ENEWS > WINTER 2008

Spotlight on ACT! Customers
ACT! by Sage Premium Declared a Winner by TSE Sports & Entertainment

Challenge: Separate contact management databases were difficult to synchronize over multiple locations. As a result, the main database was always out of date. Management had no visibility into the sales process.

Solution: An upgrade to ACT! Premium allowed TSE Sports & Entertainment to consolidate its multiple databases into a single database, securely accessed by representatives in all locations.

Results: Tracking Opportunities allows TSE Sports & Entertainment to focus on those with a high probability of closing. Marketing tools allow the company to launch highly-targeted campaigns to qualified prospects.

Customer Summary:
Headquarters: New York, New York
Type of Business: Marketing and Hospitality
Number of Locations: 3
Number of Employees: 90+

Application:
Software: ACT! by Sage Premium
Number of ACT! Users: 20

When America’s most prominent companies want to entertain clients or reward executives, they look no further than TSE Sports & Entertainment. This dynamic and innovative corporate hospitality firm plans and executes turnkey sports-themed vacations. From the Super Bowl or World Series to the Kentucky Derby or U.S. Open, TSE Sports & Entertainment will secure tickets, airline reservations, hotel accommodations, event receptions, and virtually anything else its clientele is seeking. To help it generate new opportunities, track open opportunities, and communicate with its clients, TSE Sports & Entertainment depends on ACT! Premium.

"We are a 100 percent sales-focused organization," says William Steinberg, director of business development at TSE Sports & Entertainment, "and ACT! Premium helps us sustain our momentum and close more sales."

Assemble The Perfect Team
The company started out using ACT!, designed for individuals or small sales teams. Rapid growth soon meant the company employed 12 sales representatives across three locations—all requiring access to the software. Performance suffered since each representative was synchronizing their local database installation with the main database containing more than 50,000 contacts. “Our attempts at synching—sunk us,” says Steinberg. “It took too much time and as a result our sales reps didn’t sync very often. So our database was always out of date and incomplete.” In addition, the local installations of the software were not included in the company’s routine backup regimen.

TSE Sports & Entertainment called a local ACT! Certified Consultant (CC) to help design a solution. “They helped us upgrade to ACT! Premium,” says Steinberg. “It’s designed specifically for the kind of remote access we need, and can handle the volume we throw at it.”

Enjoy Fast, Secure Access
The ACT! CC helped design and implement a remote access solution for TSE Sports & Entertainment, consolidating the multiple individual databases into a single database accessible to all representatives over the TSE Sports & Entertainment Citrix Server. Each Contact record within ACT! Premium was then assigned to the appropriate representative.

Now each representative, whether working from the main office, one of the branch offices, or from home, has fast, reliable, and secure access to only the records assigned to them. And the single, centralized database is backed up every night.

When the sales territories change, when a representative leaves the company, or when a new representative is hired, Steinberg appreciates that he can leverage ACT! Premium to quickly reassign territories and the associated Contacts and Opportunities.

The company’s ACT! CC also provided comprehensive training for the staff to enable them to fully utilize the software. “As it turns out, we weren’t even using one-tenth of the software’s capabilities. We didn’t know all that it is capable of doing.”

"Not only does the information ACT! Premium tracks keep our reps accountable, it gives management an excellent picture of the effectiveness of our sales engine."

Identify And Pursue Every Opportunity
Steinberg says that previously, when he wanted to know how much business was being generated for the next Super Bowl, for example, he had to ask each representative to tally their figures. Now, since each opportunity is tracked within ACT! Premium, Steinberg has instant, real-time access to that information. “I just press a couple of keys and can get a report showing open and won Opportunities for any event, upcoming or in the past,” he says.

Forecasting overall sales, which used to involve manually consolidating information from each of the representatives into an Excel® spreadsheet, is now an automated process. For each Opportunity created in ACT! Premium, the representatives can maintain comprehensive details, including: Open Date, Probability of Close, Status, Price, and even unlimited notes.

Steinberg is able to instantly generate graphs, reports, even an Opportunity Pipeline report that provides him with precisely the level of detail he needs. “ACT! Premium gives management an excellent picture of the effectiveness of our sales engine,” notes Steinberg. “It allows us to focus our efforts on the opportunities with the highest probability of closing.”

Enjoy More Marketing Wins
TSE Sports & Entertainment is utilizing ACT! Premium as a marketing tool as well. If the World Series is to be played in Cincinnati, for example, a targeted e-mail campaign is launched at clients and prospects in Ohio, plus those who have attended a World Series event in the past. “ACT! Premium allows us to query the database in ways we never could before, uncovering marketing and sales trends and opportunities that we might otherwise have missed,” says Steinberg.

Turn The Team Into Fans
The company’s sales team members each make more than 200 phone calls every day. Notes of all of these calls plus task reminders and follow up calls are recorded and scheduled in ACT! Premium. “The reps tell me they couldn’t work without ACT! Premium,” says Steinberg. “And I can easily see how many calls are made during the week, and monitor how many opportunities result from those calls. It helps keep the representative accountable.”

TSE Sports & Entertainment is using ACT! Premium to its best advantage, “We would not be where we are today without ACT! Premium,” concludes Steinberg, “it’s been a highly worthwhile investment.”

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Do you have an ACT! story to tell? Join the Sage Software Customer Reference Program. The Customer Reference Program provides an opportunity for customers to promote their success with ACT! while receiving benefits such as product discounts and exclusive offers. If you are interested in joining or would like to nominate someone, please contact Mara Switzer at mara.switzer@sage.com or call directly at 480-444-4923 to discuss program details and reference opportunities.

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