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First Direct Corp. is now on Facebook!

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About Facebook Pages-

A Facebook Page is a public profile that enables you to share your business and products with Facebook users.  When your fans interact with your Facebook Page, stories linking to your Page can go to their friends via News Feed. As these friends interact with your Page, News Feed keeps driving word-of-mouth to a wider circle of friends.

That's right ... I said you might want to "Crash" your GoldMine!   We have a salesperson who uses GoldMine all day long and has done a  ton of personalization to his GoldMine toolbar.  His toolbar saves him a lot of time and helps him to sell more.   The other day this salesperson accidently hit the "Reset" on their GoldMine Toolbar.   He freaked-out at the thought of having to recreate all their personalization, or worse, having to work with the default toolbar.   What could he do to "undo" their problem?   The answer was simple, albeit not obvious.  Here's an easy trick for GoldMine Administrators to know about if someone comes to you in a panic because they accidently "reset" their GoldMine Toolbar.

Because the users Toolbar settings are stored in the GoldMine users ".INI" file, and because that it written to WHEN they close their GoldMine properly, all you have to do is crash GoldMine and any changes to the users preferences are not stored.  How could we do that you might ask?  Simple, just go into the Windows Task Manager and "End Process" for the GoldMine Executable (GM.exe).  This "kills" the GoldMine software application and the INI is NOT written to with the changes to his GoldMine preferences including the "reset" of the GoldMine Toolbar.  The user's problem is solved easily!  And he thanked me profusly for saving his customizations!   (NOTE:  This will only work if you do it BEFORE the user logs out of GoldMine!)

First Direct Corp. offers a 1 hour webinar on "Two Terrific Productivity Tools" that goes into how to sell more efficiently with the GoldMine Toolbar and Taskbar.  Visit  http://www.1stdirect.com/events/gmtools.php for information.

We’ve all said it! ...  “’I'll follow-up with you next week.”  Then we go into GoldMine and schedule ourselves a call for the next week so we actually remember to call the person back.

Here’s a GoldMine tip/trick to make that process a little bit easier.

In the Date field when scheduling a call, appointment, next action, etc. etc.  instead of typing in a date, or using the lookup to bring up a calendar, type in 1W.

Then, magically, when you tab or click, to the next field the date will be set for 1week from today.

Assume, then, that you want to schedule the activity 2 days from now, well, just type in 2D, for 3 days 3D.

D works for Days, W for Weeks, and M for Months.  So to schedule something 2 months from now, Just type in 2M!

If you’ve ever taken my basic end-user GoldMine training, you’ve heard me say “do your day.”  One of the key points about a workgroup CRM system for the sales team (reps, support, management, etc.) is that everyone should just do their day, the same way, in GoldMine!

The famous comedian Jack Benny once humored, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?  Practice!”

A workgroup of CRM users is like an orchestra in that everyone has their role and needs to play their part well, but no matter how good we all play, it will only sound good if we’re all playing at the same time off the same sheet of music. 

GoldMine Premium provides you many tools for aligning the day-to-day life of your sales people, including but not limited to email and letter templates, fields for collecting qualifying information, a means of tracking activities and planning future follow-up, opportunity management, a seamless basis for providing the data that is needed by marketing and management, and much more! 

It’s important to get your prospects into the hands of an effective salesperson.  But when that salesperson is also a capable user of a CRM system that is aligned to the way they do their job, you have an even greater result.   In addition to that salesperson achieving greater sales productivity, your whole business can thrive as you achieve the synergy that comes from a sales team that is able to function far better with one another, their support staff, marketing, and management!

One of the many advantages of GoldMine® over other CRM applications is the GoldMine® Task Bar.

The GoldMine Task Bar is a great way of having quick, one-click access to common things like:

• GoldMine Main Menu Items
• Launching external applications and web sites (web resources like Google Maps, Dun and Bradstreet, Spoke, etc.)
• Displaying documents and files in GoldMine
• Using and Sharing Macros

In addition, GoldMine users with master rights can customize the task bar to allow all users access to frequently used menu commands and macros.

What's more, task bars can be Global (for all users) or Local (just for each user).

Each icon on the task bar represents a task item (essentially a short cut). You can customize up to 50 task items into one task group. In other words, a task group is a collection of tasks [task item]. Each task grouping is accessed from a pull-down button on your GoldMine Task Bar, and you can have up to 20 task groups.

Here’s how to create a new task bar group:

1. Click on the Customize option on your tool bar task bar
2. Right click on the task bar
3. Select "Add New Group"
4. Give it a name and select "OK." (Users with master rights can check the box "Global Group" if they want to give all end users access to the task bar)
5. Start inserting items to the new group

Click here to see the benefit of using the GoldMine® Task Bar!

Click here to learn how to take your productivity to the next level with the toolbar/taskbar and templates

What image do you conjure up when you think of someone who’s selling?  Possibly you pictured someone talking on the phone.  Surely you’ve heard the expression “dialing for dollars” as a way to describe the daily efforts by salespeople and telemarketers to reach prospects and customers. 

Whether you’re cold calling, introducing yourself to new web leads and referrals, following up on active prospects and customers, or fielding incoming inquiries, a large ratio of sales activity takes place on the phone.  And, when you’re on the phone you should be on the record. 

As a GoldMine trainer my number one basic principle for success with GoldMine is to “be on the record!”  Look over the shoulder of anyone in my office who’s on the phone and you’ll see what organization they’re talking with because that’s the GoldMine Record on their computer’s screen.  You have to be on the record you’re talking with in order to use GoldMine for the reasons you purchased it, not to mention to improve the quality and accuracy of the information you have.

For my organization, and others, the use of the phones is a big enough factor that we believe it warrants having tight integration between your phone system and your GoldMine database. 

