You can add any type of file as a document in your Address Book Entries, Opportunities, Customer Service Cases and Campaigns.

To add a document to an entry:

• Select the entry that you want to add the document to.
• Select the Documents window.
• On the Home tab, select Insert a File from the Insert/Print group.

– or –

• In the Documents window, right-click and select Insert File. Specify the properties such as Name, Owner and Description.
• Click Browse and browse to the location of the file and select Open.

Maximizer’s predominant focus is on Address Book entries—Companies, Individuals and Contacts. Address Book entries can also be designated as sales leads to help you organize your information. The Address Book window gives you the ability to manage your daily activities with companies, and the people who work for them.

In addition to the basic Address Book information, including addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses, you can record other important information, such as relationships between companies or extra details, like the business type. As you work with the Address Book entries in your Maximizer Address Book you can keep notes on your activities so that you can always have a history of your activities with your customers.

There are three types of Address Book entries in Maximizer:

Companies – Entries that represent corporate entities such as businesses, associations or organizations.
Individuals – Entries that represent single, key people, like self-employed professionals or entrepreneurs. These entries are not associated with Companies.
Contacts – Entries that represent the people attached to Companies or Individuals. These entries refer to the people inside organizations.

Companies and Individuals can exist on their own in an Address Book. Contacts are always attached to other Company or Individual entries.

A quick and easy way to manage assigned tasks to colleagues is via the task scheduler in Maximizer. You can assign tasks and also follow up on them to make sure they have been completed. Try it now. Right click on a contact in the contact window. Select Schedule and then select To Do. This will open a dialogue box which allows you to detail the time and the task (like please make me some coffee sweetie!)

To assign the task to a colleague you must select the option Assigned To: and then choose their name. You can also follow up on the task status by selecting the Hotlist from the icon bar on the left of the screen and selecting their Hotlist Window. If their name does not appear that means that they have not given you permission to assign tasks to them (eysh, sorry for you, you will have to make that cup yourself. I am sure that if you ask them nicely however they will share their hotlist with you.

The automated campaign in Maximizer Enterprise can send to either e-mail or fax recipients. We suggest using an e-mail to fax service for a fax campaign to make it faster than using a normal fax modem.

In both cases, you begin with a template. This is set up once you have clicked on Marketing and then on the Campaign icon to open up the campaign window. Place your mouse pointer in the window and click the right button to access the menu. Choose Add Automated Campaign template.

Now you are presented with a step by step set of windows to guide you through creating the template. In the first window, Click on Add and give your template a name. The first time you use this function, you will create a unique template, thereafter, you can use that same template to be the basis of new ones. You can also give the template a description, then click OK.

Then click Next to move to the Campaign Activities windows. Again, click Add, choose either e-mail or Fax. The next window will be titled according to the choice you made. Here I will go through the e-mail activity. Give the activity a name, description and E-mail subject. You also need to give it a Start Time and Delay Start (if required). The Landing Page URL will be the page that links directly onto your website for recipients to gain more information. Next you need to select the Message Body File. Click on this button and you are now able to find the existing HTML file that you may have created in FrontPage™ or actually create the message body in Maximizer’s editor. What is the difference?

The HTML file does not enable you to merge information from your Maximizer database without programming support. The Maximizer Editor does allow for merging of information, however font support is limited. We have found Word HTML documents to be clumsy and larger than FrontPage™’s, but merges can be done. The choice is yours and depends on the effects that you want.

Creating the document in Maximizer’s editor means that you have all of the usual UDFs available and you can do a really focussed document. We use this solution for marketing mail shots, whereas this newsletter is done in FrontPage™.

Once you have created and saved your document, it will appear in the Message Body Library window from where you went to create it. If the document already existed, then you will have clicked on Import and found it on your server. Now click on OK to bring it into the Activity window. To put in the sender’s information, click on the Email Addresses tab. Here you put in the information for the sender and the address to reply to, as well as the cc and bcc recipients. Attachments can be added as well on the last tab. When you are complete, click on OK.

The activity will now show in the activity window – note that you can have multiple activities for a campaign if you require. Click Next. This brings you to the Save window and gives you the option to create a campaign from the template. For now, just click on Finish.

The second part of the Automated Campaign is the list of recipients. To set this up, return to your address book and decide on the User Defined Field (UDF) that you wish to use for this list. For instance, we use the UDF newsletter, which is a table with two options, Subscribe and Unsubscribe to decide who receives the newsletter. Once you have the UDF set up and have indicated which people (Contacts) qualify, then you need to do a Search for them. Click on Search | All Fields and find the UDF, tick it and click the appropriate choice. Click OK and make sure that Contacts and Individuals are selected. Click on Catalog and create a new catalog entry with the campaign name as its title – this means that you can update the search in future. Click OK twice to begin the search. Once it is completed, select all the entries, check that they all have email addresses, select them (EXCLUDING ANY THAT DO NOT) and save them as a Favourite List with the campaign name as the list name.

