During a meeting last week we were discussing a book to review during a quarterly education event coming up. Cleaning out my desk drawers the week before, I stumbled upon a miniature edition of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.  I suggested we use that as our book review. It's timeless and still very relevant. That idea made me go look for the full size version and I re-read it over the weekend. Well, mostly I sped-read it. The reading event triggered my blog post today. Every

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

One of the features of Act! is the ability to create Word templates that can then be auto populated with fields from the act database.  The classic details pulled into the document are company name, contact name, addresses, etc. A tip we often show is adding last contact interaction information such as the last time the contact was called or had a meeting.  If you use the Act! calendar and clear out the activities, Act! automatically records that information as Last Reach (phone calls

We have all known procrastinators or have been one at some point ourselves. Managing a procrastinator can be a frustrating and difficult situation. Let’s face it, procrastination not only affects our business but it affects our sanity. One of the obligations of a good manager is to mentor those we manage and help them achieve their project and career goals. There are ways to help a procrastinator from falling into those same destructive patterns. One way to help them is to find a way to help

We all know that procrastination can get you into trouble. You can lose data if you don’t backup your computer/database, you can lose a customer if you don’t follow-up when you said you would, and you sure don’t want to be at a meeting at the wrong place on the wrong day or time. So what can you do? Act! to the rescue! Use the Act! Calendar and Task List Have you ever gotten to the office and thought, “I know there was someone I was supposed to call” but you cannot remember who it was

We all know that procrastination is generally a bad practice, but there are times when it can work in your favor.  First case in point...sometimes we feel that “keeping our nose to the grindstone” on a particularly challenging or creative task is the best way to accomplish it. However, psychologists have shown that taking some time away and doing a completely different type of task can allow your subconscious to find links between disparate concepts, thus when you return to your

Last week was National Procrastination Week so it inspired a theme for some of the articles in our monthly newsletter (which ironically is one week late.) That is just dripping in irony. For years, I have been a proponent of time management and organization. But I can and do procrastinate when there is something I simply don’t want to handle. Whether it’s that grumpy customer or an employee issue, the situation isn’t going away. It’s best to deal with it head on. The hard things you

[caption id="attachment_4711" align="alignright" width="300"] Is it legal to monitor employee emails.[/caption] Last week I got an interesting email from a client regarding the legality of monitoring and reading employee emails. There were some internal issues that were causing concern and they wanted to know what tools to use and how to go about implementing the process. Before looking into tools, I wanted to ensure that it was legal at all. The answers I found turned out to be a bit more