By VISIONS staff
The old saw “time is money” has never been as true as it is today for the folks in occupational health sales and marketing departments.
They are unsung heroes in every program, the multi-purpose utility players, always being yanked this way and that with less and less time to do their thing––bring in business. Hence, any tool that can save time and fuel efficiency becomes critical for them. An hour saved is a bonus hour to focus on direct sales.
Two core timesaving principles are to be impeccably organized and have ready access to relevant market information. This is where customer relationship management (CRM) software comes in.
CRM software traditionally offers the following features:
- A central database to manage marketing, sales leads, and prospects in process as well as customers
- An enhanced ability to manage individual productivity
- Tracking and forecasting
- Availability of marketing lists segmented by service offering, size, and territory
- Post-sale support
There is a vast array of formal and informal tools to help sales professionals prioritize their day. In general, these software options can be divided into three groups: generic relationship management support systems such as Act!, GoldMine, Salesforce, and others; the use of dedicated occupational health software such as SYSTOC or Agility Plus; or employing such tools such as Microsoft Excel or Word. Each option has strengths and advocates.
GENERIC SALES MANAGEMENT TOOLS
The assortment and versatility of sales contact management tools is growing. Many have new features like marketing support and email marketing capabilities. Act! and GoldMine have been the top picks for marketers for years. Salesforce, Sugar, Constant Contact, and simpler tools such as You Don’t Need a CRM and Mail Chimp also have loyal followers.
ACT!
Historically, Act! has been the industry’s go-to customer and contact management software system. As the granddaddy of them all (30 years and counting) Act! is popular because it is affordable and user-friendly. But marketers also like its calendar and client history functions and its platform for email marketing campaigns— up to 500 contacts with the basic system. Plus its mobile apps can now be accessed on smartphones and tablets.
Act! requires a monthly fee of about $10 per user for its most streamlined edition. (The lion’s share of Act! users are individuals or small groups.) Its Premium Cloud option, which includes technical support and video training, runs $35 per month per user.
According to Mr. Greg Davis, Act!’s distribution account manager and presales engineer, “We basically created the industry. We’ve had years to refine the product’s navigation capability and overall usability, while always striving to minimize clicks, which we do particularly well.”
Marilyn Trinkle, Silverton Health’s Director of Business Development and Business Health Services, in Woodburn, OR, is a long-time user and ardent Act! fan. She particularly likes the way it brings her entire sales team, as well as her client pool, into a common information base. “I find it helps our clients as well as our internal team be connected in a common database [and yet still] retain all of their own information as well. We also invite our clinicians to peruse the system; shared information is crucial.”
In terms of special add-on features, Ms. Trinkle values Act!’s ability to segment her database into smaller sub-groups so she can execute highly targeted marketing campaigns. “We import all sorts of lists into Act! and do numerous mail merges and eblasts, matching messages with a host of templates that we have stored in the system. I also like Act!’s ability to track information graphically.”
OVERVIEW: ACT! www.act.com
Act! Essentials (basic product, http://www.act.com/products/act-essentials): Subscriptions are $10 per month per user. This version offers only a fraction of the traditional Act! features but does include an online database and Emarketing capabilities. Tech support and maintenance are not included.
Act! Premium Cloud version:
Subscriptions are $35 per month per user. This offers more security, plus upgrades and tech support.
Act! Pro v18:
This version provides a variety of options. It’s designed for single users, but the database can be shared with up to ten.
Pricing Options:
- Annual subscription includes a perpetual license, i.e., you can walk away after a year and keep using the last version. The high end is $500 per user with loyalty pricing and volume discounts available.
- The annual subscription license is local on your computer and renewable annually. Renewal starts at $250 per user with loyalty pricing and volume discounts available.
- Act! Cloud, hosted by Swiftpage, is accessible over the internet with web browsers, and also renewable annually. Renewal is required for continued use of the product and costs approximately $350 annually.
Call: 866-873-2006
Free Trial: Act! Essentials:
https://mycloud.act.com/signup/
GOLDMINE
If Act! is Hertz, GoldMine is Avis. In that context, Act! tends to have more individual users whereas GoldMine is embraced more by corporate customers. Now 25 years old, this product does an excellent job eliminating redundancies, developing schedules, tracking calls and meetings, and managing follow-up activity. Gold Mine offers real-time reports and analytics, cross-selling leads, and lead
management.
According to Mr. Paul Petersen, vice president and general manager of GoldMine, the system “does an
outstanding job sharing information, creating audit trails, and sharing information across multiple users. GoldMine was designed originally as a team collaboration project.”
GoldMine tends to occupy its own niche, with a greater number of features at a higher cost than the more streamlined Act! but less than the more elaborate Salesforce.
