Sales and Marketing Philosophies in Sage ACT!

Do you need a sales process?  How would you go about developing one if you don’t have one or if the one you have does not reflect how your customers want to buy?

ACT! users are astute students of sales and marketing philosophies, adopting tools to engineer better results.  You may be aware that Sage ACT! itself evolved into its present state through 25 years of development beginning with Pat Sullivan, ACT!’s founder.  Among his many contributions were the ID/Status field and Last Results field, marking a dynamic relationship between the salesperson, their prospects, and the database driving the process. 

When ACT! introduced the Opportunity with ACT! 4.0 Pat consulted with Dale Carnegie and Associates (now Dale Carnegie Training) to develop a sales process with 11 separate stages based on the DCT Sales Advantage methodology.  In recent years Sage ACT! added web integration to plug into social media, getting closer to prospects and customers.  As technology advances, so do the opportunities to adopt expanding philosphies.

There are hundreds of philosophies, all with inspiring authors and speakers, but their approaches are varied.  You may know:

• ·         Jeffrey Gittomer.  Little Red Book: 12.5 Principles of Selling
• ·         Seth Godin.  All Marketers are Liars and Purple Cow
• ·         John Jantsch. Duct Tape Marketing and Referral Engine
• ·         Sandler Training. The Sandler Rules
• ·         Catherine Kaputa. You are a Brand

Adhering to your philosophy of selling and marketing requires some introspection and planning.  Recognizing your streamlined process and the stages you pass through become steps in your own Sage ACT! opportunities.  

You may have several processes, one for sales and another for service, for example.  While using the samples that ship with Sage ACT! may work well for you, there are no limits to how you may modify the processes to follow strategies based on your preferred philosophy.

When you are beginning with a philosophy for sales and marketing and adapting it to your own strategy be careful to look at each stage as a gate through which each deal may pass.  A definitive stage is rarely a task (activity) completed by you, it is more likely your prospect’s response to the task and whether they have moved themselves into your next stage.

Also, the earliest stages may be based on your research (Qualifying, for instance) which requires only a modest amount of interaction with the prospect.

When you are done with your analysis of how you may best apply your sales and marketing philosophy to your database, then you roll up your sleeves and begin making the alterations to your database.  This may also be the time to contact us and get some help in this transformation.  

iCloud, Sage ACT! 2012, and Market Tectonics

Notes from a recent exchange with an ACT! user upgrading to Sage ACT! 2012.  The ACT! user states:
"Everybody has web access apps. For better integration on the go and with other applications,  I want the ACT contacts and appts on my PC to be pushed in realtime to my iDevice.  So they are always in sync without every having to raise a finger on all my computers (macbook, iPad, iPhone and PC running ACT)"

I might add that the most popular post on this blog, by far, is the one about publishing ACT! to the web and devices.   This behavior has been described as Ubiquity: put my stuff in ACT! from anywhere and have it show up everywhere.

Zip City's business model supports businesses that use ACT! for sales, marketing, and business intelligence.  How we have defined sales, marketing, and business intelligence has evolved deeply in the 16 years I have been an ACT! consultant.  I like to think of it as tectonic shifts in fundamental principles affecting markets.  Call it market tectonics.

Market tectonics prescribe shifts in demand that are not so subtle.  The vision you have of what ACT! should be is a rather new one that is nonetheless quite predictable.  The calculus Sage has to do in response to these demands includes a formula of how much you and millions of other ACT! users are willing to pay for the privilege of ubiquity.  Sage is in business to capitalize on our evolving understanding of What Is Possible.  ...and, now, what is possible is ubiquity.  When ACT! goes SaaS, as it will soon enough, this demand will be met.  Ubiquity will be part of the product offering from Sage by, say, Q3 2012.

Of course, there are more nimble players in the market now and there are solutions for the environment of ubiquity.  Today, Zip City could set you up with your entire desktop environment (ACT!, Office, Quickbooks, Swiftpage, et al.) in the cloud accessible form your every device.  Your business can have ubiquity for $50 - $90/month/user.  If a simple, moderate iPad/iPhone integration with a subset of data (contacts, activities, history, notes, opportunities) in a full blown app is what you seek, then you will be rewarded soon when we announce the app for $69.99.  It is still in beta as of this writing.

