Monday 27 April 2009

ACT! Users Need Rules, Boundaries and Limitations. Part 1 - Rules




As any ACT! Whisperer will tell you, if you really want to be the master of your ACT! software you have to impose some rules, boundaries and limitations on the users.

The point is this, you need to be able to control what what contacts and information is going into your database and in what format.

In part we can achieve this by configuring the ACT! database settings to restrict who can access specific records ("boundaries") and what what they can enter in any specific field ("limitations). But that still leaves many fields which by their nature have to allow free text entry. To control the data entry in these fields we need some guidelines, a style-sheet, some ACT! Rules.

So, take a single sheet of paper and give it a title ACT! Rules

Now write down exactly what you want your ACT! users to put in your database and how you require them to enter that information. Then get everyone together and explain the rules. Tell them why they are being imposed. Get a sign off from everyone that they understand what is required of them. Everyone gets a printed copy of the ACT! Rules!

Let me give you an example.

Let's define exactly what categories of contacts are going to go into our database. Looks like a no-brainer doesn't it. Customers and Prospects of course.

So what about "Suspects" (= unqualified leads)?
Or Sub-Contractors?
Or Your Suppliers?
Or Your Business Professionals (e.g. your accountant)?
Or Your Personal Contacts?
Or Competitors?
Or Our own employees? (ACT! users will be there by default).

See what I mean; the list could go on and on.

Now, there are no rights and wrongs, here, it's for each business to decide what information they need to capture. If there is one guiding principle however it is that ACT! is primarily a Sales and Marketing tool for your business, and anything that dilutes the quality of the contacts in ACT! should be left out.
So our first rule might read.

Rule 1. Contacts to be entered: Customers, Prospects, and Employee's only.


Next, let us define the style we are going to use when filling in data. We want "Proper" formating, i.e. names with a leading capital and the rest of each word in lower case. Why? well what ever you type in is exactly how it's going to be printed out if we generate a letter or other document from ACT! so it matters.

Rule 2. All names and addresses to be entered in "Proper" format, i.e John Smith


Now define how you want to handle those critical full stops (periods if you are on the other side of the pond) in abbreviations. If you have a contact called "R Jones" do you enter the name as "R Jones" or R. Jones"? That full stop is probably one of the main reasons contacts get missed out when doing a lookup. If I do a lookup for "R Jones" and the name is in ACT! as "R. Jones" you won't find him. Again, there's no right or wrong, but make a decision and stick to it. My own rule is that I never put stops in data fields in my database.

Rule 3. Never use fullstops in abbreviations


Next, what's the minimum amount of information you will accept in a new contact record? The answer depends a little on what you are going to do with the data, but assuming you are probably going to send a letter, an email and make a phone call at some point you require.

Rule 4. The minnimum information required before creation a new record in ACT! is as follows:
1.Surname
2.First name or at least an initial (having just a first name really confuses ACT!)3.Full postal address including Zip/Postcode
4.Telephone Number
5.E-Mail
6.Your business might also require additional information. If so, specify it.

Rule 5. Who are the ACT! Database Administrators (best to have more then one).

Rule 6. Who is responsible for ACT! Database Maintenance and Backups?


Get the idea? The ACT! Database administrator is also responsible for periodically checking that the rules are being followed and for taking remedial action if they are not. By applying some rules we can control what's being entered into our ACT! database, which means that records are easy to find, and we dont have mistakes and omissions when we are doing searches or setting up groups later on.

If you would like more information about on-site ACT! training and coaching in the UK please visit my web site at
http://www.bigbluemarketing.co.uk/act-software-training-10-c.asp

Thursday 23 April 2009

A Strange Coincidence

Now here's a stange thing.

Yesterday I went to a place called Hale near Manchester to run some ACT! training for a PR company there.

As far as I can recall it's the first time I've ever been to Hale, and what a lovely little place it is. The high street is quite up market and full of coffee shops, bistros, art galleries and the like. All very bohemian, and no doubt not unknown to the Manchester United team and thier other halves.

Anyway, the training all went well, and that was that.

