What's new in ACT! 2000

Sales Opportunities

Getting Started
Be certain the Funnel steps, Products and Type are set up before starting to work with Sales Opportunities.  To do this, select Modify Sales Stages from the Sales menu dropdown.
Tip:  You can also edit from the Sales Opportunity tab opportunity dialog box.
To edit the Product list, click the down arrow select Edit list at the bottom.  This will allow you to add your products.  To edit the Sales stage list click the down arrow and select Edit list at the bottom.  You can now modify the list and move descriptions up and down in the list.
Gotcha--If you are synching and want the list of products to transmit to the field, you must enter a sale for the product.
Entering a New Opportunity
Select the product, enter the number of units, enter the unit price ACT! will calculate the Amount.
Enter the Type, date and time.  Next Enter the Forecasted close date and the Probability.  
Tip:  You can also associate the Sales Opportunity with a Group if using Groups for Account management
Select the Additional Information tab to enter the Main Competitor and Details about the account.
Modifying the Opportunity
The new Opportunity will appear in the Sales/Opportunities tab.  You can edit this by clicking in any one of the fields or double clicking in the box at the far left.
Note:  This works very much like the Activities tab.  Notice the filter and check box to complete.
Tip:  If you select show grid lines -- you can read this easier.
Tip:  You can add columns to the view so you can see the fields you believe are important.  This works the same for all ACT! column lists.
Closing the Sale
To close the sale, click in the check box column or double click in the box at the far left.
If you double clicked, then click on the Complete Sale button.
Indicate the result and the reason.  
Using the Sales Reports
There are several reports and graphs that allow you to see how you are doing with your opportunities.  These are found by clicking the Sales Reports from the Reports drop down menu.
Tip:  You can highlight the Sales Funnel Graph and paste it into another document.  This allows you to put it into a PowerPoint presentation, Word Status report etc.
Finding Contacts with Sales Opportunities
To find contacts within a specific sales stage, Select Sales Stage from the Lookup dropdown.
Gotcha:  You can not lookup on any other sales opportunity field.  And, you can not lookup up to find contacts without a Sales Opportunity.
Tip:  You can use the Lookup , Keyword Search to find other sales opportunity information.  It's a bit slow but will work.

Activity Series
You can schedule a specific set of tasks that you use over and over again and assign them to an Activity Series that you can select to schedule these all at once.  Examples, Marketing Campaign, Escrow Close
Creating an Activity Series
From the Contact menu, select Create/Edit an Activity Series.  A wizard will begin.  Select the Create option and click the Next button.  Select whether this will be based on the Start Date or Due Date.  Click the Next button.   Once you have entered the information from the first Start or Due activity, the wizard will pop up a grid that will allow you to quickly Add the remainder of the series.
Scheduling an Activity Series
Select Schedule Activity Series from the Contact Menu.  Select All contacts, Current contact or Current lookup -- this is an AWESOME feature.  
Note:  This can take a long time if your database is large, the activity list is long and you are trying to schedule for several contacts.

Group Rules
Group rules allow you to specify a list of rules that qualify a contact for membership into a specific group.  This allows you to quickly refresh a groups membership without the need of doing a lookup and adding the contacts to the group.
Select the Groups View
Select Group Membership from the Group dropdown menu and the select Define Rules.  A wizard will begin.  You can select use a Saved Query or Field values.
Tip:   The easiest is to use Field values -- this way you don't need to worry about complex Boolean expressions.
Gotcha:  You can only have two conditions.
Continue with the wizard until you reach the last step and you can run the rules.
Gotcha:  The group rules DO NOT remove contacts from the group, they only add them.  To completely rebuild the group, you must remove all entries before running the rule.

New Lookups
Keyword-This still takes a long time but when it finds a contact with the specified keyword, it highlights the location where the keyword was found.  
Empty Values-You can now easily find all contact were the contents of a field are empty.
E-mail Address-You can now lookup by a specific or blank e-mail address.
Gotcha:  Lookup by e-mail will not let you narrow the lookup.

Some Issues
•	Having the e-mail address as a column on the Contact List view seems to cause a slow down.
•	Situation where ringing alarms causes the mouse pointer to constantly
switch to an hourglass and keyboard input to the database (activities
/ notes) is very slow.
•	Scheduling an activity causes the entire database to be made available to schedule.  Keep your database fit and trim.