Return to the Campaign and select Add Automated Campaign by right clicking. You now have two choices Fixed Date or Ongoing. If you have multiple activities in your template, it will be the latter, otherwise stay with the former. Click Next. Choose the template that you want to use in the campaign, put in a budget figure and expected revenue and click Next. Now you are to choose whom to send the campaign to – select your Favourite list and click Next. Give the campaign a start date and click Next. You now have the option to validate your email addresses before clicking on Finish.

Note – it is important to leave Maximizer open to run the campaign!

From our experience in helping companies with their CRM systems we can say that the single biggest IT stress in a business is caused by the lack of a backup when it is needed most. Electronic equipment can fail, software can get corrupted and computers can get stolen or damaged, all of which can result in the loss of your precious customer data. Typically, when this situation arises there hasn’t been someone assigned the responsibility of doing the backups with the result that a lot of finger-pointing goes on while the stark realization that the last backup done 2 years ago sinks in.

Backing up the Maximizer database is very easy. In most cases select FILE and then select QUICK BACKUP. That’s it. If that option is not available it means that the backups are being managed on the server using MS SQL and you will need to check with your IT manager that they are being backed up properly. Backups should ideally be done every day and in addition to backing up to a local hard drive a copy of the backup should be taken off-site as well. If it’s too much of a bind to take a backup off-site every day then take one at least once weekly, bearing in mind though that the more often you take backups the easier it will be to recover from a disastrous loss of data at the office. Designating a person to manage the backups is of paramount importance and it is a big responsibility as they will be held accountable for your company’s confidential data at all times. There are also numerous companies that offer a secure offsite backup service and another option is backing up your data to an online service, if you have the available bandwidth to do so.

Your Maximizer CRM system has a calendar and diary manager and will send out appointment reminders when you create a meeting in Maximizer. You will need to set that feature up though and this is how you do it: Firstly, at the top of the screen select file and then preferences. Then select the tab marked calendar/hotlist. In the box marked options the last option asks if you would like to send out email appointment reminders. Choose your option and click ok to save and close. That’s it! Maybe you could test it by setting up an appointment in Maximizer to invite me to lunch!

The Calendar window allows you to schedule and view your appointments. You can also see when others are busy or out of the office and you can view other users’ calendars if you’ve been given permission to do so. Creating appointments is easy – just right-click in the Calendar window and choose Add Appointment. You can also easily create an appointment for an Address Book entry by dragging the entry to the Calendar window icon. Another way of doing this is by right-clicking on a contact in the Maximizer Contact Window which will then give you the option to create an appointment.

A very welcome feature in Maximizer is the Colouring Rule. This feature allows you to link user defined fields to address book entries and depending on the value the text will change colour. An example would be the category of client or even the product they buy from you. To access this feature Select SETUP on the menu bar and then click on the Colouring Rule Option.

One of my favourite features in Maximizer is the ability to create your own column views. A column view is the way Maximizer presents information to you in the main address book view. To select different views you would click on the drop down arrow next to the COLUMN VIEW window. See below:
Maximizer

Here you are presented with a list of views. To create your own view, all you have to do is is click on the icon to the right of the drop down button – the COLUMN SETUP ICON. That will open up a dialogue box which then allows you to create new column setups. You can have up to 99 columns!!!

Did you know that warm water freezes faster than cold water under certain conditions? I am told that although this is certainly true there are numerous inconclusive scientific theories to explain just why. So what has that got to do with Maximizer? Absolutely nothing actually, unless you want to share this information with your colleagues, in which case Maximizer’s Company Library is the best place to do this.
Maximizer

The Company Library is a great place to store useful company-related information to make it easily accessible to all Maximizer users. The company library is accessed from the Icon bar on the left – click on it and a Windows style tree view becomes visible. You can create new folders by simply right-clicking on the root folder and selecting Folder. Give the new folder a name and then right click on that. You can now add documents to that folder. The documents can be in any format you like, from PDF’s to Excel spreadsheets to MP3s. The sky’s the limit and to date I’ve found that there’s not much you can’t do in the Company Library, so try it out if you haven’t done so already.

Good Customer Service is the challenge of every business. You only have to visit www.hellopeter.com to realise how this challenge is a bar too high for many SA businesses – not every time, but you are only as good as your last customer service call!

Maximizer Enterprise assists in addressing this problem through the built-in Customer Service module. There are two aspects to it – the incident capture and the knowledge base. The incident capture, which is the Customer Service area, enables a responder to the incoming call, e-mail, fax or angry customer coming into the premises, to log the call with all appropriate details. Depending on your business, serial numbers can be logged; equipment types; everything right down to the problem category.

The case is then assigned to a responsible person for action or sent to the appropriate case owner for assignation. Completion dates can be set and this date will generate an e-mail to the owner of the case and the person responsible for solving it warning them that it is still outstanding. This notification happens the day before!

