We’ll show you how to put effective systems in place to make sure that nothing drops through the cracks!

The challenges of handling leads & enquiries

• Managing a long list of leads
• Being unsure about the different stages of enquiries
• Forgetting to follow up
• Leaving enquiries in the inbox
• Not knowing what to do next 

Break your list of enquiries into sections – the “post-it note” analogy

Instead of looking at your leads and enquiries as one long list, we like to use the analogy of post-it notes stuck on a board. If the board was divided into sections that represented stages or statuses of the enquiry, then a post-it note could move from one section to another to give a visual overview of where each enquiry/lead was up to.

Keep reading to discover how you can design your own workflows and home screen, or install the examples we’re using for yourself!

Map the journey of an enquiry

Before designing a workflow or home screen to view its progress, it’s a good idea to map out the possible routes the customer journey might take. Below are a couple of examples:

Identify your main workflow based on your map

From there, it’s possible to identify what the key steps would be in a typical enquiry, and design your enquiry workflow to include those steps.

The red lines in the maps below represent the enquiry workflow.

The green boxes represent occasions where you might be exporting information from Light Blue to pass into your newsletter tool of choice.

Installing the example workflows

You can install the workflows that we use in these examples (and later build a home screen around) by following these steps:

• Download either the “Portrait Enquiry (competition lead)” or “Wedding Enquiry” workflow file,
• In Light Blue, click on the “Records” menu at the top of the screen,
• Choose Records > Import > Light Blue Templates
• Select the .xml file that you downloaded in the first step
• The workflow will import and appear in the “Workflows” preferences
• Set the Workflow Type to “Enquiry workflow”
• Click on the “Set Defaults” button and choose which type of shoot(s) you’d like the workflow to be used for.

Using tags to label records that will be sent to your mailing list

When an enquiry/lead needs to be passed from Light Blue to your mailing list software – perhaps because they’re a low value lead, or have gone stale – then you can add a tag to the record which could then automatically pass the details from Light Blue to your mailing list software via Zapier.

Within the example home screens that we’re using, we rely on two tags called “Newsletter (low value)” and “Newsletter (stale lead)”. You can create the same tags by:

• opening Light Blue’s “Tags” preferences,
• clicking on the “Add record” button,
• creating a two tags named “Newsletter (low value)” and “Newsletter (stale lead)”.

Use queries to group records into different sections

Now we’ve mapped out the possible routes that the enquiry/lead may take on their journey, and set up workflows and tags manage the work you might need to do, we can now think about the different sections on the home screen (or “post-it note board” from our earlier analogy).

The orange boxes on the maps below represent the different stages you may wish to group your enquiries/leads into:

Once you have decided on the sections you’d like, then you can create queries that find all the records that would be in each section.

The full set of queries and home screens that were used in these examples can be downloaded at the end of the article. Below are a few examples of the queries that you might create yourself:

Adding queries to your home screen

Once you’ve created the queries that you’re interested in, then you can add them to your home screen using either the “Quick Query” or “Quick Query Totals” widget. Learn more about customising your home screen, here.

Installing the example home screen and queries

You can install the home screens and queries that we use in this class by following these steps:

• Download either the “p. Enquiry Board” (for the portrait competition leads example) or “w. Enquiry Board” (for the wedding session enquiry example) file,
• Go to Light Blue’s Home Screen,
• Click on the options cog in the very top right hand corner,
• Choose “Home screen layout editing” > “Import home screen layout”,
• Select the file(s) that you downloaded,
• They will now be available to choose from your list of home screens.

Light Blue brings all of the information that you need to run your business together into one place. As you’re managing your business, both you and your clients are entering helpful information into Light Blue. For example, when a new enquiry fills out your website contact form then you import that into Light Blue as a new enquiry, or when you raise an invoice and mark it is paid, all of that information is stored in Light Blue and linked together behind the scenes. You’re not having to deal with spreadsheets, paper diaries, or anything else, it’s all together in one convenient system.

Light Blue’s Home Screen gives you an overview of the information that’s most important to you. Light Blue’s strong customisation options allow you to set it up to show what’s most helpful for you and your business. You can even set up more than one Home Screen layout, so you can have different ways of looking at your business for each of the hats that you have to wear as a business owner.

00:00 – Introduction
01:10 – Home Screen overview
02:45 – Customising the Home Screen: creating an example Layout of immediate things to focus on
05:25 – Changing the Home Screen colours
06:10 – Reviewing the information showing in the example Layout created above
07:35 – And reviewing the in-built Financial Overview Layout
08:55 – Using Quick Queries in your Home Screen
10:40 – Generate new business using the Business Opportunities Layout
12:20 – Manage your enquiries using the Enquiry Management Layout

Importing the Business Opportunities and Enquiry Management Layout’s shown in the webinar

1. Download the layout files here, save them to your downloads folder or desktop.
2. Open Light Blue, click on the Options cog in the top right corner of the Home screen.
3. Choose “Home screen layout editing”
4. Choose “Import Home screen layout”
5. Choose one of the .xml layout files you downloaded a moment ago
6. You’re all done.

👉 For a more detailed look at the Home Screen head on over to this help article.
👉 To learn more about Widget Types read this one.
👉 And to learn how to use the Home Screen to manage your post production take a look at this one.

We’ve also been hard at work adding new tools to Light Blue that help you to ensure that your business complies with the GDPR. This webinar takes a closer look at the GDPR-related features that we added in Light Blue 7.1.

Selling gift vouchers (sometime referred to as gift certificates or coupons) is an important part of many portrait photographers’ revenue stream.

If you’re using them in your business, you need to be able to identify which shoots were booked because of a voucher sale, and which vouchers remain unclaimed.

In this webinar, we’ll show you how Light Blue can help you to track and manage your voucher sales, including how to use our powerful reporting tools to establish how profitable a voucher campaign was.

The nature of the work does present some challenges for your diary and to-do list, especially when selling sessions quite some time in advance of baby’s due-date, and of course baby will arrive when they’re good and ready!

In this webinar we’ll look at how you can use Light Blue to successfully manage your newborn photography business, including how to deal with fitting late & early arrivals into particularly busy shooting periods, and how to handle your customers experience.

To install the resources from this webinar

1.  Download the XML file. Don't try to open it, your computer won't know what to do with it.
2.  Open Light Blue, click on the Records menu,
3.  Choose “Import”, then “Light Blue Templates”,
4.  Select the template file that you’ve downloaded.