Technologies evolve and choosing how you access your information is part of technology’s promise.  Apple creates iCloud and a few months later ACT! users are wondering how they can leverage the concept to further their own environment.  Apple did not create a solution, though.  They created an environment for Apple solutions.  What iCloud apps are you using now?  iTunes, sure.  MobileMe? What else?  There isn’t much available yet.  It’s new.  Google and Amazon.  Same thing.  They are selling space and access to their proprietary devices, but no integration with popular applications that power business, like ACT!

The inevitability of ubiquity is a force of market tectonics.  It will not be long before applications we have used as desktop stalwarts become cloudified.  (Think Google Apps and Office 365.)  But what about applications like ACT! which are powerful (customizable) engines as desktop applications, in a way that the cloud cannot yet match?  We will see deeper integration with the cloud, certainly, but we will not see the power we know on our desktops today for some time.

Till then look for ubiquity to be offered in the form of virtual desktops and apps that sync in real time.  Because the market, You, demand ubiquity and because you are willing to pay for ubiquity, you will then see ACT! not only on your desktop, or as a web interface to your server, but you will also see it as a SaaS application hosted in the cloud and you will see, very soon, an app available on your iDevice.

The plates keep shifting and we are on top of it.

If you are in need of ubiquity today, then give me a call.

bevan wistar
ACT! Certified Consultant
Zip City
503-381-5654
bwistar at zip-city dot com

Holiday Marketing with Sage ACT! 2012

Use the holiday season to let your prospects and customers know that you are thinking of them personally.

Now is the time to make sure your prospects and customers know they are on your mind.  If you count the number of times you “touch” your base with some type of communication, remember the next few months are a welcomed time to reach out for no other reason than to let them know how much they mean to you.

Using Sage ACT! allows you to make the process easier by helping you to find them, and their addresses, quickly.  The features within Sage ACT! best-suited for the task at hand are described below.

Creating Your List
There are multiple ways to identify who to send your holiday email or card to within Sage ACT!.

Lookup by Opportunities Won.  Find the contacts with whom you have done the most business this year.  Look for the top opportunities Closed Won within the custom date range most relevant to your need.  Select all the opportunities on the list, right-click the selected, and choose Create Lookup.


Lookup by Contact Activity. Also consider a Lookup from your Contact records using the Contact Activity from the Lookup menu, selecting your preferred date range and contact types from the available filter.



Define Fields. Analyze your business and evaluate the processes you use to close business.  Does your existing database include all the ways you would categorize your contacts?  ID/Status and Referred By may not be enough. 

Consider adding a field like Role to describe whether a contact is a "Decision Maker", an "Advocate", a "Gatekeeper", or a "Speedbump", something we would not find on their business card, but should be right next to their Title field on your ACT! layout.


Sending
Sage Email Marketing for ACT!  (SEMA)  Use your built-in broadcast email tool to send good wishes directly to your list’s inbox.  Make your own, or use one of the many handy templates in the library.  If you need a free account (limit of 50 per day) then use this link (prior to version 2010) or sign up right from your toolbar in ACT!  


Zip City will build your first template for you when you set up your new SEMA trial... for nothing.  Call 503-381-5654 to get your holiday message out now.

Export to Excel
Once you have selected your list of recipients customize your columns to show only the fields relevant to your mailing and then click on the Export to Excel button on your toolbar.  The resulting list will be configured exactly as you see it in Sage ACT! and can then be used to send to your third-party service provider.

Plan ahead and acknowledge your best contacts by offering them the best of the season, easily, with ACT!

Making Printing Labels a Snap!
Purchase a Dymo Labelwriter 450 model printer and integrate it with ACT! to make printing labels a snap! Call me to learn more or schedule a time to have me set it up for you.

Good design is good business.

Bevan Wistar
ACT! Certified Consultant
www.zip-city.com
bwistar@zip-city.com
503-381-5654

Not Everything is a Contact in Sage ACT! 2012

In B2B Sales, Not Everything is a Contact.

Managing the complexities of multiple relationships by putting our data where it belongs.

As we consider the singular focus required in our efforts to ensure our prospects and customers feel a personal level of service we must also consider the nature of the information we accumulate on their behalf. Of particular concern is that we keep the information we collect available and discoverable when our primary relationship expands to other contacts in our database. What may be true for our primary contact may also be true for related, subsequent contacts when we are focusing on the larger picture, or an opportunity that involves multiple parties.

Here we will take a look at our own database for signs we are trying to do too much with one entity and ways to transition that information into more appropriate entities that will work harder for us and for our prospects and customers. 



