GoldMine 4.0 
When I began to write software reviews a decade or so
ago, my
first published review was a program called ACT!
I was a sales rep at the time and I immediately recognized the full potential of the computer to help me in managing my sales contacts.
Soon more than two dozen contact management programs appeared. Programs with manes such as Contact Mate, Tracker, Telemagic, Polaris PakRat, Sharkware, GoldMine Version 4.0 and Maximizer to name just a few, were lining the shelves of software retailers.
As a reviewer I tried them all. I knew that there would eventually be a shakeout in the marketplace and that a few leading programs would emerge.
Currently there are three major players in this market. Act!, Maximizer and GoldMine, Version 4.0.
In my humble opinion, the two top contenders are Act! and GoldMine Version 4.0. I use GoldMine as my personal contact management program.
Act! Is an excellent program for basic contact management. It incorporates a screen that allows you to view your contact information, dial the phone and keep a record of what you said, when you want to call back etc.
GoldMine Version 4.0 on the other hand does all this and a lot more as well. In fact, the beauty of the program is that for a novice user, it offers a way to begin to learn the program in simple contact management terms, and allows him or her to progress to the desired level of proficiency with the program. Furthermore, it is a program designed with the network or remote user in mind. It is a workgroup based tool as well as an individual tool for entrepreneurial sales people.
In a small organization, the importance of task scheduling is paramount. The number of tasks the entrepreneur has to face and the limited time he has to accomplish those tasks make the proper allocation of time particularly important. GoldMine Version 4.0 is a powerful tool that can be used to great advantage by any sized organization.
Major features of the program include:
GoldMine Version 4.0 is at it base a contact management program. Unlike other programs with fixed fields, GoldMine offers you the opportunity to re-label the standard fields in the program as well as add additional fields. The notes field is unlimited in size. The program provides a comprehensive history of all the activity accomplished at each customer listing.
For years I had used a paper based Daytimer to manage my appointments, meetings and other business events. The major weakness of this type of planner is that once you turn the page without re-entering the uncompleted items on a future page there is a good chance you will forget to do the scheduled activity. With GoldMine 4.0, uncompleted items move to the next day or to a date you designate. Nothing is ever lost and you are assured that your important events are covered.
Even if you don’t have a notebook computer to take with you, you can print your calendar each day and the net effect is that your Daytimer can be used to take notes at a meeting that you can later enter into your desktop at the office. With a to do list, and the calendar features in GoldMine Version 4.0 you will never forget that important meeting. I print mine out daily and take it with me.
As a tool for sales analysis, GoldMine Version 4.0 is simply wonderful. Salesmen leave their positions and when they do they usually take the knowledge of your accounts with them. Important contacts, buying habits, and even the purchasing agent’s interest in golf are things that your new employee will have to learn.
If you salesman was entering the history of the contacts he made and the profiles of the clients he visited during his employment with you, the new salesman will be up an running from the first day of his field contact efforts. This feature of the program will pay for the cost of GoldMine in a single week or less! From my experience it takes 6 months for a rookie salesman to effectively learn his territory. With GoldMine 4.0, the learning curve is shortened by a minimum of 70 percent in my experience. Your new salesperson has all the information he needs and an account history. Customer buying habits and the information about the client and a particular buyer will help him or her break the ice in no time.
GoldMine Version 4.0 will also help the salesman forecast sales for any period you select based on the data the salesman enters himself or a clerk enters in the master list of clients. GoldMine will also assist you in analyzing your sales to determine for instance what products need more emphasis and which product lines are selling the least or the most.
This is where GoldMine Version 4.0 really shines. In addition to call analysis to show you the performance of the telemarketing professional (number of calls per day, number of sales versus number of calls etc.) GoldMine features Branching Scripts. This terrific feature allows you to create scripts that are based on responses by the person being called. If they say "yes" to a question the telemarketing person asks he clicks on the positive response item to get the next screen. If they say no, he clicks on the negative response item, and another response screen appears to assist the telemarketing person deal with the "No" response. This feature is particularly important in training new telemarketing professionals. It eliminate the "nervous sounding" aspects of their call by giving them the tools to deal with the responses. It builds confidence during the training period.
If you are like a lot of sales managers, you pass leads out to the various salesmen and hope they contact the lead prospect in question. Far too often, the leads wind up in a file or in the trash and the salesman has never called. GoldMine Version 4.0 eliminates the lead follow-up dilemma.
It allows you to assign and follow progress as to the lead in question. If you require fields that show the contact’s name, title and what was discussed during the contact, the salesman knowing that you will always ask him about the lead will act on the lead in a timely way.
I usually have an inside person make a follow-up call to confirm that my salesman covered the bases during his initial contact with the prospect. I always let my salesmen know that I am doing this in the name of increased sales. Since
compensation is tied to performance on the part of both the inside and outside sales persons as a team, there is no feeling of being spied on. My people know that GoldMine and I never forget about a lead.
