564: Task and Project Management Using Asana, PipeDrive and Slack with Business Productivity Consultant Paul Minors

Speaker 1 0:00 Marketer of the Day episode 564, task and project management using Asana pipe drive and slack with business productivity consultant Paul miners,

Robert Plank 0:10 hey everybody, and welcome back to the marketer of the day podcast. We're chatting with Paul miners. So I mean, would you like to be more organized? And have you heard of some of these tools, like Asana MailChimp pipe, drive, Zapier, have maybe heard of these tools, but you said to yourself, you know what? I have to learn all this stuff, or I'm not quite on board with it, well, you're going to want to sit up and pay very close attention to our conversation here, because Paul miners, he's great and at being a virtual consultant, and he helps businesses set up some of these tools. You mentioned Asana, MailChimp, pipe drive and Zapier, and he has helped over 201 on one clients to create more productive businesses by using the very best productivity and sales tools. So Paul, glad to be talking to you.

Paul Minors 0:54 Yeah. Thank you so much for having me on the podcast today.

Robert Plank 0:57 Super, super glad and super great to have you. And so when so you're this guy who has all these productivity systems, these self improvement hacks, you can help us get more with what we're doing and help us scale and all these things. And so when you tell people about some of these tools you use to get more done and get better organized and delegate, do you encounter any resistance from someone saying, Oh, just do that with pen and paper, or I'll just use Excel. Is anyone resistant to using some of these tools?

Paul Minors 1:30 Not? Well, yes, there's always a little bit of resistance, right? Like, I mean, usually the kind of clients that approach me anyway, it's like a business owner, or like a director of a company, and they found this tool, and they've kind of decided they want to use it. So they're kind of further along in that journey. They've decided, yeah, asanas like a tool, that it looks like it can help us, but they're not really sure of the best way to set it up. They don't really know what they're doing with it. They just need an expert to come in, tell them what to do, tell them how to set it up and train their team as well. Where the resistance usually comes in, sometimes with larger teams, there's inevitably going to be people on the team, maybe who are less tech savvy, who are just resistant to change. There's, you know, they just kind of like the way things are, and they're sort of like, Why do why do we need to change things? And what I always say to these people is like, these tools are designed to make you more productive, like, if you feel like it's a chore, or if you feel like you're not getting the most out of this tool, or it's slowing you down. That's actually not what we want. Like, the tool is not designed to make you slower. So that's often a case of, like, maybe we need to relook at, how are you using it, what are the principles that you're applying, and so on. So yeah, there can be some resistance, but it's just a case of, like, working through it, working out, how do you roll out a tool like this to your team. And I think the biggest mistake that companies often make is when adopting like a new tool, whether it's Asana or any other kind of software product that they want their team to use. You know, Slack, Google Drive, one of the one of the mistakes that people often make is they just dump it on their team and they go, right, we're using this now without any kind of formal like, roll out plan, or any guidelines around, like, this is how we're going to use it. This is how I expect you to use it. This is the way I want you to use it. There's no There's no real introduction to the tool. It's just kind of dumped on the team. And when that happens, like, some people love it, some people hate it, everyone kind of uses it in their own different way. And the team doesn't really gel until you sort of get everyone together and like, really agreeing on how this tool should be used. So I do think that regardless of what software you're rolling out, like taking some kind of strategic approach to how you roll it out, thinking about where this tool kind of fits in, and how we're going to get people to adopt it, is kind of a really crucial step, fair

Robert Plank 3:36 enough that makes perfect sense, that you can't necessarily just dump the tool on someone, or dump it the tool on your whole team, and expect everyone to just pick it up, because maybe they there will be some sort of a learning curve. They might use it in different ways. I mean, as you're describing it, it makes me think of, you know what, if everyone was using typewriters and suddenly you said, Well, hey, we've got a word processor now. We've got Microsoft Word. Here's this new thing. Go ahead and use it. Well, if people don't know how to use it, there will be those growing pains. So it's it's better to have that rolled out plan and train them that way. Everyone's on the same page, because the tool itself is not going to solve your problem. I mean, it makes perfect sense. So we're talking about this tool called asana and and I have to admit that I haven't used it, but I have a coaching client who uses it, and sometimes they see on his screen, he'll create these different tasks and create deadlines for them and assign them to different people. But that's the extent of what I know about Asana. So can you catch us up here and tell us what this tool is and what we should be using it for?

