We are all affected today by the changes in the way business is conducted. Where we once had some limitation of where prospects and customers could conveniently do business, today we compete with every business in the world. We used to be able to count on the local neighborhood for our retail business, not so today.

Our customers and prospects have much more information available to them with the click of a mouse. The Internet has provided a cultural shift from a seller controlled environment to the buyer being in charge. We can no longer push our marketing message out to them, but must wait for them to come to us. But how do you do that when the average person received over 5000 sales messages a day?

What we must not ever forget is that regardless of who we compete with, or what business people buy things from; it is still people conducting business with people. The way we engage might be different, but the connection still has to be made. There still is a relationship between the two parties.

People love to be in contact with people, not machines. We still want to hear the friendly voice at the other end of the phone when we call. We might investigate products and gather information from a website. We will research all the information available to help make n informed purchasing decision. But, most people will still go the local store and transact business with a person.

They will come back to that person, if, and only if, there was a trust built during that first transaction. If not, they will continue to seek out a better relationship. Still today, the number one reason most people do not continue to do business with a company is the lack of service and attention to their needs. Not price, not because it is online, or any other reason most companies think it is. It is about service. Yesterday, today and tomorrow; how did you take care of my needs when I came to do business with you?

Are you talking care of your customers? If not, your competitor will.

Hello All,
We are almost to Veteran's Day, November 11th, and it is important to say thank you to all the service personnel in every branch of our Armed Forces, for their service to our country.

It would be a personal honor, for me, to extend my thanks to each and every one of them. While it is not possible for me to do that personally, I can post it here for all to see. I would also ask that each of you, reading this, do the same and we could possibly reach everyone of them.

It is, in my opinion, equally import to thank their families for the sacrifices that have and/or are making of their loved ones in service. Please remember that every person serving our country is someone's brother, sister, husband, wife, son, or daughter.

Because of their service, past and present, we all enjoy the benefits of living in the greatest free country in the world. So remember to say thanks to them always and especially on November 11th.

Even if you do not agree with the policies, actions, or philosophy of the leaders of our nation; (past and present) it is the individual service personnel that provide the service and pay the price. We can not hold them responsible for what the leadership does.

So THANK YOU VETERANS, one and all, past and present for ensuring that we continue to have the freedom to live in the United States.

We have all heard of the 80/20 rule in business. We’re sure you remember the adage that 80% of your business/revenue comes from 20% of your customers/efforts. It has been true for many years and it continues to be true today. Recognizing this as a universal rule of business is the most critical thing you will do. The question that naturally has to come next is: Which 20% actually generates 80% of my business?

In our example here, we are going to apply the methods outlined to your marketing efforts. We are going to show you how to KNOW, not guess, what 20% of your efforts are getting you the 80% of your business revenue. The same procedures can be applied to every part of your business, but this one has the most impact on your bottom line.

Do you have a way to find out, specifically, what activities are generating your 80%?
Most small business owners and larger companies as well, do not have a system that can tell them which tasks generate the majority of the revenue that comes into their business. Guessing or “Gut Feel” is the method most small business people use in trying to identify the “Right Stuff,” and they will be right some of the time. For, even a blind squirrel will stumble onto a nut once in a while.

What would be more useful is a system that can tell, in a very short time, what result any effort has on the bottom line. While this does not denote a technology, per se, it does call for a system which provides information about results, or expected results, of every action that you do.

Technology, in today’s business climate, is currently the preferred way to gather information for most companies. Despite all the advantages of technology; it requires more up-front effort than a paper based system. Where technology really demonstrates its usefulness is in the retrieval and analysis of information in the “system.”

Manually entering information for retrieval and analysis can be (and has been) done, but there are easier ways to populate the database. The best way to do that is use your Contact Relationship Management (CRM) program to track who is getting your marketing message. Your CRM program should be able to tell you who responded to your message, and when. This same CRM system should also tell you how many of those that responded actually turned into closed sales and the total amount of those sales.

Armed with this information, your technology can now shine in the area where it is most helpful. We would now use it to retrieve following information:

the number of pieces mailed,
number of responses you get,
response source,
conversion percentage,
income those responses generate,
average order,
percentage response,
income per thousand,
cost per order or cost per response,
net dollar return,
returns,
bad debt,
any other fact that you need to specifically measure your activity results.

