CRM Blog

Even if you consider yourself an expert in ACT 2010, there’s a chance you aren’t using all of these 6 tips! So take a minute and compare your knowledge!

1. Do you need quick driving directions? Just memorize ALT+VIID.  Select the contact and hit ALT+VIID. Presto – you now have driving directions to the client.
2. Use the Opportunity Name whenever possible. This is one of the most easily searchable fields in ACT. Just go to the ACT menu and select Lookup|Opportunities|Name
3. Although ACT allows you to attach mail-merged letters to history, we recommend you do not do this. You see, if you attach  a 5 page Mail-Merge to 100 contacts, then you will be attaching a 500 page document to the database 100 different times. Doesnt’ make much sense to bloat your database, does it?
4. When in doubt, right-click. Sometimes you’re searching for a certain button or icon, and you just cannot find it? Try just right-clicking. ACT has done a great job of putting the most important options into the right-click (context) menu.
5. Consistent Color-Schemes for Activities. If all users adopt the same Color-Scheme, then it becomes easier to view calendars for multiple users. We recommend that all users set High Priority to Red, Medium Priority to Blue, and Low Priority to Black.
6. When customizing Activity Types, apply an icon. This allows for clearer viewing within the Calendar. There are dozens of websites offering free icons. We often use alphabet icons (“M” for Marketing Call, “T” for Travel, etc…)

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One of my greatest web frustrations is the mass of information yet the lack of strategy regarding Social Marketing.

I kept looking for someone to tell me the 10 easy steps to getting started in the world of Social Media. So I decided to create my own - here’s my breakdown of how to get started. And all the tools below are free.

1. Set up your Logo. Branding is crucial, and you want to make sure that your brand is consistent across all platforms.
2. Start blogging. Content is king. So if you have nothing to offer to “the conversation” on the web, then don’t waste your time with Social Marketing. Figure out how you want to position yourself in the market. And start producing (or intelligently summarizing) the content that your listeners are interested in. If you aren’t set up with WordPress or don’t feel comfortable with it, then just go to WordPress.com and set up a free account. It’s not that difficult; in fact, it’s easy – and powerful. Just make sure to keep your blogs bite-size, use visuals and create alluring titles!
3. Get your Accounts set up. That means (a) a Facebook Page (b) one or more Twitter sites (I separate my personal tweets from my business tweets) (c) one or more YouTube channels (d) a LinkedIn group.
4. Start following opinion leaders. It’ll help you learn how to best blog, how to best tweet and how to best use YouTube. By “follow”, I mean (a) follow on Twitter (b) become a Fan of relevant Facebook Pages (c) Subscribe to Blogs that matter to you – most blogs let you set up an Email subscription (d) Subscribe to the YouTube Channels of valued leaders. For example, while I follow Max Lucado on my personal twitter, I follow Gizmodo on my business twitter – to help me stay abreast of the latest trends in gadgets. I subscribe to Problogger’s blog, and I also subscribe to MarketingProfessor’s YouTube channel. Lastly, I highly advise you to configure your SmartPhone so that you can easily view Facebook and Twitter. If you’re like me, then time is precious. Having quick access on my Sprint EVO 4G helps me stay abreast of all the trends.
5. TweetDeck and HootSuite are the two best products that allow you to send and receive Social messages. They aggregate the messages for you. I create a message and then choose which channels I will push it out through. Very convenient. And best of all, you can set up filters (such as “CRM”) to help you stay abreast of the conversations that matter to you.
6. Bit.ly is a simple tool that you can connect directly into TweetDeck. It helps you create personalized links to the pages you are marketing. And you will love the reports it provides. If you use it right, Bitl.y will help you discover which of your links (and blogs) are really drawing readers and which aren’t. You might be surprised!
7. YouTube. Although this might appear daunting at first, most cameras these days allow you to easily create video content. This is the wave of the future, so hop on board now! It ain’t going away. There are fantastic tools out there like Camtasia – as well as some great free utilities  from DVDVideoSoft. Create the videos, shorten them, convert to Flash and upload to YouTube. I do it all with DVDVideoSoft. Did I say free! And don’t worry about the quality for now. No one expects you to be the next Steven Spielberg. By subscribing to popular YouTube channels, you will become aware that the people want content, not beautiful editing. If it takes you a month to edit a video, it might just be “old news” by the time you post it. Web 2.0 is fairly forgiving.
8. Gadwin Printscreen. Although there are more professional tools out there, I have been using Gadwin for 8 years. It installs in 2 minutes, it’s free and it is easy to configure. It is probably the tool I use the most! Everyone loves a picture, and Gadwin puts you in the driver’s seat.
9. SlideShare. This online PowerPoint reader allows you to upload your PowerPoints and then embed them into your blog or website. Very easy to use, and it makes your blog look slick! Again, this last tip is more about your blog than your social marketing. But it definitely helps to embed visual content into your blog – be it JPG pictures, YouTube videos or SlideShare presentations.
10. Configure your blog to automatically feed into your Facebook Page, your Twitter feed and your LinkedIn group. So when this blog went live, my 3 Social Marketing pages were immediately updated. FeedBurner is a great tool to help you with this. You will likely also need to use your RSS feed. This is probably the most complex part of the whole experience. And if it is too complex initially, then skip it and instead promote your published blog manually via TweetDeck.