Paul Minors 4:36 Yeah, Asana, for those that haven't heard, is a kind of task and project management tool. And so asanas vision for their product is they started off with it, really just wanting it to be like a replacement for email. It's actually founded by Justin Rosenstein and Dustin Moskovitz, who was the CO Dustin was one of the co founders of Facebook. You may have remember. Remember his name from the social network movie, and then Justin was, I think no. So Justin worked at Google, yeah. And Dustin was at Facebook, yeah. And these guys, I think the tool was initially developed, maybe when they were, when Dustin was at Facebook, and it was developed as an in house, like project management tool. I think might be getting that wrong, but it was somewhere along those lines. And they really designed it as like, as a replacement for email, and so with with all the tasks, and when you're setting up your projects, really laying out the scope of your work, you can communicate in Asana, and you can comment on tasks, very similar to how you comment on a post on Facebook, you can comment on a task. And so I've seen great results where teams pretty much don't send any email to communicate internally. They don't even use Slack as much. You know, these instant messaging tools. All of that communication really goes through Asana, because you can tie your conversations and have a record of the conversation linked with the actual units of work and the tasks that you're working on. And now, asanas that you know, they've been around for a while now, but their vision for the product is like they really wanted to be the complete ecosystem where you live and do your work. So they, in the last few months, they put out the new timeline, and they released a great video a few months ago on where they're heading with this product, which is quite unique. Like not a lot of software companies will ever tell you, this is the this is the future, or this is where we're these are the features we're going to be building. Like they they actually released a video showing like, this is what it's going to look like. And it was really interesting to see a software company kind of being really open with the direction of their product. Direction of their product, and yeah, they really want it to be a full fledged project management, resource allocation tool that's going to allow you to see and manage the complete, you know, hierarchy of your business, and manage, like, your your vision and your missions and how projects flow into that. So it's going to be this complete ecosystem where you live and do your work. But as of right now, like it's, it's still, like, it's a great project management tool, and it's a great tool for just like, laying out all your work and really just seeing very simply who is doing what and by when, who, what and when. And I think it's amazing, like, the productivity that results when you have that kind of transparency in the team about who is doing what and when is it due the transparency, the accountability that it creates is massive as well. Because really, there's no hiding. There's none of this. Like, I didn't get your email, or I'm sorry, like, I didn't have time. Like, everyone can see everyone's workload, mostly, and so it's a great way to, like, bring teams together and really get everyone working towards, like, a common goal.

Robert Plank 7:16 Well, great. And what you touched on there in that it replaces email. I mean, that's that's huge, right there, in that it sounds to me like we should be using our email as little as possible, right? Because what you're making me think of is, back when I hopped on to using a customer support desk for my business, when I finally did it, I couldn't believe I didn't do it sooner. It used to be a matter of if I sold products to customers and they had some sort of an issue, they would email me directly, and eventually that became too much for me to handle, and sometimes I'd forward it to an assistant, or I'd have the assistant log into my Gmail, and I told myself that that got the job done, until I came across some of those issues that you just now mentioned there, and that customers would say, Oh, well, I emailed this. Didn't you get it? Or I'd, you know, do a search and find someone's name and have to pick through like, which was the correct email or which was the correct conversation. And I just, for whatever reason I was, I was stubborn, and then when I finally moved over into a customer Help Desk, then I could, then there was no longer that excuse, right? If someone said, Well, I didn't get my email, well, no, you opened a ticket. Here it is. And then we look at a ticket and we can see, well, we sent it on this on Monday, we replied to it to you on Wednesday, or I can see that here's your ticket, and we assigned it to this person who then got back to you, or didn't get back to you. So now we can see basically like, who's whose fault it was. And it was one of those things where to get started and to deal with a few customers. In that sense, I guess email was okay, just to have something there. But as that organization grew, as there were more customers, as there were more people jumping in, it seemed like once there were, once was more than two people, then it was just completely unmanageable, unless there was a system like this to do with customers. So it sounds like it's a similar situation with prod group projects and dealing with co workers with Asana, where it's like email gets you by the first couple of months, but afterwards it's just going to get out of hand if you try to use email to solve this.

