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.

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:

1. Database or Rolodex?
2. It’s just a database!

Now, let’s talk about your living, breathing, ever expanding database of contacts that you’ve been keeping track of, and staying in touch with over the years. This database represents your customers, your prospects, your suspects, your vendors, your referral sources, your media contacts, absolutely everyone you’ve come in contact with during the course of your business life time. Not only does this database contain the “who’s who” of your company’s existance, but it also contains the notes and histories of all the interactions of days gone by. Details of phone calls, meetings, buying habits, lead sources, measurable outcomes of marketing campaigns, relationships, and more, all packaged together in a nice and neat data repository we call a database. Now, put this bad boy on the market and offer it up to somebody who is interested in buying a business like yours and see if you get their attention! As they say in the auction business, let the bidding begin!

One last thought. If you are at all concerned about the current state of your database, or your thinking that what I described above is a bit of a stretch from where things are for your company today, then maybe we can help. It’s one of the things we happen to be very good at here at True North Partners, so if you would like to talk with us further about how we might be able to help you build and develop your company’s most valuable asset, click here and give us a call. We look forward to talking with you.

Related posts:

1. Have you hugged your database lately?
2. Database or Rolodex?
3. Welcome!

What you will find here at True North Partners is a team of people dedicated to helping small businesses do more with less. Our focus is to help companies integrate, automate and communicate, and we do that through helping you build and develop your most valuable business asset, your database of customers, potential customers and referral sources. We are also dedicated to helping you fix follow-up failure and we will accomplish that through automated marketing techniques making use of some truely amazing, state-of-the-art software.  It is our hope that this website, and all of us here at True North Partners become a resource for you and your business and by working together we get to help you grow your business profitably, efficiently, and quickly!

Related posts:

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