Of course, this assumes the CRM software has been configured to capture the essential data and report it. If that is not the case then you might consider a change to the way you are collecting information or using a program that collects the information missed by the CRM system.

Summary
Unless you set out to collect information regarding the results of actions taken, you will never know for sure if what you are doing is bringing the desired results. Manually recording results will work, but is wasteful of manpower. Using software that collects the results while you conduct business normally is more efficient, and less expensive. CRM systems can capture some of that information, but other software alternatives can fill the gap.

BestFit Business Manager integrates with the GoldMine database and is capable of performing this kind of tracking, analysis, and reporting.

Does your program of choice do all that for you?
Do you wish it did?

For years I have tried to find a bridge between my GoldMine Contact Manager software and my QuickBooks accounting software.

I tried the linking software put out by FrontRange and found it to be a miserable experience overall. Slow, limited, and/or not functioning as I would expect it to.

Then I found BestFit Business Manager. What a difference it made. I could match my mature GoldMine system data with my existing QuickBooks data. It did not matter whether I was talking about Customers, Vendors, or Employees.

More importantly for me was the elimination of duplicate data entry when I added a contact in GoldMine; then sold something and having to create a new record in QuickBooks with the same data. What a waste of time!

Now, I just create everything in GoldMine and when the sale is completed; I just export the contact information directly to QuickBooks. The sales related information goes directly in and QuickBooks creates an invoice for me. What a much easier way to do things.

Do you have similar experiences with this bridge of information? Care to share them?

Many years ago, when I first began using GoldMine, I found it to be a great contact manager that allowed me to manage my schedule and track all of my historical activity in the system. What it didn’t do, was allow me to operate and manage my business. I found it difficult to be able to know how much time I spent on a particular task and ensure that my billing was correct, based on that time spent.

In order to be able to do the many tasks than I wanted, in GoldMine, I found I had to have many different add-on products that did the many things that GoldMine couldn’t do or didn’t do well. So, I ended up with a quoting software, helpdesk software, project management software, and billing software that integrated with my accounting system. Each of the systems required me to enter data in different locations and most were not connected to my primary contact information in GoldMine.

In addition, getting the information into a comprehensive report was challenging to say the least; as each of these systems had their own set of data files without a common link between them. Some developers had integrated their software with GoldMine, but none completely integrated or updated the various parts of the GoldMine system. So, my helpdesk and ticketing solution required its own database and didn’t populate the GoldMine record. The quoting package allowed me to pull various pieces of data from the GoldMine system, but it didn’t link to my helpdesk software. To ensure that I had billed for all of the time we spent working on a customer’s project, I had to create specialized reports in order to get all that data in one report.

When I first saw the BestFit Business Manager, I was very excited to see that all of the components integrated together and linked together in one database. Eureka!

Now, I had all the parts linked together to be able to take my billing information on projects and put that data into a quote, import it into my QuickBooks accounting system with the touch of a button, and be able to get complete reports on all work done. My billing accuracy went up, my total billable time increased, and I no longer had to enter data in several different systems to be able to get a complete picture of my company and the work we do for customers.

An added bonus was the ability to link my marketing and advertising activity to my quotes for new prospects and to be able to see which of my activities were generating the most results that converted prospects into paying customers. The fact that the software allows me to assign and track which of the customer or prospect has been touched by my marketing activity, and connect that activity to the quote; that turned into a project or billable support activity allows me to focus my advertising dollars on those activities that truly work. It also allows me to see which activities aren’t working and need to be stopped.

The integration with our QuickBooks accounting system allows quotes, proposals, and billable activity to be automatically imported into the accounting system without requiring my users to re-key that data into the accounting software. Yet it allows me the ability to be able to see, in the GoldMine system, the activity that’s in the accounting system for each contact record.

With the built in reports, designed in Crystal Reports, I now only have to go to one place to get all of the information I need to effectively run my company and to determine our most productive activity and employees. Because the software is utilizing Crystal Reports as the tool to extract data out; I can customize any report I want or create new ones to see exactly what I need to see in my business operations.

After using the BestFit Business Manager for the last five years, to run my entire company, I can’t see using any other software to do it. I get the benefit of a world-class contact management system and business operations software all in one package. I was so sold I bought the company.