Are You Keeping Up With Reading?

According to the US Department of Labor and a survey by Yahoo! Chief Solutions Officer, people who read at least 7 business books a year earn over 2.3 times more than people who read only a single book each year. What books have you read lately to fuel that constant flow of new ideas and strategies to help take your business to a new level?

ACT! Tips on Video

ACT! asked me to write the lead article for their e-newsletter (being released tomorrow). Entitled “Three Quick Tips for the New Year”, it covers how to create and send an e-mail merge template for quick follow up with clients and prospects. The article also include instructions on creating groups based on queries for quick lookups that are always automatically updated by ACT!. Finally I included a reminder that by even learning just a few new tips and tricks using “The Official ACT! by Sage QuickStudy Guide” that readers could make a huge difference in their productivity for the year.

While some readers are content to see the numbered steps on how to accomplish a task, many like to see the steps performed. So I also included links for some quick flash videos that demonstrate the concepts. You can also see these videos on YouTube.

Creating Mail Merge Templates (no audio)

Creating Groups Using Criteria (no audio)

Kaizen

In making New Years Resolutions, it is tempting to create life-changing Mount Everest types of goals which can seem overwhelming and many times cause us to abandon the climb before even starting out.

At this time of year, I try to keep the concept of kaizen in mind. Kaizen is a Japanese word meaning change for the better. It is also frequently used in conjunction with productivity programs that encourage you to pursue continued improvement. Similar in concept to the “baby steps” from the movie “What About Bob”, kaizen encourages us to make even the tiniest imaginable change. Even the smallest incremental improvement can many times have a huge impact over time as the effect is compounded. In addition, smaller changes are easier to implement and have less chance of failure.

Can you think of just one very tiny change to make in your life… just a little one… sort of your own baby step?

New Year’s Again

I’m getting a late start in new year’s planning as I got the crud that is going around the country right before New Years. Sitting on the couch and watching movies that I didn’t like the first time around is not really conducive to productive planning. In reviewing my goals from last year, I am reminded of an article I read once that suggested that we replace the word “resolution” with “intention” in our annual planning. Last year I replaced New Year’s Intentions with the verb “choose”.

• I choose to be happy
• I choose to be successful
• I choose to work on this project instead of that project.

My problem in planning the year is not in deciding what to do as much as it is deciding what I will NOT spend my time on. There is always more available to do than there is time to do it in.

Are there things you could leave off of your list that would allow you more time to excel at the remaining things on the list?

Which Sales Rep is Using ACT! ?

One of the earlier posts included a comment from someone who wanted to know if there was a way to track which sales reps had logged into ACT! by Sage and how long they had used it. However, I’m pretty sure that who is logged on and how much time they spend is probably now what the manager really wanted to know (at least I hope not). One sales rep could spend hours looking at ACT! and never get anything done. Yet another sales rep can look up a name and phone number in their Treo (that was synced to their ACT! database), make a call, and close a deal without ever actually opening ACT on the desktop.

One of the things that I love about ACT! is that it is so flexible that it can support many different ways of working. Everyone has their own way of getting the job done. There are those that like to plan their entire day the night before (and ACT! will help them do that). There are those that come in without having made any plans at all and just start calling (they can “Record History” without ever having scheduled anything if that is the way they like to work). There are successful people in both work styles, but most of us work somewhere in between… scheduling some of our work and making spur of the moment contact decisions.

I think what this manager really wanted to ensure (regardless of the work style of his reps) was that they were recording the results of their contacts with clients and prospects. Now you CAN track that in ACT!.

Use the Edit Date field to create a lookup of all records that have been edited during the time period you are interested in. Then in Contact List view, add the “Last Edited By” field to the column display (right-click in the view and select “Customize Columns”). Now click on the column header to sort by the “Last Edited By” field. Ta-Dah! There is your basic list of who has been working their clients. Run the Notes/History Report on the current lookup to get a better idea of what has been going on.