When you hear the term ROI, I am betting you are thinking money.  When I buy this stock, what will be my return.  If I invest in a business, will I get my money back. According to Wikipedia, ROI, or Return on Investment “is the concept of an investment of some resource yielding a benefit to the investor.”  Basically it means whatever you invest, be it money, time or effort, you are expecting some form of benefit. Often I am asked by clients to help them get across

We will periodically get calls from customers complaining that ACT syncs run forever or their ACT database is running too slow.  Before killing the computer, as the graphic alludes to, instead it's better to look at what is the root cause of the problem.  Usually, at this point we ask a couple of questions then we logon to their database and start checking a few things.  One of the things we look at is the size of the ALF file. An ACT database is a SQL database and is really two

Recently, I read a great article talking about calling prospects.  The main point of the article was that not all leads were equal - you needed to mix it up when reaching out to potential clients.   One of the questions people often ask is how many times should a prospect be called before you give up and call it a dead lead.  The article said it depended on the size of the business.  Smaller business owners were able to make decisions quicker while larger organizations had "

You can configure fields on ACT! Envelopes, Labels and Reports to collapse for contacts with no data in that field by enabling the Collapse if blank attribute for that field on the template. Follow the steps below: From the Report Designer and the Envelope, Label or Report template; right-click the field you wish to collapse for contacts with no data, and then click Properties from the shortcut menu. The Field Properties dialog box appears:  

I love creating groups in ACT - or for that matter, in any CRM.  It's a way of consolidating contacts into meaningful relationships.  Examples are christmas lists, prospects, do not call or email, and many others.  A client of mine has a "big spender" group - really.  You know what that one contains - it's his customers that he wants to ensure get TLC treatment. As a contact database grows, it is wise to create groups to make accessing the contacts faster.  If you have

By default, ACT will return 50 results whenever you do a search using Universal Search.  To increase or decrease this number, do the following: Close ACT!. Open Windows® Services screen and locate ACT! Service Host. Right click on the service and select Stop. Using Windows Explorer, browse to the Sage ACT! installation directory. 32-bit operating system default: C:\Program Files\ACT\Act for Windows 64-bit operating system default: C:\Program Files (x86)\ACT\Act

Everyone who reads my blog knows by now that we work with Customer Relationship Software.  It's one of the applications in the aresenal of tools used by businesses to increase sales and customer loyalty.  We use it ourselves as well.  When you are a smaller business, you need every trick in the book to stay on target and generate new business. One of the things that happens to everyone, not just small business owners, is we get caught up in the day to day minutia and work that

You do a search using the Universal search box in the uppr right corner,but it nevers finishes.  Here's what to do. Close out of Act! on all machines accessing the database From the server, press the Windows key + R on your keyboard In the Run dialog, type services.msc and press enter Right-click on Act! Service Host and select Restart Launch Act! and test Universal Search If you are using a Remote database, do the same thing above as the index files reside on the same machine as the