High-touch, face-time, one-on-one—whatever you call it, sales is the one function of your business that demands human contact. You just can’t automate it. How many customers sing the praises of menu-driven voice mail?

Contact management solutions (CMS) actually can help a salesperson get organized and stay that way, allowing for more time to spend with prospects and customers. Many of these applications also can lead the way through the most complex sales cycle, prompting introductory phone calls and follow-ups, and making sure sales letters and proposals go out on time and to the right people. Small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) have a number of CMS products to choose from, designed specifically to suit their operations, and at affordable prices—from a low of $15.00 per month per seat to a one-time rate in the range of $200 to $300.

CMSs are a combination phone book, calendar, and sales history notebook, though many applications offer a wider variety of functions. They can be installed on a single computer, on a company’s file server for access by multiple users and over the Internet, or it can be a hosted service with a third-party provider taking care of the nuts and bolts. Some applications work with or through Microsoft Outlook, while others provide their own interface to enable sending and receiving email while recording the customer’s contact information, the email message, and the salesperson’s response. A CMS usually will sort contacts—alphabetically, by the product or service, by geographic area, or according to other criteria—and will synchronize with devices like laptops or handheld organizers. Calendar capabilities range from straightforward daily To Do lists to predetermined sales cycle schedules that can run for months, reminding the user when to call, send product information, or to arrange a meeting with the client.

Essential Features
Some CMS applications date back to the late 1980’s. One of the most widely used, Microsoft’s Outlook 2003 with Business Contact Manager Update allows salespeople to build on an existing address book, as well as pulling in contact information from Microsoft Access, Excel, and Word; ACT! software; and other sources. This directory becomes a database that can be sorted by criteria the user defines with the Enhanced Rules and Alerts feature. The same tool will also trigger reminders about meetings, follow-up calls, and other activities.

Outlook with Business Contact Manager Update users can export contact lists to Microsoft List Builder, then develop a postcard, flyer, or newsletter using templates from Microsoft Publisher. The CMS also interfaces with Microsoft Word to merge names and addresses into sales letter templates or other text formats. In addition, the results of a database sort—for example, all customers in Ohio, or those who’ve made purchases within the last six months—can be sent to Excel to become finely-sliced sales reports.

Microsoft has developed two distinct offerings to address the requirements of businesses with client server infrastructure and those with desktop infrastructure. For desktop single users, Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 with Business Contact Manager is targeted for businesses with fewer than 25 employees that don’t need a full-fledged multi-user customer relationship management (CRM) application.

For multi-user CRM, Microsoft Dynamics CRM is targeted to businesses which need an application that includes sales, marketing, and customer service. Shared contact information is available to both Web browser and Outlook users. Microsoft Dynamics CRM stores data in a Microsoft SQL database at the server level optimized for data sharing online or offline through synchronization between the server database and a local MSDE store. Microsoft Dynamics CRM is also available in a Small Business Edition—a full-featured version designed to run on Microsoft Small Business Server.

Businesses that need simple tools to track contacts and sales opportunities may opt to start with Business Contact Manager for its low cost and simplicity. As they grow and require multi-user functionality, richer features, and customization, they will be able to migrate to Microsoft CRM 3.0 Professional or Small Business edition.

New additions to Microsoft’s offerings include Microsoft Office Small Business Management Edition 2006, designed to bring the ease of use of Office to accounting, offer deep Office integration, and—when used with Outlook with Business Contact Manager—to provide more robust CM functionality. Microsoft Office Small Business Management Edition 2006 integrates financial and customer management into one solution to enable businesses to manage their customers, finances, and day-to-day tasks in one place. Now core accounting, inventory management, sales orders, employee management, job tracking, and more can be melded into the CMS.

Outlook CMS takes a comprehensive approach, bringing the various components of the Microsoft Office package to support sales efforts. However, some offices may have other accounting and list management programs already installed, or they may need features that go beyond Outlook.

Big Capabilities for Small Business
Ace Contact Manager offers businesses a powerful CMS. A product of Data Management Assistance Corporation (DMAC), Ace Contact Manager offers the benefits of easy installation and security in a truly network-based operation.

Ace Contact Manager allows users to access and collect data about anyone who comes into contact with the organization. It provides a fully indexed, grouped, and coded master address book, as well as the tools for appointment, time, task, and contact tracking while centralizing and providing security for the data.

