Several years ago I had the pleasure of meeting a new client who has also become a friend. His name is Reese Griffin. He is now retired, and was lastly a SVP at Boston Mutual Life. He's a born and bred southerner from Tennessee. Reese came to us looking for Act consulting. He is a devotee of the product and has been for years. It runs his world and he's almost lost without it. I was impressed with how well he used it and how he made it a vital part of his every day actions. Often,

It's hard to come up with fresh materials for social media. Every weekend when I plan out my tweets for the week, I've settled on having a general theme. It helps me gather material and puts a focus on things that come up spontaneously throughout the week. As I have said before, life in general is the best producer of ideas for posts. My social media theme this week in Nurture Marketing. What led me to this idea was actually reading another article about selling. The article talked about

I've been working with a client recently and we're getting ready to upgrade their Act! As part of the project, I asked my client what was their defined sales process.  And I got the answer I was actually expecting. There was none. Most of the sales reps had been selling this product line for years. They knew what to do. It just came naturally to them.  So I asked him were they planning on bringing anyone on board who was not familiar with the products or how they all sell.  He

Successful businesses have figured out how to use their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to foster relationships with prospects and clients. Building these meaningful relationships starts with: Learning about your clients – professionally and personally through dialogue and on social media Adding pertinent data to your CRM And, finally, taking action Here are six ideas for using Act! to add a personal touch to your client interactions and show gratitude to them for their

I recently worked with a client who had a CRM at their organization but they were using it as a glorified rolodex.  When I asked them why they had not taken the product to the next level, they asked me why should they? They wanted to know the benefits. Keeping track of your customers is one way to guarantee more sales. It's such a simple thing. Understand what they want, advise them on what's available, offer them good pricing and support, and you make sales. However that assumes you've

CRM. What is it? First off, it's an acronym - Customer Relationship Management.  But far beyond that it is a methodology and set of business tools and practices to know your customer.  It helps answer the important questions.  Do they need anything? Are they happy with  what is going on with your services or products? Have you reached out to them recently? Without a CRM process or tool, you are dependent upon people keeping track of things individually which is ok, but it

Yesterday I was once again reminded of something I read in a book by Dale Carnegie: "91% of customers say they give referrals yet only 11% of salespeople ask for them." One of my clients said they were really happy with what we had done and that they were going to refer us to their business networking group. And I asked myself, "self, when was the last time you asked for a referral?" Quick rap on the forehead, and then a postit note saying "Ask for a Referral" placed on the monitor. Such

Spring is in the air and it's time for some spring cleaning.  How often do your scrub your contact lists? How often do you check for duplicates and merge them? If you are like most people, not often enough. That's not surprising.  We all get caught up in our day to day work schedules so data cleansing is not high on the priority list.  But it should be.  Bad data costs money - in efficiency, lost revenue, wasted marketing expenditures, and a variety of other ways. And you