This morning item three on my ACT! to-do list was to create another ACT! training video, which I did. It was only after it was done that I spotted that the ACT! Contact that I had used from the Demo database for the video was "Lucy Connor" of "Studio Designs". Guess where the ficticious Lucy is based? That's right, Hale, near Manchester.

Spooky or what?

If you want to see the short videos you can see them here http://tinyurl.com/cgubo6

I'll be adding more as time goes on so you might want to bookmank the page.

Jeff

Social Networking and CRM Make Poor Bedfellows

Social networking is the new black. It’s huge, and it’s not too surprising that it has already been exploited by commercial interests. This is a shame. It seems that every time someone comes up with a new site to “make friends and chat” it gets taken over by commercial interests keen on finding a new way to make a buck.

A whole new raft of “Social Networking Marketing Consultants” has sprung up like the little fleas on the bigger fleas to help businesses sell more though this medium, whilst at the same time developing their own careers.

There is no doubt that a great deal of business will be done through this route. At its simplest level the premise is that customers will make buying decisions based on recommendations offered by the social networking community. The idea is that a “personal” recommendation is more persuasive than the conventional sources of information from advertising and promotions alone.

This new fad has not escaped the providers of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software who are now rushing to see how they can integrate the social networking sites into their business sales and marketing software.
Can I be the only person on the planet who sees this as a largely pointless exercise in the Business to Business world?

If I look at my own customer database less than 5% of the contacts are Jo Public, the rest are Businesses.The reality is that I can now go to a named contact in my database and have it automatically pull related information from social networking and other web sites. Now updating my contact records with qualified, meaningful data such as stock market price, business news, or such-like can undoubtedly add value, but linking social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter is unlikely to bring much to the table.

I may be fascinated to know that Tania of Manchester is having cornflakes for breakfast, or that Stephen Fry is currently walking through Horse Guards Parade (he actually is, apparently) but unless I’m planning to sell Tania cornflakes or Stephen Fry an A-Z map of London the information is of no value to my business and frankly I want it nowhere near by carefully developed and lovingly maintained CRM database. Let’s face it, most of what is written on social networking sites is banal twaddle.

I’m sure there is money to be made out of exploiting the social networking sites, but for those of us in the B2B environment they are of little more than a distraction to the real work in hand.

Thursday 16 April 2009

Brush Your Teeth - Check and Repair

I had a desperate email from an ACT! user yesterday who was still using ACT! 6 (there are a lot of you out there - you know who you are..).

Problem was that ACT! simply refused to open.

The common reason for this is that the user has not be regularly doing "database mainenance" on their ACT! database.

Look, a database is not a 'fridge. With a fridge I can reasonably expect that I can use it many times a day for years on end without a problem. A database (any database) is (a) a complicated thing, and (b) is made up of thousands upon thousands of files on your computer. Here's the news: files break, get over-written and corrupted. There, I've said it. Under normal circumstances, just by using your computer, something will eventually break. Call it entropy theory or Sods Law, but as sure as night follows day it will eventually break.

Fortunately, ACT! comes with some tools which minimise the chances of this happening in the first place and other tools that might be able to fix things if they have gone wrong.

Firstly, we have "Check and Repair". This can be found under Tools > Database Maintenance. (in ACT! 6 it's called Compress and Re-Index). Run this at least once a week.You can think of this as general house-keeping. I makes sure everything is neat and tidy and is therefore running as quickly as possible. In ACT! 2009 (V11) you can even schedule this to happen automatically, which I do myself, daily along with scheduling a daily backup.

Next option is to head for ACT! Diagnostics. This is a little known utility which gets installed by default whenever you install ACT! It is usually recommended that you don't play with this unless you know what you are doing as it can have a detrimental effect if used wrongly. However you will have at your disposal a range of maintenance options (depends on the version of ACT! you have). With ACT6 you can get the details here http://tinyurl.com/d75p3w . Running "Scan and Repair" until you get all green ticks will often sort out problems of ACT!6 databases not opening correctly.

So minimise potential problems by following a simple rule; brush your teeth, take a shower, backup ACT! then check and repair your ACT! Database daily for a healthier, stress free life.