MRSware Documentation - MRSware Sales and Commissions

Be Prepared, Be Professional, Be Productive

2/16/2016

In July of 2008 I wrote a blog - "Jack Berman's Call Organizer" - about the way I used to prepare for sales calls when I was a manufacturers representative. In the blog I talk about how and why I did this and how successful it was for me.

What I forgot to mention is the time it took to do the preparation. Jack told us (1991, CPMR 101 students) it should take about 15 minutes per call. It often took me much longer to prepare for a call. Here are the steps I took initially:

* went over each manufacturer's reports for sales numbers TY vs LY
* went over each manufacturer's reports (if available) to see what SKU's they were buying
* tried to remember what we talked about the last time we met or talked
* wrote down what I wanted to accomplish during the meeting

Over time the steps changed slightly:

4 Ways to Filter your Lists, by Example

10/2/2015

There are several handy ways to filter the listings in MRSware to show just the information you are interested in at the moment.

Here is a little summary of the options in the form of a usage example for each:

Closed Opportunities, Expenses and Revenue from Project Printout

8/26/2015

The Project Printout report -- a report that is run for an individual Project, summarizing that entry and its linked items -- can optionally include some totals from those linked items. Total costs vs. revenue, and the deal close rate give valuable insight to the profitability of a project.

Tracking Your Accounts through Phases using Types: Give Your Team a Hint

11/24/2014

Types are the broadest definition of your contacts, each contact or company having a single Type that defines them as they flow through the processes in your CRM system. Typically this will look something like "Unqualified Lead" as they come in from a trade show or conference, progressing to a "Qualified Lead" state and then either "Lost Lead" or "Prospect". As the relationship with that company continues, hopefully they continue to a stage of "Customer". They might even continue through that stage to a Type of "Former Customer".

Ranking Customers and Prospects in MRSware

10/15/2014

Question: Can I rank my customers and prospects A, B, or C in MRSware?

Answer: Yes, by setting up and assigning categories to the customers and prospects.

Here's how:

1. Create the categories A, B, C in Companies/Contacts.
Setting up Categories

2. Assign categories A, B, C to Customers and Prospects.
There are a couple of different methods of assigning categories.

Company's Activity Lists Now Showing Invoices

4/23/2012

Activity lists appear in Company cards, Contact cards, Projects, and Campaigns in MRSware. These lists may contain journals, tasks, opportunities, appointments, campaigns and/or e-mails.

Company/Contact Name "Matches" (green) and 'Matches' (red) squiggly lines

4/23/2012

Throughout MRSware you have the ability to type a company or contact name into a variety of Contact fields: Company cards, Contact cards, Contact selectors in Journals, Projects, Appointments, Tasks, Opportunities, Campaigns, Invoices, E-mail To fields, as well as the Contact Selector fields you use to link companies and contacts to Journals, Appointments, Projects, etc., and Search fields All these fields not only offer Auto Complete options, but also offer a text control with context sensitive hints.

What this means is that if you type in part of a name and click on the Tab or Enter key, the system will finish filling out the name for you (Auto Complete). However, when there is more than one match or if there is no match in the system for the name you typed in, then you will see a squiggly colored line under the name (Text control with context sensitive hints).
Below are examples of text control with context sensitive hints and how to use these hints.

Bulk Update a Company's Contacts' Addresses

4/12/2012

In addition to being able to bulk update the categories for all of a company's contacts, you can also bulk update the addresses for all of a company's contacts.

Here's how:

1. open a company card
2. change the address in the Address field in the Company tab
3. click on Save and Close
4. re-open the company card
5. click on the Contacts tab
6. select all of the contacts (click on the first contact, hold down the Shift key, click on the last contact) or multi-select a few contacts (click on one of the contacts, hold down the Ctrl key, click on the other contacts you want to change)
7. right click on one of the contacts and select Update Addresses
8. click Yes when asked if you want to continue

Open iCalendar (.ics) files in MRSware Calendar

9/24/2011

iCalendar is a standardized format for saving, sending, and sharing calendar appointments between software applications. MRSware support opening and adding iCalendar (.ics extension) files to the MRSware Calendar. You can also send iCal files from MRSware to your external partners, mobile devices, an anywhere else you would like to have that appointment's details.

Creating Customer in all CAPS is not necessary

3/5/2011

We still see MRSware Users entering customers and other data in all capital letters into their systems. I believe this is a practice that started with some older accounting system, some of which required (or at least made it easier) for various reasons to enter customer or sales reps in all capital letters. It is not necessary to enter any type of Company or Contact in all capital letters in MRSware.

