Tracking sales calls and other account activity

[Guest]

Hello again - as noted in the post below, my colleagues and I are getting up
to speed on BCM. I was working with one of them yesterday, and we're trying
to figure out the following:

She and I are both in sales for our organization - I sell customer service
training, and she sells a call center new hire screening tool. We both find
that we need to make a series of calls to leads and prospective clients.

If I call Company X today, and reach a person that tells me a better time to
talk is next week, what is the best way to set a "trigger" to remind me to
call Company X next Wednesday (for example). If I can't get ahold of that
contact on Wednesday, how do I log that non-contact and "reset" the trigger
for the following Wednesday?

What is the best way to view all of those upcoming calls?

I'd prefer not to generate a report to do this - that seems inefficient to
me after using Outlook and ACT!.

I know there are a number of different ways to accomplish this task in BCM,
but I'd like to hear from other people about what's worked best, or most
efficiently, for them.

Thanks -

 

[Guy]

I would log the call as a phone log to the contact/account. I would then
schedule a task for the date of the follow up call. If you use tasks you can
easily see all your tasks in a list or in calendar view. You can also custom
sort these tasks and set reminders for specific times if need be.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the idea. I just tried it - and I see that the task does not
contain any reference to the contact itself. Do you then type the name of the
contact in the subject line so it shows up in your task list?

This seems a little redundant, but perhaps there's no other way....?

 

[Guy]

Yes, you are right. It is redundant. So much so that I wrote code to
automate this. If you are familiar with VBA here is the code I wrote. I'm
not an expert programmer so I'm not saying it was achieved the most
efficient way but it worked for me. I created a button on the task to run
this macro and I use that instead of the built in one.

Public Sub AddContactToTask()
'Declare variables.
Dim objApp As Outlook.Application
Dim objItem As Object
Dim objInsp As Outlook.Inspector
Dim colCB As Office.CommandBars
Dim objCBB As Office.CommandBarButton
Dim objContact As Outlook.ContactItem
Set objApp = CreateObject("Outlook.Application")

'Get Linked Contact
Set objItem = objApp.ActiveInspector.CurrentItem
Set objInsp = objApp.ActiveInspector
If Not objItem.Class = olContact Then Exit Sub
If objItem.UserProperties.Item(1).Name = "Account Name" Then
Set colCB = objInsp.CommandBars
Set objCBB = colCB.ActiveMenuBar.Controls.Item(7).Controls.Item(15)
Set objContact = objItem
Else
Set colCB = objInsp.CommandBars
Set objCBB = colCB.ActiveMenuBar.Controls.Item(7).Controls.Item(16)
Set objContact = objItem
End If

'Launch Task and Insert objContact into "Contacts" field
objCBB.Execute
Set objItem = objApp.ActiveInspector.CurrentItem
objItem.Links.Add objContact

'Release Objects
Set objApp = Nothing
Set objItem = Nothing
Set objInsp = Nothing
Set colCB = Nothing
Set objCBB = Nothing
Set objContact = Nothing
End Sub