Paul Minors 9:20 Yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right. But in saying that, like in my business, I work, it's just me and my wife. We're a two person team. We sit across from each other, but we if we are away from each other during the day, like or we just want to track up the decisions we make. We don't do that with email. We do that in Asana, and it's a great way that you know, if Hayley needs to give me a task, or wants me to do something, she can put a request into Asana, and vice versa, I can give Hayley a task in Asana, we can communicate back and forth about like, you know, the progress of it, or any decisions we've made regarding that task. So our communication is always tied to the work, whereas in email, I feel like there's a divide, there's a separation. Email is an environment. For communication, completely separate from work. In Email, it's not clear. You can have a you can have a conversation back and forth all day. You still don't know necessarily, who's doing what and when, but when you have a task in Asana that says, you know, complete this weekly report, it's assigned to Paul and it's due by Friday, the communication is always linked back to a piece of work, like a task that has to be fulfilled at the end of the day. And so I find that by having that communication happen inside of a task manager, decisions get made quicker. Work happens quicker, like the productivity and efficiency of a business just goes up because you're bringing communication and putting it alongside the actual work that you need to do. And often with email, people don't even have, like, a task manager. There's no There's no way of actually seeing who's doing what. You just kind of have to everyone kind of has to interpret the email and decide who's doing what, and often that's done in a completely unspoken you just have to kind of make a guess about what to do, which is obviously a lot more inefficient,

Robert Plank 10:58 right? I mean, it sounds like a total nightmare. And also there's that issue of, well, people don't use email as much anymore. So then you have a situation of, you send someone an email and then you have to text them or call them and say, Hey, did you get that email? Or shoot them a Facebook Messenger message or Skype so that makes perfect sense, that you do it in Asana. That way it's all tracked. It's not in this vague, weirdly worded English sentence or things like that. It's right there in the system. And then I'm assuming here that Asana also has, you know, email notifications if there's that communication, and maybe an app for things to pop up and when deadlines come up, like people can get notified outside of Asana to go and log back in and check things, right?

Paul Minors 11:42 Yeah, exactly. I mean, you can turn on email notifications. I mean, that can work like with contractors who maybe you've invited into your account, who they don't use Asana every day, so it's quite good for them to have emails turned on to get notified about things that maybe you're sending them. But in general, like, you know, if you really are living and breathing inside of Asana every day, you don't want those email notifications, you can actually deal with the notifications and the updates natively in Asana. So you actually it's better to turn them off. Okay,

Robert Plank 12:10 fair enough. And so that's great as well. Where you're saying there that you it doesn't have to be just within your organization with employees, if you're if you're freelancing things out, or you have a client, you can invite, you can create a new account, and you can invite someone in as a guest on that project to go in and check on things, right? Yeah,

Paul Minors 12:30 absolutely. There's lots of different privacy settings. I mean, some people you know, they want to invite contractors in, or even clients as well. Like, it's a great way to manage clients. I think you mentioned before, like, where you know a client, or you could invite a client into your account so they can you can see, you can show them like, this is the project we have set up. This is everything we need to do. These are the parts I need you to do. Because let's often with client work. The thing slowing us down is waiting on the client. And you say, these are some things I need from you. Can you get them to me? And often, like, if you just do that with email, maybe it gets client just kind of forgets about it. It's a low priority for them because it's not really their work. And then they come back to you after a week and go, Hey, where's what's happening with this project, and you have to say, Well, I'm waiting on you, you know? And so Asana does a great job of like, solving that problem, because you can invite them in and say, This is the project. Here's the timeline, which is that great new Gantt Chart feature. Here's the timeline. This is the piece I need you to do, and that that piece will let me do all these other bits. Everything else I'm doing here is dependent on you doing your piece first. So if they come to you and say, Hey, what's happening with the project? You say, Well, you're the bottleneck. I need this piece done. So it's a great way, yeah, with the different privacy options available, you can invite in clients and contractors to really make it visible. Again, who's doing what and what's slowing the project down. And

