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 Manage Customers.
Maximize Growth. Do Business Over the Net. |
My first published software review in 1986 described a new program I had discovered called Tracker. If you recall the era of the 51/4 floppy disks, Tracker came on the first disk I ever saw that incorporated a full color picture on the disk jacket. What was inside however impressed me even more.
Early on, I recognized the value computing would have to a well organized sales force. I started selling in the era of three by five cards. Record keeping consisted of scribbled file cards in a small metal box, filed in an A-Z tabbed divider.
Naturally cards always got mislaid or misfiled. Unless you possessed a photographic memory a lost card could mean a lost customer.
The early customer management programs such as Tracker, offered an outstanding way to enter data that could be retrieved with a few keystrokes and a knowledge of that dreaded system called DOS.
Shortly after Tracker was published, Act! appeared. Act! was at the time a state of the art program. It was easy to use and very powerful. I immediately used it for my own contact management needs.
PC software writers began to churn out Contact management programs until there were more than 18 contact management programs on the market, varying in cost from $30.00 to several hundred dollars.
When Microsoft Windows arrived on the PC scene, contact management programs quickly moved over to the potential Windows offered with it's Graphical User Interface (GUI). Windows made contact management a practical and easy to learn business tool. Finally, contact management products begin to be taken seriously by sales and marketing organizations. Of course the so called portable computers of that early era weighed in at 14 or so pounds. The idea of taking the storehouse of data that you could amass about your customers with you on the road was good in theory but hard on your back and shoulder muscles. I took the output of the contact manager with me instead. It was more than sufficient. I made notes on the sheets I printed to take with me and entered the notes and data into the computer for my next visit.
Several years later, laptops appeared weighing in at 6 to 8 pounds. Now we were ready to take the customer data with us.
It was about this time, I started a company called Sales Success Systems, which was dedicated to the idea that sales growth could be achieved through the use of laptop computers and a solid contact management system.
We started with Act! which had gone through several changes of ownership until it was finally purchased by Symantec.
Maximizer came to my attention about 5 years ago at the Comdex Show in Las Vegas. I was impressed with the program and along with Goldmine, I offered training in Maximizer as well.
Through the years, a large majority of contact management programs just disappeared. Ecco, Pack Rat, and Sharkware to name a few.
The market today consists of three main players, Maximizer, Goldmine and Act!
All three programs have been honed and refined to take advantage of multiple platforms, and their growth and feature rich interfaces make choosing one a difficult chore.
When I installed Maximizer 5, I was greeted by the screen you see below.
My initial impression was that the screen looked busy, that is there was a lot of information on the screen at one time. After I examined the program for a while, I began to appreciate the fact that the interface offered rapid access to the critical data a person would need while on the phone with a client. The name of the game in a good contact manager is the ability to get the information you need in the fewest possible keystrokes. While this is not as critical prior to calling a customer, it becomes so once the contact is made.
Maximizer excels at the ability of the user to quickly select the data stream he or she needs while in contact with the customer. This is a feature of the program I love!
You can keep your Maximizer To-Do list in front of you, as well as your contact screen. In the screen above, I have the default address view, the contact view and the history view all on the same screen. If I click on the Hotlist Icon, I get my To-Do's with a single keystroke. The calendar icon will display my calendar in any format I wish by Month, Week or day.
The e-mail Icon opens the e-mail module and allows you to send or receive your e-mail with the Microsoft Outlook in Windows, or by using Eudora as I do.
Note the tabs on the bottom of the lower boxes. These speed you to additional items with a single mouse click. One of the strengths of Maximizer over competition is that the user defined fields are not limited to a given number. You can customize the program to your hearts content, adding or subtracting fields as your needs change.
If you can summarize the flexibility of Maximizer the words "No Limits," describe the power of the program. There are no limits on the amount of information you can store in the program. It offers the best flexibility in contact management programs today.
Maximizer offers a feature called E-Commerce. Essentially this is a feature not found in any competitive product. After about an hour's effort, you can create a web site that includes the ability to start accepting orders and inquiries right away.
Maximizer also offers you free hosting of you site, or you can choose an independent ISP hosting facility. This feature alone is worth the price of the program. Set up catalog pages and become a part of the expanding Internet Marketing explosion. In addition, your web site will be introduced to the major search engines insuring that if anyone on the web is seeking your product or service your company's name will appear on their inquiry screen.
You can also utilize the Inquisit business intelligence to locate information about your present customers or a perspective customer with this handy search service that scans a myriad of newspapers, wire services and other sources to find information relating to the company you want to know more about.
A built-in utility, MaxPort will enable you to import your existing data from ACT! or other popular database formats. Third party vendors have developed add-on programs to enhance the versatility of Maximizer ever further.
The ReportSmith module allows you to print reports about specific contacts or all your contacts with any information you desire to have included. The reporting capability includes data such as graphical representation and it accomplishes numerical calculations and graphics as well.
Maximizer features dozens of additional capabilities. The program is priced at a really reasonable $149.00 which is less than it's major competitors. For a more in-depth look at this outstanding product, please visit their website:
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Page Updated 04/25/07