Like it or not, unless you’re working for one of the Fortune 500 companies you too are an underdog when it comes to your business.  It’s an uphill battle to get your name to stand out against the competition.  Compounding the problem is some scary information that I read years ago that still reverberates.  It takes an average of 12 touches to convert a prospect into a customer.  And, 50% of sales people give up after the first effort; 90% give up after the second.

Wow!  With the odds so highly stacked against us it’s tempting to wave the white flag and admit defeat.  But like Butler, or Jimmy Conners who came back from a 1-6, 1-6 deficit to win Wimbledon in 1987, you have to focus on what you can do and not on what the other guy is doing.

Here’s a few coaching tips that apply to both sports and, more importantly, your business.

1. Act like a hero. Think of the frustrations you’ve had when contacting large companies (don’t get me started on Comcast!) and then do the opposite when interacting with your customers and prospects.
2. Out-distance your competition. I always said that if the other guy only tries to reach someone twice, I’d try to reach them three times.  If it takes twelve attempts to win a new customer then make those twelve attempts.
3. Use the proper equipment. I doubt that Conners could have won Wimbledon with a broken racquet or holes in his tennis shoes.  If you’re going to resort to e-marketing use an ESP (e-mail service provider) to track your results.  And by all means use an effective database tool to help you focus on the correct audience.
4. If you can’t be bigger, be smarter. Was it me or did the Butler guys look a heck of a lot smaller than the Duke players?  The fact that they almost won gives testament to the believe that brains can conquer brawn.
5. Don’t think meat, just pitch. In case you didn’t catch it, that’s a reference to what Kevin Costner told Tim Robbins in the baseball classic, Bull Durham.  He was trying to get “Nuke” to stop over-thinking everything and trust his mentor.  Trust your coach or, if you don’t have one and you’re struggling, hire a great coach or consultant to help you out.  It works for major class athletes and it will work for you.

Let the games begin!

 Alyssa was raised with a computer.  She used to come with me to my computer school and help teach the children’s classes.  We were the first house on the block to have Internet access and Alyssa took advantage of my expertise when it came to mastering Word, Excel and Power Point. 

 My two daughters are only four years apart in age, yet I saw a tremendous difference between their generations.  When Andrea departed for college at the start of the millennium it took a mini-van filled to overflowing to carry her “necessities.”  Her possessions included a stereo, television, desktop computer, digital camera, photo albums and a huge box of cables including one for the dorm’s Ethernet connection.  Alyssa arrived on campus four years later carrying only an IPod, I-phone, Mac book and a couple of power cords; although she traveled much lighter her amenities were comparable to those of her sister.

Alyssa is a card-carrying member of the 70 million strong “Generation Y.”  Although they travel light they have access to a never-ending source of media which they expect to access immediately, anytime, anywhere.

ACT 2010 now includes links to various social networking sites including Facebook and LinkedIn.  I was surprised to learn that many of my clients weren’t as excited about this new development as I was.  “Don’t use Linked In,” huffed one person.  “Facebook is for kids,” snapped another.  These folks obviously assume that the people they encounter in the business world think the same way they do.  Unfortunately, they don’t.

I’ve identified ten areas of communication that have changed over the course of the last ten years, at least if you’re a member of Generation Y.  And, like it or not, if they want your business to survive you’ll have to adjust to those changes. 

1. Land lines:  For Generation Y, land lines are a thing of the past.  If they do talk on the phone they do it via a cell phone which has become a permanent appendage. More than 23% of homes currently lack land lines – and the number is going up all the time.
2. Newspaper Classifieds:  I’m a firm believer that radio killed the video star then Craig’s List surely killed the newspapers and put most forms of print media in jeopardy of extinction.  Morning papers and TV news have been replaced by online media sources.   
3. Dial Up Connections:  Your first Internet connection was probably a dial-up.  Today’s generation wants instant gratification and finds it at home, on their phone and even at the local McDonalds.  And your site had better have the bandwidth and design to enable quick page viewing!
4. Books:  I’m an author so this one really pains me.  Books are expense to produce – and purchase.  They take space to store.  Gen Y does their research over the Internet and downloads their reading material to their Kindle. Students can even download textbooks at sites like Coursesmart.com.
5. CD’s:  Whoosh.  Now you see them, now you don’t.  Faster than you can say “download” the CD has been replaced by YouTube, ITunes and a variety of other sites that allow media downloads.
6. Film cameras and prints:  Even if you could buy one, you’d have a hard time finding a place to process your film.  Gen Y has thousands of pictures residing on their cell phones, computers and Face Book pages.  And can access millions more on the Internet. A single image is no longer enough to speak a thousand words.
7. Yellow pages:  Ironically, the only people using the Yellow Pages these days are aging Baby Boomers who probably lack the eyesight to read them anyway.
8. Fax machines:  If they don’t have land lines, why in the world would a Generation Y’er have a fax line? 
9. E-mail:  If you think you’re reaching your target audience via e-mail alone, think again.  Generation Y is so mobile that even e-mail can’t keep pace with them.  they’re using Face Book and Twitter to communicate. 
10. Cell Phones:  Buh-bye cell, hello smart – at least when it comes to phones.  Gen Y doesn’t have to sit at a desk or be tied to a computer to access information; they carry a wealth of information in the palm of their hands.

Of course, you don’t have to reach out to Generation Y.  You could market only to people who think – and communicate – the way you do.  Unfortunately, that idea makes the somewhat flawed assumption that those people will still be around at the end of the next decade!

I’ve been using ACT for over 20 years and, like most of you, my database needed a bit of Spring Cleaning. Although I routinely rely on Swift Page to help me update contact information, I wanted to get a better understanding of the needs of my contacts. I sent out a simple email to roughly 1600 ACT users that I had added to my database during the years 1999 through 2004 asking them to let me know what software they were currently using for contact management, their reason for using it and how they liked it.