Once the case is resolved, the how of the resolution has to be entered as well as how long it took. This information can then be placed in the Knowledge Base for future reference. This side builds up a searchable database of documents, which can be used for new cases. We have used this often to resolve recurring problems, with a marked decrease in downtime. Customer Service can be set up to calculate the cost of the job and everything can be copied and pasted into the invoice on the job’s completion.

The Customer Service module in Maximizer provides a great way for your support staff to acknowledge a customer’s request for assistance. Once logged in Maximizer the Customer Service module will automatically send the customer an email, quoting a reference number and the details of the call that they made. The Customer Service module will then ensure that the call is followed internally in your business by chasing the assigned staff member until they either run screaming out the front door or do the task. We are pleased to report that our research indicates that support staff happily attend to the task rather.

A really cool feature in Maximizer is the ability to customise the whole GUI (that’s Graphical User Interface). You can change the background colour and font type, colour and size for all your Maximizer windows.

To do this, select the SETUP tab, select WINDOW > WINDOW SETTINGS from the Workspace group and choose SET COLOUR or SET FONT. Get creative and if you find you have overdone it click on RESET DEFAULT LAYOUT to undo the madness and get you back to normality.

By viewing real-time snapshots of departmental and company performance through Maximizer CRM dashboards, executives and managers can adjust tactics or resources quickly. Easy to set up and modify, key performance indicators are displayed in the formats of your choice.

You can get to see results at a glance and they are displayed in charts, gauges, thermometers and LED-styles that allow you to enhance your insight further by clicking on the dashboard indicator to view the data behind the metrics. This data can then be formatted, sorted and exported to MS Excel if needed.

A very useful feature of Maximizer is that of default entries for the Address Book, Opportunities and Customer Service windows. They are particularly useful for creating new entries whereby fields specified in the default entry are pre-populated for you. For example, if you know that all of the Address Book entries for a particular database will have the same city and province you can specify these fields in the default entry for the Address Book. Default entries are also user-specific so each user can have different default entries for a particular database.

To modify a default entry:
1. On the Setup tab, select Default Entry from the Default Entry group.
2. Specify default values for fields in the Basic Information and User-Defined Fields tabs. For the Opportunity window default entry you can also select the Sales Plan and Competitors & Partners tabs to specify more default fields. Similarly, for the Customer Service Case window default entry, you can also select the Solution Information & Billing tab to specify more default fields.
3. Click OK to save the changes to the default entry.

You can quickly draw a map showing the location of a customer’s address stored in Maximizer’s Address Book or of the Address Book entry associated with an Opportunity or Customer Service Case. You get to choose to view only the location of the entry or you can view directions to or from the customer’s address and your current address.

To draw a map of an Address Book entry:
• Select an Address Book entry, opportunity, or customer service case.
• On the View tab, select Map from the Show group.
• The Draw a Map dialog box opens displaying the address of the current Address Book entry in your web browser.
• Under Draw this type of map, select the type of map that you want to view. You can choose the following types of maps:
™ Map of selected entry only.
™ Map of travel route from current address to selected entry.
™ Map of travel route from selected entry to current address.
If necessary, enter your address in the Current address fields. Click OK.
• A new browser window opens to a page displaying the address for the map.
• Choose an online map site, being either Google Maps or Microsoft Live Search Maps currently. Click OK.
• NB: The ‘map’ function will only provide you with the correct directions if the Address Book entry has a physical address and you are connected to the internet.

A super cool feature in Maximizer which can be used every day to ensure good data integrity is the duplicate checking function. It will check and display any duplicate records in the database and works by checking selected columns in your main address book view. You can try it now by selecting a column and then going to the menu item Search. One of the options available to you is Check Duplicates. Click on it and it will display all your duplicates. Keching!!

You can easily create email templates that can then be re-used to send to as many different Address Book entries as you wish at different times. An email template can include merge fields that are populated with information from the selected Address Book entries. You can also use these templates when sending e-mail messages to Address Book entries associated with selected Opportunities or Customer Service Cases.

An email template can be created via the Compose Email Message dialogue box whenever you compose a new email message. If you want to add Merge Fields to this email template you will first need to select the Address Book entries, Opportunities or Customer Service Cases you wish to send the mail to and then select the email message to be sent separately to your selected entries.

To create an email template:

1. From the Address Book, Opportunities or Customer Service window, select the entries to send the email to.

2. On the Home tab, select Email from the Write group.

Depending on your email preferences, the Send Email dialogue box may open. For information on the options in the Send Email dialogue box, see Send Email Options.

If you want to add merge Fields to your email template, you must select both the All entries and Separately options in the Send Email dialog box.

3. Compose the text of the email message.
You can compose the email message in HTML or in plain text and you can use the formatting toolbar to apply additional formatting to the email text.

4. Select Merge Fields from the Insert group to insert Merge Fields in your template.

5. Select Email Template from the Insert group.

The HTML Email Templates or Text Email Templates dialogue box opens.

