March 6, 2010
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting! In the last month I’ve started using a tool that has revolutionized my ability to control information - and save me time. OK, this blog isn’t about ACT! or how to organized your information in ACT!. This is about finding a method to the madness of organizing all the other stuff in your business or personal life that you have to control. I’m talking about the articles you read online, blog posts, emails on topics of interest, hand written notes, photos, audio files, a Twitter post, research projects. You name it, the list never ends. Paper files don’t always work and they aren’t very green.
After reading an article by Walter Mossberg in the WSJ, I discovered Evernote. This is nothing short of amazing and the powerful basic version is free! Evernote is a hybrid of cloud and desktop software that gives you the ability to store virtually any item you want, organize it in notebooks with tags that are logical to you. And have control of your data from any computer anywhere you have an Internet connection. Oh, and by the way, you can share it with others if you want.
Evernote is a private digital file cabinet that is searchable, well organized and easy to use. It works with MAC, Windows, iPhones, Palm Pre, Blackberry, Windows Mobile and Android. It has plugins that make it easy to upload data from Outlook, Twitter, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Safari.
All the data you upload is stored on the Evernote server in your secure account. Once uploaded you can create notebooks based on how you want to organize the data such as project or topic or client. Each item you upload can also be tagged with key words for instant retrieval.
Evernote can be used for gathering ideas for personal or business projects, upcoming trip planning (confirmations, maps, agendas, venue information), client projects, you name it. The Evernote Blog has some interesting examples. Here are some of the ways I’ve been using Evernote:
- Clip news articles of interest to clients – You can email these directly from Evernote
- Forward e-newsletters that I want to refer back to later
- Scan hand written notes from meetings or photos of whiteboard notes taken by my phone (BTW, Evernote will even decipher your writing making it searchable!)
- Clip blog articles for future reference
- Share a notebook out and share that with a client to review our work for them
- Clip product reviews and store information for an upcoming scanner purchase.
As I mentioned earlier the basic version of Evernote is free. There is a 40 MB monthly limit to storage, but no overall limit. There are limitations on files that can be uploaded, example you can’t upload MS Office docs. And there are tiny ads, but I’ve never found them to be intrusive. The premium version is $5.00 per month or $45.00 per year. Your monthly storage goes to 500 MB. Virtually any document can be uploaded, MS Office files, PDFs (and they are also searchable.) The ads disappear with premium.
As the pace of business and life in general keeps picking up, the need to stay organized becomes a premium. Evernote can give you that ability at little or no investment. If you adopt Evernote, let me know what “outside of the box” ways you are using it.
Popularity: 7% [?]
December 31, 2009
In years past, I’ve always focused narrowly on how to get more out of ACT! in the new year. For 2010 I’m going to focus on resolutions to make this new decade your best EVER! OK, so I might include an ACT! tip, but the goal is to reach out and be broader in our perspective and look at how we can improve our businesses. After you read my top ten, please add yours to the list. I wish you a wonderful and prosperous New Year!
1 – Really use the Internet for research and sales prospecting
Many of us have companies we are targeting. Set up Google Alerts for your top 10 prospect companies so you can stay on top of their breaking news. Search LinkedIn for your prospect’s companies and their people. When you find a key contact, send them an InMail message to open a dialog. Search Facebook for your prospect’s fan pages. Don’t forget about Twitter. While you’re setting Google alerts for your prospects, also set them up for you, your company and your key words. I promise you will be amazed what you learn.
2 – Get recognized and get found
Go ahead, Google yourself, then Google your Company. Google your top competitors and their key executives. Google key words for your industry. Are you and your company on the first page of your searches? Are you higher than your competitors? The yellow pages are dead. More and more customers are doing their research on the Internet and you need to make it easy for them to find you. If you would like a little help, take a look at a colleague of mine, Judd Seida. His firm, BizHive, has helped many companies improve their online presence – and their sales!
3 – Get a voice and a blog
OK, this is related to #2, but is worth its own mention. Blogs give you an ability to tell your story. You can have a team approach to blogging and let several people at your company blog to add breadth to your message. A blog on your web site will improve your Search Engine Optimization and raise your visibility. The search engines love fresh content. It’s easy to find things to blog about. Check out Chris Brogan’s blog about blogging every day. If you are ready to take your web site, blog and social media to the next level, then check out The Authority Black Book.
4 – LinkedIn is a waste of a salesperson’s time - NOT!
I saw that headline in a recent email from Salesgravy.com and I flipped! I love the reverse psychology. If you are in sales (and who among us isn’t), LinkedIn provides you with a unique lead generation and business building opportunity. Additionally, LinkedIn is a great way to become recognized as an industry expert and the go-to person in your field of expertise. To learn more about the value of LinkedIn read Paul Castain’s LinkedIn The Right Way and join the Sales Gravy LinkedIn Group.
