In the latest issue of ACT! eNews, Kristi Smith provides good, tactile instruction for some advice you might have heard from this office before: let the machine do the work. What that means, of course, is there are tools like ACT! which have undergone years of development, not to mention the money we as users have paid and the time we as users have spent implementing and learning. Let’s let the tools do their job. The first step as Kristi phrases it is “to dispel the idea that ACT! is a database program. ACT! is a powerful sales management tool that happens to run on a computer.”

Question: As a Sales Manager, where do you want your staff to apply their time and resources?

1. Preparing reports for review at the next sales meeting
2. Developing leads, presenting to opportunities and fulfilling orders

Clearly the answer is b. and because you have a sales management tool, you are prepared to allow your staff to do just that. Kristi provides instruction on how to use dashboards, a group of graphical representations of key indicators so you can see how your business is doing.

Kristi suggests using the dashboard for:

Pipeline coaching: see how your team members move through the sales cycle and where they need help moving opportunities to the next stage

Goal monitoring: see how close individuals or groups are to reaching their targets

Focusing on key opportunities: review the top ten opportunities to see where you can make the biggest impact

Dashboard accountability: your dashboard can be customized to show the indicators you follow; print copies of the dashboard to share with your staff so they can see where your focus is

If you aren’t a Sales Manager, your dashboard will be different, but play around and find the details you are looking for and then tell ACT! you want to see your dashboard any time you log on to the system.

In this same issue of ACT! eNews, Xavier Musy shares more information about custom dashboards.

If you are already using dashboards, let us hear how in the comments section. If you are thinking about how you might use them, let us hear your ideas.

I recently reviewed the ACT! Link for use with Quickbooks tour. The first six slides with content referred to eliminating duplicate entry and centalizing information. Without a doubt, these are both worthwhile goals. However, it is on the final three slides that the good stuff shows up. These slides are each titled: Take Action Using Real-time Data and Be Productive. That sure is a mouthful but it really says something. Let’s not just cut down on duplication because we think we should. Let’s not just integrate our systems because we’ve heard that’s the best thing to do. Let’s get something done; let’s be productive; let’s accomplish something for a reason.

So in which ways does the ACT and Quickbooks integration improve productivity? With Quickbooks Scheduling, users can create activities and schedule reminders to take action on Quickbooks transactions like completing follow up calls for sales or collecting on past due invoices. The sales staff that spends most of their time working in ACT can use Quickbooks item lists and tax tables to create estimates. After those estimates are generated, they can either be modified or if they are approved, they can be converted to invoices.

There you have it: two seemingly honorable goals with several reasons to justify why they ought to be.

Two of the sales strategies mentioned in the document recommend prioritizing both your sales prospects and your existing customers. We can all agree that we should exert our effort where we will realize the biggest return; after all, how many references to the Pareto Principle can you recall from prior sales training?

ACT! by Sage ships with some pretty terrific reports for prioritizing your efforts that might work for you right out of the box. By following the Reports Menu to Edit Template, you can even modify the existing reports to meet your needs or click New Template to start from scratch. By using these tools to analyze where you need to focus your sales and marketing energy, you will also be working within another of the included strategies: optimizing operations.