Ideas for using Action Items

Purpose:  This document explains some general ideas for using Action Items in Account Manager.

Introduction:  Action Items can help you manage important calls and tasks.  They can be associated with Contacts or Accounts, and linked to existing Opportunities. Users can create Action Items for themselves or schedule them for others.  Multiple users can collaborate on one Action Item in working towards completion.

Background:  Click the “Help” button in the upper right corner of any AccountManager screen, and review the documentation under Activities > Action Items for information on how to create Action Items as well as the definitions of all the fields and options inside.

Ideas/Ways to use Action Items:

As a call report.  Your administrator can populate the options in the “Regarding” picklist.  If they make one of those options “Call Report”, users can select that on Action Items to document their notes from an account visit.  If there are actions to be taken as a result of the meeting, the Action Item can be left as “Open” and a future Follow Up Date applied to remind you to follow up.  If the notes don’t require any follow up, the Action Item can be marked “Closed” and the information will just be stored as historical information tied to the account.  In either case, you can use the “Forward Activity” button to send a summary of the notes to anyone outside your organization via email (i.e a principal, or distributor partner, etc that may be interested in the info).  Managers can also run an Activity Report, and select “Call Report” on the selection criteria screen to get a report of all Call Reports entered by the salesteam over a given period of time.

To qualify a new account.  For example, perhaps there is a new account in your area, inside of which you don’t have an existing relationship.  You could use an Action Item to document your efforts to penetrate the account, list the times you’ve left voicemails or dropped off literature or line cards, etc.  Each time, you could push the follow up date out a few weeks, so that eventually, it’ll bubble back up in your queue, if you haven’t had any response from anyone at the account.  If you do uncover some opportunities at the account, you can create opportunity profiles in AccountManager as appropriate, and even link your earlier Action Item to up to three of the opportunities as background information.

As an internal task (within your organization).  Action Items are helpful for managing internal tasks as well.  If you click the Help button as indicated int he Background section above, the screenshot example used in the user guide is of one person asking a colleague to prepare a Powerpoint presentation for them to use at a future meeting.  The two colleagues had some internal discussion, right on the Action Item, to clarify what the first person needed, and the second person attached the completed Powerpoint file right to the Action Item when it was ready.  

These are just a few examples of ways you can use Action Items for internal or external tasks, and benefit from the follow up capabilities of AccountManager!