I believe my annual ritual of defining company and personal goals is one of the reasons we have been successful… and in business…for such a long time (since 1987). I also take the time each year to review my progress from the previous year. I don’t always get everything on my list accomplished, but I notice a common thread in the items that don’t get cleared.

I can usually track the uncompleted goals (or goals that got no traction) to 3 problems:

1. I did not form a clear mental picture of what to do next – Everyone knows that your goals should be well-defined and specific, but you should also have it clearly in mind what the “next step”* should be. Getting healthier or making more money can be great goals, but until you decide how to do that, they are only desires or wishes. Once your goal is more defined (e.g., add a new product line or drink more water), then you need to define the next steps. What does it take to add a new product line?
   • “Research” is not a well-defined or specific next step.
   • “Research what my clients are interested in”… is still too broad for a next step.
   • “Select 10 clients to call to find out what they wish ACT! would do”. OK I can work with that. I have a clearer idea of how to start the project by defining a good next step.

Of course, after that step is accomplished, I need to be sure I have another next step defined as well.

2. I did not change anything. Since many goals require change of some kind, think about adding one habit that supports your goal. Sometimes, even tiny changes in your ritual can make all the difference.
   • What if each morning before I opened up my Inbox, I made it a rule that I have to review my goals and determine if there is any “next step” I need to add to the day’s agenda. It’s just a tiny thing, but that habit starts my day well.
   • What if every morning when I get a cup of coffee, I build in a habit to also get a glass of ice water to take back to my desk as well.
3. I did not create an environment to support my success – Change is usually hard, but sometimes you can change your environment to make it easier. Think about it. If you have tasks that are hard for you to do, how could you change your thoughts or the surroundings to make the task easier. Environmental tweaks can beat self-control any time.
   • What if I scheduled a recurring activity in my calendar for each Monday morning to “Review goals and schedule next steps”? What if during that time I had a rule that during that 15 minutes, I did not do anything else. No email, no calls, no web-surfing… just a focused 15 minutes each Monday morning.  I can  put my goals list that I am working on in the “Details” section of the activity, so that I have quick access to the goals that I am working on for the year.
   • What if I use the concept of proximity and put my water bottles next to the coffee cups… it would make it easier to remember each day to take water to my desk, along with the coffee.

Some New Years resolutions are easier than others to accomplish. For the tough ones, check the three pitfalls against what you hope to accomplish and see if you can’t give your goals a better chance at success. Each element requires some thinking… but I promise it is well worth the time.

*I attribute my understanding of Next Steps to David Allen and Getting Things Done® (registered trademarks of David Allen Company -www.davidco.com) and highly encourage you to understand more abount his methods of productivity: Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity 

If you are a GTD follower already, we have an add-on to ACT! that puts Projects and Next Steps inside of ACT at your fingertips: http://www.cornerstonesolutions.com/solutions/GPD4CRM.html

Each year I take a few minutes to add holidays as “Events” in our ACT! calendar. By adding them as Events, they will appear at the top of everyone’s calendar. It is also a great way to add employee birthdays, vacation schedules, or even trade shows.

Events display at the top of every user's calendar

It is easy to add these official (and unofficial) events to your ACT! calendar so that every user of the database can see and plan around the reserved dates and events. 

Adding n Event to Your ACT! Database

1. In ACT!*, click Schedule, Manage, Events
2. Click Add… (Use the list of 2012 federal holidays below if you like).
3. Enter the Event Name: and the Date:.
4. Click OK.

* You must have Administrator or Manager role to create Events in your database.

2012 Federal Holidays
Monday, January 16 - Martin Luther King, Jr. Birthday
Monday, February 20 – Washington’s Birthday
Monday, May 28 – Memorial Day
Wednesday, July 4 – Independence Day
Monday, September 3 - Labor Day
Monday, October 8 – Columbus Day
Monday, November 12 - Veterans Day
Thursday, November 22 – Thanksgiving Day
Tuesday, December 25 - Christmas Day

Other days to mark on the calendar
Monday, January 23 – Chinese New Year
Tuesday, February 14 – Valentines Day
Wednesday, February 22 – Ash Wednesday
Wednesday, February 29, 2012 – Leap Year
Sunday, March 11 – Daylight Savings Time
Saturday, March 17 - St Patricks
Sunday, April 1 – Palm Sunday
Friday, April 6 – Passover
Friday, April 6 – Good Friday
Sunday, April 8 – Easter
Sunday, May 13 – Mother’s Day
Sunday, June 17 – Father’s Day
Sunday, September 16 – Rosh Hashanah
Tuesday, September 25 – Yom Kippur
Wednesday, October 31 – Halloween
Sunday, November 4 – Daylight Savings Time Ends
Friday, November 23 - After Thanksgiving
Saturday, December 8 - Hanukkah

p.s. If the events doen’t display on your calendar, it may be that they have been turned off.
Click Tools, Preferences, click the Calendar & Scheduling tab
Click Calendar Preferences button.
Put a check in the Display events option.
OK, OK

I’m frequently asked about printing labels (or envelopes) from an ACT database. Remember you “write” letters and you “print” labels and envelopes. You can review the steps below or watch a quick video if you like.

