Social CRM: Does it mean what it says?

This is a good article describing other facets of CRM - namely that it's not only pre-sales and sales process software, but keeping in touch with your clients as well *after* purchase.  By integrating social media you can track what they are "talking about" and react to their needs.

Social CRM: Does it mean what it says?

Attaching Documents Quick Tip

If you use Companies (i.e. where the Company Name is it's own record, and Contacts are linked to that Company), and you attach documents, then you've noticed that attaching documents on the contact record Document tab only show up for that contact, and are not shared across the Company record.  Here's how to fix this...

Put those outdated or extra computers to good use

Do you have extra/outdated computers (or just hard drives) in your storage room/garage that you don't know what to do with? Tired of wasting time looking for data, not knowing in which drive it resides? Tired of not having your data accessible to all computers all the time?  Would you like a central location for important files and backups?  NAS - Network Attached Storage - is what you need, and it can be done for little, or no, cost.

Create a Google Map from ACT! Contact List

Creating a Google Map from a Contact List can be done in just a few clicks with two simple ACT! AddOns. Using the ACT2Excel add-on from CRM AddOns ($69*), and a free Excel template from the Batch Geocode website, we’ll do a simple export to excel, where the mapping will take place.

The bulk of the work is actually done in Excel, defining the cells that will hold the address data. The spreadsheet comes with some sample data, which you’ll want to delete, then replace the Address, City, ST, and ZIP fields with the corresponding ACT! field, and save. Then, it’s back to ACT! to create a contact list and export it to the template you just edited. When Excel opens up, you’ll have the list - address, city, state, and zip - in an Excel sheet.

Finally, just a button press in Excel will create the map. The image below is 5 addresses from the ACTDemo database:

Click here to download the Excel file - GMapsInExcel. Of course, you’ll need the add-on to put the whole thing together, but you can experiment with this template. Please contact me with any questions or comments! Hope this helps…

* Note: this ACT2Excel add-on is a must-have for ACT! users. You can perform customized data exports, create invoices/quotes, execute calculations which can then automatically populate fields back into ACT!, and much more. Check out their page for all the details…

ACT! Dialer with VoIP

Back in the "old" days, all you had to do is go to Tools>Preferences, and on the Communications tab click the Dialer button and tell ACT! the modem to use (if it hadn't already), and the dialing preferences, and you were able to dial a contact's phone number within ACT!  VoIP does not use a modem, so here's how to keep (or recapture) that functionality...