The searches, auto-completes, and filters all work correctly regardless of the case. Since it works both ways, you are certainly free to enter your companies and contact however you like them to appear... Just keep in mind that MRSware is a contact relationship management system, from which you will be sending e-mails, newsletters, or other marketing materials. It may be odd to send out those things with everything in capitals all the time.

Hide & Mark Hidden

9/15/2010

Each Company and Contact has a check box on the main tab called "Hide". The function of this is to hide the Company/Contact from their Listing. This is an easy/simple way to sub-divide contacts in the listing to remove the least-accessed ones, so that the list loads faster and is less cluttered. When you want to see the hidden contacts again, select "Contacts" -> "Show Hidden" from the menu, which will load the entire list including the ones marked with Hide.

Examples:

We import large Lead lists for shows we attend. We want them in the system to send them our email marketing pieces, track which campaigns/shows they were a part of, and promote them to Qualified Leads when appropriate. However, we don't want to see all of these (thousands) of leads each time we go to our listing, so we mark them as hidden and only pull them up when needed.

We have inactive Customers that we don't need to interact with regularly (but we certainly don't want to lose their history), so we mark them as hidden from the list.

Other areas the Hide option effects:

Search
Users can choose to include or not include hidden companies/contacts in their search results by checking/unchecking the "Include Hidden" box.

Customer Listing
Companies that are of type Customer that are hidden, are also hidden in the Customer Listing. To show the Customer in the Customer Listing, select the "Show Hidden" option in the "Customers" menu.

Reporting
Many of the Sales and Commissions reports can be run with or without the hidden customers. This allows for a more concise report that only contains active customers in it.

Bulk Update Hidden

Companies and Contacts can be multi-selected in the Company/Contact Listings and assigned or unassigned the Hide option all at once. Multi-select your contacts, then right-click on a selected on and choose "Bulk" -> "Update Hidden".

History - data history - to retain or not to retain?

12/1/2009

We are often asked how to delete data - a customer who has gone out of business or a manufacturer who is no longer represented – from MRSware. This is a thorny issue, one that has repercussions beyond the information appearing in a current report.

Should you retain the data or should it be deleted from your MRSware system? Let's look at the issue from both sides.

Safeguards for accidentally deleting content in MRSware

6/21/2009

Q: It occurred to me as I am telling the team that they are now supposed to do their own updating on contacts and customers that someone might have the potential to blow up a major file. What are the backup systems for our files on MRSware?

Appointments, Journals, Tasks oh my! Which to use and when

4/16/2009

Appointments, Journals, and Tasks are all part of the greater Activity Tracking system in MRSware. While each has its own niche, they do overlap in some aspects, and purposefully so. What we are going to talk about here is our recommendations for the use of each and how we designed MRSware around there concepts... Each company, of course, is welcome to use them in the way which most fits their style, business, and reporting needs.

Journals are Call Reports, Notes, Phone Call Logs

4/16/2009

The Journal is a versatile tool for keeping organized notes and activity records. Users can certainly keep the same information in the general Notes section of a Contact, but the advantages of a Journal entry instead are several-fold and very powerful:

Journals are searchable: by Contact, by Date, by Subject, by Category. This allows the User to pull a set of journals for a particular Customer to see what has been going on at that location, or pull a report for a Manufacturer to let them know the amount of activity taking place on their behalf in the field.
Journals are organized by date. What you get is a list that is defaultly sorted by date, resulting in a chronological order of touches with the contact. This makes it very easy to keep up to date on a wider range of contact activities, as well as provides a quick way to look at a contact before a planned visit or call. Additionally, the Journals are intermingled by date with other activities in the Activities tab, so that you get the overall, chronologically-ordered picture of what is taking place.

Relationship Management

3/26/2009

Relationship Management is essential to a successful enterprise in normal business times, however in a downturn, the established relationships that are flourishing and new ones just beginning become critical to the continued growth of your company. All of the information you need is in your Relationship Database.

Once you realize what the power of a Relationship Database can do for your company, and how and where to build one, (see “The Power of the “R” in CRM”) you need to harness the force of the information you’ve gathered. Using Report Explorer and Data Analysis along with the Search, sort and filter tools built into MRSware provides you, the user, with many avenues to travel for the information you need to succeed.

Bulk Update Types

2/9/2009

Users can update the System Type on multiple Contacts (or Companies) all at the same time:

1) Go to the Contact Listing (or Companies), or use the Search → Contacts menu option to pull up a list you are interested in. Filter and sort that list as desired to find the group you want to update.

2) Multi-select the Contacts, then right-click on any selected contact and choose Bulk → Update Types.

