ENEWS > WINTER 2008
Listen to Your ACT! Guru
3 Quick Tips to Make This Year Shine
Do you feel like you have the basics of ACT! covered, but would like to “kick things up a notch” for 2008? Have you been thinking about how to reach out to your clients and prospects on a more routine basis while cutting the time it takes to personally interact?
Well, the New Year is here and it’s a wonderful time to develop new skills and habits to help make this your best year yet. While there are many things that you could do in ACT! to help make your life easier, let’s start with these three easy tips.
- Create Custom Templates for Quick Follow-up
- Use Group Criteria for Quick Lookups
- Let “The Official ACT! by Sage QuickStudy Guide” Help You Be More Efficient
Review the procedures for each of these tips...
Watch the “Creating Custom Templates” video
Watch the “Populating Groups Using Criteria” video
1. Create Custom Templates For Quick Follow-Up.
Having a well-written follow-up letter (or e-mail) that you can send out on a moment’s notice can make you and your company look more professional and well-organized.
1. Choose Write, Edit Template…from the ACT! menu.
2. Select the template that is closest in style to what you want to use and click Open.
3. Choose File, Save As..., type a new name for the template, and click Save. (Note: Do this BEFORE you edit your new template so you don’t accidentally overwrite the basic template.)
 4. Create the letter or e-mail as you normally would. You can copy and paste content from letters or e-mails that you have used before, if you like.
5. Insert field place holders, as necessary, by positioning the insertion point in the document. Select the field to insert (from the Add Mail Merge Fields dialog box) and click Add.
6. Save and close the file.
You are now ready to merge the template with any Contact in your database.
1. Choose Write, E-mail Message (from template) or Write, Other Document (from template).
2. Select the template and click Open.
3. Add additional comments if desired and click Send (if it’s an e-mail) or Print (if it’s a letter).
You could also choose Write, Mail Merge to send the template to the current lookup of contacts in your database.
Watch the “Creating Custom Templates” video
2. Use Group Criteria for Quick Lookups
If you plan to merge the template you just created to a lookup, you may want to consider using Groups. Creating a group is easy. However, did you know that you can add a contact to a group based on one or more field values?
Let’s say you want to create a group of all clients with e-mail addresses.
1. Click on the Groups icon at the left to go to Group Detail view.
2. Click the New Group icon on the toolbar (or press the [Insert] key on your keyboard).
3. Enter a name for the Group.
4. Click the Add/Remove Contacts... button on the Contacts tab.
5. Click the Edit Criteria... button in the Add/Remove Contacts dialog.
6. Create a query that finds all contacts with an ID/Status of Customer (or something similar to what you use in your ACT! database) AND where E-mail “Does Not Contain Data”. Click the Field Name drop-down and select ID/Status. For the Operator, select Contains. In the Value area, type the value for the first criteria. Click Add to list. For the second row of the query, select the E-mail field and choose the Operator of Contains Data. Click Add to list. Click Preview to check your results so far.
7. If all looks well, then click OK to save the query criteria for the group.
8. Click OK once again to sage the group.
Watch the “Populating Groups Using Criteria” video
While it may take a minute or two to define the Group query criteria, it is great for helping you to keep your Group memberships up to date. As you change the ID/Status from Prospect to Customer, the contacts are automatically added to the group. If the e-mail bounces, you can remove the data from the E-mail Address field and the contact will be immediately removed from the group.
3. Let “The Official ACT! by Sage QuickStudy Guide” Help You Be More Efficient
 Almost seven years ago I was asked to write a book that would help ACT! users learn and understand the software better. After presenting the first 400+ page draft, I asked what name they had chosen for the book… The Official ACT! QuickStudy Guide. Quick study? How could anything that large be called quick?
Well, really I did get their point. Each topic in the book is intentionally designed to stand on its own, never assuming that you’ve read any of the previous sections. So…you can pick any procedure in the book and quickly understand how to implement the task in your own ACT! database.
There is a ton of new features that have been added to ACT! over the years (it is a 20+ year old product). Get your own copy of The Official ACT! by Sage QuickStudy Guide so you can upgrade your skills as you upgrade your software. Learning just one new feature a month could make a significant difference in your productivity.
Susan Clark, ACT! Certified Consultant
Author, The Official ACT! by Sage QuickStudy Guide
Cornerstone Solutions, Inc.
www.cornerstonesolutions.com
Bonus Article
Reporting Series - Keeping an Eye on the Competition using ACT! Export to Excel
In past editions of ACT! eNews we have discussed how to use the ACT! Export to Excel feature to produce sales forecasts, pipeline projections, and analyze marketing campaigns. In this edition we are going to use some of those same skills to analyze our competition.
In order to effectively analyze the competition you and your selling team must populate some key pieces of information for each ACT! opportunity. They are the Competitor, Reason, and Status fields (you can double-click an existing opportunity or press Ctrl+F11 to create a new opportunity to see these fields).