6. Click Add to add a new email template and enter a name, description and owner for the template and click OK. To reuse this template in the future, select the template in the Available Email Templates list and click Retrieve. To save changes made to the template, select the template in the Available Email Templates list and click Save.

7. Click Close to return to the email message.

Using Maximizer CRM’s Used Defined Fields (UDFs) you can flag the contacts you plan to either invite to an event or contacts who have registered for the event. Then by setting up Action Plans driving marketing automation you can send these contacts items such as the agenda for the event, directions and even their ticket!

Furthermore, there could be additional information that you may require from delegates, such as dietary requirements, dates of arrival and departure, transport required, whether they’ve received the goodie bag, and, and, and. Depending on the type of event the list could be endless and without using something like Maximizer CRM’s automation capabilities it would be very difficult to manage.

To create UDFs to aid your event planning, simply
Create and name the event by adding a Table UDF, for example: ‘Business Partner Conference’.

Add Items to the table UDF, for example: Invited, Accepted, Declined, Payment Received, Dietary Requirements, Date of Arrival etc.

Manually input the information from each delegate as you receive it.

You can then set up a Workflow (only available to Maximizer Group & Enterprise Customers) which triggers an email with joining instructions when the ‘Attending’ UDF is updated .

Alternatively you can complete a search on the ‘Attending’ UDF, create a Favourite List and send all entries in the list the same email with joining instructions.
Finally, once you have set up one event it is very easy to set up additional events. Simply select the original UDF in the Setup Mode and then go to Save As. By simply changing the name of the event you will set up a similar event Table UDF with all the same items saved.

Most views in Maximizer CRM can be exported to MS Excel at the click of a button. Sending it to an Excel spreadsheet is great for reports or printing. The process is very simple.

You should see two Excel icons on the top left of your Maximizer window, as shown below Click on the icon on the left and the contact details on your screen open up in Excel. Simple!

A great feature in Maximizer is the ability to save the results of a search as a list that can be retrieved later at the click of a button. Called the “Favourite List”, it retains different lists (or sets) of your Address Book entries or Customer Service Cases which you can retrieve and display in the relevant window. You can create customized lists of particular sets of entries that can quickly be retrieved whenever you need to work with them.

To do this is easy. First, bring up a list of contacts or companies in the main Address Book view, next select the item View from the top menu bar and in the Favourite Lists block click on All Lists and click on Add. Give the new list a name, click on OK and you are done. To use that list again just select View and in the Favourite Lists block again select All lists, select the list you wish to use and click on Retrieve. You can have as many Favourite Lists as you like. Also, if you would like to add an entry from the address book to a particular Favourite List, right click on the entry and select Add to Favourite list, after which you can select the list you want to add the entry to followed by selecting OK.

Maximizer Help is your comprehensive guide to working with the Maximizer modules. As you already work with Maximizer you will no doubt know what business task you want to accomplish—such as sending an email to recipients and recording your contact management information. If you need help on achieving this you have 3 options to choose between for documentation:

• F1 Help – Context-sensitive help for all windows and dialog boxes.
• Online Help – Online step-by-step instructions with a table of contents, an index, and search.
• Online manuals – Printable version of the online help that you can read using Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Sometimes it is much easier and quicker to navigate the Maximizer screen using your keyboard rather than your mouse. The Maximizer home screen is the Main Address Book view and the heart of the system. It’s also where all your clients are listed and is where you will spend a great deal of your time in Maximizer so it makes sense to be able to get back to it effortlessly. You can return home to the Main Address Book view at any time simply by holding down the “Ctrl” key and pressing “1”.

Isn’t that smart? And just as smart is the question you will likely ask about what happens when you press “Ctrl” together with any of “2”, “3” or “4”. Don’t be scared, try them now and always remember that “Ctrl” and “1” will always take you back home. You can also use “Ctrl” and “E” for email. There’s a host of other keyboard shortcuts with a complete listing of all the shortcuts available in the the Help menu ( press “F1″).

The Knowledge Base window provides you with a library-style tool to manage your customer service solutions. An article is typically created for each case solution, answered question, or guideline relating to your products or services.

When you resolve a customer service case, you can type, or attach, an explanation of how the case was resolved and jot down key words that best identify the article content. Or, if an existing knowledge base article was used to solve the case, you can assign the article number to the case.

Articles are not always associated with cases. To add an article that is not associated with a case, right-click in the Knowledge Base window, and select Add Knowledge Base Article. Articles can be added in two formats: standard (text) or document (file attachment).

A newly created article is assigned a draft status until it is opened and assigned a different status by the appropriate users. Articles can also have a status of internal, published, or expired. The status determines who can read or modify the article:

• Draft articles can be viewed and modified by the creator, owner (user or security group), and approvers.
• Internal articles can be viewed and modified by all users who have knowledge base read rights, excluding Customer Access and Partner Access users.
• Published articles can be viewed by all users who have knowledge base read rights, including Customer Access and Partner Access users, and modified by approvers.
• Expired articles can be viewed and modified by the creator, owner (user or security group), and approvers.