Robert Plank 13:46 that's really great. And that scenario you just laid out there, I mean, that could, you could easily lose a couple of weeks just playing the He Said, She Said, game or who's waiting for who game you might be, might lose a week or two just waiting on one person, and they don't even know it, and then they're the bottleneck, and then other tasks are dependent on them. So everything stalled out for one or two weeks, whereas in Asana, it's 100% crystal clear, and there, there are no more excuses there. So that sounds really great. And then, so something that we touched on when we were first started rolling here is that you mentioned that, well, having the tool on its own is great, but we need to get people using it, and we need to have some sort of strategic rollout plan to make sure that everyone is using it all correctly and using it all in the same way. So can you unpack that a little bit when you're helping some organization use a tool like Asana, what's your thought process there? What goes through your head as far as this plan to get people on board with it.

Paul Minors 14:44 Yeah, I mean, there's a few, there's few steps that I typically go through. Like, kind of step one is sort of like reorganizing and structuring the account in the best way for the business and, you know, based on the processes and the projects that they're currently managing. So, you know, often clients I work with, there's a bit of time spent in the beginning. Probably the most time consuming part, in fact, is, yeah, really structuring the account in the best way, because Asana is such a blank slate, working out the best way to set things up can be a challenge. Like, do you use projects? Do you use tasks? When do we use sub tasks? How do we manage clients? Like, and the the common mistake I see people make is that they set up way too many projects and don't take advantage of the kind of hierarchy that Asana gives us. And so when you have too many projects, just gets much harder to see who again, who's doing what, like the you have to check more places. And so I try and lead people to have a more consolidated account. But really that's kind of step one is just getting it all well organized before you then try and bring your team into it. Because if you don't understand it, and you're the one setting it up, and what hope is your team have. And then, kind of, in preparation for actually onboarding your team, like it's worth thinking about kind of the rules and best practices that govern how you're going to use Asana. So things like, you know, if we do use, say, Slack, you know, for instant messaging, how is that going to work with Asana? When do we communicate in Slack? When do we communicate in Asana? Who can assign tasks to who, who marks the task is complete? How are we going to use due dates? There's, like, loads of little things like that that we need to decide, because if you don't kind of put rules on these things, some people like, let's use the completion of tasks as an example. If I, if I give you a task, Robert, like, some people would get that task and do it, and then you'd be waiting on me to complete it, because I was the one assigning it to you. I should be the one completing it. That's what you might say. But then I'm like, no, no, it's your task. You need to complete it to tell me when it's complete. And unless you kind of define that and say up front, right, the person receiving the task, they're the ones responsible for marking it's complete, you can end up with all these tasks just sitting there. Some of them are complete, but you don't really know. And so you just need to make some formal decisions around those little things. How are we going to use this tool? And then, depending on the size, yeah. Oh, no. Go ahead. Continue. Yeah. Well, the final few steps are, like, depending on the size of your company, like, you might want to do a little test rollout first with, like, a small team or a department, and just sort of say, like, right, let's get you guys on board. Let's see how you want to use it, get some feedback from you. And then, kind of before we go to the bigger team, bigger team. But otherwise, like, if you run like a small to medium sized team, you could probably just bring everyone together, show them the basics. This is how we've set things up. This is the these are the rules we want you to follow. And this is where you can put your projects and things. And you actually just introduce them to it. Introduce them to the key features as well. And it's worth having, like, an internal Asana champion, you know, someone internally who kind of is in charge of keeping the account organized, answering, you know, questions that the team have, and just being the internal Asana guru, really, who can kind of lead that training, and who's really good at picking up new tools and learning how to use it. But, yeah, that's, that's, yeah, after you've got those best practices, best practices set up, you can, you can roll it out to your team, and then I think it's just a case of, like, monitoring the progress, like, see how people are using it ongoing and, you know, making changes to the structure or to those rules based on the actual, you know, real life usage that people exhibit. And just, you know, it's an ongoing process. You'll never get everything, like the structure and everything perfect straight away, so you might need to, like, just evolve things as you go. But, um, yeah, that would be kind of like my typical approach,