I received over 500 hundred responses to my request – and the responses continue to trickle in two weeks later. If nothing else, users of contact management software love to share their experiences!

I had expected that many of the ACT users from 10 years ago had moved on to other CRM solutions that they perceived to have a better set of bells and whistles than what they found in ACT. Boy, was I wrong! Most of my contacts have remained loyal to ACT.

If I was surprised by the response rate, I was stunned to learn that Outlook was the competitive product that had lured away the most users from ACT. Yikes! Talk about taking one step forward and two steps back!

Outlook is great for emailing to a single contact and for keeping very basic calendars and personal address books.  However, if you’re running a business and need to keep track of your prospect and customers you’ll need to supplement it with another solution.

There are numerous limitations to using Outlook in a business environment including:

• No Account Management: There is no way to “roll up” several contacts into one centralized Account or “Company” record.
• No Sales Process Management: Because Outlook is targeted at a general audience, it does not provide tools for managing sales, projects and customer relations.
• No Reporting: Outlook only allows simple printing of list. It does not include the ability to create custom reports or specific sales reports. ACT! provides many contact reports, all of which are customizable to meet the specific needs of a particular individual.
• · Minimal Customization of Contact Data: Outlook offers very minimal customization. ACT! allows user to store the exact information that they need to by easily modifying or deleting existing fields and add unlimited customer fields for each record.
• · Lack of Mail merge features: Because Outlook’s users tend to be the general population and use Outlook as an e-mail client, they typically have no need to use templates. On the other hand, ACT! users are sales professionals and small business owners who want to automate as many business processes as possible.
• Inability to create an e-mail merge: You must use a BCC in order to send a mass email in Outlook, and you can’t personalize the body of the e-mail. This means that your e-mail is very likely going to be trapped by your user’s spam filter.

I can only assume that those ACT users who migrated to Outlook are either no longer running businesses or have no need to grow one. For me, not using ACT to manage a business is tantamount to using an abacus to total a long column of numbers.

For more information on CRM software visit my website www.techbenders.com or send an e-mail to blog@techbenders.com.

I like to rank CRM products. Using Excel as a database is better than using a Rolodex system or sifting through mountains of business cards. Using Outlook gives you an added level or organization and provides you with a basic calendar. Outlook’s Business Contact Manager begins to integrate several business processes. I like ACT! because of its flexibility, ease of use and price. Once you’ve outgrown ACT! there are many options available to you; however, many ACT! users only scratch the surface of ACT!’s functionality.

In this article I rank ACT! users based on their experience with both CRM software and ACT!. You’ll notice that I do not take into consideration the actual years a user has spent working with ACT! but rather your true mastery of the software.

Level 1: The Apprentice: Focus on organization
Hands down, the majority of ACT! users are “Apprentices.” These folks are using ACT! as an electronic rolodex.

• Data entry is typically inconsistent. For example, a variety of abbreviations is used to record city information.
• They probably still have multiple databases and are duplicating their data entry.
• Apprentice users are still struggling to add structure to the ever-increasing amount of data in ACT! and have no idea how to tame the chaos.
• Apprentice users typically feel that they should be using more of ACT!’s functionality.
• Apprentice users often put the CRM decision making in the wrong hands. For example, an admin assistant or IT person determines the structure of the database rather than the company’s main decision maker.

The key benefit for the Apprentice user is organization. In general, the biggest obstacle to better contact management is the users themselves; the Apprentices know that they need to change their CRM implementation but they are afraid to make any changes.

Level 2: The Professional: Focus on Productivity
Becoming an ACT! professional is all about integrating your processes, increasing your productivity and increasing your profit margin.

• Professional users avoid duplicate entry by integrating their various software programs including Outlook, QuickBooks and even their smart phones to ACT!
• Professionals use ACT! for all facets of contact management; it is used equally for sales, marketing and customer service purposes.
• The database is universally accessible; a user can access his information from wherever his travels take him.
• If necessary, the database can be shared by a team of users.

The key here is knowing why to use functionality rather than just knowing how to use it. Your reward for raising your usage level to Professional will be the increase in productivity seen throughout your organization.

Level 3: The Expert: Focus on Profits
The key word here is processes. An Expert user of contact management is one whose software runs like a finely-tuned clock.

• There is a systematic approach to contacting prospects in order to determine those that are qualified leads.
• There is a pipeline in use to identify both qualified leads and existing customers.
  The methodology used for qualifying leads is based on proven, successful strategies.
• Your successes can be measured and, more importantly, be reproduced by both existing and new staff members.
• You have a system in place for identifying important customer milestones such as contract renewal dates.
• You reserve your calendar for meetings and appointments and don’t rely on it to remind you of critical milestones such as contract renewal dates.
• Groups, when used, are dynamic; contacts are placed in a group based on specific queries and not just a random selection.

25% of a typical database consists of “dead wood.” The Expert knows how to prevent contacts from “falling through the cracks.” More importantly, the Expert can quickly focus on the events that product the greatest profits.

Level 4: The Master: Focus on Growth
Very few database users – if any – achieve true Mastery of a database but there’s no harm in aiming for perfection. Database Masters notice improvements in their organization’s efficiency, productivity, and ultimately profits.

• You can easily monitor performance, and are continuously improving the system.
• You have the ability to forecast upcoming revenues.
• You can easily find – and resolve – problems such as customer service issues, lost leads or abandoned deals.
• You can use your data to create future strategies.

Those of you who truly become masters of your database will undoubtedly experience an increase in your company’s efficiency, productivity and profits. In addition, you will be able to document dramatic growth in your business. Customer retention will increase, your closing rate will improve and your lead generation efforts will be much more successful.