Since you spend advertising dollars to generate leads GoldMine Version 4.0 will
show you where you get the biggest bang for the buck with you advertising dollars. Lead analysis is another tool offered in the program.
GoldMine offers both prepared and custom report format capability. The
built-in report writer will allow you to design any type of report you can imagine, based on the data entered into the program. The program also feature a graphing capability to further enhance your report output.
GoldMine was designed with the work group in mind. With GoldMine you can allocate your personnel resources for various projects and manage the time the employees spend on a project. You can set alarms that come up on their screen to remind them of events such as meetings and deadlines. You can also use the calendar to avoid conflicts in over assignment or under assignment of people to projects or avoid the embarrassment of having assigned a person to be in two places at the same time, or to schedule someone you forgot was on vacation.
If you are using the Internet to send e-mail, you can use GoldMine to do this. You can send peer-to-peer e-mail or send e-mail to groups of individuals or to the entire organization. The e-mail screen is shown below.
This is the all new GoldMine E-mail Center. It is
quite an improvement over the previous version. It is similar in appearance to Eudora, my
favorite e-mail program. All your e-mail is grouped into various files such as
in, out and deleted. New categories can easily be added to suit your requirements. The new
E-mail center is a joy to work with and very easy to use.
If your salespeople carry alpha-numeric pagers, GoldMine Version 4.0 includes a complete messaging capability. If you inside sales team has critical information for the field salesperson, the message is instantly viewable on his pager. No having to call back to the office for specifics. This feature can save you a terrific amount of dollars in cell phone charges. In addition GoldMine can send faxes via modem to any fax machine in the world.
GoldMine can work with all the popular word processing programs such as WordPerfect and Microsoft Word to create mass mailings.
By now everyone is familiar with program Wizards. These little wonders assist you in completing the aspects of your programs by automating the process for you. In a word processor for example, they create memos, or e-mail cover sheets in seconds.
In GoldMine, Wizards assist you in exporting or importing your data, global replacement of data and other functions.
GoldMine really shines in the arena of data synchronization. Basically the synchronization feature compares the data in the salesman’s contact database with that of the sales manager’s database and updates either so that they both contain the most recent information. This can be done remotely over regular telephone lines between two computes attached to a modem.
GoldSync allows you to combine the data from more than two systems to synchronize with a single server. It virtually automates the process assigning data to specific files.
It also allows updates regardless of the time the date was last synchronized. Records can be filtered to get only the data that is required.
The security features built into GoldSync will allow the administrator to determine just what data goes to what person and limits the synchronization process to the wishes of management.
The overall design of the program is outstanding. Basic data such as name address phone numbers and primary contact are right there in front of you. Like Act! The initial screen shows the majority of information you need to see at-a-glance.
But this is where the resemblance ends. The tabs below the contact area tell you everything you could possibly want to know about that contact. All the information is a single mouse click away. The clever design of the program makes it very easy to handle your contacts because in just a few keystrokes you will know everything that has happened with the contact, past and present. It’s all there.
You can view a concise history of ever phone call, fax, memo or note you’ve made simply by clicking on the tabs below the information screen. Imagine trying to do this with a paper based system.
The tabbed format is what makes GoldMine so
powerful. It’s like having a filing cabinet drawer for each contact with no filing necessary. The program saves the data for you
in chronological order. It never gets lost or misfiled. You never forget to call someone
because you didn't transfer the data from one page of your paper based Daytimer to
the other.
In addition, you can customize the program to add information that is specific to your industry. I designed a check off list of the products they are buying and those I can sell them that they haven’t bought as yet.
The real strength of GoldMine Version 4.0 is that it has no limitations. You can customize it to your hearts desire or just use it as is. The results mean more sales dollars in your pocket because of the timely follow-up of the client/customer.
I've taught a weekend seminar in time management using contact management software, both Act! And GoldMine. My students have reported that as a result of computer based contact management, they are making more sales and the primary reason is that they never forget to call their prospect back at just the right time.
GoldMine Version 4.0 has eliminated the large number of icons that wrapped across the top of the screen and down the left side as was the case in the last revision. This makes the program much easier to learn. The essential icons are all there and you can add or delete those you actually need. You can customize the toolbar to work the way you do.
Note the summary tab highlighted in yellow. This view gives you a quick look at essential information about a contact including last call, appointments etc. This at-a-glance design makes viewing and using your contact data a snap. Other tabs contain other information you can use during your call.
The screen below depicts a typical phone report, which is pre-designed for you.
If keeping in touch with people is the basis of your company’s purpose, GoldMine Version 4.0 will assist you in making certain that your contacts pay off. There are also a number of third party consultants who configure GoldMine to accommodate specific requirements. They are listed on the GoldMine web site.
GoldMine has won a plethora of prestigious awards including...
GoldMine Version 4.0 is priced at $295.00 for a single user and $895.00 for a five-user network. Upgrades are priced at $99.99 and $199.99 respectively.
For more information, visit the GoldMine web site at
Last Edited 04/25/07