My Sales Life 2.0

[jelake 11]

I've been in sales my entire life and have always looked for ways to improve my effectiveness.  I'm a typical ADD sales guy who has the attention span of a 4 year old (maybe less) so I find myself falling out of line with my "system" due to distractions.  I still achieve good results, but I think I work too hard to get there.  I'm not asking you to cure my ADD  but I am interested in feedback on improving my workflow and system.  I recently changed jobs so I have a great opportunity to start with a clean slate and install a new process early before I get super busy (optimistic!) with customers.

 

I've laid out some of my requirements and objectives in hopes that others have found tools to aid in these processes.  The biggest issues I tackle are task collection/management and contact management.

 

My primary systems are Mac (Office for Mac 2011), iPad and iPhone.  However, any components I implment need to be cross platform because I can't be locked into a single one (what if I have to move back to Windows?)

Required applications/services

 

Salesforce.com

• Quotes
• Sales Forecasts
• Prospects/Leads/Contacts/Companies
• Tasks

Exchange mail

• Corporate mail/calendar/contacts
• Tasks

Evernote

• All notes
• Capture tasks/follow ups

 

Objectives

1. Achieve high level of productivity while complying with external requirements (ex: boss says business contacts must be in SFDC)
2. Enter data once!
3. Access data anywhere (Mac / iPad / iPhone / Android tablet / Windows PC)
4. Automated to extent possible

 

Task Management

• Enter tasks in meeting notes in Evernote
• Enter tasks in Outlook
• Enter tasks in SFDC
• All tasks to be combined into a single "to-do" list (ok if this is external to to apps above, as long as it complies with Objectives 3 and 4)

Contact Management

• Enter contacts into system in variety of fashions:
• • Scan business card
  • Grab e-mail signature
  • Import from spreadsheet, csv, etc.
• All contacts must be synced to a single location (Exchange?)
• Only customers, prospects, leads should be synced to SFDC (use categories in Outlook?)

 

 

[realistdreamer 23]

Thanks for signing up for our beta https://docs.google.com/forms/d/16nPFDkbdLfK-zK3fOMmET7ryFv4eJy5otL35iSUQ43M/viewform.  

 

To answer your questions, I Google'd to find a sync between Salesforce and Exchange Tasks -  http://login.salesforce.com/help/doc/en/sfo_getting_started_guide.pdf.  I believe our solution will get your EN info into Salesforce thereby completing the loop for you in all three products you use.  Good luck.

 

When my company standardized on Exchange, I found the MYN system great for task and email management - http://amzn.com/0974930466.  With this and EN, you should be in great shape.

 

Back then I used OneNote, but the switch to Google Apps led me to EN.

 

P.S.  My ADD is pretty bad so I know where you're coming from.

[jelake 11]

To answer your questions, I Google'd to find a sync between Salesforce and Exchange Tasks - http://login.salesforce.com/help/doc/en/sfo_getting_started_guide.pdf. I believe our solution will get your EN info into Salesforce thereby completing the loop for you in all three products you use. Good luck.

Unfortunately the Salesforce solutions only seem to support Outlook on Windows...I'm using Outlook for Mac 2011 which seems to limit the available solutions for challenges like this.

When my company standardized on Exchange, I found the MYN system great for task and email management - . With this and EN, you should be in great shape.

I may check out this book. Thanks for the recommendation.