Also at home on standalone computers, this CMS is designed to provide maximum utility and security on a Local Area Network (LAN). It does not need to be installed on every workstation; only icon links need be installed on individual workstations, and installation is not a complex procedure.

For security, Ace can be configured to prevent anyone other than authorized administrators from saving or reading records, documents, and files. Only the network administrator or Ace administrator can move or copy Ace databases.

ContactPlus Software has been in the CMS business for more than 15 years. "ContactPlus was developed from the ground up for smaller business, so you don’t need a big mainframe computer to run it," says Ed Trujillo, president, ContactPlus Corporation. "It’s really fast. It interfaces with WordPerfect and Word for letters, and interfaces with Outlook. We also have an Electronic Mailing and Marketing Assistant, EMMA, and that lets you design a whole trickle down marketing campaign."

Trickle down marketing entailss sending out brief emails, newsletters, product announcements, tips, and the like to keep in touch with a list of prospects and customers. "If you blast them with too much information, they’re going to throw everything away," Trujillo notes. "But if you send a little bit of good information every other week or so, you’ll have a better chance of them reading one of your emails or postcards."

"With ContactPlus, you can put your contacts on a predefined schedule that will trickle information, and in an automated manner," he continues. "The software will generate labels, postcards, or emails to the right people, according to what stage they’re at in your sales cycle. You can set up ten stages in the marketing plan."

The user still has to produce the letters, postcards, emails, or other materials, but ContactPlus provides the lists of leads, prospects, or customers, sorted and ready to go.

Contact databases can include sales histories, notes, or responses to offers, and they can be accessed by the whole sales team or whoever is qualified. "The product includes security, and you can arrange your data to allow only certain people to see your particular prospects," Trujillo says. "Each salesperson could have their own database, and the manager would have access to everything. You can set it up that way."

Another CMS, Prophet from Avidian Technologies, Inc. was developed to operate within Outlook while adding sophisticated tools, such as sales force automation (SFA) and CRM.

"Ninety percent of the businesses out there now are using Outlook," notes James Wong, president, Avidian. "What would you suppose is the first application a salesperson would open at the start of the day? Probably Outlook. And it’s probably the last application they close when they go home. What happens is, they’re using Outlook as their regular calendar, email, and To Do list, yet they need the sales features. Any activity they do with the customer, they need to track that and share that information with their team. Also, they need to report on those activities. Outlook isn’t doing all that, so they need to look at other applications."

Wong describes Prophet as an Outlook plug-in. It operates through the familiar Outlook screens and menus, adding click-on features to Outlook’s toolbar. With Prophet, users have additional capabilities to sort and filter Outlook contact lists, as well as to attach relevant files and information. "With Prophet, you can click on a contact name and see all the email you’ve exchanged," Wong says. Or, clicking on a company name will bring up information on all associated individuals. Sales and billing history also is available with the touch of a button.

A key benefit of Prophet is its close association to Outlook. Wong says, "Our philosophy is, don’t try to change peoples’ work habits." By utilizing existing contact lists in Outlook and familiar Outlook screens, extensive retraining is not required. Prophet can be up and running in a matter of hours.

CMS Leaders
Two of the leading CMS providers are ACT! from Sage Software and GoldMine from FrontRange. ACT! was one of the first developers in the CMS field and currently boasts 2.5 million users for its desktop, server-based, and Internet-accessible editions. New in the latest versions, ACT! 2006 and ACT! Premium, for up to 50 users, offers a Tree View—a means of sorting contacts into groups, sub-groups, and even sub-sub-groups. An individual contact can be included in as many of these groups as the user wishes.

"You can make it quite complex," says Paul Selby, senior product manager at ACT!. "You could create a group of everybody in Arizona who has an ID status of X value, and their eye color is blue. On top of that, you can blend the two. You can have complex criteria, and tell the system, always go find these people, but I want to add these others in as well. It’s a very flexible way of doing things."

ACT!’s calendar functions also allow for complex functions. "Activities can be anything," Selby says. "You can add any activity type, and you can schedule it with any other user of the database as well as any of the contacts on the database. The Premium version lets you send invitations to other users. I can schedule an activity at my workstation, and on the other end, they’ll have a dialog pop-up that says, ‘You’ve been invited to this meeting, do you want to accept? decline?’"

ACT! provides a built-in email client that supports POP SMTP email protocols, including Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, and Lotus Notes.

