Recently, two of my customers suffered huge business losses because their applications were unaccessbile on their cloud solutions.  I am not a proponent of putting everything in the cloud for just this reason.  These clients were ones who went down this path because someone else suggested that putting every business process in the Cloud was a “good thing.”  Well, yes, until the cloud is not available. For one customer, it cost them over $50,000 to be down for a day.  A

One of my favorite features added to ACT CRM is Universal search.  This capability allows you search anything inside of ACT, including attachments.  You can filter the results as well.  But, hidden, tucked away in help manuals no one ever reads, are some tricks to further define your searching. This blog article will show you those tricks. Using Special Characters and Operators You can use special characters and operators with your search term. Special characters are a symbol

[caption id="attachment_1525" align="alignleft" width="300"] When planning a company strategy be prepared for nothing or extremes.[/caption] If you read my blog, you know we work with and support act!, a CRM tool that is going on 26 years old. It's a great product and one I believe in strongly. I can't imagine a company, particularly a small one, trying to survive without a tool like act! Recently, act! was purchased by Swiftpage. Note that I am showing act with a lower case letter - that's by

[caption id="attachment_1516" align="alignleft" width="300"] The skiils of an architect and consultant make a perfect marriage of styles and ideas for helping a business grow.[/caption] My youngest son is an architect. We, including my oldest son, are computer and business consultants. Sitting in the living room one night we started talking about what he does and how it compliments what we do. We ask a lot of questions when working with clients. The questions are to help us understand the

Google Drive is the new "Google Docs" where you can store and share spreadsheets, documents, PDFs, etc.  One of the options I bet you haven't tried or noticed is the ability to create forms.  These forms can be used to capture information that can be sent or stored on a spreadsheet.  Surveys are a good way to demonstrate this capability.  This blog article will get you started. Google Forms can be used to help plan events, send surveys, give students a quiz, or collect other

Tenacity. What a great word. According to Webster, it means "the quality or state of being tenacious." And Tenacious means, according to Webster, yet again, this: a : not easily pulled apart b : tending to adhere or cling especially to another substance c : persistent in maintaining, adhering to, or seeking something valued or desired Yes, indeed a great word. The first time I heard a varient of this word was when an ex IBM rep told me I was very tenacious. What she really meant was I was a

Recently two of my staff were having a discussion about ways to get people to let us know if a quote was still a go.  One of my people came from an organization that was very aggressive in their sales techniques.  He wasn't really fond of that aggression nor are aggressive tactics our style, but he remembered something that actually worked really well.  You put either ANY NEWS or IS THIS DEAD? in the subject line of an email.  Nothing goes in the body of the email

A few months ago I had a great lunch with a friend here in town who owns a marketing firm that has a particular emphasis on social media.  One of the things we discussed is the changing face of marketing.   What is also changing is the role of sales and salespeople. My company is really starting to focus on changing how we sell and market based on what I am seeing in the industry.  The whole topic gave me the idea for today's post. I’m going to start it off with