You can view a quick lesson on how to print a label and then use the procedure below to remind you how it is done.

Printing a Label or Envelope 
      (For all versions of ACT)

1. Lookup your contact(s) first.
2. File, Print (Click Tools, Print if you are using the Web version).
3. Change the Printout type from Address Book to Labels (or Envelopes).
4. Select the size.
5. Click Print (or OK if you are using an older version of ACT or Open if you are using Web).
6. Select either Current contact or Current lookup.
7. Change the “Send output to” from Printer to Preview (if necessary) to check your settings.
8. If you selected Labels, click the Position tab to change the starting position Row: and Column: (This feature was not available in versions 2005, 2006, or the Web version.)
9. OK. Verify that all looks OK.
10. Click the Print button on the toolbar.
11. Select a different Printer if necessary, load your labels or envelopes, and click OK
12. If necessary, select the Envelope Feed options for your printer and click OK

If you have been a Sage ACT! user for a long time, you may not be taking advantage of how the new Groups feature works. In older versions of ACT! you had to manually add and remove contacts from groups. Most people forgot to add their new contacts to existing groups and so the group memberships would be quickly out of date.

All of that has changed with the newer versions. Did you know that you can add a contact to a group based on one or more field values?

You can follow the detail instructions below this video, but live examples are included in this video:

Let’s say you want to create a group of all clients with e-mail addresses.

1. Click on the Groups slider bar at the left to go to Group Detail view.
2. Click the New icon on the toolbar (or press the [Insert] key on your keyboard).
3. Enter a name for the Group.
   
4. Click the Add/Remove Contacts… button on the Contacts tab (or the icon on the smaller toolbar at the top of the screen).
5. Click the Edit Criteria… button in the Add/Remove Contacts dialog.
6. Create a query that finds all contacts with an ID/Status of Customer (or something similar to what you use in your ACT database) AND where E-mail “Contains Data”. Click the Field Name drop-down and select ID/Status. For the Operator, select Contains. In the Value area, type the value for the first criteria. Click Add to list. For the second row of the query, select the E-mail field and choose the Operator of Contains Data. Click Add to list. Click Preview to check your results so far.
   
7. If all looks well, then click OK to save the query criteria for the group.
8. Click OK once again to save the group.

While it may take a minute or two to define the Group query criteria, it is great for helping you to keep your Group memberships up to date. As you change the ID/Status from Prospect to Customer, the contacts are automatically added to the group. If the e-mail bounces, you can remove the data from the E-mail Address field and the contact will be immediately removed from the group.

Am I the only one that has trouble remembering the file folder structure that I created on our server over a year ago (much less the one that Ginger or Scott created to store their files)?

You know the ones that I mean. The ones where the  files that you saved for a specific client are 10 levels deep and it’s hard to remember the exact path to get back to them!

The Documents tab in ACT! is great for storing files and shortcuts to files, but sometimes I want to link to a specific folder on the server or my PC that contains all of the files relating to a company or contact that I am working with in ACT!.

There is not a built-in way to do this, but you can easily accomplish this…

1. Look up the contact in ACT! that will hold the folder shortcut.
2. Launch Windows Explorer (or a My Computer window).
   

   Dragging a folder shortcut to the Sage ACT! Documents tab.

3. Navigate to the client folder you want to add to the Documents tab.
4. Right-click the folder and choose Create shortcut. 
   A shortcut file will be created with the same name as the folder with the word – Shortcut appended to it. If you have trouble finding the file alphabetically, sort the list by date modified to find the file you just created.
5. Drag the shortcut file to the contact’s Documents tab.

Voila. Double-click the shortcut in the Documents tab to view the contents of the linked client folder.

p.s. Oh and you can probably delete the shortcut in the Explorer Window if you like, since you don’t need it any more (though on some older operating systems it may be necessary to keep the shortcut). A copy of it is now on your client’s contact record in ACT!.

Have you set up your Sage ACT! database to make your travel easier? How do you schedule and record your travel plans? Do you put it on your own My Record?

Years ago we set up a simple system that has been invaluable to me when I am traveling (or setting up my travel schedule).

