As a Sage Certified Trainer, I have worked with many companies to train end users.  I have learned some important patterns to be taught and reinforced for continued success of CRM within an organization.   When I do pre-planned follow-up refresher training with companies, I can tell how well the following items have been incorporated as best practices for Sage SalesLogix while working with the users.

1.  How to enter new (unique) Accounts/Contacts following your company’s business rules. Notice I said unique not duplicates!

2.  How to record Sales activities, either scheduled or unscheduled, as History in Sage SalesLogix. By the way, I didn’t say enter “notes” in Sage SalesLogix.  A small but high impact decision I see users make is using the “add note” feature instead of recording the activity properly as a phone call or meeting. These notes do not show up as completed sales activities when running activity reports out of SalesLogix.  It is the small things that matter over time!

3.  How to record e-mails to History in Sage SalesLogix. This is extremely powerful integration yet an under utilized feature of Sage SalesLogix for newbies. I think a misconception may exist with untrained  users that they somehow lose an e-mail item from their Outlook sent items. This is simply not true. I also see an over dependence on Outlook; somehow people believe it is a CRM. Users must learn to trust Sage SalesLogix to record these e-mails and then how to quickly filter and search for something in the Notes/History area.

4.  How to keep data clean and update records to match your business processes. What happens when an Account goes out of business or a Contact leaves an Account? Do your users know what you expect them to do with the record to reflect those changes? Communicate often with your users and develop groups for them to meet goals and expectations,  like those Contacts with no e-mails, etc.

Call us to discuss Sage SalesLogix training and ways to reinforce best practices in the use of Sage SalesLogix.  Just like in sports, it is important to understand the fundamentals and drill them often to form automatic habits.