How’s your week been? I hope productive and successful and you’re looking forward to a refreshing and relaxing weekend filled with idle moments and sunspot naps.

Seems as though my week was filled with administrivia. One of those weeks where every day you get in to your office, look at the things you need to get done, then get to work. At the end of the day, you look back at your accomplishments and wonder what happened to the day! Yikes, I hate it when that happens.

We did make progress on a few things though.

We launched our ACT! On-line training series this week with a GoToMeeting class on Thursday morning and another this afternoon. Both sessions filled to capacity pretty quickly with ACT! users hungry to learn more about segmenting their database using Groups, Companies, and Relationships. Next week our On-line series will be on Activity Management in ACT!. We will be talking about some advanced techniques in how to make sure you get done what you need to get done, when you need to get it done.

On April 28th, we are hosting an ACT! User Group meeting at the Southdale Library in Edina. Our topic for April is Eat That Frog! Have you read it yet? Awesome book by Brian Tracy. Brian goes in to great detail on his 21 ways to stop procrastination and get more done in less time. Great read. At our User Group meeting on the 28th, we are going to discuss and demonstrate what Brian teaches in his book applied in an ACT! environment. Should be an entertaining and perhaps even educational meeting.

I would love to hear back from you especially if you have any suggestions for topics. You can add a comment to this post if you want and let me know what you would like to see as an on-line class or discussed at one of our User Group meetings.

Enjoy your weekend and I’ll be back in touch soon.

Ken

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Today, I would like to talk to you about another techique that I use, that works particularly well when it comes to managing all those phone calls you need to return.

If your calendar is anything like mine, you tend to spend more time out of the office than in it. By the time you get back to your office, it’s time to catch up on voice mail and emails. When I clear out my voice mail, I make it a habit to schedule those activities right in my Contact Relationship Management (CRM) system. This way, I don’t have to manage multiple pieces of paper, and because my CRM synchronizes to my BlackBerry, the contacts and activities automatically end up on my phone as well. I try to do the same thing with my email. I triage my new messages and those that I can get delegated, deleted or responded to quickly with a short reply. Then I look for messages that require action on my behalf and schedule those activities in my CRM (often times, attaching the full email message to the contact record, or at least pasting the message into the history). Usually, by the time I am finished clearing out my messages from both my phone and email, I have a pretty good collection of activities in my database. Often times, a majority of those activities are phone calls that need to be returned.

Once my CRM is brought up to date, I’m back to my Task List to review the activities that require my immediate attention. As I mentioned yesterday, one of the tricks I use is priority management. Another trick I use is to take a look at my list of phone calls, and any calls that are of a high priority, I drag to a specific time on my daily calendar. While Im doing this, I also make sure I schedule the more difficult calls, (or the calls that require the most brain power) for earlier in the day. This way, I can make sure that I am getting the critical calls done first so in case something happens to my schedule during the day, I’ve at least focused my efforts appropriately. When I do this, I find that I tend to move from one call to the next without looking at the entire list again, and “cherry-picking” the next call. I can also be very sensitive about the amount of time I need to allocate to my activities and the time of day. If it’s “selling time” then I had better be doing the calls related to selling. By proactively reviewing and scheduling your list of calls, you’ll find that you are getting through more calls in a day, and achieving a much better connection rate.

I would appreciate reading your comments so if you have any feedback for me, please post them as a response below.

Enjoy your day!

Ken

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