I feel responsible for helping the salesperson that uses act to become successful so they can provide for themselves, their family and also for the company they work for. If they are successful, the owners of the business and there were employees all benefit from their success.

Having trained people to use act for almost 18 years, I have found that the people that are most successful with act when they have a clear understanding of what they hope to accomplish within their job. In other words, they have goals.  Goals that are written down.  A road map for attaining their goals and the good sense to periodically reevaluate how they hope to get there and make necessary tweaks to their goals and strategy.

Is the Boss on Board?

One of the largest detriments to making act successful is when the boss is not on board. If the boss doesn’t see the value in what the software can do to help the salesperson and the company accomplish, it will never be utilized successfully. Granted, you might have minor successes. But the question that I’ll always have is what it could have been? If the owner or boss is on board and is an advocate, the odds of success are much greater.

Helping You Make the Most Out of Act

When I start working with you, one of the first things I will ask you is what are your goals and expectations for your salesperson or staff. Quite often I will get a fairly general response. What I am looking for is something much more specific.

Here are some of the questions that I will ask you to consider:

• Does your salesperson have strong organizational skills?
• Does your salesperson know how to use Microsoft Outlook?
• Are the contacts in act well-organized?
• How many prospects are there in your database?
• Will they be selling the current clients?
• Do you assign salespeople to a specific territory or contact?
• How do you want contacts to be contacted?
• Telephone calls?
• Email?
• Personal visits?
• How often do you want these to occur?
• What kind of reports do you expect from your salesperson?
• What is your email marketing program?
• How do you find new prospects?
• How do you follow up with your existing clients?

My goal for teaching people about act

Based on the goals that you and I have discussed, I will help the salesperson to start using act right away to sell.  They need to be productive right away.  They don’t have to know everything to be able to use act.  In my opinion, the best case scenario for helping a person learn about act is this:

• a person comes into the office on Monday morning and immediately starts using act to sell
• they are using act as a tool to start selling immediately
• as they sell, they learn a little bit more about act every day
• as they sell, act will create a history of what they have accomplished
• this history, will help you create reports and gather information about what they have and have not accomplished so you can help them accomplish more
• It will also help you gauge your level of expectations
• I urge you to never forget that act is just a tool
• a salesperson should have weekly goals, monthly goals and quarterly goals
• act is a great tool for helping salespeople track those goals
• reviewing those goals is a great way to learn the strengths and weaknesses of the salesperson and of your company’s approach to sales
• What additional tools can I introduce to your salesperson to make them more efficient?
• How do you leverage new technology to help the person become more successful?
• How do you leverage your own website to help your sales staff?

Three Months from Now

So your salesperson has been selling and has been using act for three months. What have we learned?  What have they learned? The great thing about act is that it can tell you a great deal about what has a user has accomplished. It is imperative that you and your salesperson understand that I do not use act reports to babysit your activities, I use act to help you understand how you can do things differently to be more successful. I also use act to help you evaluate your own personal goals.

If you plan and use act properly, the results should speak for themselves.