Contact fields that will cause problems with our relationships. When we are tracking what might be considered Company-level information against the contact, every new contact we add to the database may then have different data that the primary contact. Keep that data on the Company Record. Examples:


·         ID/Status
·         Number of employees/beds/insured/users
·         Budget
·         Industry
·         Last product/policy/service purchased
·         Customer/Account Number


These are examples of data unique to the company for which our contact works, not the contact him- or herself.


How to fix it.  Company records can link fields to Contact records.  We need to collect information like the examples above when we are qualifying our prospect.  We wouldn’t create a Company record until there is another contact from that company added to our database.  Sage ACT! allows fields on the Contact record to be linked to the same fields on the Company record. 

When the field doesn’t exist on the Company record we would need to add it from Tools | Define Fields and link the new Company field to the original field on the Contact record.  When the field is changed on the Company record, as when the ID/Status field is changed from “Prospect” to “Customer”, we will be prompted to update the linked information to all linked contact records.

An added benefit to working with the Company record is that it consolidates all the conversations we have had with all contacts at that company with all the ACT! users on our team on the History tab.  We also see aggregated views of all Notes, Activities, and Opportunities, giving us deep insight into the value of the relationship unavailable on the multiple Contact records alone.

Can all the companies be created at once?  Yes.  With all the linked fields and contacts associated, too.  (One of our favorite add-on solutions for this task comes from Egen Consulting, Company Wizard.)

Consider opportunity-based information.  Taking this concept forward, let’s ditch the deal-based data we might put on the Contact record and move over to Opportunities.  This entity is often overlooked, but it happens to be the center of our revenue focus.  Why bother?  If things like Insurance Policy data, as an example, are being managed on the Contact record then what happens to that good information when the renewal comes in a year later?  We have to overwrite perfectly good and worthwhile data in favor of the latest data.

One way to fix this is to move all our data over to the Opportunities record.  This way when a renewal (as an example) comes in the renewal will be an additional record against the Contact record (and the Company record), leaving us visibility into our sales history with our customer over the life of this customer.

Not everything is a contact.  Now we are tracking relevant data giving us better insight into our B2B relationships, and delivering better service to our prospects and customers.

If you would like help with a transformation like this one please respond to this email or give us a call.

Good design is good business.

Sage ACT! for Web, iPad, Safari, and Mobile Devices

Would you like your own Sage ACT! SaaS (Software as a Service) database?  How about putting Sage ACT! on your Mac, iPad, or Handheld Device?


Consider getting your ACT! data on the web.  We inadvertently created something of a splash with a recent email including mention of the web feature in ACT! 


With Sage ACT! Premium (all versions*) you can host your own database on the web.  That's right, everyone at your organization can log into your ACT! database whenever and wherever they would like.


Take ACT! with you wherever you go.


No monthly subscription.  You own it and it doesn't cost extra. 


All you need is a server enabled with IIS and Sage ACT! Premium.  The database you would see online is the same database you access on your server, desktop, or laptop now.  Changes made on the web are visible on the network immediately, and visa versa.

_______________________________________________________________________________

Test Drive

Go to the official Sage ACT! webdemo and try it yourself:

1. Open Internet Explorer or Firefox
2. Go here
3. Username is "Chris Huffman" (no quotes)
4. No Password
5. Allow Popups
6. Give it a whirl

http://afwdemo.act.com/apfw/

_______________________________________________________________________________

Sage ACT! for Mac, Safari, iPad, and handheld devices (smart phones).

This segment of the market is very fluid with products arriving in succession.  What solution you choose will likely depend on your existing scenario.  Let's run through a few.

Sage ACT! Connect.  Launched August 1, 2011 and working with Sage ACT! 2011 and Sage ACT! 2012, SAC offers connectivity to all devices with supported browsers, including Safari (for your Mac, iPad, or iPhone).  The data available in the browser comes from the most popular fields and features in Sage ACT!, including standard contact fields, activities, notes, and history.  See more on our Sage ACT! 2012 page.  Get $10 off an annual subscription from Zip City, normally $69.95/user/yr. for $59.95.

Log in to your desktop or laptop and run ACT! as though it is native on your device.  Using LogMeIn Ignition, a $30 app on the iTunes App Store seen here, above, you can easily set up a link from, say, your iPad to your Sage ACT! database.  Any  version and ALL features.  How?  Because you are logging into your own machine wherever it may be.  All you need to do is make sure your main machine is turned on and you will have access to your entire desktop, including email, Word, your add-ons, your custom layouts and fields, and custom tables.  GoToMyPC has a similar solution.


