Make the most of inactivity
Picking up on the spring cleaning theme, we wanted to show you the Contact Activity lookup. It’s a feature that goes unused far too often. Many of you may not know it’s there. If you are a good little ACT! user, you enter your leads and prospects into your ACT! database after, or while, you chat. Then what?
Hopefully you record the history of the call and schedule your follow up activity. Most of the time, we’re sure you’re pretty diligent. This scenario always conjures up a scene from “Up” for me. SQUIRREL! The phone rings, a pretty bird lands in the tree outside my window, I mean your window. Ooooh, he’s really pretty. I should Google what kind of bird that is. . . Focus. There is a way to dig in and find your neglected contacts. This opens up couple of opportunities. One potential outcome of this task is literally Opportunities. The other is the opportunity to clean up and update your data.
To perform a Contact Activity Lookup, click Lookup, then select Contact Activity.
Select your Lookup criteria, either “Not Changed” or “Changed” since a specific date. Choose where you’d like ACT! to search: Contact Fields, Notes, History and Activities. You can even narrow the search to specific History and Activity types. Once you click OK, you’ll have a list of Contacts that need attention.
If you are a manager, this is a great exercise to review with your Sales Reps. If a Contact is marked as a Prospect, but you haven’t talked to them or made any changes to their Contact record in six months, are they still even a Prospect? Maybe the Contact should receive a phone call, be updated to a different status, or maybe the Contact should be purged from the database.
Who are you neglecting and are you missing out on opporunities? Use the Contact Activity lookup to find them, update them and possibly drum up some more business!