The Knowledge Base window displays articles according to number, last modified date, product, category, title and status. Click on a column heading to sort the articles by the column subject matter. To select multiple records, hold down the Ctrl key on your keyboard as you make your selections with your mouse.

Maximizer can satisfy all your label printing requirements and it’s ever so easy! Check this out….. Select and display at l 24 contacts or individuals in the Main Address Book View window. Highlight them all by going to EDIT, SELECT ALL. Next, go to FILE, PRINT, LABELS. Select PREVIEW and click on OK. You can adjust the label types by selecting PAGE SETUP before clicking on OK. You will notice that we use the Avery Standard Sizes and we also give you the option to manage your own label sizes with the USER DEFINED option. Don’t forget that you can press on the F1 key at any time to get extra help.

Considering that one of the main benefits of Maximizer CRM is the ability to track interactions with customers it makes sense to include your phone calls. Maximizer can record the instance of an incoming or outgoing telephone call and if you are using a modem or a TAPI interface you can have Maximizer do the dialling for you; alternatively you can record your phone activities manually as you complete them. It’s also possible to call each Address Book entry in a list that you selected previously or you can make an individual quick-call. To manually record incoming calls, select your contact and press the F7 key; alternatively you can right-click on the contact and select “Phone”, or just click on the “Phone” icon at the top of the page.

It is often easier to work with a few records in Maximizer than it is with the whole list. To get the list you want to work with you would typically select the records by clicking in the margin to the left of each record (or by holding down the shift and down-arrow key to select more than one) and then selecting Edit, followed by Make List Current. However, you can also perform this task with a single, magical click of the mouse as follows:

Once you’ve selected the records, simply move the mouse pointer to the square in the top left of the address book view (as shown in the image below) and click the wheel of the mouse or the centre button. All the selected records that you want will become the current selection.

This Maximizer tip deals with selecting records and making them current. This feature allows you to go through the address book list and select records you want to report on or apply some action to. This is how you do it:

Select a single record in the main address book view by using your mouse and applying one left click in the margin on the left of the record. That will select the record. Try that on another record lower down the list. You should now have two records selected. To make those records current, select EDIT, MAKE SELECTED LIST CURRENT. Your view should now only reflect those two records and you are ready to perform the desired action on these selected records.

Maximizer has a great document management feature that allows you to store, search and retrieve documents associated with a particular customer. You can attach any type of file: PDF, MS Word, Excel, Jpeg and other picture formats, as well as MP3, AVI and Mpegs. Doing this is dead easy. First, select a contact and move your mouse to the contact document window where you then right-click. A dialogue box will open where one of the options is INSERT FILE. All you have to do now is browse for the file and click on OK. All done. It’s that easy! The file inserted is a copy of the selected file and it does not delete the original. The main benefit of making a copy of the document is that it is automatically available to all Maximizer users on your network that have been given the necessary permissions to view these documents.

If you prefer, you can insert a link to the document which you can leave in its original location on your network or PC. To do this, tick the LINK box in the dialogue box at the time of browsing for the file to insert. You will then get a reminder that unless you put the full network path to the document into the description box for its location the document will not be available to view by other Maximizer users on your network. An example of how to put the full path in is given with this reminder. By inserting documents in either of the ways described above you get to have all the information relating to a contact in one easy-to-find location automatically associated with that contact.

You will notice that there is an icon in the left hand vertical bar (Icon Bar) called Email. Selecting this will open your Outlook Email in Maximizer – very sneaky! Now the whole office can see all your emails – Hah! Alright, you can calm down now as they they can’t really see your mail. That was just to get your attention. The view you see is exactly the same as you get in Outlook and it is also just as private. The idea of having Outlook available in this view is so that you can select an email and store it in its entirety in the selected client’s documents folder in Maximizer. In this way you can also share the email with your colleagues using Maximizer if you want to have them see it. One of the many advantages of this is that other users can access the information without having to track you down for it when they need it, which saves them time and also allows them to deliver that all important service to the client.

Saving the contents of an email to a client’s documents folder in Maximizer is really simple. Just right-click on the email from within Maximizer and a host of functions are available to you, one of which is to save the email to the selected Address Book entry.

Did you know that you can send a SMS or Mobile Text message from Maximizer using MaxSMS?

MaxSMS is an innovative method of easily transmitting and tracking the delivery of SMS messages, either to a single recipient or many thousands of recipients as a bulk message.

MaxSMS currently works with the popular Maximizer range of CRM products and the application seamlessly extracts the cell numbers from a list of selected contacts so that a particular message can be sent to all of the contacts at once, with the option of the delivery date and text of the message automatically being saved to the contact’s notes field.

