When is it time to backup?  BEFORE it’s too late! 

If suddenly there was a power surge and the hard drive(s) on your server crashed, what would you do?  Would you reach for your most recent backup and restore it with confidence? 

What can I say, if you do not have a backup plan in place and haven’t tested its validity, you are an accident waiting to happen.  Trust me, I know.  If you get bitten, you will not ever let your backups lag again.

Consultants have many tools and tricks to use, but if these fail us, the ultimate fall back is your backup.  A few weeks ago, I received a phone call from a client whose GoldMine was not working.  It was GoldMine 3.2… it came to me because I’m the only one who remembers the 10 year old product!  I asked if they had a backup.  The answer was, “No, if I did, why would I need you?”  We then talked about magic and miracles and why not to take the chance of not having a backup of a customized, no-longer-supported product.  They could have easily restored from a backup and saved the expense of calling me.  Needless to say, I was able to recover their GoldMine – but I made my point about backing up.  I also have a new client that trusts me.

Within some of the GoldMine dBase products, there exists a backup function that I do not recommend.  While it does do a backup, it is not consistent and doesn’t give the flexibility of restoring an individual file if that is all that’s necessary.  My recommendations for backing up are listed below.

There are many parts of Goldmine that should be backed up.  Backing up doesn’t have to be complicated.  Making a copy of a few folders and putting them in another place like another machine, an external hard drive, etc. can be very effective.  Here’s how to handle a dBase installation of GoldMine:

1.  
   1. GoldMine’s root folder – wherever the software has been installed.  For a typical single user, that may be at c:\program files\goldmine.  But for a networked user, it resides in a shared folder on the server.  A backup of this will take all of the “exe’s” and “dll’s” necessary to recover the program side of GoldMine.
   2. In a dBase environment, the files in the GMBase folder and also the contact set folders being used should be backed up.  This folder can be found in the root of GoldMine – ie c:\program files\goldmine\GMBase.  In a typical install of this type, a common folder is added and contains all of the database files used in the Common Contact Set.  If you’ve created others on their own, include these in your backup.  Using the same example, the Common Contact Set can be found at c:\program files\goldmine\common. 

For Microsoft SQL installations, it can be a little more complicated.  While the first step listed above will also copy the necessary program files and should be done, the database backup is quite different.  You may be lucky enough to own a piece of expensive backup software that has a SQL component and it will handle your data backup for you.  It’s not the end of the world if it is not.  Either way, we recommend using the internal backup functions of Microsoft SQL.  The backup, however it is invoked, will create a file and place it somewhere on a device that is accessible.  This will greatly decrease the time necessary to recover the backup because the file is at hand.  There are other reasons to use the SQL functions and I’ll discuss a few below. 

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   1. In both SQL 2000 and SQL 2005, you can use the instructions at the following link to do a simple backup.  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/930615/en-us
   2. The other method is to set up a Database Maintenance Plan within SQL.  Not only will this handle the database backup, it can also perform other common maintenance functions such as re-index the data, check for database integrity, shrink the database to eliminate unused space, etc. 

You can find the Database Maintenance Plan wizards:

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   1. For Microsoft SQL 2000  – Within the Enterprise Manager, click on the Management folder and right click on the Database Maintenance Plan.  Choose New Maintenance Plan and follow the prompts.
   2. For Microsoft SQL 2005 – Within the Management Studio, click on the Management folder, right click on Maintenance Plan.  Choose Maintenance Plan Wizard and follow the prompts.

(The specifics of each option are too lengthy to discuss here.  Contact your service provider for more detail.)

Scheduling a backup to run during the night and you will be sure to have something to fall back on in the morning.  You won’t have to think about when the right time to backup is… it will automatically be ready for you when you need it.  I hope you NEVER need it!

