As companies increase their use of technology, they also increase their dependence. As companies increase their dependence of technology, the value of their data increases. In many cases, the entire survival of an organization balances on the availability, reliability, and accuracy of information. Your company may not be the extreme case, but chances are, the value of your data is incalculable.

In order to ensure availability, reliability, and accuracy, the system must be physically and electronically secure, protected from virus infection, and have a “complete” disaster recovery plan in place. The most crucial aspect of disaster recovery is a consistent, dependable backup solution. And believe it or not, tape is still the most common solution.

For GoldMine 5.x users the solution to backup dBase is simple but less powerful than SQL. A complete, unattended daily backup with a 1-2 week (5-10 day) rotation is a must. Yes, many companies opt for a complete backup one day and incremental through the rest of week, but if you find yourself quickly trying to get back up and running the day before the full backup, that’s 5 tapes you have to restore from. Along with a 1-2 week rotation, we also recommend about 6 month-end tapes. Sounds like a large number of tapes (11-16) but you can bet it pales in comparison to the value of your data. Make sure you do a test restore at least once a month and clean the drive about once a week. If not, you may find all your efforts fruitless, because you may not have anything to restore when you need it.

For GoldMine FrontOffice users all the above applies as well, and then some. With FrontOffice, comes MS-SQL. By leveraging the power of SQL you can recover your data to the “moment” before the corruption, loss, or crash. By making a full backup of your transaction log to the hard drive (preferably a separate hard drive), regular incremental backups, and backing them all up to tape before clearing them, you dramatically increase the flexibility of recovery.

Yes, this information is simplified a bit, but hopefully it will get you thinking and might prompt you to review your options with your local FrontRange Solutions Partner.

Once upon a time there was a company that made special kinds of products that were sold to special kinds of companies. This company made lots of sales each year, and each sale was worth a lot of money. One day, their GoldMine consultant was trying to help them work out some better ways to use their GoldMine. The consultant and the people from the company started talking about lead management. The company had a very simple lead management process. They advertised in lots of important magazines, and waited for people response cards to come in. Then, the company would send every response their beautiful, expensive brochure. It cost the company lots of money, but they didn’t care because they were selling lots of products.

The GoldMine consultant asked them how they managed things like bad addresses and returned mail. They said the company had a whole pile of envelopes that had been returned by the post office. One day they were going to put that information into their database, but not today! The consultant asked about duplicate names. The company said that it happened sometimes, but they thought it was really important to send their brochures out right away to show they really cared. The consultant was a little bothered by this, but the company didn’t seem to mind the money they were throwing away. Then, from the back of the room, a little voice said “What about those guys in prison?”. Well, you can imagine everybody’s reaction! The consultant said “What guys in prison???”. And the little voice (that belonged to the girl who saw to it that all the brochures went out) explained: “We get a lot of cards from guys in prison. A lot of the magazines we advertise in are free, so they fill out the cards so they can get mail. I guess they’re lonely…”.

After talking with all the important people at the company, the consultant found out that they wasted more than twenty thousand dollars every year, sending their nice brochures to prisoners and lots of other bored people in the world. Best of all, almost twenty percent of what they sent out were duplicates! So, as you can see, even a simple lead management process can benefit from some common sense database practices!

GoldMine makes forecasting business extremely simple. It will also present our forecasted sales or opportunities in the form of a “funnel” analysis or report. Let’s consider the benefits of this type of representation of our sales pipeline.

By virtue of associating a probability with each sale in progress we can generate a sales funnel. A sales funnel lets us view how much business is in our pipeline at each level of probability. But first the company must decide on the definitions and basis for selecting the probability. Some firms have the sales person subjectively indicate the closing probability.

Since sales people’s instincts vary from overly conservative to totally unrealistic this method is fraught with problems. To minimize these subject swings firms prefer to have the probability correspond to specific stages in the sales cycle. Plus, this will enable much more intelligent reading of the sales funnel. With a funnel we see the amount of business in the pipeline at each stage in the sales process. One advantage of using GoldMine’s “Opportunity Management” tool to track deals is that is offers the ability to track both the sales cycle “Stage” and the “probability” of closing. Either way, sales management should recognize that the more options they give for stage and probability, the more time consuming it is for sales people to update their pending transactions. From a practical standpoint, less is more!

A sales funnel is not just a tool for evaluating the performance of a sales person or sales force. It’s a way of predicting the future. Business ups & downs impact various departments including production, delivery, customer service, even purchasing and accounting. Having some advanced notice, via the sales funnel helps them to prepare for the future and manage their processes and resources.

An equally valuable benefit of funnel analysis is that it can give us early warning signs that our marketing or sales efforts are ineffective. Also, it may indicate changing market conditions we need to adjust to. In more ways than one, a sales funnel can definitely help us to manage smarter.

The adage “out-of-sight, out-of-mind” is truer than ever. Modern society has caused “attention deficit.” A state wherein there are more things vying for our limited attention than we can possibly focus on at once. In computer terms, you might say we’re trying to process more information than we have the “RAM” to do it with. As a result, our attention is constantly shifting from one matter to the next. And the moment, it does we may lose sight (attention) of the last matter we were dealing with.

In addition to all the stresses and problems this “attention deficit” condition is causing for us personally; it is creating major difficulties and challenges for marketing & sales professionals. As if it weren’t hard enough alone just to get one’s attentions, the moment we think we’ve got it, we’ve lost it again. One minute we’re talking to a prospect who’s all hot to purchase, the next we can’t even get them to call us back. Not because they’ve purchased elsewhere often times, but simply because they’re just too busy to give us their attention again.

GoldMine is a great tool for overcoming this challenge. Use it to reach your target audience frequently. Alter your channel of communications from fax, to phone, to email, to personal letter, to mass mailing. Mix it holiday greetings and article reprints. Sprinkle in other friendly relationship building touches like an article you thought might interest them. Using GoldMine this way you’re ensuring a much greater likelihood of being in-sight and on their mind when they’re ready to make a buying decision. In the process you’re building name recognition as well as credibility.

A 1997 study by Cahners Publishing of 40,000 sales inquiries showed that only 11% of people bought within 90 days of their initial inquiry. About 17% bought between 4-6 months after their inquiry. And another 25% bought 6-12 months after inquiry. Almost 50% took a year to make a purchase. Do the math and you realize that those who end up buying 90 days after their inquiry represent four times more sales opportunities than shorter-term prospects.

You’ve heard it said that an effective lead handling process must build-in future follow-up. Touching a prospect periodically over 18 months after they show up on your radar screen has several essential benefits:

• Greater likelihood of being there when your prospect is making a buying decision.
• Developing recognition of your products/services and company.
• Maintaining your database accuracy as your learn of personnel and address changes.
• Informing prospects of special promotions, awards, announcements, new products and other information that may trigger a response.
• Each prospect communication can build credibility and leave a positive residual affect; thereby strengthening the impact of future communications.

A common mistake is leaving lead follow-up to the sales force. Sales people primarily communicate on verbal channels (phone and appointment). While very powerful, the sales force may not deliver enough frequency and coverage. To achieve the repetition lead follow-up requires companies may have to use direct mail, broadcast fax, broadcast email, and public relations.

GoldMine is the perfect tool for lead follow-up. The sales force and marketing share and update the same database. Their individual efforts compliment the others; leading to better overall results.

Do your sales and marketing people meet regularly to discuss ways to improve their cooperation via the database? Does marketing advise sales about campaigns? Do the sales people capture the information that is vital to targeted marketing campaigns?

If you want your prospects to remember you and buy from you by reaching them periodically for a longer time frame, GoldMine is the perfect tool.