Robert Plank 18:05 okay, and that's a great way of chipping away at this. It seems to be a huge problem. Of, you know, people aren't using this now. We have to get everyone on board. You just attack it on all these different categories one at a time. And it almost sounds like, you know, instead of like, there's there's debugging of software itself, right? And making it so when you click on things or do things that they work, it's like, in this case, you're debugging the software for the humans to use. And so just sort of as you were explaining that what, what came through my mind is, so first of all, you you get a handle, and you explain what the terms are in the software, right? Because anytime you're dealing with some new system, there are all there's sometimes just new words for things. So you explain like, what a project is, what a task, what a sub task is, so people aren't using the wrong tool for the wrong job. And then you next get a handle on that hierarchy. So that way it's not just a ton of little tasks. That way, things are grouped into a project, for example. And then part of your process here is figuring out, well, how does it work with the other systems? And is going to be all in Asana, or, like you said, sometimes some things are left into Slack. And then after that, then you figure out who does what. So that way, it's not just a free for all. That way someone can assign something, and someone else can do it, and someone else can mark it as complete. And then you figure out these rules and kind of the the flow chart, I guess you could say, so that way. Again, it's not just chaos, but there's an actual smooth system when everyone's clear on who starts things and who finishes things. So that that way. And then also you introduce us to just a small subgroup, if that's possible. So that way you can figure out how they get a handle on it, and then roll out to everyone else. And then finally, you have that internal champion. There, someone who hopefully, ideally, really knows Asana Well, or knows it and uses it more than everyone else. So that way, if there are bumps in the road, if there. Hiccups, then that can be the go to Asana person, and then you just monitor progress along the way to make sure that everything's working the way it should work. Yeah, absolutely. Well, super cool. And so, so, yeah. So, I mean, Asana sounds like some this tool that everyone should be using to keep things organized. I mean, I love how you mentioned there that you and your wife, even though you're just a team of two, even a team of two, needs to use it because, I mean, that way you don't lose all that time if there are some kind of communication issue. And I want to make sure that we work in a few of these other tools that have helped you, like, there's there's MailChimp, there's pipe drive, which my business partner I have been recently using this last couple of weeks, and just like all these other tools, I can't believe we didn't use it sooner. So in this last few minutes, Can you unpack Pipedrive for us and tell us what that's all about.

Paul Minors 20:53 Yeah, so Pipedrive is a sales CRM, so very similar. Well, I say similar, it's actually very different, but I guess, like, it plays in the same sandbox as other tools like Salesforce, you know, is the big sales CRM that most people have heard of, Zoho, I guess, video, Infusionsoft, a little bit, HubSpot, you know, it is really a tool that's designed to help you manage and track the leads and kind of clients that you're selling to. But I want to be clear, like it's really where I some of these other CRMs maybe, like, Infusionsoft is, like, designed to manage lots of leads, like 1000s at once, and maybe you've got marketing automation built in there as well. Pipedrive is more for the one on one sales that you're doing. So for example, for me, running a consulting business, you know, I've got 20 to 30, maybe leads in my pipeline at once. You know people who have approached me to get help with consulting, and you know some of them I've got, like, booked for a meeting. Some of them have received proposals. Some of them have confirmed their interest, and someone waiting for payment. Like they're all at different stages. So Pipedrive makes it very easy to see who's at which stage of that journey. And that's a realistic number that I can realistically track on my own without want to make. Without automation. So it's, I just want to make that a differentiation up front. It's not really for tracking and managing 1000s of leads. It's more of a direct sales tool. And so with me, yeah, like it's, it's kind of, in a sense, it's a little bit of a task manager as well, because it does have activity management built in. So you create a deal. A deal is basically like a sales opportunity. So somebody approaches you to get help with consulting. You create a deal, and you can have activities assigned to that deal so that you can, you know, okay, when do I need to follow up? When do I need to write a proposal? And you can track all of the engagements with the client, like if you call them, you would log a call, and you can write your notes in there as well. So in a sense, it's a little bit of a task manager. The reason I have Pipedrive as well as Asana is because Pipedrive is just it's so well geared for sales. So like all the activities that you're completing as you move deals through these stages, all of this information is feeding into the reports. And actually the reporting in Pipedrive, I think, is one of its best features, because it actually tells you so much information about your sales process. So for me, for example, having now used it for a few years running my consulting, every single client I've worked with has gone through there. And so the data that it gives me is incredibly valuable, like I can tell you pretty much that of everyone that approaches me, my conversion rate on those deals is about 50% so of everyone that approaches me, about 50% will work with me in some capacity. And Pipedrive just gives you that information. So clearly, where other CRMs? Like, it's quite hard to get that information out, or you have to do some analysis in Excel. Pipedrive just gives you the data right in front of you. This is your conversion rate. It shows you, these are the conversion rates at different stages. So, like, this is the for example, with me, my proposal sent stage like, that's generally where I have a big drop off. You know, once you got a meeting booked, everything pretty much goes through, but getting that proposal out, that's often where I lose a few you lose a few potential clients. And so the information it gives me about my sales process is incredibly valuable, and that's something that obviously, Asana can't do for you. So that's what I mean when I say pipe drivers very geared towards sales. But, yeah, it's um, fantastic tool. Again, you can have your team in there, so you can have deals assigned to different sales people. You can see who's closing the most deals, who's doing the most work in terms of activities. And it's just such a useful tool for just keeping on top of all the potential leads and clients you want to work with in one place.