The Competitor field is designed to hold one or more organizations that are competing against you to win an opportunity. As the opportunity comes to completion it is recorded in the Status field as Closed - Won or Closed - Lost. When you update the status to “Closed” you can populate the Reason field with an explanation of why the opportunity was won or lost (ie. Price, Product, Packaging, etc).
An ACT! user with Manager or Administrator privileges can modify these fields, the associated drop-down items, and other characteristics to customize this feature for an organization. ACT! 2008 works with both MS Excel 2003 or 2007 (earlier versions only work with MS Excel 2003). Also, keep in mind that the ability to export your data to Excel is a privilege and can be taken away by your system administrator.
Preparing for Export:
Begin by opening ACT! and clicking View | Opportunity List. You’ll notice ACT! has a powerful filtering section at the top of this view. Excel will allow you to filter the opportunity data, but many ACT! users find it easier to do some filtering here before they export to Excel. For instance, if you only want to analyze “Closed - Won” and “Closed - Lost” opportunities you can click the Status dropdown and uncheck, “Open Opportunities” and “Inactive” before exporting.
The competitive fields mentioned earlier are not displayed by default so we must add them before exporting. Click View | Customize Columns (or right-mouse-click and select Customize Columns). The fields in use will appear in the right hand column. Available fields will appear in the left hand column. Click to highlight a desired field from the left and click the “right arrow button” to add it to the displayed fields list. For the following examples please add the “Competitor” and “Reason” fields and make sure the “Status” field is displayed. Also, make sure that “All Users” have been selected using the Select Users button.
Exporting to Excel:
Click Tools | Export to Excel or click the “Export to Excel” icon on the toolbar. This action will open Excel and export the displayed opportunities (and the displayed fields) to a new Excel Workbook. Thanks to our good friends at Sage, an accompanying PivotChart and a PivotTable are also automatically created.
Analyzing Competitors by Record Manager:
Click on the Opportunities Pivot Chart worksheet. You should be looking at a graphic depicting the exported opportunities by Record Manager. Locate the Competitor field in the PivotTable Field List Box. In one move, click and drag the field and place it right next to the Record Manger field. Some opportunities might not have the competitor field populated. You can remove them by clicking on the Competitor Field Button and deselecting them.
Congratulations! You now have a graphical depiction of each competitor grouped by record manager. The field in the upper left (Status) is called a Page Field. You can change it to reflect only the opportunities you have won or lost. This will give you great insight into the competitors the sales reps are facing and the amount of business that is won or lost to each of them. Click the PivotTable worksheet and notice you have a nice report. If desired, Click File, Print.
To get an organizational view of your competitors simply remove the Record Manager field.
Removing a Field:
Removing a field is very simple. Right-mouse-click the field and click Remove Field. The field will be removed and placed back in the PivotTable Field List Box. Remove the Record Manager field.
Next, locate the Reason field in the PivotTable Field List Box. In one move, click and drag the field and place it right next to the Competitor field. (As before, you can deselect the opportunities that do not have the Reason field populated).
Sales managers and executives will use this view to list competitors and gauge their strengths and weaknesses against each.
Changing the Group Order:
Now that you’ve created a Competitor by Reason report you might want to view the information from a different perspective perhaps, by Reason then Competitor. This is also an easy task. In one move, click and drag the Reason field and place it before the Competitor field. Now the PivotChart will display all of the opportunities by Reason grouped by Competitor.
Instead of being focused on the competitor this view can give an organization insight into competitive trends and why their own products and services are (or are not) selected.
Analyzing Competitors by Status (Won/Lost):
To begin, right-mouse click the Reason field and select Remove Field (leaving the Competitor field). Now click and drag the Status field (from the upper left) and drop it to the right of the Competitor field. This will show your win/loss amounts by Competitor.
A savvy manager can use competitive analysis to validate competitive threats, spot trends, be proactive about developing competitive strategies, and gauge individual and organizational strengths and weaknesses. Your analysis is only limited by your creativity. Use these skills and ideas to achieve great success at your organization!
Bonus Tip:
Have you grown tired of looking at summaries? Need to zoom in on some detail; try this:
- In Excel, Click the Opportunities Pivot to display the Pivot Table.
- Double-click any of the summary numbers (under the Count of Record Manager column) to show the records that compose that summary.
- To go back, simply Click on the Opportunities Pivot worksheet.
For more help with the Export to Excel feature, you can visit the ACT! Knowledge Base at www.act.com; or seek out an ACT! Certified Consultant. They are specialists in helping organizations get the most from their ACT! investment.
Steve Stroz, ACT! Certified Consultantr
Gold Coast Advisors, Inc.
www.goldcoastadvisors.com
Did you find this article useful? Let us know: act-guru@howdoyouact.net
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