As many of you know, my background is contact relationship management (i.e. CRM) and most of my experience centers around the ACT! product.

Here’s a question for you. Is your company database a rolodex or a database? In previous articles, I’ve talked about how your company database is your most valuable business asset and that this database holds the key to your company’s success. Regardless of what you use as a software tool to manage this database, be it ACT! or SalesLogix or SalesForce or whatever, the most important concept is that, a) you have a company database and a good tool to manage it and b) you’ve customized this database to be specific for your business. If this is the first time you have seen the words customized and database in the same sentence, then read on because this information is spot-on for you.

When I think of a rolodex, I think of those index card holders that would sit on your desk, circular in design, and it would hold 3×5 index cards filled with contact information. It had a big knob on the side and when you turned the knob, the index cards went around like a ferris-wheel at a theme park. If you had a lot of cards, and you turned the knob fast enough, this thing doubled as a cooling fan and could blow-dry your hair (OK, maybe not in my case, but you get my drift). Each of these rolodex cards contained information on your contacts, or if you got one of the fancier ones, it actually held their business card. The trouble with these rolodex files though, was that you were very limited in the information you could keep on a contact. If you wanted to keep track of information in addition to what was already on the business card, you either had to write it on the card, or maybe add another card. If you were just looking for an address, or a phone number, it didn’t work too bad. However, if you wanted to keep track of their interests, or their kids or birthdays or anything extra, it got cumbersome fast. Depending upon how you filed the cards, as long as you remembered the contacts name or company name, you could get to the card pretty easy. On the other hand, if you wanted to do any kind of special search, forget it. The rolodex file just wasn’t set up for that. Now, enter the digital era and the concept of the database.

With a database, and a good contact manager, (like ACT!2010), now you have some power. Not only can you store the business card information, but you can also store all kinds of things about this contact. You can keep information on their family, hobbies and interests, purchase history, annual events like birthdays and anniversaries, contract renewals, on and on limited only by your imagination. Best of all, not only can you store all this great information, but you can access it in seconds. You can find all the people you haven’t contacted in the last 90 days, or all the clients that have a shared interest in a particular event or hobby. You can group contacts together based on common themes like all those that should receive your catalog, or that have indicated an interest in a specific product and now when you have a promotion going on, you can get this information out to them in just a couple of minutes. Either by a mail-merge to a letter or through an email blast where each recipient gets their own personalized letter or message, customized for them because this information is all stored in your database.  Now that’s powerful!

You can even take it up a notch if you want. If you’re using a product like ACT!2010, there are tools available that will let you synchronize your database to your cellphone, wirelessly, and in real-time. You can add tools that will do calculations on fields stored in your database, and store the results of those calculations in other fields. You can have the database automatically create an activity based on a value you select in a field. You can add contacts to groups or take them out of groups based on information you enter into their contact record. You can have the database create a call list of your hottest prospects, so you can get in touch with them when they are ready to buy. Tools like these (and there are many more) can turn a flat-file list of contacts into a living, breathing repository of client and prospect intel that puts you in control of your sales cycle and allows you to drive new sales even while the economy around us is in slow motion.

Speaking of a slow economy, in the spirit of Cyber Monday, we are offering a special incentive to upgrade to ACT!2010.  If you schedule your upgrade with us by noon on Monday, December 7th, you will save 20% on the cost of your installation and services. Upgrades must be scheduled to occur on or before January 31, 2010.

For more information and to schedule your upgrade, please give us a call at 952-292-3420.

Have a great day!

Ken

Related posts:

1. Have you hugged your database lately?
2. It’s just a database!
3. Thanksgiving thoughts.

Today, I want to start a new series of blog posts aimed specifically for the ACT! users. As many of you know, I’ve been an ACT! Certified Consultant for several years, and an ACT! user for many more (since 1988 actually). As an ACT! consultant and trainer, I try and stay up to date and plugged in to the ACT! community and as a result will provide to you, the ACT! user, the latest updates and highlights that ACT! has to offer. The best way I can think of to accomplish this is through weekly blog posts to my site as ACT! Tips. My intent is to provide you with content that you will find valuable and if implemented, save you time, increase your productivity and perhaps even save you money. I would encourage you to respond to my blog posts with your comments and even suggestions on additional topics you would find helpful.

Today’s topic is a general overview of the newest ACT! release, ACT!2010 (version 12).

If you’re already an ACT! user, I’m sure you’ve received several marketing pieces from Sage over the last several weeks encouraging you to upgrade to ACT!2010. Some of you may have already taken the plunge and upgraded, while others are on the fence, waiting to see or waiting to hear if the buzz about the new version is all that it’s cracked up to be. In my humble opinion, it is.

The look and feel of ACT! has had a major overhaul with many new features introduced. I won’t go into all the details here, but will instead refer you to the ACT! page on my website where you can actually view “mini-demo’s” (called demoettes) of the primary new features. Go here, to take a look for yourself. Right now, the link to check out a free 30-day trial of ACT!2010 hasn’t been enabled, but I hope to have that available in the next few days. When the link is enabled, you will be able to request a CD from me that will include the full version of ACT!2010 Premium, in trial mode, that you can install on your system and see for yourself if it’s something you want to take advantage of. Please just bear in mind that before you install the latest version of ACT!, there are a few things you will need to be aware of, so your current production ACT! system doesn’t become compromised. All of this will be spelled out for you in great detail in the supporting documentation that accompanies the CD. I had considered offering the free trial version as a download from my site, however, the file size is in excess of 350MB’s and for a lot of folks, their internet bandwidth just isn’t robust enough for that size of download. I also wanted to make sure that anyone interested in checking out the newest version had made adequate preperations to insure the new version would run on their existing system and they didn’t run any risk of jeopardizing their current installation. That’s why I am including pre-printed supporting documentation.

So, in the mean time, check out the mini-demo’s (available here) and as soon as I have all the pieces put together, I will let you know how to request your CD. If you have specific questions about the new version, post them as a response to this article, and check back frequently (or subscribe to my RSS feed here) for updates.

Have an amazing day!

Ken

No related posts.

As you may already know, I’ve been in the contact management database business for a long time. First as a user, then as a business consultant. My particular area of expertise is helping other businesses build and develop a database of their most profitable customers, ideal business partners, and passionate referral sources.  I hope you will agree with me when I say that in your business, your database is your most valuable asset. You do have a database right? Now, please understand that I’m not talking about your Outlook address book, or some other email-based address book, or contact directory on a cell phone, smart phone, pda or spreadsheets.

No, what I am referring to is something much more valuable and tangible. What I’m talking about is a living, breathing, dynamic and organic relational database that is the sole-source repository of everyone you know. It needs to be customizable, searchable, and capable of segmenting your contacts into a variety of categories. It also needs to be secure and capable of being backed-up on a very regular basis. Ring a bell? If you don’t have something like this, then not only is your whole business at risk, but you’re losing revenue. Lot’s of revenue!

At True North Partners, we focus exclusively on one contact management (or contact relationship management) database system. ACT! by Sage.

Over the course of the next several blog posts, I will be writing about the ACT! Contact and Relationship Management system, and going in to great detail about how you can improve your company’s profitability, and overall net worth, by harnessing the power of systems like ACT!.

Thanks for taking the time to share in my morning inspiration.  Enjoy the rest of your day!

Related posts:

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2. It’s just a database!