Manage Contact Types

2/9/2009

Users with the appropriate permissions can edit existing, add new, and delete unused System Types. All of these functions are performed by accessing the Manage Contact Types from the Go To menu.

Bulk Update Contacts' Categories

10/27/2008

Users can assign Categories to the Contacts working at several Companies all at once. From the Company Listing:

Multi-select the Companies whose Contacts you want to assign your Category to.
Right-click and select "Bulk" → "Update Contacts' Categories".
Check all the Categories from the list that you want to assign to the Contacts.
Click "Save".

This is the same function that is available from the Contacts Listing; however, being able to assign the category from the Company Listing allows the User to keep the Contacts and Companies in better sync.

Here are some examples on what this feature can be used for:

a) I want to send out a product promotion to all of my distributor sales reps from one of my buying groups. The buying groups are in the categories, but are currently only maintained at the company level. Let's bulk update the categories for all of those companies' contacts to move the category down to the contacts level. Now from here, I can do a combined search on the Job Title field, along with my buying group category, and get the exact distribution list I am looking for.

b) I have all of my customers assigned to me via a category in the company listing. I want to copy that category over to the individuals at those customers, so that I can synchronize them to my phone. Bulk update the contacts' categories to assign your sync category, then synchronize away to get them all down to your phone.

Contact Import User Manual

10/13/2008

The Contact Import User Manual provides instruction on how to use the Contact Import Wizard. The Contact Import Wizard automates the process of importing contacts and companies stored in other software packages into MRSware.

Contact Import User Manual

Because MRSware is not a static entity, parts of the User Manual may be out of date. Check back periodically to view the new additions and changes to the User Manual.

Creating one company-wide, "master" database of contact and companies

6/16/2008

One of the typical challenges/projects we see when a new customer comes on board with MRSware is the creation of one company-wide company and contact list that everyone can use. The challenge part is that the source of this new "master list" is found in multiple, previously individually kept contact lists from various programs that the inside staff, outside field, accounting department, etc. kept. This makes many sources of the information, all of which will have different information, whether it is just names of contacts and companies spelled differently, or entirely different (or missing) address, phone numbers, e-mails, et. al.

So what do we do about all these sources and differing information? We work at it. It is going to be an iterative process of working through the lists to bring them together. Some of the tools you will use along the way include those built into your existing contact program (the source of the list), Excel, and tools we have built into MRSware.

Following is a short list of a couple of the tools and features to use, and when to use them:

Printing Journal entries

6/12/2008

Users can print Journals in Excel, PDF, and a couple of other formats through the standard reporting engine. Use the "Run Journal Printout Report" button on the button bar of the Journal entry to print it.

Generate a list of customers with contacts for a particular manufacturer

6/11/2008

Question

How do I get a list of customers for one of my manufacturers that also includes the contacts at those various customers?

Answer

You can use the Contact Export Wizard to do this:

1. Click on "File" → "Export" → "Contact Export Wizard".
2. Check the box that says "Customers" on the Search Options (first) page. Press Next.
3. Fill in the Principals name. Press Next.
4. On the Export Criteria page, make sure "Both Companies and Contacts" is selected at the top. Check the box that says "Include contacts for matching companies" near the bottom. Press Next.
5. Continue through the wizard until you get to the Export Destinations page. Enter the file name you want to create and press Finish.

This creates and opens a spreadsheet file that contains all of the companies and contacts for the selected manufacturer. You can play around with the various options in the wizard to further filter down your results as needed. For example, you might run this for a particular sales rep, or geography.

Assigning Categories

6/10/2008

Categories are attributes created and assigned by you to aid in searches. In CRM you will find categories in Appointments, Companies, Contacts, Journals and Tasks. Categories may be assigned individually or in bulk. Below are the instructions to assign categories in bulk.

1. Click on Companies or Contacts in the Shortcut Bar.
You can also use the Search → Companies feature to search for a specific group of companies to assign a category to.

2. Once the list opens multi select (CTRL + left click) the Companies/Contacts for the new Category.

3. Right click on one of the selected Companies/Contacts → Bulk → Update Categories

The Bulk Edit Categories window will open.

*** If the categories are already listed in the Categories table:

4. Check all of the categories that apply to the companies you selected.

5. When finished, click "Save".

*** If the categories are not shown in the Categories table, you will have to Create your categories before you assign them.

CRM is the cornerstone of any company

6/8/2008

Contact Relationship Management (CRM) is the foundation upon which any company builds their business. The foundation should include and support the entire company. All the basic functions of a company - a master database of Companies, Contacts, Calendars, Journals, Tasks, E-mail communications - should all be captured within your CRM application. All of this information should be accessible in one, single, central location for all employees anytime and anywhere they need it.