Leveraging technology to advance business processes is Lineson specialty.  ACT! Contact and Customer Manager is the most popular solution for any industrial, contractor or construction sales force. 

Key Tools

ACT! Contact Management

Contact Management is the key technology application of the sales chain in the industrial and contractor supply market.  Sales reps and managers for factories, reps or distributors will benefit with the implementation of a robust contact management solution.  ACT! the the number one selling contact and customer manager solution. 

With extensive experience in the real world application of ACT!, Lineson provides manufacturers, reps and distributors with ACT! training, solutions and implementations. 

Setting up ACT! for Multi Lines Call Reports

Generating call reports for your product lines is a time consuming activity that is dubious in its value, however, many manufacturers are persistent in their demand for reports.  If your firm is using ACT! to manage your contacts and sales calls it is easy to generate reports for your manufacturers without creating additional work for yourself.  A note of caution, you should already be using ACT! to setup your appointments and make your calls. 

Recording calls on a particular customer will not work when reps handle multiple lines.  Running a report this way will include all activity for all lines, not something you would want your other manufacturers to know. 

The answer lies in setting up a contact unique to each manufacturer.  Consider a rep firm with three lines, Line Alpha, Inc. Line Beta, Inc. and Line Charlie LLC.  Hopefully the firm will have many customers that buy a combination of these lines, however, when generating reports for Line Alpha, you don't want to include results for Line Beta.  Create a unique code for each line, e.g. LINEA, LINEB, and LINEC.  These codes will be the first name in the contact field, for the last name use the manufacturers account number for the customer.  To keep a simple listing of prospects just record the first name for the line the customer is a prospect for, add the account number as a last name after you have closed the sale.  For example,

This way, assuming your reps have been using ACT! to record their sales calls, phone calls, quotes, emails and opportunities, just lookup the first name for the line and run a report.  Notes/History works well, just enter the dates for the report and you are good to go.