What a travel reservations contact might look like in your Sage ACT! database.

I create records in ACT for each travel vendor that I might use (e.g. Company name = Southwest Airlines, Marriott Hotel, Avis Car Rental, etc.).

For the Contact name, I use the main word from the company name for the first name and set the last name to “Reservations”. (e.g. Southwest Reservations). This allows me to look up Last Name = “reservations” and get my entire travel vendor list. While I could use the ID/Status for this, the ID/Status does not always transfer to Cell phones, and thus not available for quick lookups while I am on the road.

Of course, I enter the reservations phone number for each vendor in the Phone field.

If I have one, I also include the e-mail address that the vendor uses for their confirmation e-mails. It makes it easy to attach the confirmation straight from my Inbox for later reference.

If the vendor has an online reservations web site page or an account login, I include that full URL in the web link to make it easy for me to go straight to my login page.

If you are in a single-user database, you could use the Title field for your customer account number (Title fields always sync to your phone or other devices). If you are in a multi-user database, you may want to review my post on using Secondary Contacts to maintain confidential information, like your account number or  login and password information.

So, when it is time to arrange my travel plans, I Lookup, Last Name, “reservations”, OK. I select the vendors I want to use and schedule my flight, hotel, and rental car on the contact records of the associated vendor. It makes it easy to see previous travel plans for reference.

I also always include the confirmation number in the Regarding (along with other reservation info) so that I can quickly use my phone to access those details if I need them while traveling. If a flight is cancelled, by searching on the word “reservations,” I also have quick access to phone numbers for alternate airlines and for notification of other vendors that I will be arriving later than planned.

When I get to the car rental site and they want to know my Fast Break Number, I just look it up in my phone in the Title field. Everything at my fingertips.

If I am not familiar with the area, I also include a street address for the local hotel or rental return site in the Regarding, so that if I need to use my GPS, the location is close at hand.

This seems such a simple thing, but has really made my travel arrangements very easy over the years. That’s what I love about ACT!. Simple to use… helps me keep my life under control.

These days keeping usernames and passwords (and the website login address) for all of my accounts is impossible. Everyone wants to go paperless – which is certainly a great idea – but keeping track of how to log in to see my statement (instead of just opening the envelope) is becoming frutrating. And, of course, it is not prudent, and sometimes not even possible, to use the same password for each account. ARGH!!

One of my favorite things about ACT! is how flexible it is. I am always taking a specific feature that was meant for something else and re-purposing it for my own use… and it is usually really easy to do.

For example, take the Secondary Contacts feature. It was designed to provide a way to keep an unlimited number of alternate contacts that would be used for information purposes only (since you can’t keep history or include in mail-merges). I regularly use this feature to keep track of Accounts Payable personnel who were helpful in getting an invoice paid or for the name of the IT person that handles the client’s internal PC problems. However I also use Secondary Contacts to keep track of other things as well.

For example, I also use it to remind me of usernames and passwords. You can create a contact record in ACT!  for “American Express”. Or you could create a catch-all record with the name “Susan Logins” (which you can mark as Private or as Limited Access so that only specific associates can see the record and associated data).

You could use the Secondary Contacts feature to keep track of your customer logins.

Now create a new Secondary Contact record.

Procedure: To add a Secondary Contact
1.  On the Contact’s record, display the Secondary Contacts tab.  
2.  Click the New Secondary Contact button on the tab,
3.  Fill in the data as desired. For example, in the Contact field, enter the type or purpose of the record, such as ”AMX Login”. In the Title field, enter your username and password. Enter a Customer Support phone number if you like. In the Web site, copy and paste the actual login website url that takes you straight to the login screen. Mark the record as Private if it will be in a multi-user database and you don’t want others to see your password.
4.  Click OK. 

Note: Secondary Contacts display in alphabetical order by last name… in this case “login”.

Note that the Secondary Contact has been marked Private, so only you can see the username and password. Doulbe-click to display the weblink.

Entering the username and password in the Title field allows for quick reference. Double-click any Secondary Contact to display the complete information. You can click the hyperlinked Web site field to open the site in your default Internet browser.

You can create as many Secondary Contact records as you like.

I love figuring out different ways to use things to be more productive. Have you used this feature for something different?

Ever want to keep track of activity types other than the 5 basic types that come with ACT! by Sage:  Call, Meeting, To-Do, Personal Activity, and Vacation. Why would you need another activity type?

