Garbage in, Garbage out! The old phrase is really true if you use a CRM System. On one had companies we have worked with have uncovered hidden gold in their CRM Databases. Imagine being able to look 3-6 months ahead in your sales cycle to spot potential deals, coach underperforming sales persons,and track the success of that trade show or marketing event.
When Sales people call on clients, they have the unique opportunity to stick their heads into that organization and see what is going on and to look for opportunities that are an opportunity to serve. Once that is done, it’s critical to get that information from the head (or notebook) of that sales person into a searchable and organized system like ACT!
DON”T DO IT THIS WAY! – generally people keep Rolodex information in ACT! fields and will enter a note journaling what happened with a client. The problem is this is really not searchable. Consider the following
Fields: Enter repeatable data in fields – create custom fields (buckets) for any data that you seem to capture for all of your clients. Things like Lead Temperature, Source of the Lead, Industry, Interested Product, anything that you would search by or market by.
Notes: are for background information and inter team communication – don’t record phone calls held here. Example of a note would be “Sally has an engineering background and works 1/2 days on Fridays”
History: for meeting, phone calls and things that HAVE BEEN DONE. Activities when completes are histories. Also, the Record History Command (CTRL+H) is a great time saver.
Activities: Anything you have scheduled in the future. Make sure you clear or mark as complete any activity that you have finished.
Opportunities; Did your conversation uncover a deal? if so enter the details of the deal as a new opportunity.
This should take 2 minutes or less for each contact. And when done properly will provide a hidden treasure in your database from years to come.
