Your Business Powered by ACT!

3 Quick Tips to Make This Year Shine

Do you feel like you have the basics of ACT! covered, but would like to "kick things up a notch" for 2008? Have you been thinking about how to reach out to your clients and prospects on a more routine basis while cutting the time it takes to personally interact?

Well, the New Year is here and it's a wonderful time to develop new skills and habits to help make this your best year yet. While there are many things that you could do in ACT to help make your life easier, let's start with these three easy tips.

1. Create Custom Templates For Quick Follow-Up.

Having a well-written follow-up letter (or e-mail) that you can send out on a moment's notice can make you and your company look more professional and well-organized.
  1. Choose Write, Edit Template… from the ACT menu.
  2. Select the template that is closest in style to what you want to use and click Open.
  3. Choose File, Save As..., type a new name for the template, and click Save. (Note: Do this BEFORE you edit your new template so you don't accidentally overwrite the basic template.)
  4. Create the letter or e-mail as you normally would. You can copy and paste content from letters or e-mails that you have used before, if you like.
  5. Insert field place holders, as necessary, by positioning the insertion point in the document. Select the field to insert (from the Add Mail Merge Fields dialog box) and click Add.
  6. Save and close the file.
You are now ready to merge the template with any Contact in your database.
  1. Choose Write, E-mail Message (from template) or
    Write, Other Document (from template).
  2. Select the template and click Open.
  3. Add additional comments if desired and click Send (if it's an e-mail) or Print (if it's a letter).

Note: You could also choose Write, Mail Merge to send the template to the current lookup of contacts in your database.

Watch the "Creating and Merging ACT! Templates video >>


2. Use Group Criteria for Quick Lookups

If you plan to merge the template you just created to a lookup, you may want to consider using Groups. Creating a group is easy. However, did you know that you can add a contact to a group based on one or more field values?
Let's say you want to create a group of all clients with e-mail addresses.
  1. Click on the Groups icon at the left to go to Group Detail view.
  2. Click the New Group icon on the toolbar (or press the [Insert] key on your keyboard).
  3. Enter a name for the Group.
  4. Click the Add/Remove Contacts… button on the Contacts tab.
  5. Click the Edit Criteria… button in the Add/Remove Contacts dialog.
  6. Create a query that finds all contacts with an ID/Status of Customer (or something similar to what you use in your ACT database) AND where E-mail "Does Not Contain Data". Click the Field Name drop-down and select ID/Status. For the Operator, select Contains. In the Value area, type the value for the first criteria. Click Add to list. For the second row of the query, select the E-mail field and choose the Operator of Contains Data. Click Add to list. Click Preview to check your results so far.

  7. If all looks well, then click OK to save the query criteria for the group.
  8. Click OK once again to sage the group.
Watch the "Populating Groups Using Criteria" video >>

While it may take a minute or two to define the Group query criteria, it is great for helping you to keep your Group memberships up to date. As you change the ID/Status from Prospect to Customer, the contacts are automatically added to the group. If the e-mail bounces, you can remove the data from the E-mail Address field and the contact will be immediately removed from the group.

3. Let "The Official ACT! by Sage QuickStudy Guide" Help You Be More Efficient

Almost seven years ago I was asked to write a book that would help ACT users learn and understand the software better. After presenting the first 400+ page draft, I asked what name they had chosen for the book… The Official ACT QuickStudy Guide. Quick study? How could anything that large be called quick?

Well, really I did get their point. Each topic in the book is intentionally designed to stand on its own, never assuming that you've read any of the previous sections. So, you can pick any procedure in the book and quickly understand how to implement the task in your own ACT! database.

There is a ton of new features that have been added to ACT over the years (it is a 20+ year old product). Get a your own copy of The Official ACT! by Sage QuickStudy Guide so you can upgrade your skills as you upgrade your software. Learning just one new feature a month could make a significant difference in your productivity.

Susan Clark, ACT! Certified Consultant
Author, The Official ACT! by Sage QuickStudy Guide
Cornerstone Solutions, Inc.
www.cornerstonesolutions.com