The MaxSMS application itself is provided at no cost and to be able to start sending messages the user first needs to register on the Web site provided by the application where credits for the SMS messages can be bought. To get it now click on DOWNLOAD.[/spoiler]

[spoiler title=”Mobile CRM on iPads®” open=”0″ style=”1″]
Did you know that you can access Maximizer CRM 12 via a smart phone or an iPad® while on the road? Using Maximizer this way you can obtain crucial customer information and sales leads while monitoring new business opportunities anywhere, anytime with Mobile CRM.

And with easy search capabilities you are just one click away from your key contacts and all account histories, giving you the ability to track a sales opportunity or resolve a customer service issue instantly.

By equipping your staff with mobile CRM your team can reduce administration work back at the office and stay on top of things while on the road.

My Work Day is an area on your screen where everyone in your company using Maximizer can see Hotlist Tasks, Appointments, Company Announcements and the Dashboards. Select the My Work Day icon to open this window where you can then click on an Appointment or a Hotlist Task to view details of the activity.

You can also select a Company Announcement from the drop-down list to display these on the page.

To add an Announcement to the list, insert the Announcement as a Note or as a text or HTML document in the Company Announcements folder in the Company Library. You will need to refresh the window for the Announcement to be visible in the list – select the View tab and choose Refresh from the Window group.

To specify that you would like the My Work Day window to launch when starting Maximizer and to show or hide Company Announcements, Tasks and Appointments or Dashboards, go to the Settings tab.

You can print Activities or Company Announcements for the day by selecting the Print icon. Selecting the Calendar icon and choosing a date allows you to display Tasks and Appointments for a particular day.

NB. You need to be part of the Company Announcement Authors security group for your documents to display in the announcements list.

Try using the keyboard to navigate from Window to Window. It’s much faster than using the mouse. Try it now by holding down the Ctrl key and selecting 1, 2, 3 or E etc. The Keyboard shortcuts are also explained in more detail under the Help menu option “keyboard shortcuts”.

Notes are a quick and easy way to log an interaction with an address book entry. On the phone to a contact? Click and drag the contact to the notes tab or window and the notes dialogue box pops up in an instant. While you are talking you can type a summary of the conversation. After a meeting type in your paper notes to Maximizer. The date, time and the creator of the note is logged against the client details.

Even better is the notes search function in Maximizer. In V12, Select SEARCH and OTHER FIELDS and then choose NOTES. You will see that you have a host of options to choose from. Who wrote the note, when they did and so on.

Opportunity management helps you and your colleagues manage simple and complex sales. Complex sales involve the participation of more than one person in the buying decision and require the support of a sales team. Prospects for complex sales can range from single businesses to multiple corporations or governments. With Maximizer’s Opportunity Manager you can:

• Create strategies—detailed plans that identify the factors that influence a sale and the activities you must perform to close the opportunity.
• Apply these strategies to opportunities.
• Effectively schedule and coordinate the selling process among all members of your sales team.
• Ensure that all the right people in your organization have up-to-date information about the status of your opportunities.
• Forecast the probability of successfully closing your opportunities.
• Analyze the effectiveness of your strategies and create new ones for new opportunities.

In short, Maximizer helps you define and strengthen your selling methodology. Your sales team can define a strategy—what you need to do to close a sale and how to address the issues and obstacles involved—and then apply this strategy to opportunities.

It’s not always obvious as to when people are in, out or busy with an appointment in a medium to large office. Maximizer’s Peg Board works in conjunction with the Maximizer Calendar to show you each user’s current status and Maximizer users can opt to automatically sign out of the Peg Board whenever they create an appointment.

Ø To sign out of the Peg Board
On the Home tab select Meeting, followed by Options from the Add Appointment window and tick ‘Sign out of Peg Board’ and OK. Don’t forget to add the relevant information for your appointment before you then go and save that appointment.

The Peg Board displays users that are currently available but you can also override the calendar status and change your status directly in the Peg Board.

You can also see other users’ busy periods in the Peg Board if they have allowed you to view their calendars in the Calendar/Hotlist preferences. If you have the necessary permission to view users’ calendar appointments you can also click the Appointment button to view the details for a particular appointment.

Ø To view the Peg Board
On the View tab, select Pegboard from the Availability group.

Considering that one of the main benefits of Maximizer CRM is the ability to track interactions with customers it makes sense to include your phone calls. Maximizer can record the instance of an incoming or outgoing telephone call and if you are using a modem or a TAPI interface you can have Maximizer do the dialling for you; alternatively you can record your phone activities manually as you complete them. It’s also possible to call each Address Book entry in a list that you selected previously or you can make an individual quick-call. To manually record incoming calls, select your contact and press the F7 key; alternatively you can right-click on the contact and select “Phone”, or just click on the “Phone” icon at the top of the page.

On-Premise

You can personalize how Maximizer works for you as there are various settings that give a great deal of flexibility in how you work—in other words, Maximizer can be adapted to the way you want to work.