OVERVIEW: GOLDMINE
www.GoldMine.com
Base Cost: The one to two-user version is $549 one time per user. This includes up to two licenses. Shared licenses for up to three simultaneous users include one year of support. There are also volume discounts for more users. GoldMine also includes a web for mobile devices as well as a subscription option for $55 per user per month.
Features: It’s designed to interact and merge with Constant Contact, includes customized filters and lists, and is especially good with large samples (1,000 or more) and campaign stats (how many were opened or bounced.)
A three-user bundle is $1797. GoldMine’s motto: “All the CRM you need at a competitive price.”
Call: 800-443-5457
Free Trial: http://info.GoldMine.com/acton/form/7090/0012:d-0001/1/index.htm
SALESFORCE
Salesforce is the world’s largest CRM app, offering a wider array of options than ACT! or GoldMine, albeit at a higher cost.
Ms. Barb Fagan, director of business development, and Ms. Donna Nash, lead accounts representative for Milwaukee-based Froedtert and the Medical College of Wisconsin, are both enthusiastic Salesforce users. Ms. Nash said Salesforce is user-friendly once you learn it and adaptable to any sales culture.
“It’s as simple and or complex as you want it to be; at the end of the day it depends on the needs of the user,” said Ms. Nash.
Ms. Fagan finds the system intuitive and simple with literally thousands of tutorials to help you master it. “We connect it with Outlook; we can send emails and our team’s calendars can be in synch,” noted Ms. Fagan. Although her program seldom requires customer support, she has found the support exceptional in the instances it was needed. “I was amazed by how much they knew about us from the start ––the excellent questions they posed to drill down to our needs and their ability to listen.”
OVERVIEW: SALESFORCE
www.salesforce.com
Base Cost: Numerous plans and options are available.
Premium Version: Their sales cloud provides charts, alerts, and leads and can be customized for auto-marketing and targeted companies.
“Leads and Sales cloud” – pipeline analysis, Twitter feed
Call: 800-667-6389
Trial/demo: https://www.salesforce.com/ form/signup/freetrial-sales.jsp
CONSTANT CONTACT
www.constantcontact.com
This program is intended to manage eMarketing by uploading lists and allowing the customer to create their own campaigns. Another feature is social media interfaces with platforms like Facebook. Considerable online training is available. The base price is $240 per year with a premium version available for $520 a year.
Call: 855-783-2308 or 855-797-4708
MAILCHIMP
www.mailchimp.com
MailChimp is another eMarketing tool similar to Constant Contact, but less costly. It provides links to LinkedIn and Twitter. There is no charge for Eblasts of less than 1,000 email addresses. A MailChimp subscription runs $199 a year.
Mr. David Negrete, formerly a sales associate for St. Charles, IL-based Tyler Medical Services, cut his teeth on Constant Contact but later transitioned to the less costly MailChimp without losing a beat. “I found that MailChimp was a great way to communicate with a database; it’s simple, clean, and user-friendly, yet as versatile as most of the big name products”
Using the contact management capabilities of popular occupational health program management software is an appealing alternative to using a dedicated CRM product. Both SYSTOC (UL) and Agility Plus (Net Health) offer such components.
According to Ms. Meg Kepner, a solutions consultant at UL, SYSTOC imbeds contact management features in their standard software. Although not as sophisticated or broad-based as the leading generic brand, SYSTOC does offer such features as utilization by salespersons, scheduling, and contact
histories. SYSTOC does not offer marketing capability per se but can facilitate letter generation that can be sent via U.S. mail or fax.
Mr. Kelley Schudy, vice president of sales at Net Health, said that their Agility OM product offers standard
access for each salesperson. As such, sales can document and report on productivity (meetings, calls, & presentations), pipelines, and follow-up activities. Major time savings are found using a single software when sales personnel can update company, contract, protocol, and pricing information and have it immediately available to practice and clinical staff without duplicate entry.
Renee Vandall, vice president of marketing for Net Health added that “smaller programs tend to use the
templates inherent in Agility OM for private conversations and to segment marketing messages.”
For many occupational health sales professionals, basic Microsoft products such as Excel or Word do the trick. Basic functions such as scheduling, client/prospect histories, and email marketing blasts can all be accomplished fairly easily and customized to the user’s preferences.
A note of caution: too much information may be as onerous as not enough, for time is money and time spent pouring over interesting but irrelevant data can usually be more effectively spent elsewhere. A large program with a robust professional sales/ marketing team is advised to invest in a formal contact management system; a single individual, in say a small rural market is likely to be better off using their occupational health program management software or core Microsoft products.
When it comes to sales and marketing, the well-organized bird gets the proverbial worm. Programs need to assess their contact information needs and to commit to a system that fits their culture and budget and smooths their sales management process.
After all, time is money.
Note – a downloadable free report reviewing the top 40 CRM’s is available at http://www.crmsoftwarereview.org/top-40-crm-software-vendors-v4.php?track=2744&traffic=GoogleSearch&keyword=crm