A GoldMine customer was looking for reasons to upgrade from their Corporate Edition GoldMine to Premium.  With 21 users they were concerned they could justify the investment in software and services.   Demonstrations and discussions were enough to convince them that it was the right move and they opted to move forward with the purchase through First Direct Corporation. 
After six months I (Bob Ritter) interviewed the customer to see if they believed they made the right decision.  Here’s a bulleted list of what my customer said to me:

• The Case Management capabilities and the Service Center have helped us to be far more efficient and focused
• The ability to create, escalate and move a case around is a great help for us to work as team
• The interface is very easy to use
• Our engineering department, with eight engineers, is able to set and focus on priorities. We’re continually updating priorities and sorting cases this way so we address the most important needs
• Our phone support people are tracking calls from 11K franchise customers using support templates to make sure our cases have continuity and thus reporting.   Templates are associated with types of issues we troubleshoot.
• Thanks to the new capabilities and improved user interface of GoldMine overall, the level of usage of GoldMine has risen overall

With the added benefits in Premium Edition there  is greater interest in using GoldMine more fully in other ways.  We envision greater use of the Details Tab for tracking products owned, the Knowledgebase for procedures, Pipeline Management, Automated Processes, and more.

Thanks to GoldMine Premium Edition there is greater commitment to using CRM technology throughout the company.  Our  customer summed it up best when they said, “We are happy with the ROI – and glad we made the decision to upgrade to Premium with First Direct Corp!”

Is a discount or promotion the reason to buy CRM?  While special promotions help to close sales, they’re not the reason I sell CRM, and they certainly should not be the reason one purchases it!

When it comes to CRM, you spend money to make money! You purchase CRM to significantly increase sales, productivity, and customer retention. You don’t buy CRM to save on the cost of your CRM!  Getting a one-time $100-a-user savings because of a special discount, is not the reason to purchase CRM. 

Furthermore, the cost of the software is just the beginning!  Everything which contributes to the success of your CRM implementation contributes to the success of your firm.  Investment in CRM expertise, training, report writing, let alone hardware, network performance, security, and telephony integration, are all worthy additional investments. 

Here are costs that should concern you more than the cost of your CRM:  The cost of slow sales because of the ineffective use of CRM technology; or, having to hire staff to do tasks that your CRM system could have automated.  Or, having no idea what’s going on with your prospects & customers when their sales rep leaves your organization because they kept it all in their own personal system which you have no record of. 

Training is smart investment. When it comes to training … provide as much as it takes!  It makes no sense to short-cut training for all your users!  If you don’t give your users the training they need, you’re actually handing them an excuse not to use the system you just invested in to run your business on! 

Reporting is another smart investment!  You put data into your CRM so you can get information out of it! Management can work smarter if it has the information it needs; information that could answer questions about the performance.  Much of this information can be derived from well designed reports based on the data in your CRM.  Don’t choose to operate in the dark, without the objective basis for their decision making – develop the reports you need! 

CRM Software is for making money, gaining a competitive advantage, handling new leads, better serving existing customers, working as a team, and more.  Once the emphasis for why you purchased your CRM is put on deriving tangible benefits from your system, the value of your CRM system will overshadow the costs of your system.  If you only focus on the costs, you’ll fail to get the results or the ROI.

One of the most significant investments that management needs to make isn’t about money.  That is an investment of time! Management needs to invest the time to plan out the strategic and tactical ways in which the organization can use their database technology to the organization’s benefit. When your employees see management making this effort they will know that there is a real commitment to the CRM system and your employees are far more likely to make the best use of it themselves. It’s time to show them you mean business!

From surgeons to carpenters, from police officers to accountants … every profession uses tools.  And, so it is with sales professionals.  CRM is far and away one of the most important tools in a salesperson’s toolbox!

Professionals need to know the terminology, trends, and facts in their field.  They need an understanding of their customers’ wants, needs, and objections.  They must also be familiar with best practices, pitfalls, and patterns which lead to success.  But all this is not enough!  They must also be highly skilled on the tools of their trade. 

There’s an applicable expression, which I’m not a fan of, – “Those who can, do, and those who can’t, teach.”   This expression gives all teachers a bad rap because many teachers are talented professionals who can easily work in the field that they teach, and have. They just love to teach.  Nonetheless, this saying does make a point – if you know a lot about a field, but you can’t use the “tools of the trade,” you might have a career as a teacher, but not as a practitioner.

CRM technology is a chief sales tool, and a skillful CRM user has a competitive advantage. Yet most salespeople barely use a fraction of their CRM’s capabilities and many struggle to use even the basic features, regardless of what CRM product they have.  Why is that?

I’ve heard all the excuses … I don’t have the time or I’m out of the office. It’s too hard to use.  It doesn’t do this or that.  I’m not good at computers.  These are cop outs!  Here’s why salespeople aren’t skilled CRM users:

1. Lack of Effort – You can’t expect someone in your office to spoon feed you CRM knowledge.  It’ll never happen.  The rest of the office already thinks salespeople are spoiled and they’re tired of cleaning up salespeople’s mistakes and sloppy paperwork.  Break out the manual and make the effort to go through the application on your own.  Skills take time and practice to develop.

