While none of us could have ever imagined dealing with the coronavirus and COVID-19 and the work at home mandate. In March of 2020, most companies changed their business model to working remotely. This experience has changed the way we do business and many companies have opted to continue this remote work model.
We changed our definition of “work” about 5 years ago. We changed from “work” being a place you go.. to “work” is something you do. In this post I wanted to share with you the 5 remote working tools we love and hope you will too.
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ToggleTrello: Project Management
Trello is one of the tools we have been using the longest and use it for pretty much everything we do. Trello is a project and task management tool that allows us to Collaboration and organize projects into boards.
One of the things I love about Trello is that we can have different boards for different people and different projects and collaborate on them with an individual or as a team. For example, we have several different team members in the production department in various parts of the country. All their projects, communications, due dates etc.. all flow through Trello. Have a question on the status of a particular project, it’s easy to get a quick answer by logging into that board for a status update.
For example, all customer service tickets that come in from the for the studio website are automatically logged into Trello to be assigned to a staff member. It also makes it easy (with a customer on the phone) for anyone to quickly check the status of a ticket or reorder and give the customer an update or FedEx tracking number.
We will go into more details an examples in future blog post.

Zoom: Video Meetings and Conference calls
I've had more zoom meetings and conference calls in the last two months than I've had in the last two years combined. Zoom is the new tool for staff meetings and it's also super easy to get on a call with vendors and prospects. You can share your screen for a Powerpoint presentation, software demo or tech support call. Zoom makes it super easy to schedule meetings and integrates with all major calendars.

Slack: Communication
Slack is another tool that we have been using for years. Mostly for communications with developers and website managers working as independent contractors. Due to the fact that many of these individual are in different parts of the country and in vastly different tine zones a lot of the communication was done through email in the past. I am glad to report that Slack has eliminated the need to email communications.
Slack is a chat-style communication tool with file-sharing capabilities. With Slack, we organize the various projects into channels. for example, we have a channel for the web development and channel various software development projects.
While Slack originally started as a way to remove email so that conversations could take place faster and with less formality, it now gets even more features to help distributed teams, including work calls.
Google Drive: File Storage
With everyone working remotely, the challenge became file sharing. I was always being asked to find a file on the server and send it to someone. Google Drive to the rescue. It allows us to share all files online for all team members.
It works amazing for sharing all resources and also working on specific jobs. We are also using Google Sheets and Docs to be able to collaborate as a team in real time. You have the ability to set user permission to allow edit access or view only mode.

Close: CRM
Close is a great CRM for any small B2B business that wants to make more sales with less work. Make more calls, send more emails and close more deals and track all customer correspondence.
The CRM is easy to use, visual and updates most of your customer data automatically so you can focus on your customers and on closing those deals. Close also integrates with your email provider and keeps track of all email correspondence in the customers account. It also integrates with Slack, Zoom and many others.
You can send text messages through Close, do automated drip campaigns, create pipelines, set reminders, it it will keep you on task for rebooking existing accounts and tracking progress on new prospects.

Hope you found these helpful. Working remotely has definitely required some new skillsets and new tools. What are your favorite tools that didn’t make the list?