**UPDATE**  We recently learned of another solution.  The $10 version of PocketCloud allows the user to change screen resolution on the tablet, allowing for easier visual access.  This is our new favorite solution. 

Handheld Contact.  HHC recently released a version of their sync service for iPhone and iPad, adding to Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and Treo support.  No Android.  This is a sync product (not interactive and live) with broad acceptance among mobile users.  HHC requires some configuration on your server, but it can support many users with a centrally administered service.  HHC also maintains a separate calendar and address book from the native device calendar and address book.  So, as an HHC user, you will have two of both.  Some prefer this and others don't.  The premium service is about $240/user/year.  $179 for the first year.

DejaOffice from CompnionLink.  CompanionLink has been the best-selling add-on for ACT! for decades.  I love the guys who run the show over there and I can see their office across the Willamette from my desk in SE Portland.  However, the feedback I have been getting from clients indicates the solution has lost a bit of their former luster.  Comments about duplicate contacts and recent declines in what had been the best tech support in the ACT! add-on universe come up more now than in the past.  That said, the solution for handhelds is updated so frequently that one can say that there is no combination of Smartphone and version of ACT! that CompanionLink cannot work with.  All versions.  All phones.  Want something special for your Android, iPhone, or iPad?  CompanionLink has a free app on the iTunes App Store, DejaOffice, that offers basic ACT! functionality with an internet connection.  It even tracks expenses!  $129, one time (no subscription), links DejaOffice to your ACT! database with CompanionLink Pro.  You might consider buying their premium support package which includes initial setup (lowering risk of dupes), which is cheaper than having an ACC do it, but lifts the overall cost of the solution.

In Development.  The ACC community does have a resident Apple developer working on an application dubbed ACT! for the iPhone.  The working release title is iTrACT! and we are looking forward to updating this page in August 2011 with notes on its features.

Citrix Hosted Solutions.  If your organization has a number of users who wish to access a virtual desktops in the cloud, then a hosted Citrix solution may be what you seek.  The promise of this solution, like Ignition and GoToMyPC, is that your mobile force will be able to live on nothing but a tablet.  No more laptop bootup wait time.  Prices vary depending on what apps are being hosted, but you would have to own the software that is being hosted on your behalf.  The more apps, the more you pay.  Office, Sage ACT!, and QuickBooks, for instance might run $70/user/month.  But if you are a mobility freak and like the instant-on your tablet provides, this is becoming a very popular solution for teams.  Call us if this is something you would like to investigate.

While this list doesn't include all applications for remote connectivity with Sage ACT!, it represents 99% of the market.  Short of a native application built by Sage for your device these are your options.  

Happy mobility!

*versions...
ACT! has supported web-enabled databases since 2004.  If you have your original disks of the better version of ACT! (equivalent to the current Premium product) you may have the installation files for Web Access.

Prior to ACT! by Sage 2010 you are stuck with what you have as Sage no longer supports those versions.  ...and 2010 will be sunsetted later this year.  IF your organization has additional users who would need licenses AND if you are using a sunsetted version THEN you will want to upgrade.  We can set you up so contact us now!

Bevan Wistar, ACC

Zip City

Portland, OR

503-381-5654

bwistar (at) zip-city DOT com

Building the Perfect ACT! Database

It's all about relevance.

When we step back and look at our Sage ACT! database objectively, we want to feel as though it invites us back in to continue working.  Can our database do this?

In a word, yes.  It can.

The path your organization may take to get to this state may seem like an arduous one after reading the rest of this post, but the benefits are tremendous.  Imagine a database that reflects our mission, our processes, and the unique relationship we have with our customers and prospects, and know that hyper-relevance is possible in the ACT! database we use every day.  We can wake up to it, and much later we can put it away only because we have other things to go and do.

Because ACT! enjoys a uniquely powerful design engine we will look at implementing ways to make your database so compelling a tool you will keep it in front of you everywhere you can.

Relevance.  When we look at our ACT! screen and see a couple fields we rarely use, we tend to ignore the fields around them.  Good design principles would have us rearranging the fields in such a way that the fields mimic our actual use habits, allowing us to pay attention to information grouped in more useful sections.

