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By: GUEST AUTHOR Louise Wiedermann, Project Technology Consulting | 12/14/2016
The last time I visited with a customer, I asked the question, “How do you know who you are going to call during the next week?” The responses were surprising – anything from “I take a look at my accounting system and pick a few” to “I don’t really have a plan, I just respond to the emails from customers and prospects.” There is a better way. As an Act! user, you have the ability to use Act! Activities to schedule phone Calls, face to face Meetings, and To-Do’s. What if you could create a plan of when and how often you would contact your customers? Act’s recurring Activities is the perfect tool to implement this plan. Let’s work in a hypothetical Act! database in which we have customers and prospects tagged in ID/Status. We also have another customized data field called Customer Category where we have classified our customers as A customers, B Customers, and C customers. That category can mean anything, but for our purposes, our A customers are our most important customers. “Most important” translates to “needs to be contacted” on a regular basis. If someone falls into the category of most important customers, I want to make sure I call them once a month. Let’s schedule a recurring call on the First Monday of every 1 month. To do this, pick Schedule an Activity, choose Call, and then pick the Recurrence tab at the top. Choose the recurring settings for Monthly, Every 1 Month, and the First Monday. Fill in the remainder of your Activity window and click OK. How easy was that? Use that same thinking for your B and C customers. It could be that you call the B’s quarterly, and the C’s twice a year. All this can be done with recurring activities. This is a great plan of action, but don’t forget – Activities should be Cleared. That’s Act’s way of saying “It’s done” or “This is the outcome or results of the activity.” Once you make that phone call or go to your meeting with the prospect, Clear the Activity and add your information in the details section. The next recurring Activity is already scheduled and waiting for you. Start paying attention to your customers proAct!-ively and using a schedule with Act! Activities, and more sales may come your way. New to Act!? Click here to start your free 14 day trial.