never-ending to-do list.

Membrain's Tasks helps you banish the mundane and streamline task management, allowing you to create, manage and complete your tasks efficiently.

In a small but nifty addition to Tasks we've enhanced the process even further - adding the ability to Create a Follow-Up Task easily while creating Appointments, Notes, and Phonecalls. A new related task is created with one click and set for the next day, keeping you focused on what's required to keep up momentum and get the job done successfully.

Creating follow-up tasks as a reminder to do something important couldn't be any easier

Task Management Highlights

Haven't used Tasks in Membrain yet? Keep track of what's important and don't let anything fall through the cracks. Here are just a few ways you can use Tasks for success:

• Hit the letter t on your keyboard for quick access to your Task List
• View your colleagues Tasks List, and comment on their tasks for effortless collaboration
• Assign tasks to your colleague's (and even contacts outside of Membrain), helping you delegate and spread the load
• Set reminders for yourself when a task is upcoming or overdue, and flag them so you don't miss any high priority tasks
• Trigger new task creation automatically from the Sales Process when an event occurs, like a new sales project created, red flag alert or a step is completed, and have it assigned to the relevant person or role.
• And now! create follow up tasks with one click when creating Appointments, Notes and Phone calls.

So what are you waiting for? Learn more about Membrain's Task and Activity Managagement tools and increase you and your team's productivity now.

Complex B2B sales is just that. Complex. And our mission here at Membrain is to minimize that complexity and make managing opportunities - and all the components that come with them - a more productive experience.

We've added a new feature we're calling "Products" to Membrain's array of capabilities, allowing you to itemize the individual components that make up a complete Sales Project. Whether that's a list of products you sell, different contracts you manage or even simply payments you want to keep track of - all of these can be tracked individually, along with their revenue details, opening up a whole new world of data analysis and reporting possibilities. 

Itemizing the components of a Sales Project is, of course, a great way to manage opportunities and identify which products or services are working for you as a business. But that's just the beginning.

With Membrain's new Product Database, you can capture more specific information on each item, such as future milestone payments, different payment terms, or fixed or recurring costs. This allows for more in-depth reporting and accurate forecasting on expected revenue - not just closing dates.

Here are just a few ways Membrain's Product Database can
add depth to your opportunity management

Break down the details of each Sales Project, item by item, with a helpful summary of the overall expected revenue.

Use Dashboard to create a multitude of powerful graphs about Products, related revenue and other insights. 

We're excited to bring this new feature to you, and hope you are keen to learn more. Get started with Products today with our step-by-step guides, or contact us for a personalized walk-through at support@membrain.com

Recording the value of a sales project is, of course, how we track incoming revenue and forcast effectively. Though its often necessary to track other metrics which have a value associated to them, over and above the sales project value. This is where Currency fields come in to the picture.

The newest edition to Membrains collection of custom fields - Currency Fields - are now available.

So whats a Currency Field I hear you ask. Well, Currency Fields allow you to track an item, service or product you're offering and see its value in monetary terms

With this new field type comes the ability to record not just the overall value of a Sales Project, but to get more specific and track the value of individual items, quantified in monetary value. Not to mention the multitude of new possibilities for analysing this data to get real insights into where your revenue is coming from, right down to a granular level.

Currency Fields are fully incorporated throughout Membrain, and can be used in lots of ways including:

• Filter, group and sort the Sales Project List view to clearly see your new Currency Fields at work
• Use them with Calculation fields and let Membrain work out margins, percentages, discounts etc of individual value items, regardless of your personal currency settings
• Include them in your favourite graphs in a Dashboard, to see where your revenue is coming from in full glorious color

Want to know more about Currency Fields?  Great!  Get started with this help center article that walks you through setting up Currency Fields

Communication and collaboration is at the heart of any good sales team. The more we share our knowledge, offer advice or give encouragement, the stronger and more successful we become.    

Membrain makes this easy with the use of Comments and Mentions, keeping the conversation active with the relevant people on the team and in correct context.   