The ACT! layout designer is a very powerful tool, flexible enough to allow us to place objects anywhere, resize them as we need, and even put boxes around related information for clarity.  We can keep it clean and line everything up.

From your Tools menu, select Design Layouts, and choose the entity where you would like to start.  Contacts and Opportunities tend to be the most popular areas to customize first.  Make sure to save your layout with a different name.

Define Fields. Analyze your business and analyze the processes you use to close business.  Does your existing database include all the ways you would categorize your contacts?  ID/Status and Referred By may not be enough. 

Consider adding a field like Role to describe whether a contact is a "Decision Maker", an "Advocate", a "Gatekeeper", or a "Speedbump", something we would not find on their business card, but should be right next to their Title field on your ACT! layout.

Opportunities.  No one ACT! feature offers us more than this entity offers. No other feature is so universally underutilized.  Now is a great time of the year to think deeply about how you segment your revenue and the processes you use to address each area of segmentation. 

How transactional is your business segment?  I use a sliding scale for my clients that range from 1 (the equivalent of buying a cup of coffee = highly transactional) to 10 (brokering a bank sale = highly relational).  Where does your business sit?

Write down your processes (or flow chart them).  When you think about how you work, think of the gates you pass through rather than the tasks you must complete.  These gates will become the stages in your process.

If you have a varied catalog, like:

• Sales and Service
• Free Samples
• Buy, Lease, Charter
• Business Development and Renewal
• Clients and Candidates
• Grants, Donors, and Membership

...then each of these requires a separate process with its own stages.  Make sure to keep it simple. Four or five stages is the most you will want to track.

Spreadsheet Rut.  Who doesn't love MS Excel?  But, really? 

If you are tracking data against your accounts in Excel, Access, Filemaker, or some other application, then you should take comfort that ever since ACT! 10.03 custom tables work inside of ACT!, eliminating the need to keep a separate set of analytics running independently of your real data in ACT!

Custom tables can roll up the math and track independent data points against all related entities in ACT!  I have written custom tables for Event Management, Software Support (of course), Insurance, Commissions, Project Tracking, Automobile, Order Entry, and more.

The data output can be routed to reports, Word, Email, and yes, Excel.

Custom tables deserve an post all its own, so look for more later.  If, in the meantime, you have questions about building your own perfect database, then please feel free to contact me.

Good design is good business.

Bevan Wistar
ACT! Certified Consultant
www.zip-city.com
bwistar at zip-city dot com
503-381-5654

Stacks of Business Cards? Turn them into Business

Attending a meeting with the purpose of meeting leads that will turn into business? At the end of a productive conversation you will likely exchange business cards and at the end of a day at a good meeting you will have a stack of business cards to turn into contacts in your Sage ACT! database.

Now we will walk you through the best way to turn those cards into leads you can track easily in Sage ACT!

The process looks like this:

1. Collect the cards
2. Capture the information on those cards
3. Manipulate the data
4. Get that info into Sage ACT!
5. Send a "Thanks" email to everyone you met that day
6. Go out for dinner

Once you have your cards collected you need to transfer the data from the cards into a format you can use in ACT!  You have abundant options that all include some form of scanner.  While we highlight only a few here you can call us if you need to know more.  If you would like to avoid working with a spreadsheet as an intermediary you might try WorldCard Pro (updated link 11/16/2012), which will scan directly into Sage ACT!  After a lead hands you their card you simply scan it directly into ACT! with the scanner and skip to Step 5.

Other scanners will give you a neat list you can save into a spreadsheet, which is also the way you would get data from card swipes you may have rented at a larger event. Here we will show you how to manipulate that data to expedite the process of communicating effectively with those leads before they have returned to their hotel room.

On your list of scanned leads you will want to add a couple columns to import into existing fields in your Sage ACT! database.  In this example we will add the Referred by field and the  ID/Status fields as columns on our spreadsheet.

Put in the values that represent your actual situation.  Here we use our event name "ConnectionSphere 2011" as the referral source and "Lead" as the status.  On your laptop you may simply import this list directly into Sage ACT! from either MS Excel (Sage ACT! 2011 or higher) or a CSV file format.  From the File menu, select Import... and use the Sage ACT! wizard to speed the process along.

Once your contacts are imported you can do a quick lookup by Referred by Equals ConnectionSphere 2011 to retrieve your list:

Now all you do is kick off a quick email blast with a template you created in advance.  We like Sage E-marketing for ACT! because it is built right in and can create a "Call List" within your ACT! database.  Send your email to the Current Lookup and your new leads will be impressed with your attentiveness when they get back to their hotel and see your email waiting for them.

