Laptops were just coming on the scene and I got a NEC. My card file box gave way to my "road warrior." Because the machine weighed in at 12 or so pounds, I quickly learned that toting this type of weight through airports was not worth the effort. I began to print out my contact sheets in Act! prior to my trip and I brought a print-out of the contact records  I needed to refer to on the trip.

The truth of the matter is that even with my 3.5 Sub-Notebook, which I now take everywhere, Act! 2000 still provides me with crisp new paper printouts that I take with me during the visit.

I make notes on the contact sheets themselves and transcribe the data to my Act! 2000 database at the end of the day. After fourteen years with the program, I am always pleased with each new release. New features added to the new releases make my contact management chores easier and easier.

Since the late 80's a number of contact management programs have come onto the market. I have reviewed most of the major products over the years. Prices ranged from $39.95 to over $1000.00. Programs such as Aussie Tracker, Polaris PakRat, and  Ecco Pro have since disappeared from the scene.

The current three top contact management programs are...
Act! 2000,  GoldMine and Maximizer.

Of the three, Act! 2000 is the easiest to learn and offers features that will enable even a novice to begin to organize their contact data in a few short hours.

Don't mistake a P.I.M. (Personal Information Manager) for a Contact Management Program. At first glance they appear to be similar. Both offer address books, to-do lists, and activity calendars.

In essence Contact Management Programs manage relationships, P.I.M.'s help you to accomplish some fundamental contact information and calendar management.

Lotus Organizer is an example of a P.I.M. You can use ACT! 2000as a P.I.M. as many people do, but not vice versa.

Contact managers also offer built-in word processing or link to your existing word processor. ACT! 2000 has it's own word processor built in. No need to switch from one program to another to send a letter or memo.

The screen on the left show the ACT! 2000 built in word processor. As you can see by selecting the letter option from the main screen, the word processor opens a document that is already

pre-addressed and also enters the signature line.

If you use any Windows word processor, the ACT! 2000 Word Processor will be familiar to you.

It is full featured and includes formatting as well as typographical options. The built in word processor is a terrific feature for turning out memos, letters and faxes.

The instinctive and easy to understand interface in ACT! 2000 is designed to allow the new user to be up and running in very little time. ACT! 2000 creates its data files in dBase format which is important if you consider that the data generated by ACT! 2000 is readable by any database program that recognize the DBF file format.

As sales executive, I like the ability of Act! 2000 to combine the data generated by both inside and outside sales personnel.

Having taught contact management in a seminar I designed called "Effective Sales Management Using a PC," I feature Act! primarily because of the ease in which data can be managed from multiple inputs.

In the early days of computing, salesmen would often retain customer information in various file formats or even in their heads.

If a salesmen leaves your company, he often takes with him the knowledge of accounts that may have taken him or her months or even years to develop.

By using ACT! 2000, sales managers insure that the company is in possession of up to date account information on a client, and a complete history of your clients is available to a new salesman who can then "hit the ground running."

That capability alone assures that there will be a much shorter customer learning curve, and will result in maintaining the continuity your ustomer has in the relationship with your company.

The new salesperson knows what has transpired with the customer and has copies of all the letters, notes and contact information that will make him productive in a minimum of time. This ability alone will directly impact your bottom line and will pay for the program in a short amount of time.

Most  salesman hate paperwork. Generating call reports the old fashioned way is tedious and no one really reads them anyway. With ACT! 2000 keeping your data up to date is fun and produces comprehensive information on every client.

I insist that my salesmen e-mail me their ACT! 2000 contact file on a weekly basis. I review each salesmen's contacts for the week and I can quickly see what is happening in their territory.

All their activity is there and includes what they talked about with each customer they visited and the next time they plan to see that contact. The screen below shows the main act contact screen. The important data is right there in front of you. Note the tabs on the bottom of the page. Each tab will show you more information regarding the contact. A list of activities are displayed in the blue area.

Each activity is identified by an icon that indicates a call, or a face-to-face appointment, or another type of activity. Note there are priorities you can set for the degree of urgency the activity requires. High, medium or low.

The daily To-Do list is something I live by. Any activities that are uncompleted that day revert to the following day. A paper based Day Timer requires you re-write the to do list on the following day's page or risk forgetting some important event. With ACT! 2000 you never loose track of an activity. Alarms can be set to remind you that an important activity is going to take place. The alarm will appear over any other program you are running as long as ACT! 2000 has been started and is running in the background.

The screen on the left is the input screen for adding new activities. Note that all the significant items relating to that activity are capable of being entered quickly. The activity to be entered is a To-Do item. You can assign a color to the to-do to indicated a special significance that activity has. I use red for hot. The activity can be sent to other members of a group you designate, to remind them of a meeting, etc. Alarms are easily set as well.

When I measure the performance of my sales team on Friday, I give their data a preliminary scan, and then I merge the updated file into my main database. I can pull all the contacts in a single territory by using a customizable field which searches for the salesman's number or initials.

I can also do this in a date range to review activity that took place during a particular period. The Smart Querying capability of ACT! 2000 makes finding records a snap. I also use it to attempt to forecast pending sales by querying the custom field that gives me the date a sale will be made. I then query a range of dates say, next Monday to Friday and see what the anticipated sales are for the coming week and what if anything I have to do to assist my salesman.

If I am traveling to a territory, I print out the contact histories of the accounts we are going to see. I then review the information with my salesman in the car, on the way to the client site.

By now, you are beginning to recognize as I did that ACT! 2000 is well worth its price and can actually save thousands of dollars when a new man comes into your organization or a territory change takes place. The contact's themselves are impressed by the knowledge of their account that the new man possesses. They don't have to "Train" him in how to do business with their company.

ACT! 2000 will locate records by a number of built in search capabilities. The menu list will search for a contact by their First or Last Names, Company Name, City, State, Zipcode, Phone Number, or a special code you assign.

ACT! 2000 will then provide you with all the "Tom Smiths" in your files or all the accounts in "Tulare California."

This data can also be searched for the purpose of making a mailing to a specific group of accounts or accounts in a geographical area.

There are two basic screens for every contact. The initial screen has provisions for nine user customizable fields. You access the second screen by hitting F6 or selecting the icon for screen switching. The second screen has six user customizable fields.

Essentially almost all the fields are customizable. You can change the names of most fields to accommodate your specific requirements but you will probably use most of them just as they are.

The screen above depicts a report that can be generated in seconds. A contact report can be printed to take with you as I do when I go into the field. Each of the activities that have been listed give me a current glance at all the important information about that account. I make notes on the contact sheet itself and transpose them to the computer record when I get back to the office. The user fields are easily customized to include information pertinent to your specific needs.

Major program features in ACT! 2000 include....