ACT! Now to Improve Sales – Contact Management for the Modern Agent

During the summer of 2004, ISU Curry Insurance, a commercial insurance brokerage, was looking for a way to keep track of its 6,000 contacts.

The answer came with the introduction to an Act! consultant who unleashed the power from within the program. ISU Curry had no idea of the potential that Act! had in store. In the first year of its use, ISU Curry produced $6,000,000 in new business premium alone. This is largely credited to Act!

What is Act!?

Act! is a contact management program designed to help manage and grow a business through contact/prospect management, scheduling, reports, and activity tracking. With everything from scheduling client calls or letters, to running reports, Act! can be customized to complete almost any task.

Some of the fields have been customized to list specific insurance data such as Xmod, Expiration Date, Current Agent and Carrier. There are hundreds of programs available; however, with over 15 years of watching its effectiveness, Act! is the best selling contact management software on the market to date.

Add-ons to help you

There are all kinds of add-ons to be considered when purchasing Act! Some are sold by Act! and others are sold by vendors. One worth mentioning is Cardscan, great for instant scanning of business cards automatically into Act!

Another is AddressGrabber Business by Act! which will allow you to highlight an e-mail address and with a single click, automatically extract a contact’s Company, Title, Street Address, City, State, Zip, Phone, Fax and E-mail fields and accurately transfer them into Act! For a complete listing of add-on vendors go to http://www.actaddons.com.

An important fact to note is that Act! does not interface with insurance agency management software. Instead, Act! is best used separately as a sales and organizational tool to generate clients that can then be added to any management program. Most insurance management programs come with some type of contact database program, but most are very limited. Act! is in the business of producing the best program of its industry and it shows.

Maximizing its use

The real power of Act! comes from its ability to be fully customized. Right down to the fields and tabs, Act! can be customized to the exact fields an agency needs. All of these fields are searchable, which allows for specific searches such as: “customers with workers’ comp expiration dates of July with Xmods higher than 125 and more than 50 employees.”

As long as the specific data has been acquired from a purchased list, or entered in by an agent, all searchable are only a mouse click away. Agents can use Act! templates to create personalized sales letters to prospects, and use the reminder feature to automatically print follow-up letters.

Act! consultants

If you need help customizing your database, look for a certified Act! consultant in your area. Act! Certified Consultants are independent of Best Software, producers of ACT!, but have been trained and certified to install, customize and network ACT!

A complete listing of these consultants and trainers can be found on the ACT! Web site: www.act.com/partners. To fully maximize its use, getting training from an Act! Premier Trainer is key. They can show you all the tricks and productivity features to make Act! work for you.

Taking Act! on the road

Act! can be synchronized with your Palm/Pocket PC, Blackberry or laptop. Have it with you when you are visiting your clients to review their information and schedule follow-up activities.

Sales opportunities

This feature in Act! will allow you to manage your potential and closed deals. Act! can print graphs and a sales pipeline to show management or the sales team how many policies are in the pipeline and their status (waiting for quote/approval etc.).

Getting results

Using contact management software like Act! is best used in a commercial insurance agent’s office. Act! recognizes the importance of tracking renewals of clients’ policies or important dates of commercial accounts.

Personal lines accounts are simply entered into the agency management system and can be easily forgotten. If a commercial broker forgets an important renewal date for a prospect, the agency may lose its chance to take the prospect to the market.

With Act! at your fingertips, there is a complete history of previous calls, letters, all of the client information, and notes on exactly what was said the last time contact was made.

Never forget an appointment again

The Calendar feature can be utilized by creating an appointment with a direct link to the prospect information. With a slight jingle, an alarm can notify an agent of an important Broker of Record they promised to request from a prospect, while automatically printing out the letter. From a management level, the calendar can also be shared so that the office manager can see just what all of the producers are working on, and what might need to be added to the pipeline.

Using Act! in an agency is a win-win situation. Once all its strengths and options are fully explored and utilized, Act! can take your agency to the next level of success. To get Act! go to: www.act.com which provides a variety of packages starting at $229 per user, AddressGrabber Business for Act! $129 at www.egrabber.com, and Cardscan from www.cardscan.com starting at $125.

Michael Curry has 15 years of experience as a computer consultant for the insurance industry and is president of Curry Computer Technology in Pasadena, California. Curry is also president of Offsite Backups, catering to the backup needs of agencies. He can be reached at michael@currytech.com.