by James Meyer
MeyerSoft
H & S Yacht Sales is the one of the largest retailers of yachts this side of the Mississippi and the largest 30-60 foot sailboat dealer in the U.S. For years, H & S has relied on ACT! contact management software to keep careful track of its list of prospects and customers.
Since it can sometimes take years for a customer to finalize plans for such a major purchase, it is imperative that H & S carefully tracks all of the details of every contact they have with every prospect. Keeping accurate records for those individuals who have previously made a purchase is equally important to providing the high level of customer service H & S customers have come to expect.
An essential requirement for H & S has been to assure that staff at each store has access to the most up-to-date contact information. Occasionally a prospect or customer will visit one of the other H & S stores, since inventory often differs from one store to the next. It is helpful for the sales manager at any store to be able to look up the record of a prospect or customer and immediately be aware of details essential to meeting the needs of that individual.
ACT! maintains a wide range of data important to both ongoing customer service, and the sales process; comments in the form of time- and date-stamped notes, history records such as copies of emails, proposals, price lists, letters and faxes, appointment calendar entries, and the myriad of details pertaining to the yacht being considered, or already purchased.
Years ago ACT! used a technique called "email synchronization" to keep each store's ACT! database up to date. Changes to contact records were transmitted from satellite stores to the main store, where they were merged into the master database. In a subsequent email transmission, the main store's database was then used to update each of the satellite stores. Although email sync was problematic, it was an affordable process with few alternatives.
Eventually the email synchronization process was replaced by "Internet Synchronization." Currently, H & S Yacht Sales relies on ACT! Premium for Workgroups and ACT! Premium for Web to keep all of its stores updated.
MeyerSoft, Phoenix, AZ, has equipped each store with its own "remote" database, which contains all the information it needs to enable the ACT! software to automatically connect by Internet to a master database installed on one of MeyerSoft's Web servers. The file server at each H & S store, triggered by the ACT! scheduler, is updated every hour with no user intervention. Users working in ACT! are unaware the synchronization process is taking place.
Will MacIntyre, H & S Sales Manager, say "We run a sales organization with 25-35 associates that have all been using ACT for some time. When we found Meyersoft we went through exhaustive testing both on line and in desk top versions. The technical support we receive has been exemplary! Our situation is fairly unique in that all of our users have their own systems and the hardware is anything but consistent. The patience MeyerSoft's staff had with our staff has been truly great!"
As Sal Casalnuovo, Marketing Coordinator for H & S, explains, "MeyerSoft was instrumental in helping us upgrade our old, semi-functional system to a new fully networked ACT! database in a timely manner. Our company depends on our salesmen and they in turn depend on their ACT! contact management system working 24x7 from the office or remotely. We thank MeyerSoft for a job well done!"
H & S Yachts staff can access their database using a Web browser. ACT! for Web presents a user interface nearly identical to the workstation version of ACT!. This provides H & S staff with "anytime, anywhere" access to their contact data.
A sales manager attending a show in New York City can return to the hotel room, bring up the H & S ACT! database using an Internet connection, enter sales leads acquired at the show, assign the leads to the appropriate sales reps, and those leads will be visible to the respective sales reps at each store within the hour.
The process of maintaining a master database on a Web server, for the purpose of maintaining synchronization with one or more remote databases, is called "ACT! Sync Hosting." Providing online access to the ACT! database using a Web browser is referred to as "ACT! Web Hosting", or "ACT! Web Access."
There are a number of companies who provide ACT! hosting services. H & S Yacht Sales has relied on MeyerSoft to convert all of their data to the new version of ACT!, and to set up ACT! Sync Hosting for each of their stores.
When a prospective customer is considering a purchase costing several hundred thousands of dollars, there are many decisions to make. Often the decisions are made jointly by husband and wife. Many details, features, requirements, and options will be considered and discussed, questions will be asked, and pros and cons brought into the picture, often over a period of months and years. Without a contact management solution like ACT!, a considerable amount of paperwork would be required to track all of this information. Sometimes handwritten notes are lost, are found to be illegible, or are difficult to update or correct. Finding an essential detail in a stack of paperwork requires painstaking time and effort. With ACT!, every detail concerning every contact with a prospect or customer is easily recorded from day one, and maintained in chronological order. If there was a particular discussion relative to a certain model number, the sales rep need only conduct a 'keyword search" for that model number and ACT! can, within seconds, find every reference to that model number in the entire database.
Suppose, for example that a sales rep learns of a yacht that has become available but cannot remember the names of persons who have expressed interest in being notified when that particular brand, model, and price turns up for sale. Using ACT!, the sales rep can instantly find all those persons who should be notified of the availability of that yacht.
H & S Yacht sales reps are now relying on ACT!-integrated Swift Page Email to keep their clientele informed of events, announcements, special pricing, and new arrivals. Swiftpage is an email marketing solution that provides tools to create email templates, or allows you to import your own, and to then send email mailings to your contacts directly from ACT! while tracking and reporting on all opens, clicks, bounces suppressed and more.
Today ACT! is the #1 selling contact and customer manager that helps salespersons throughout the world organize contact information, manage daily responsibilities, and communicate more effectively to improve your productivity. With over 2.7 million users and 41,000 corporate customers, ACT! is renowned for being easy to learn and use, and is an effective solution for anyone who regularly works with contacts.
For more information on ACT!, Swift Page Email, ACT! Hosting, and ACT! for Web, contact MeyerSoft, (602) 956-7975 or visit the MeyerSoft Web site at www.meyersoft.com.