If there is an activity you want to track, a custom activity type may just be the ticket. For example, if your business markets through trade shows, you might want to create a “Trade Show” activity type. You can also use this valuable feature to better manage your sales force by creating activity types that differentiate between Prospecting Calls and Maintenance Calls. You can filter the Calendar or Task List to show specific activity types (even the custom ones). You can filter the Activity or History tabs on the Contact record to only display specific custom activity types (i.e. Tech Support calls). You can also create a report based on specific activity types. The possibilities are endless.

To create a custom activity type:

1. Click Schedule, Manage, Activity Types….
   Don’t create new Activity Types lightly. Once created, they cannot be deleted, only edited or deactivated. Only users with Administrator or Manager roles have the authority to create a custom Activity Type.
   

   It is REALLY important to also modify the results for your custom Activity Type.

2. Click the Add… button.
3. Name: the activity type.
4. If you have access to icon files, you can use the Browse… button to select an Icon: for your new activity type.
5. Select a Result, click Edit…, and modify the Result name: to include the new Activity Type name, and click OK.
   This is a REALLY important step and you should not treat it lightly. If the Activity Type is “Marketing Call,” change Completed to Marketing Call Completed. If you leave the default result name, all you will see in History is Completed with no indication of what type of activity was completed (or originally scheduled).
6. To add a new result, click Add…, type the new Result Name, and click OK.
   You may want to have more than two possible results. Perhaps something like Marketing On-Site Call might be a valid third one.
7. Click OK.

We have several custom activity types in our own database that help us be more productive with our time. If you need help with something like this, give us a call.

Do you see this icon in the lower-right hand side of your screen in your System Tray?

This icon lets you know that you have Outlook messages that failed to attach to a contact record in your ACT! database.

Occasionally, ACT! may be unsuccessful in attaching an email message to an ACT! contact record when you clicked the Quick Attach icon or when you sent an email from Outlook and elected to record ACT! History of the send.

Whatever the reason for the failure (the ACT! contact does not exist or has a different email address), ACT! holds the e-mails for a specified period of time so that you can manually attach them.

To manually attach:

1. Double-click the Quick Attach icon with the red X in the system tray (use the pop-up arrow if necessary to display any hidden icons.)
2. Click the Not Attached Messages tab.
3. Select the problem message and click an icon on the toolbar.
4. Select one of the options (described below).
5. When you are finished, click Close.

Retry Quick Attach… Perhaps you lost your network connection or had a password change or added the contact’s Personal e-mail. (Review my post on attaching Outlook messages to an ACT! contact record.)

Attach to ACT! Contact… Displays the Attach E-mail to Contacts dialog where you can select the contact record (perhaps the email address is slightly different in ACT!)

Attach to New Contact… Displays the New Contact dialog to create a new Contact from the e-mail so that you can then attach the email to the new record.

Remove deletes the selected e-mail message from the list. This option is especially nice if you have no altered your default of attaching ALL messages sent. There are some contacts that I correspons with that are just not in my database, nor do I plan to add them.

p.s. If you don’t see the icon in your system tray, then you don’t have any messages that failed to attach. That’s a good thing.

I am spending the last few moments at the kitchen table on my brother’s farm before I hit the road to the airport to fly back to Houston. It was good to see family, but because of all the rains, they are late in getting out the corn this year. I brought some Texas sunshine with me, so I have not had as much time to visit as normal as they are spending most of their daylight hours in the fields trying to catch up.

When I got here I was surprised that they had put in wireless since I was last here, so I had Internet access when I wanted to look anything up (and show off my new iPad toy).

So what does this have to do with which iPad? When selecting an iPad model, you really only have three decisions to make:
o WiFi or WiFi with a monthly cellular access plan,
o Storage, and
o Color.

Now I am really glad I bought the Wireless model without the monthly service. There really is not anywhere I go that doesn’t have free wireless now. If I were a sales rep on the road all the time and needed to check on something before I went into an appointment… maybe. But if you have a phone that receives your email and surf the web, then you may not find that you need an iPad with wireless capability. You may think of other reasons that a monthly wireless plan might be valuable to you, but I haven’t found one yet for my daily use.

When I bought my iPad, I could choose among 16, 32 or 64 GB of storage. I picked the 32, because it was all they had in stock and because it was a middle of the road choice. However, I’ve downloaded a ton of photos and music from my PC, along with quite a few programs and I have still only used 5GB. Unless you plan to download lots of movies or elaborate games (for entertainment while on a plane or at other times you don’t have WiFi access), I’m thinking that the 16GB would be just fine.

The color only refers to the face of the iPad. You can choose between white or black (one more choice than Henry Ford offered). The actual case is always aluminum (unless you have one of the fancy protector covers added to the case for protection or decorative reasons). While the white is very cool looking and hip, I chose the black because I thought it was easier on the eyes when reading.

Time to get on the road.