I see it all the time. The typical CRM user fires up his software and is greeted by numerous alarms.  At that point he deftly hits the “Select All” and “Snooze” button.  Drip.  Drip.  I can almost hear important information dripping through the cracks of the database!

Oh, alarms – how do I hate thee?  Let me count the ways.  First of all, too many of you routinely snooze your alarms.  Secondly with all those alarms going off none of them really stands out so that the really important stuff is mixed in with the not so important stuff.  Finally, what happens if you forget to set an alarm or an activity?  The floodgates open and a deluge of information is lost forever.

Don’t believe me?  Research shows that at least 25% of the average database is dead wood.  And part of the reason for that dead wood is that we let too much important information fall through the cracks in our database.

Fortunately, the use of ACT’s dynamic group function provides a simple solution for plugging those holes.  A dynamic group will work automatically and require less time on your part than the more traditional method of scheduling tasks.  The contents of a dynamic group change dynamically when the information in your database changes.  For example, you might create a dynamic group for each of your sales people.  When you assign contacts the sales force they will automatically appear in the appropriate group; if you reassign contacts the groups will realign automatically.

Here’s what you’ll need to do to create those dynamic groups:

1. Determine the purpose of your existing alarms.  My solution will work for activities such as following up with new prospects or reaching out to customers that you haven’t spoken to in the last two months.
2. Create a group in ACT by going to the Groups Detail View, clicking the Groups menu, selecting New Group and giving the group a name.
3. Right-click the new group from the list of groups on the left side of the Groups Detail View, select Group Membership, choose Add/Remove Contacts and then click the Edit Criteria button.

At this juncture you’re ready to create a simple query to automatically find the contacts that match your criteria.  I particularly like to build my queries based on a date field so that I can automatically find customers with expiring maintenance contracts, or orders that are still waiting to be shipped.

You might find it helpful to see the new prospects that have been added to your database in the last two days to insure that they don’t “fall through the cracks”.  Here’s what that query looks like:

Once you get the hang of creating dynamic groups the sky’s the limit.  Just think – the only alarm you’ll have to be snoozing is the one next to your bed!