Previously, Commenting on items or events and Mentioning colleagues (using the @ sign followed by their name) were only possible in the Activity Stream of a Sales Project, Prospect, Company or Contact. But with this most recent update, it is now possible to use Comments and Mentions in Tasks and Appointments too! So you can keep the conversation relevant to where you are, and what you're working on.

Some scenarios where this update helps your team work collaborate and communicate:

• Before you invite your colleague along to a meeting, why not Comment on the appointment itself, Mention your colleague and ask if they want to join in? 
• Ask a team member how a meeting went and follow-up from the appointment itself
• Let your manager know you need some assistance on a Task you've been assigned to, just mention him/her in the Task and keep the conversation relevant  
• Or even ask a colleage for a status update, on those tasks that you've assigned

And whats great about these comments and mentions? You guessed it, once you mention someone in Membrain, they get an instant notification in Membrain Guide. So you can grab their attention right when you need it. And whatsmore, they work with Membrain Go, our mobile app.  

Learn more about how Comments and Mentions in Membrain can help you build team work with your colleagues today!

What do you get when you cross the best Sales Effectiveness Plaform on the planet with a growing Communication and Collaboration app?  You guessed it... the much anticipated Membrain - Slack integration!

Use the Slack Integration to Alert, Inform and Encourage your teams about all the important milestones reached in Membrain, as they happen!

We're very excited to launch Membrain's most recent integration, keeping everyone in the loop on the exciting things that happen within Membrain.

Let Membrain send notifications right throughout your organisation via your chosen Slack Channel, and keep everyone updated!

A few ideas to get started with the Slack Integration:

• Send a congratulatory update to colleagues when a Sales Project has been won!
• Notify the Finance channel when an "Agreement Signed" step in a Sales Project is completed
• Alert the Customer Support channel when a Sales Project generates a red flag
• Inform the Marketing channel when a "Demo required" step in the Sales Project is completed
• Notify the Sales channel when a Prospect has been converted to a Sales Project

Can you think of any other ways where you could use this powerful integration? Get creative and spread the word with your colleagues through this easy to set up integration today! 

Learn how with these help center articles: Slack Integration Setup and Automated Events in Prospecting and Sales Projects.

Membrains Win/Loss Analysis features provide you with the insight you need to understand which deals you win or lose, and most importantly why.

But thats not all - these graphs are jam packed with additional details, helping you pinpoint behaviors and trends in your process, like how sales projects move through the pipeline, what parameters indicates a strong opportunity v's a weak one and much more. 

Improved visualisation of Win/Loss graphs helps you understand your data and see trends clearly

Historically, data with extreme outliers in numerical fields, or in time related data-points meant useful data sometimes got squashed into one area of the graph, making it difficult to clearly see the most important (and often data-rich) bulk of information.

Grouping these outliers with extreme values on both ends of the spectrum gives additional definition to the most relevant data, allowing you to gain that visual understanding of your data at a glance.  

Learn more about Win/Loss Analysis in Membrain, and start using these powerful graphs today!

Sales Cycle Length is a hot topic in B2B sales, and its no wonder! Shorter sales cycles generally lead to greater profits, since more deals are being closed faster.

It therefore makes sense to identify those Sales Projects which have stalled or are spending too much time in one Stage of the Sales Cycle, as they could spell trouble. To help you see these trends in real time we've added new functionality throughout Membrain to allow you to dig deeper into this metric, and see how long Sales Projects are spending at each Stage of the Process.

There are lots of different ways you can use this metric to show you how fluid your Sales Pipeline is, and how it flows through your process. For example:

In the Dashboard:

Show Sales Projects which have spent the most Time in their current stage, and sort by longest to shortest time.

Create a graph showing all current and historical Sales Projects and their average time spent in each stage of the process, shown by status Open, Archived or Won.

• In the Active Pipeline - Sort open Sales Projects by Time in Current Stage, and see them grouped in each Stage.
• In the Sales Project List view - drill right down to see the date they entered any of the specific stages in the pipeline, as well as the time in that stage.
• Export this data out to excel for use outside of Membrain

We hope you like this new functionality - give it a try today and see how it can help you gain additional insights into your sales life cycle.