Paauwer Tools is a Monthly Ezine
January 2003
Issue 35

“Organize your life around your dreams –
and watch them come true.”
-Anonymous

Since getting organized is one of the top three New Year’s Resolutions, this is a good time of year to learn some new tools for getting and staying organized so you can have a more productive and fulfilling year. 

I work with a lot of professionals, executives, and entrepreneurs who are very good at what they do, yet they struggle with the “behind the scenes” aspects of their work.  Several of my clients offer services that are of great value to others, but their lack of business skills are a huge stumbling block to their success.  Although very skilled at their trade or profession, many lack skills in handling paperwork, marketing, and the financial elements of running a sound business.  Fortunately, technology offers some great tools to help meet those challenges. 

In my experience, there are three technology tools that are essential to creating the infrastructure needed to effectively run a business:  a file management program, a contact management program, and a financial management program.  These three programs will manage the administrative elements of your business, while providing a method to keep you from getting buried under the mounds of paperwork that besiege most entrepreneurs.

 “The secret of your future is hidden in your daily routine.”
-Mike Murdock

Keeping in touch with the right people at the right time is essential to business growth.  Benjamin Franklin once said, “To succeed, jump as quickly at opportunities as you do at conclusions.”  ACT! helps you to jump at those opportunities by reminding you of important follow-up dates at the appropriate time.  For example, if a prospect tells you that she wants to consider your product or services six months from now, ACT! can remind you to jump at that opportunity when she will be more receptive to looking at what you have to offer.

I did away with my Rolodex years ago and have been using Symantec’s ACT! as my contact management program since then.  It enables me to remember important follow-up at the appropriate time, and I have instant access to detailed information about every contact in my database.   

ACT! keeps track of more than just names and contact numbers.  It links your entire relationship history -- meetings, commitments, calls, to-do items, correspondence, proposals, e-mails, and more. Plus, with its new mobile features, you can manage your relationships from your PC or PDA (such as Palm or Visor). 

ACT! includes a Notes/History field where you can enter information, such as the price you quoted to a prospect or a promise you made to a client.  You can also use the Activities field to build in reminders and alarms to help you follow up on promises and commitments…especially helpful when the commitment requires you to follow up several months from now.  When you sync ACT! with your PDA, that reminder alarm can travel with you everywhere you go.

One of my favorite features of ACT! is the ability to look up someone’s record by a number of different criteria.  For example, I can do a search by type of contact (prospect, client, inactive client, referral resource, friend, family, vendor, etc.)  I can also look them up by area code, zip code, city, first name, last name, company name, or keyword.  And when I find them, all of their contact information and contact history is in one place. 

You can also generate mailing labels after doing a group sort.  For example, let’s say that I want to send a letter to all referral resources.  I can run labels for them and do a mail merge with a Word document to create a personalized letter.  I determine the criteria, and ACT! sorts the contacts for me.

Think of all the people with whom you’ve lost contact … people you thought you’d never need to contact because you did not offer products or services that were of interest to them.  But now you have developed a new product or service that you believe would be of great interest to them.  You’ve lost the opportunity because you did not keep their contact information since you had no way to manage it.  With ACT!, you’ll have a way to capture contact information and keep it as long as you like…AND you’ll be able to find it instantly when the need arises for you to make a connection.

“The one lesson I have learned in life is that
there is no substitute for paying attention.”
-Diane Sawyer

One of the greatest challenges many entrepreneurs face is the ability to pay attention to and manage their company’s financial records.  With a poor bookkeeping system in place, many can only hope that they don’t get audited by the IRS.  Using a financial management program eliminates the worry about such things.  The program that I’ve used for the last seven years is QuickBooks.

QuickBooks (or QuickBooks Pro for time-billing companies) gives you the ability to keep your finger on the pulse of your financial matters.  Since fiscal health is critical to the success of any business, business owners must have a working knowledge of their financial picture at all times.  The QuickBooks accounting system can be customized to match the flow of income and expenses within your business.  Once accounts are set up, you can easily enter daily transactions such as invoices, customer payments, payroll, inventory, and business expenses (broken down by various accounts).  Sales tax is automatically computed.

QuickBooks offers a comprehensive sorting capability, so you can run reports for analysis of income and expenses by such criteria as customer name, transaction date, transaction type, vendor, or account.  Regular reports can be created to provide you with a snapshot of the big picture as well as the details of the fiscal health of your business.

Best of all, the most current version of QuickBooks Pro (2002) interfaces with ACT! so you don’t have to re-enter data once you convert your prospects into paying customers!

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