Robert Plank 24:14 Well, fantastic. Well, that sounds like a tool that we all need to be using if we're doing some of these one on one deals, like you said, so we can see who's doing what. We can see what activities are happening, who needs to reach out to what prospects, who's doing what. And I love that last part in there of, you know, sort of your conversion rate, you know, your rough math. And that can be really helpful. If you you know, well, am I putting in Am I contacting enough people? Do I have enough leads in the pipeline? So that way, if you say, Well, I know I'm going to close 50% of who I have in front of me that I know if I need to be talking to more people, I need to be actually going out and closing those people. You just know that rough math, so your business is not a mystery here. And so, yeah, so we packed in a lot in our interview today. We talked about a. Asana, which is great for project management. Pipe drive, which is a customer relationship management tool, which is great for this this one on one closing. And I'm sure the people are are thinking here to themselves, gee, this guy, Paul, he sounds like, uh, not only a really smart guy, but also he's great at explaining this stuff, and not only those things, but he's also great at implementing right if you can know facts and figures all day long, but unless you know how to actually use a tool and apply it and implement it, that's a whole other thing. So if people are saying, well, you know, I liked what I heard from Paul about being organized using these tools, but there's a limit to our conversation today, and they want to reach out, or they want to see what else you have going on, is there an easy way for people to find your website and see what you have going on these days.

Paul Minors 25:43 Yeah, the best thing to do, yeah, go to my website. It's Paul miners.com, so Paul M, I n m for Mike, I for India, and for Nick. O, R s.com, that's where I live online, and you can see everything that I'm doing. You can get in touch with me to get help with consulting services. And just I've got my productivity blog where I talk more about productivity and my business as well. And so yeah, that's definitely the best place to see what I'm up to and to get in touch.

Robert Plank 26:07 Fantastic. Well, we hope to see everyone there. That is P, A, U, L, M, I, N, O, R, s.com, that's Paul miners.com. If you're looking to amp up your productivity, or if you need that consulting on Asana if you need MailChimp consulting, pipe drive consulting, Zapier consulting. Paul is your guy, so make sure that you go there. You subscribe to his blog, you opt into his list. And most importantly, don't forget to reach out if you have any sort of hiccup or hang up with any of these tools you want to get more organized with just yourself or your whole business. Paulminers.com is the place to be. And thanks so much Paul for stopping by and getting us more organized and helping us out here. Thanks,

Paul Minors 26:47 Robert. Awesome chat. Thank you.

Robert Plank 26:49 Thank you. You want to be a sponsor for the Robert plank show. Make sure to go right now to Robert plank.com forward slash, ask, fill out the form and tell us how you'd like to sponsor the show. Thanks for listening.