5 – Seek new ideas and insight
One of my personal goals in 2009 was to identify some interesting bloggers and newsletters to help me stay on top of my game. A few Google searches gave me the results I wanted. The key was making it easy to read this information each week. Here are two tips for that. If you use Outlook 2007, you can add RSS feeds and have your favorite blogs sent to your inbox automatically. Or you can set up Google Reader through your iGoogle page.
6 – Excellent blogs to get you going
Here are a few of my favorite blogs: Paul Castain’s Sales Playbook. Seth Godin’s Seth’s Blog. Chris Brogan Community and Social Media. SalesBlogcast. Modern B2B Marketing. Dorothy Twinney, local creative marketing maven Dot’s Blog.
7 - Get organized and get productive
Can you see the bottom of your desk? Do you waste hours each week looking for key information that you know is within reach? Make 201o the year you get organized. If you can’t get organized yourself, there is professional help available. Alita Bluford of Marlowe & Associates has worked with a number of our clients and gotten amazing results.
8 – Marketing – Part 1 – We have to do it!
Do you have a marketing plan? Want to create one quickly? Check out a brand new tool developed by a colleague, Sandy Barris, called Fast Marketing Plan. If you would like some creative and effective help with your marketing, talk to Dorothy Twinney at Pandora Outside the Box Marketing. Want to send snail mail, then get creative with bumpy mail. Get a free idea book at 3DMailResults.
9 – Marketing – Part 2 – eMarketing
Every company needs to reach out and touch their client base. Tools that make the job easy and get results are critical. For ACT! users there is nothing better than Swiftpage Email. Swiftpage integrates directly into ACT!. No exporting of emails and the results of your email and nurture marketing campaigns come back into ACT! on each contact record.
10 – Leverage the power of ACT! in 2010
Make ACT! your mission critical tool in 2010. Ask yourself a few questions. Do you know how to truly use ACT! to grow your business? Do you have ACT! designed to give you the information that you need? Does everyone who is using ACT! know what their role is with database? What is the one thing can you could improve in ACT! that will give you improved ROI in 2010?
Popularity: 59% [?]
November 5, 2009
Last week I attended a two hour marketing workshop put on by one on my most enjoyable clients. Dorothy Twinney founded her new company Pandora Outside The Box Marketing to help organizations implement creative and effective marketing ideas that don’t cost an arm and a leg. Something that may ring true to many of you.
I took the time to work on my business and took away some great ideas. Dorothy opened the workshop by talking about using yourself as a marketing tool. Duh, how often do we truly think of ourselves as being our best marketing tool? OK, how many of you have reviewed your 30 second elevator speech recently? We delved into analyzing our audience and our key messages. We covered reaching out to our existing customers.
Web site analysis and social media topics were blended with traditional marketing concepts. How about planning your blog posts in your marketing plan? Get the picture. Dorothy had an action packed workshop that allowed everyone to take away ideas they could immediately implement in their business. I know my ACT! database will be getting a work out with the ideas I took from the session.
The good news is Dorothy has three more workshops scheduled:
- Detroit Monday, November 9 2:00 – 4:00 $85.00/attendee
- Plymouth Tuesday, November 10 2:00 – 4:00 $85.00/attendee
- Plymouth Tuesday, November 18 2:00 – 4:00 $85.00/attendee
More information is available on Dot’s Blog and by calling 313-259-3458 x124. Mention AspenTech and Dorothy will give you 20% off! You can beat that.
Popularity: 57% [?]
November 2, 2009
If you’re installing or planning to install ACT! 2010 on Windows XP, make sure you have SP3 installed. System crashes have been reported on XP SP2 systems as a result of an issue with Microsoft SQL Server 2005 SP3. This is detailed in the following ACT! Knowledge Base article: Blue Stop Error and System Crash When Installing ACT! 2010. The ACT! 2010 System Requirements have also been updated to require Windows XP SP3. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact the AspenTech for support.
Popularity: 100% [?]
October 29, 2009
Whether you’re gearing up to send a special turkey day greeting, a holiday card, or an email to ring in the New Year, it’s important to use your ACT! database as a great resource to make this much easier and save you time.
First, do you have a way of identifying which contacts in your database should receive your greeting? If not, that’s the first step. A good way of doing this is with a “Greetings” field in your ACT! database that has a multi-select dropdown. Here’s a step-by-step on how to set that up:
1) Make sure you are logged into your main ACT! database with an administrator’s user account.