"Based on surveys with ACT! users, most people prefer to use Outlook," Selby says. "What we’ve done is build-in integration, so that from within Outlook you can set up your ACT! database as an address book. When you’re in Outlook, you can select contacts from the ACT! database, even if they’re not in the Outlook address book. You can also record a history or attach an email message to the contact. ACT! will collect the information from Outlook, and you can attach messages received in Outlook to records in ACT!."

For easy use, Selby adds that ACT! provides automated wizards to guide the user through the application’s set-up and various procedures, as well as automated tutorials.

FrontRange’s GoldMine is another leading CMS application, with an installed base of 1.5 million users. GoldMine is offered in different versions for individual desktops and/or the company server, and with varying optional components, such as interfaces for Microsoft’s Outlook, Exchange Server, or QuickBooks. iGoldMine and iGoldMine Plus can be accessed via the Internet.

"There was a study done a few years ago that said if you respond to a sales query within 48 hours, your likelihood of success increases dramatically. That’s why it’s so important to have contact management," says Greg Anderson, senior product manager, FrontRange. "And it’s not just about listing the contact. CMS applications like GoldMine are doing email, mail-Word merges, mailing list output, and managing the whole sales process. According to the same study, people who have a sales methodology are 16 percent more successful on average in closing business."

GoldMine offers extensive contact list sorting capabilities, synchronization among the sales team for automated updates and activity scheduling, as well as links to accounting and financial information. "Using the GoldMine browser, I can go look at invoices or any information attached to that client, and can see what they’ve purchased before," Anderson notes. This prevents a salesperson from extending a special offer to a client whose account may be in arrears, or one who already has bought the product.

In November 2005, FrontRange was acquired by private equity group Francisco Partners. The deal provides, among other things, fresh capital for FrontRange’s aggressive growth strategy, which will include adding customers, developing further product innovations, and perhaps even acquiring related businesses. GoldMine’s ASP version—targeted to larger organizations—is on the horizon.

From CMS to SFA
David Hood, COO of VanillaSoft, recognizes the value of CMS software, but says CMS is most effective for account management, rather than generating new sales leads. By contrast, VanillaSoft’s Sales Force Automation (SFA) is a hosted ASP service designed specifically as a tool for improving inside sales procedures and developing prospects into qualified leads.

"Inside sales is not an account manager who’s going on calls outside the office," Hood explains. "It’s somebody who’s working in the office on the telephone. Often it’s list-driven. If you’re a company selling to another company, your salesperson has a list of people they need to call to find out if they buy a certain product, who they buy it from, and if they would be willing to look at an offer from you."

The VanillaSoft product displays the prospect list along with a script that prompts the salesperson to ask specific questions. He or she then jots a summary of the call, and the results are stored with the contact information.

"Once the salesperson has found a company that buys their products and isn’t happy with their current supplier, they’ll pass that on to an account manager, and the manager will follow up," Hood says. "Or they may be setting up appointments, or selling products and services directly over the phone."

With VanillaSoft, sales managers develop the scripts, eliminating the need for extensive training; salespeople simply follow the prompts on the screen. In addition, the software provides the numbers to be dialed—autodialing is available—so managers can control who is called and ensure that all prospects are contacted. A Dashboard screen, refreshed every 30 seconds, gives the sales manager real-time access to the activities of all the callers in the group, even if they’re working from remote or home offices. The manager also can change the script on the fly. An optional recording feature lets the manager listen in on calls to check on new-hires and, perhaps, the effectiveness of the sales script.

VanillaSoft SFA is directed to companies with five to 40 salespeople, with the standard version costing $65.00 per month per seat. Hood notes that similar functions for larger call centers can run from $5,000 to $10,000 per month per seat.

Keeping pace with the times, VanillaSoft recently added a do not call (DNC) function. Hood says the state and federal DNC lists can be misleading if a client has given consent for a company to call. "Before a number is sent to a caller, it’s checked against state and federal lists, but also against the internal lists. A company can be sure they’re never calling people on the DNC list, while at the same time making sure they aren’t excluding their own customers."

CMS applications bring behind-the-scenes support to sales operations. They take care of the routine work of organizing and classifying contact lists, tracking and prompting the sales cycle, customer service, even accounting. In effect, the CMS frees the frontline salesperson from a clutter of paperwork, allowing for more and better quality personal interaction.