So whether your CRM is Sage ACT 2011, Microsoft Dynamics CRM or SugarCRM, you need to get going on your Social Marketing strategy!

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ACT! 2010 Premium has a ton of great features. But there are a few things missing.

Here are the top 3 features we’ve developed for some of our clients (and ourselves) that can add value and simplicity to your CRM life. (Please note that each requires an affordable add-on)

1. Field Calculations – The Snap-In Tool, aptly named: “Field Calculator”, has helped us sum totals automatically for financial companies and calculate coverage ratios for real estate brokers. It can be set up in a few minutes. Pretty simple and can make life a LOT simpler. (Programmer’s Tip: this one doesn’t work with Dates, but “Scripting for ACT!” does)
2. Popup Messages – Snap-In Tool, “Scripting for ACT!” can do just about anything if you write it. This simple function we added is sort of our in ACT! “Post-it”. One user can added a message in our “Special Notes” field. As soon as an ACT! User looks at that contact, they get a pop-up message of the Special Note. Perfect for those VERY important facts to know before dealing with the client: “Get a signed invoice before starting work”, “Ask about the fruit basket we sent”, “Kelly is a man, don’t refer to Him as ‘she’ or ‘her’” (Programmer Tip: MsgBox on SwitchContact Event is all it is)
3. Copying Groups to Opportunities – Not sure why, but ACT! 2010 didn’t make it possible to import from a text file into Opportunities; this makes it hard to mass populate your opportunities without an extra import tool. We made a quick tool to copy information from a Group into an Opportunity, copy all the fields over, name it the same thing and copy the Notes/History/Documents. (This client used Groups to track Opportunity information, now that Opportunities are more full featured, they moved their info over). (Programmer’s Tip: Attached Documents are just another History Type, if you copy histories to the new entity, you get Docs for free)

If you want to learn more about what’s possible or have an idea like “Wouldn’t it be cool if …”, here’s our Contact Us page, or email us at info @ accentgold . com

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If you’re like me, you probably only use 10% of your brain…or 10% of your Google search potential.

Here are 5 tricks I recently learned that have really turned me into a Power Googler:

1. Searching for specific extensions. Google can search  for types of documents using the “filetype:” operator. For example, if you are searching for PowerPoint files regarding the Passover, you could enter Passover filetype:ppt
2. Lookup of area codes. Do you need to know where a phone number is geographically located? Google will let you know where it is, as well as showing you a map of the area, too. For example: 415
3. Omit specific terms with the “–” (dash). You can limit your searches using the hyphen/dash. e.g. if you’re looking for information about the Denver Broncos but don’t want anything about John Elway, you could try: “denver broncos” -elway
4. Simple currency conversions. Woo hoo! Google does currency conversion, for example: 100 Euros in dollars. It’s limited though to the more common currencies.
5. Use the “site:” operator to filter searches to a specific website. Ever had trouble finding information on a website? You know it’s there somewhere, but the navigation is horrible. So if you’re searching for Training on the Accent Gold website, you could just plug in: Training site:accentgold.com

Who loves freeware? I do! I found a freeware tool called DVDVideoSoft. And it’s not one of those “Free Trials” that turns into a $30 purchase. Here are the top 3 ways I use DVDVideoSoft:

1. Free Video to Flash Converter - I have been uploading quite a few videos to YouTube. But I often run into uploading errors. And don’t forget, size matters. Converting an MPG file to FLASH reduces the size by at least a factor of 3. And no more YouTube errors.
2. Free Video Dub – For a quick and dirty video splicer, this one is about the easiest thing on the market. Just mark the sections you want to keep and hit Go! It creates a new file and uses your naming logic.
3. Free DVD Video Converter – If you are looking for a free and easy way to convert your DVD into MPG format so that you can view it on your PC or iPhone, this is the tool for you. I tried several others, but this one works well and doesn’t cost a thing.