2) Also ensure that there are no other users logged into your main ACT! database as this procedure does require the database to be “locked”.
3) Click the Tools menu and go to Define Fields (at this point if anyone is logged into your database it will prompt you to lock them out).
4) On the left side of the Define Fields window under List Tasks, click Manage Drop-Down Lists.
5) On the left side of the Manage Drop-Down Lists window under Drop-Down List Tasks, click Create Drop-Down List.
6) Enter “Greetings” as the name of the list and if you only want administrators and managers to be able to control the list values, uncheck the box at the bottom for “Allow users to edit items in this list”. NOTE: Never leave “Automatically add new items user enter to the list” checked. This will cause you to have misspellings and different variations of the same value.
7) Click Next.
8) Add your list values and when you are done click Finish.
9) Click the Home button to get back to the main Define Fields window.
10) On the left side of the Define Fields window under Field Tasks, click Create New Field.
11) Enter “Greetings” as the name of the field, check the box to “Use Drop-Down List”, select your “Greetings” list and click Next.
12) Check the box for “Limit to List”, check the box for “Allow Multi-Select”, click Finish and then click Close.
13) Now that the field is created in the database, you need to add it to your layout so users can begin to choose who should receive which greetings. To do that, use the following ACT! Knowledge Base article about Designing Layouts in ACT!
Now that you have your Greetings field added to your database and layout, your users can begin to populate that field on each of their contacts’ records so you know who should get which mailings. Once that field is populated, an easy way to see who should get each greeting is to use a group in ACT!. For this example we’ll use Thanksgiving:
1) Click the View menu in ACT! and choose Groups.
2) Once in the Groups view, click the Groups menu and choose New Group.
3) Give the new group a name such as “Greetings – Thanksgiving”.
4) On the Contacts tab of the group, click Add/Remove Contacts.
5) From the Add/Remove Contacts window, click Edit Criteria.
6) Here you’ll want to add a line for the Contact field Greetings where it Contains Thanksgiving:
7) After adding that line, click OK on the Group Criteria window and click OK on the Add/Remove Contacts window.
Now you have a group built in your ACT! database for everyone who should receive your Thanksgiving greeting and it’s easy for your users to manage who should be in that group. Since this group uses criteria, as your users change the Greetings field in the ACT! database, contacts will be added and removed from this group appropriately. Just repeat this process for your other greetings.
CONGRATULATIONS! Now you have your selection of contacts to print labels for post cards or envelopes, to send to your local print shop, or to do an email blast using SwiftPage Email. If you’d like further assistance with any of those items, let AspenTech know how we can help.
Popularity: 67% [?]
October 11, 2009
This weekend I picked up a magazine (yes, I still read ink) and came across a great quote. “Most CRM users have the equivalent of a Porsche. They’re driving it like my grandmother would.” This is so true. We deal primarily with ACT! in our consulting practice. The majority of our clients started using ACT! before they came to us and this year, we’ve helped many with their ACT! “driving skills.”
In 2009 companies awoke to the fact that they have been underutilizing ACT! At some time in the past they made the investment in the software but that is where their effort stopped. Here’s a little of what we’ve heard:
- ACT! is little more than a Rolodex.
- No, we haven’t customized the database. That’s what notes are for.
- No, nobody has any training in ACT!, we just installed it and let everyone figure it out.
- It’s only available when we’re in the office and sales spends most of their time in the field.
- The sales team doesn’t want to enter information twice, if they did that they would never sell a thing.
The list goes on, but the point is they have a Porsche and they’ve been driving it like their grandmother would. To take advantage of this Porsche they have to balance the three sides of any solid ACT! contact management, or CRM solution: Select the right software, design and implement the pieces so it meets the need of the organization and then train, train and train the users. Only when you put those three components together in a balanced solution, will you have a contact management system that supports the sales and marketing goals of the organization and returns a solid ROI!
When we talk with our clients about their specific challenges, they are astonished at how a well designed ACT! system will meet their needs. Did you know that ACT! has the capability to optimize prospect research, lead generation and nurturing, sales team collaboration and pipeline management? When you leverage those capabilities to solve efficiency and effectiveness challenges of your sales team, you are creating a competitive advantage over the competition.
So, stop driving your Porsche like your grandmother. Instead get a remedial course in driving school. Sit down with a certified professional who knows your CRM tool, whether it’s ACT! or not. Share your challenges and ask them to show you how to optimize the use of what you already have or enhance your system with innovative add-ons that turbo charge your system’s usage and effectiveness – and with it, your 2009 sales performance.
Popularity: 71% [?]
