Lone Star Press Accelerates Sales with Copper & Google Apps

Lone Star Press is an early Copper customer and an avid user of Google Apps. Copper and its tight integration with Google Apps have helped improve their productivity, collaboration and most importantly, helped them build and grow their customer relationships.

Based in Sherman Oaks California, Lone Star Press was founded by Richard’s mother in the 80s, and was handed down to Richard when his mother retired. Richard Jacobs, the CEO of Lone Star Press now primarily focuses on business development and marketing roles. From stationery to catalogs, postcards, direct mail, pens to water bottles, Lone Star Press runs the gamut of print and branded goods.

Adopting Technology That Scales as Your Business Grows Is the Secret to Building a Great Customer Relationship

For businesses that are growing constantly and rapidly, it is mission critical to adopt technologies that can scale up quickly to boost efficiency, cut costs, and keep up with pace of the business. Lone Star adopted Google Apps and Copper to boost productivity, collaboration, and increase sales. “Our sales are up by 30% over last year,” says Richard. He continues, “As a third-generation small business owner, we understand the value of building lasting relationships with our clients and vendors.” To do that, Richard and his team use Google Apps and Copper to manage their day-to-day business activities and stay organized to deliver perfect final products with fast turnaround time.

Finding Google Apps

“I’ve always loved my personal Gmail,” Says Richard. His team was already familiar with the tool, so it made sense for Lone Star Press to move over to Google Apps for Work entirely from their previous solution, which did not meet their needs and was consequently slowing their workflow. “The fact that Google for Work comes with additional integrated apps that help increase productivity and collaboration made our decision even easier,” adds Richard.

Google Apps as a Collaboration Tool

Google Apps allows multiple people to collaborate and work on the same document or spreadsheet in real time. “Google Apps is great. When you’re working with someone outside your office, it’s really amazing to see how easy it is to create documents together,” says Richard. The Lone Star Press team shares docs and spreadsheets with their clients as well as with their internal team to collaborate and work together on projects and orders on a daily basis.

“Soon after we started with Google Apps, we saw the need for a powerful tool to interact with our growing customer base,” says Richard.

Copper + Google Apps Tight Integration

When Richard introduced Copper to his team, they got set up and running in under 10 minutes. Copper became a tool that they use everyday alongside Google Apps. Richard is a big fan of the Copper seamless integration with Google Apps. “It has saved so much time by automating all of our data entry and task management,” he adds. Especially with the integration between Google Calendar and Copper, a feature Richard frequently uses, he is always on top of his schedule. When you log an event in Copper, it instantly creates a calendar event in your Google Calendar, with all the attendees and other details pre-populated.

Mobile Suite

Richard is a heavy user of the Copper mobile suite, which allows him to work and keep on top of things on the go. While visiting the printing facility, our team often spotted Richard walking around the facility with his iPad, working with Google Apps and Copper. When he is on the go, Copper allows him to easily log sales notes, calls, meetings and reminders. “The task list is another feature that helps keep my sales calls on schedule,” adds Richard.

Sales & Production Pipeline

Richard and his team use the web app to visualize, track and manage their pipelines. On top of the standard sales pipeline, they also set up a custom pipeline which is mainly used to track their production schedule. This production pipeline includes stages such as ‘potential job’, ‘waiting on artwork’, ‘in production’, ‘ready for delivery’, and so on. “As a manager, I can quickly see if we are on track to hit our target delivery dates,” Richard explains.

“The deep integration between Google Apps and Copper gets us to a whole new level of productivity and most importantly, helps us build and grow our customer relationships,” says Richard. Together, Google Apps and Copper have helped Lone Star Press to constantly grow its business.