For example, you can set your Address Book preferences directly in Maximizer. Your system administrator can also set these preferences in the Administrator module. On the Setup tab select Preferences and then select the tab in the dialogue box for the settings you want to edit. These are as follows:

• System Defaults to specify default settings and Microsoft Outlook integration options.
• Logging to specify how notes are logged for various actions.
• Format to specify date and address formats.
• Calendar/Hotlist to specify the default settings and access rights for the calendar and Hotlist.
• Dialing to specify settings for dialing phone calls from Maximizer.
• Outlook Synchronization to specify settings for synchronizing Address Book information with Microsoft Outlook.
• Printing to HTML to specify settings for creating HTML files from Maximizer information.
• Monitoring to configure email notification for opportunity and customer service case monitors.
• Diagnostic to specify settings for logging error messages.
• Overview Page to specify options for the My Work Day page.
• Transfer to specify settings for transferring information between Address Books.
• Envelopes, Labels, or Reports to specify settings for printing envelopes, labels, and reports from Maximizer.
• Email to specify the default settings for viewing and sending email.

 

Once you have completed editing the settings click on OK to save the changes.

Cloud

You can personalize how Maximizer works for you as there are various settings that give a great deal of flexibility in how you work—in other words, Maximizer can be adapted to the way you want to work.

• For example, you can set your Address Book preferences directly in Maximizer. Your system administrator can also set these preferences in the Administrator module. First, select Preferences from the top ribbon and select the tab in the dialogue box for the settings you want to edit. These are as follows:
• The default page is the System Defaults to specify default settings.
• Select Other Preferences to specify Calendar / Hotlist default settings and access rights for the calendar and Hotlist.
• Select Logging to specify how notes are logged for various actions.
• Select Email to specify the default settings for viewing and sending email.
• Select Monitoring to configure email notification for opportunity and customer service case monitors.
• Select Startup to specify settings for My Workday settings.

 

Once you have completed editing the settings click on OK to save the changes.

The Maximizer Quick Access Toolbar is a handy feature in the Windows Version of Maximizer CRM.

It can be found in the top left hand corner of your Maximizer CRM Window, right next to the Maximizer Button. You can also customize it to your individual requirements by clicking on the small arrow as shown in the image below. Launch any application directly from Maximizer!

Very quickly, right-click on any icon on your Maximizer Toolbar and you can add it to the Quick Access Toolbar. Quickly now and then back to work!

Maximizer has a great feature which allows you to shorten the search process.

The Quick Search feature is available in the top right hand corner and allows you to type in the name of the Company, First Name, Last Name and even a Phone Number. Try this now.

For quick access to address book entries that you use often nothing beats the Recent Entries Option. This is accessed from the Icon bar which you can use to navigate to the many functions in Maximizer, e.g. the Calendar, Email or Address Book. The last function on the Icon Bar is the Recent Entries List. This is a list of from 5 to 15 of the last-accessed address book entries. This is a particularly useful feature for people who access the same address book entries often.

The Recent Entries function setup can be accessed by selecting view, toolbars, highlighting the icon bar and selecting properties. This will open a dialogue box which will allow you to customise the Icon bar and select how many entries you would like to have in the Recent Entries function.

It’s quite common in the course of business to have different people or companies either related to, or connected with each other in some way or another. For example, one of your contacts might be another’s accountant. Maximizer allows you to keep a record of these types of relationships in the Related Entries window.

To relate two entries
Select the two entries you wish to relate to each other and select Edit > Relate Entries.
– or –
Drag an entry and drop it on to another entry. In the resulting dialogue box, select Relate the source entry to the target entry. Then specify the nature of the connection between the two entries.

Right-clicking the mouse to access different functions in Maximizer. Most of Maximizer’s more commonly used functions can be accessed simply by first selecting a record within Maximizer and thereafter right-clicking with the mouse. All you need to do to select a record is place the mouse pointer over an address book entry or contact when you right-click, right! You then select the function, e.g. Send email… and left-click on it to commence the action, right! The same goes for Notes, User-Defined Fields and Documents.

The Save and Track emails feature can be used in both the desktop version and the web client and allows important email correspondence with contacts to be saved automatically in Maximizer.

The conversation history is automatically tracked in Maximizer against the contact each time a new email is received or sent. By storing everything in one place it allows you and your team to quickly view each email whenever you choose to.

Simply follow these easy-to-use steps:
1. The Maximizer Outlook toolbar is the place to start.
2. Select your email.
3. Click on Save and Track.
4. Confirm the email and contact and you’re good to go.

Go find yourself in Maximizer! Perhaps not in the philosophical sense, but it can most certainly apply from a “where am I in the database” perspective. The search feature in Maximizer offers huge potential for getting information you need when you really need it. Much like a bank, it’s great putting away your money but even better when you get the chance to take it out again and spend it.

Let’s start by selecting the menu item Search (that’s at the top of the screen). You will see that it offers you a host of options. Select the option Last Name and type in your name. Are you there? You should be because you are important.

