On the sales and staffing side, Matthew Januszek, co-founder of Escape Fitness in Newport Beach, CA, relies on Monday.
It’s a team management platform that’s designed to help teams collaborate, and Januszek uses it to record, organize, and track business leads and inquiries. It’s an important tool at Escape Fitness, which specializes in the production and installation of functional fitness equipment.
“Since leads come in from many different sources—our website, email, trade shows, and so forth—and we have a lot of external partners, this app allows everyone to work together easily,” he says. “When a lead comes in for a specific project, it can be tracked from A to Z.”
All of the leads are put into what Januszek calls an expanded CRM (customer relationship management) system, and, once the data has been collected, it’s integrated into Escape’s main CRM.
Monday’s dashboard can be customized to provide a view that’s intuitive and simple to use that allows users to track progress at a glance.
For big projects that involve a number of people and partners, Januszek and his team use Trello, a task-management app. “Trello is great for managing product development; it centralizes the project, providing a spot where the different participants can come together.”
He likens it to a social media platform for all involved.
“For example, if the project is to design and equip a new gym, we create a board, and invite and provide access to everyone—both internally and externally—who is working on it. The flooring person can see it, the equipment people—etc., etc. And we never have to send a single email.”
Januszek especially appreciates how visual the app is. “You can actually see concepts—not just imagine what they are. And you can make comments, assign tasks and actions, and create deadlines—an exceptionally important aspect of any project.”