Now... where are we off to for dinner?

For more information on automating your lead collection and communication processes, don't hesitate to give us a call.

Bevan Wistar, ACC

Zip City

503-381-5654

ROI: The math behind tracking the conversion of leads from meetings, conferences, and trade shows with Sage ACT!

How can you efficiently gain and convert event-based leads into revenue?  Which events give you the best return?  How do you calculate your return on your prospecting investment?

With marketing budgets tightening, and the need for new business growing, every ACT! user is weighing the value of every marketing expenditure, particularly the big-ticket events.  Let's take a look at how this blog will help your event prospecting and set your marketing budgets within Sage ACT!

Your events may include:

• Industry-specific meetings you attend
• Seminars or webinars you host
• Conferences
• Trade shows

Developed by ACT! Certified Consultant, Bevan Wistar at Zip City, this series will include examples of simple modifications to Sage ACT!, as well as complex overhauls, all with steps you can take to realize your goal of increasing the value of your investment in your Sage ACT! database.

Our own experiences hosting road shows, seminars and webinars, attending shows, exhibiting at shows, and organizing shows provides us with the tools to help you build a better prospecting database.  We write this blog to share our experience with you and guide you as your own needs evolve.

Tracking ROI (Return on Investment) with Opportunities. Doing the Math.

Whether you belong to a networking group or invest in exhibition space, you are making an investment in sourcing leads.  How is each of these investments panning out?  Depending on the scope of your operation and the length of your sales cycle the answer may vary.  Getting a handle on which investments bring you the most value is a measure of that event's success.

Track two investments: time and money.  How much are you spending on hard costs associated with an event?  What are the soft costs associated with your time and opportunities lost as a result of the time invested in preparing for the event?  (future posts will show you how to track these line items in ACT!).  Once you arrive at the number you will want to begin tracking the event's path to an outcome in ACT!

Tracking revenue: opportunities.  The most direct way to track the revenue generated by a meeting is to use the Referred By field in Opportunities.  Whether the business is with an existing customer or a new prospect, if the business opportunity hatched at your meeting, then add the unique name of the meeting to your Referred By drop-down list to uniformly add a searchable term in the field.  In our example we added CommunicationShere 2011, our sample trade show, to the list and to each opportunity that came from that show:

As each opportunity is added, use the new value in the Referred By field to ensure that the revenue generated from your event is captured.  You are on your way to tracking ROI for the show.
How long it takes to realize the value of participating in the show depends on the length of your sales cycle.  In our sample database we have some products with long cycles and others, including services for existing customers that are shorter.  We have multiple Processes with different Stages to track the progress.  To track a genuine number for our ROI in ACT! we will use the longest projected cycle and base our ROI on that cycle.  With CommunicationSphere 2011 taking place in June, and our longest process taking about six months to close, we will use the anticipated revenue for all opportunities generated from the event with revenue projections in December.

Two options for tracking ROI. Quantify results either shortly after the event, or in December at the end of the longest cycle.

You can project your ROI for the event by using Weighted Totals and Estimated Close Dates.  Weighted totals are derived from percentages associated with each stage of your Opportunity Process.  Historical information helps here.  In the past, what percentage of deals close from the total number of opportunities that enter that stage?  Use Sage ACT! to align that Stage with a percentage and Sage ACT! will do the math for you.

According to the logic in this example, one in ten deals that enter the sales cycle closes as won.  The likelihood increases as the prospective buyer advances through the process.  For this deal, the Weighted Total reflects the earliest stage of the opportunity, Initial Communication, with a 10% likelihood to close.  (The Probability may be edited as you wish on a case-by-case basis.)

By aggregating your list of deals (opportunity lookup by Referred By Equals "CommunicationSphere 2011") you gain an appreciation for the actual value of the event by totaling up the Weighted Total in your list view.  In our example, the Weighted Total for these 8 deals is $25k:

The second way to calculate ROI for CommunicationSphere 2011 is to run the same numbers in December and to calculate the Actual Grand Total for deals that are Closed Won.

Calculating ROI for your event, whether it is an inexpensive webinar or in-house seminar, to a booth at a trade show, is as simple as tracking the source of each lead in the Referred By field and measuring your actual success against the investment made.

Bevan Wistar, ACC
Zip City
503-381-5654