Apart from the features of your phone system alone, here are compelling reasons for tight integration between GoldMine and your phones:

• Screen pops based on incoming caller ID can save time searching for the GoldMine record
• Automated capture of incoming callers phone number can prove very useful
• Speed dialing with GoldMine reduces wrong dials and increases productivity as much as 15%
• Power dialing outbound call campaigns to a call list where you can lift productivity by as much as 30%
• Automate tracking calls by automatically initiating a “completed call” and capture the actual call duration
• Automate scheduling follow-up with a Macros on a record of frequent call outcomes to reduce data entry time and increase selling time
• Better call tracking in the context of your CRM records means enhanced reporting and greater accountability

The bottom line – you’ll sell more!

It just makes common sense – if you’re going to put people’s phone numbers into your GoldMine database you should let your GoldMine database dial the phone for you!  Once you start dialing with GoldMine you’ll wonder why anyone would want to otherwise.

Let us give you a demonstration of what you can do with GoldMine using your existing phone system.  That’s right, your existing phone system! 
Register for our online event - Telephony Integration - GoldMine and Your Current Phone System – what you don’t know that you can do! 

Great News - First Direct can integrate GoldMine with just about any phone system! If you're a small business looking for a new phone system I'd be happy to tell you what phone system we changed to recently and why I chose it. We've reduced our phone bills nearly 50% in the process!
FEATURED ADD-ON:

Tapi Link for GoldMine - Once installed, Tapi Link for GoldMine becomes an integral part of your GoldMine and enables users to dial directly from within GoldMine and present a caller’s contact details when the telephone rings.

Here’s an effective way to give a “mass email” a personal touch and thereby lift response.   In other words, if your firm has developed fancy HTML email templates in your GoldMine Document Template library this is an easy way to enhance them when you want to give them a ‘one-to-one’ tone.

Start by making a clone (copy) of the template so that the original is not altered.   In the new template simply add lines (using your “return key”) above the designed template.  Then you can edit the top of the email with GoldMine merge fields to enter the first name and perhaps a short message -- the shorter & sweeter the better.  I like to keep such a message to two or three sentences at most and to make the tone of the message feel like it was written to just one person. 

Because the formatting at the top of the email, where you want to add the text, will be dictated by HTML coding inside the template, you probably will need to alter the font and even the alignment of what you're adding.  This can be done inside the GoldMine email client without altering the style of the actual template below.

With a personal salutation and the right personal note at the top of an HTML template, even if you broadcast this to group or filtered list of GoldMine records, this approach will still create the sense that you wrote to the recipient individually.   Doing so tends to invite a dialogue that doesn’t occur generally with mass broadcast emails.  So whether you send to one contact or a thousand records, this method can trigger a level of response that may pleasantly surprise you. 

Given the “personal feel” of the message, you’re apt to get responses which may not even relate to the primary marketing message.  Recipients may take the occasion of your email to ask you for something or to tell you something that was on their mind.  Either way, any response is an interaction that marketers want and sales people need!

(NOTE: If you’re managing replies to your campaigns with GoldMine Email Rules, you may need to pay more attention to what the respondent is saying.)

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!

This article begins with comments about the value of information and then progresses on to offer some suggestions for using GoldMine Premium.

If “information is power” then your access to it will determine your power to sell.  Here’s another old adage that speaks to the point of this article.  Know your audience!  Sales is contextual … meaning what you say and what you do relates to who you’re dealing with. 

It’s true that your ability to be effective as a salesperson depends on having access to facts, figures, and historical details regarding the consumer or business you are working with.  The more accessible the information you need to sell is, the better you can sell and the more you’ll sell, not mention the value it has for servicing your customers. 

What kind of information?  Some of the information you need is obvious – name, company, phone, email, and relevant qualifying details.  But you also should be collecting information to satisfy your marketing and management reporting needs such as lead source, industry, etc. 

In addition, if you are a real smart operator, you can appreciate the usefulness of less obvious details such as the age of the lead, when they were last contacted, a history of previous sales, credit status, customer service history, etc.

Enough said about what you need; what I’d most like to point out is how GoldMine Premium can help you access it.

To begin with, GoldMine Premium’s screen design has moved to a maximized view of the record with convenient tabbed access to windows such as your calendar, activity list, and email center.  In doing so, the top half of the screen provides much more space in which to layout fields.  Bringing fields up to the top half of the screen that were previously in the “Summary” and “Fields” Tab will display information at glance, so you can do less “clicking around.”

Plus, what many users don’t know is that you have the ability to have multiple “Primary Views.”  Primary Views are different screen layouts that you can apply to the top half of the records in GoldMine.  You can also automatically drive which screen is displayed using Record Type Rules which change the screen based on the value of the data in “Key1.”  (Click here to learn more about Record Typing) 

Within GoldMine Premium you can also have a GM+ View Tab or GM Browser Window that presents an entirely custom layout of information.  Because these screens in GoldMine use Internet Explorer to present HTML, your options for presenting information are practically limitless.  You can organize information the way you want, drill-down, and even tie in to external data from other applications in your office or from over the Internet.  

There’s even more possibilities using SQL Reporting Services and SQL Queries!  These tools, made possible because GoldMine Premium runs on MS SQL 2000/2005, offer firms powerful capabilities that can put the right information at your finger tips so you can target and analyze your sales activities far better than before!

This is all very powerful.  It’s time to think of new and creative ways that you and your organization can use information to sell more.  If you have an idea, and you’re wondering if it can be done with GoldMine, let alone how to do it, contact First Direct Corporation – we’re here to help you.

Consider this …

First Direct Corp. is having a webinar on April 2nd titled, “Using GoldMine Through The Eyes of a Sales Rep – A Sales Centric Approach to Using GoldMine.”