2. Selfishness – Heaven forbid a salesperson should have to verify an address, or enter qualifying information about their leads into the CRM fields. The reality is salespeople need to do data entry.  Otherwise, marketing can’t target their campaigns to our prospects to support our sales efforts.  It’s time for salespeople to shoulder more responsibility for the database.  It’s time to turn selfishness into a higher expectation for yourself when it comes to the effective usage of your CRM! 

3. Attitude – What do some salespeople do during CRM training?  Their email and call-backs.  Most salespeople have never read, let alone seen, their CRM’s Users Guide.  When salespeople don’t know how to use their CRM software what do they do?  Too often the answer is they make excuses for not using it.  Or, even worse, undermine the organization’s use of it.  Successful salespeople are creative and resourceful problem solvers – it’s time to use some of that on your CRM! 

The combination of knowledge and skill is a winning combination.  Practice, patience, and persistence are mostly what it takes to develop the skills at anything.  Do you have the CRM skills you need?  If not, it’s time to work on them!

I hear it all the time:  We want to do more marketing with our CRM.  We want to pull in leads from our website.  We want to automate follow-up communications to qualified leads. We want to be able to maintain a library of template letters and emails and we want to track and see who got what and when.  We want to be able to segment our database to get out more targeted promotions with relevant and compelling offers.  We want …, we want …, we want.  What about do, do, do?  GoldMine is capable of all these things and more.  If you’re not doing these things now … why not? 

I’ve heard all the excuses, and they’re cop-outs:  Our data is a mess.  The salespeople don’t supply the information. I can’t do it. Here are the reasons firms are not marketing better with their CRM:

1. Fear of Sales – Salespeople play an essential role in generating revenue, and the marketing people know this.  Salespeople are also responsible for collecting information on prospects that marketing relies on.  After all, salespeople are communicating with leads, prospects and customers.  They’re talking with them and researching them on a regular basis, so the salespeople have first hand opportunity to collect and correct the information in the CRM database. Unfortunately, too often the sales force does a sloppy job at best with updating contact information.  But marketing often tolerates this because they’re afraid of losing a good salesperson, or pissing off the sales manager.  Or, maybe marketing is worried that salespeople will just complain back about the quality or quantity of leads that marketing is generating. Don’t be afraid of the sales force!  Keep in mind that sales and marketing teams have mutual interests. It’s up to marketing to gain the support of your sales force and it’s up to sales to give it. 

2. Lack of CRM Skills – The marketing director who relies on the CRM for their database should know more about the software than the sales force.  In addition to knowing what the salespeople know about maintaining records in GoldMine, the marketing director also has to use powerful database tools that are often off limits to salespeople.  What’s more, whereas the salespeople manage the database one record at a time (one relationship at a time), the marketing director also has to be able to apply a macro perspective to the database through queries, reporting & analysis, and global updates. 

3. Use It or Lose It – Direct marketing experts know too well that lists depreciate, fast. So it’s “use it or lose it.” The post office or the Internet tells you when an address is undeliverable.  Do you have a procedure for cleaning up your data?  Do you use third-party service providers to clean and enhance your data?  Do you import your web leads, tradeshow leads, and other lists into your CRM database and get communications out to them quickly?  There are many ways to use a list to keep it fresh.

Regular marketing communications build brand awareness and generate more qualified leads so the salespeople can focus their time and talents on higher quality leads to produce greater sales results. 

Take advantage of telemarketing to qualify leads, update data, or do initial appointment setting.  Marketing can do many things that help salespeople close more business.  The quality of your marketing lists, including your house file, decline in accuracy if you don’t use them.  If your firm isn’t using your CRM for marketing you’re losing money, your salespeople are wasting their valuable time, and your data is depreciating in value.  

Marketing facilitates sales so sales and marketing need to work together to achieve synergy and be more efficient!  With the cooperation of the sales director, marketing can build resources and functions into the CRM that salespeople can use to be more professional and productive.

Everyone who works with the database must recognize that they play an essential role in maintaining the data.  The more that marketing uses the database, the more salespeople will too.  It’s time to use it or lose it!