Who have I touched?

A lot of my day is spent on the phone, talking to new people.  What a perfect fit for me, since I’m so good at talking and I generally love people, especially new ones!  Anyway, I do know my ACT! “stuff”, but as many professionals, it’s easy to let slip the practice of which I preach.  When I talk to someone new, I enter them in my ACT! database.  I fill in all my custom fields and important data.  Then, I record the History of my call, and schedule my Follow up.  Well, most of the time I schedule my follow up.  Sometimes the phone rings.  Yay, someone new to talk to!  I may have meant to schedule that follow up, but the moment is gone, and I’ve moved on. 

Every once in a while, it’s a good practice to go through your database to see who you’ve been neglecting.  The Contact Activity Lookup can help you get a handle on that.  If you click Lookup, then Contact Activity, you’ll see the dialog box here. 

I can look to see who has been, or in this case, who has NOT been changed since a particular date.  In other words, I’m going to see the list of all those people pining to hear from me.  For managers, this is a great exercise to go through with your Sales Reps.  If you have a Contact marked a Hot Prospect, but you haven’t talked to them or touched their Contact record in 6 months, should you adjust their Status, or at a minimum, check in with them? 

Once I have my list of “not toucheds”, I might add the ID/Status field to my Contact List View, sort and find my Prospects and start hitting the phones.  At a minimum, sifting through the list It’s easy to enter data and let it sit and gather dust in your database.  Instead, from time to time, use this great tool – Contact Activity lookup.