Every once in a while, you have to look at act software as if you were the sales manager for your company or business.
Recently, I had a very brief conversation with the client that requested help with viewing reports in act and on the act dashboard. He wanted to understand what his sales staff was doing and he wanted a report to show him that information. As someone who is self-employed, I would personally hate to be reported on. But I can understand the realization that a sales manager needs reports to comprehend and understand what is happening within their business. It’s just that reports seem like report card. It seems like you’re checking up on someone. If I’m a salesperson, I don’t want to waste my time doing things just to look good in a report. I want to sell.
It is my belief that the best way to generate reports about your staff is to properly educate your staff so that they work within act in a way that benefits them. If you lead the way and show them how to best utilize act software as a sales tool, everybody wins.
Sidebar: I hate reports! Don’t use reports, use groups to organize the information that is relevant to you in lieu of reports.
In order to generate a report or a group, you have to decide on who in act to report on. If you create a report in act, you really can’t do much more than just view the information. If you work with that same information as contacts in a group, you can take action on that information. Reports are for paper pushers, don’t use reports. Train your staff to utilize act and the reports will generate great information to help everyone do a better job.