September 23, 2009
FULLY CUSTOMIZABLE OPPORTUNITIES!!! Why am I so excited about this? Fully customizable opportunities have been one thing our clients have been asking for for years and Sage really delivers in ACT! 2010. Managing your leads and your sales pipeline is now much easier. With the new ACT! 2010 opportunities, you can:
- Add an unlimited number of custom fields to the opportunity layout.
- Customize the opportunity layout just like you can the contacts layout.
- Associate notes, histories, activities, and documents to an opportunity.
- Customize the products/services grid.
In case you’re just tuning in, here’s the countdown:
#10 – Big “Easy” Buttons
#9 – Quick Search
#8 – Related Tasks
#7 – iCal Invites
#6 – New Dashboards
#5 – New Reports/View
#4 – Web Info Tab
#3 – Marketing Results/eMarketing
#2 – Welcome Page
Popularity: 74% [?]
September 16, 2009
Let’s take a look at two scenarios. In our first scenario, in walks your plant manager and she informs you that your main press just broke down and it needs $15,000 in immediate repairs to meet the demand for existing orders and keep shipping product. What do you do? Well, if filling those orders is critical to your business success, you’re going to get the press fixed, ASAP. It’s a no brainer.
Now in the second scenario, in walks your sales manager. He’s been looking for ways to increase sales and has determined that implementing a custom ACT! CRM system, at a cost of $15,000, is the way to go. The ACT! By Sage contact manangement system will replace the existing paper and Excel spread sheet system and the ACT! training for the sales team, tailored to implement your specific sales processes, will provide a payback in just a few months based on his research. What is your decision?
Well, based upon the results of the CSO Insights (a leading reporter of sales metrics and trends) 2009 Sales Performance Optimization Report (http://www.kadient.com/form.aspx?id=589), most companies today believe they would do better in this economy by cutting costs rather than improving sales effectiveness. I guess the sales manager will hear a message of no to the ACT! CRM solution, and yes, let’s cut sales training and sales support staff while we are at it. Heck, we’ve got to pay for the repairs to our delivery truck!
The CSO Insights report found that the percentage of sales reps failing to hit their sales quota is down – down from already downwardly adjusted numbers… so even lower expectations aren’t being met. On the plus side, the report revealed that the top 20 percent of salespeople are generating 61.5 percent of the revenue. This suggests that better training in best practices might improve overall performance for the other 80 percent of the sales reps. The report also points out that for 70 percent of the firms surveyed, their new salespeople take at least seven months to ramp up, suggesting that better training and technology could make new reps more productive faster.
Additionally, the report makes the case that investing in improved sales effectiveness needs to be a top priority this year: “Success in2009 will be achieved by making more sales calls. The real objective is going to be how to make great calls: motivating stakeholders to meet with you; creating a sense of urgency that moves evaluating your solutions to the top of their priority list; differentiating yourself from the competition; selling value; and creating a compelling business case to get the project approved now. “
To accomplish those goals, salespeople must be more effective than they were in prior years. Continuing to only cut costs will see revenues and margins continue to fall. The CSO report points out that “2009 needs to be about investing your way to sales effectiveness” by looking elsewhere in the organization for ways to make budget cuts.
OK, back to our scenarios. There is an important message here. It might be a good idea to remember that sales come before production. If sales and marketing aren’t closing the deals, there will be no orders to produce. Are your sales and marketing systems as good as they can be? Do you have disjointed islands of sales data throughout your organization? Do you expect your sales reps to do better this year with last year’s tools? How’s that working for you?
Popularity: 41% [?]
September 9, 2009
The new ACT! 2010 Welcome Page eliminates the need for users to click all over the place in the application looking for helpful information. The Welcome Page includes Getting Started guides, information on new features, How Do I information, Video Tutorials, access to Support & Services, and much more.
In case you’re just tuning in, here’s the countdown:
#10 – Big “Easy” Buttons
#9 – Quick Search
#8 – Related Tasks
#7 – iCal Invites
#6 – New Dashboards
#5 – New Reports/View
#4 – Web Info Tab
#3 – Marketing Results/eMarketing
Popularity: 62% [?]
September 1, 2009
With the integration of eMarketing into ACT! 2010, our #3 timesaver is the Marketing Results tab. This new tab, when combined with the end-to-end eMarketing capabilities of ACT! 2010, allows you to quickly and easily identify who your hottest prospects are. It also shows you your next activity, last history, and last note. In addition, you can view your eMarketing history to determine which of your marketing campaigns were most effective.
In case you’re just tuning in, here’s the countdown:
#10 – Big “Easy” Buttons
#9 – Quick Search
#8 – Related Tasks
#7 – iCal Invites
#6 – New Dashboards
#5 – New Reports/View
#4 – Web Info Tab
Popularity: 65% [?]
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