The Search option also allows you to refresh the information on the screen. Select Search and then Company and leave everything as it is but change the Maximum entries option to All. That will then bring up every Company and Individual in your Maximizer address book. There are lots of other options under Search, so go play! Press the F1 key if you need help.

Do you have a Microsoft Windows or Blackberry mobile phone? If so, did you know that Maximizer offers full mobility via the MaxMobile© application. Customers today have greater expectations than ever of rapid responses and people in your organisation – field sales and service staff, mobile professionals, and executives – need the right information at all times, to respond to these demands.

Maximizer is integrated with LinkedIn so you can associate LinkedIn profiles with Maximizer Address Book entries. The integration is available in the Address Book, Opportunities, Customer Service and Hotlist windows. This is a great feature because it lets you get to know your contact before you call them. Typically you would spend some time searching the internet for more info on your contact but this way it’s instant and will save you lots of time. Its all about getting to know your clients better!

You can share your calendar in Maximizer, allowing you to collaborate seamlessly with colleagues or for a manager to view upcoming appointments and prioritized activities. The calendar allows you to choose daily, weekly or monthly views, and you can leave it to Maximizer to prompt you about task deadlines and appointments. The colour-coded multi-user format makes for easy viewing of different users’ calendars at a glance. You can also then print your schedule to your daytimer. Opening another user’s calendar that has been shared is done by selecting the user’s name from the Users drop-down list. Both the selected user’s appointments and your own appointments are displayed. You can also view the booked time for meeting locations and resources by choosing the corresponding value in the list.

Isn’t it great when friends and colleagues call you to wish you a happy birthday. I am sure that your customers would enjoy it as well. Maximizer can manage this reminder for you via the User Defined Field function. You can create a field that will allow you to enter a customer’s birth date and when that date occurs you will get a reminder. In fact you can have it that the whole office will know that it is the customer’s birthday.

To access this function, select file and then select setup user-defined fields. Click on add field and give it the name Birthday. From the type field select date. Now would be a good time to Press the F1 key for additional attributes. For instance you can choose not to add the year and also to add the date to your calendar.

You can manage sales quotas for teams, territories, and leaders assigned to opportunities. Sales quotas keep track of the revenue from opportunities compared to the quota applied to the team or leader assigned to the opportunities.

Sales Managers can create quota templates that can be applied to many teams, territories, and leaders. Maximizer users must have the Sales Manager user role to access quota templates. Quotas are only available in Maximizer CRM Enterprise Edition.

To create a quota template:
* On the Setup tab, select Template Library > Quota Templates from the File Management group.
* Click Add.
* Specify a name for the quota template.
* In the Quota field, enter the total amount of the quota for the fiscal year.
* In the Fiscal Year drop-down list, specify the year that the quota applies to.
* The beginning of the fiscal year is set in Administrator.
* Under Milestones, select Month or Quarter as the milestones in the fiscal year. By default, an equal percentage of the quota is applied to each milestone.
* To modify the percentage applied to a milestone, select the milestone, click Modify, and enter the new percentage. If you modify the percentage for one milestone, you must modify all other milestones, so that the percentages add up to 100.
* Click OK to save the quota template.

To apply a sales quota:
* Select the Quotas icon to open the Quotas window.
* On the Home tab select Quota or right-click, and select Add Quota.
* In the Template name drop-down list, select a quota template to base the quota on.
* Select the leader, team, or territory that the quota applies to.
* If necessary, adjust the other properties of the quota.
* Click OK.

You can now view the status of a person’s quota in the Quotas window as their quota will automatically be updated with revenue figures from Opportunities won by that person.

At first glance the Maximizer Word processor, which can be accessed by selecting the Editor Icon at the top of the screen, does not seem to offer much functionality. Try this easy method to create a very professional quoting template by imbedding an excel spreadsheet in your template:

First select the editor; it should open to a new page. Position your cursor to where you would like the quote matrix to be. In the editor select Edit, Insert New Object and choose Microsoft Office Excel 97-2003. This will insert the spreadsheet and give you full Excel functionality within Maximizer.

The V Card is a nifty feature of e-mail messaging that allows an attachment containing all your contact data to be created. The recipient of a V Card e-mail simply has to double-click on the V Card to have all your contact information in the attachment instantly imported into their contact management system. Not only does this save on typing but it also means that you can be assured that all your contact details, including the correct spelling of your name, are accurately captured. Maximizer allows you to generate V Card e-mails. To find out more about sending V Cards using Maximizer press the F1 key while in Maximizer and type “vcard” in the search field.

With Maximizer you can create a Web-to-Lead Form to collect information from customers and leads on your website. Information submitted through the Web-to-Lead Form is entered directly into your Maximizer Address Book. For example, you can use this feature to create a contact form to receive customer inquiries or a survey form to receive customer feedback.

To learn more about this click here.

5 Keys to Maximizing B2B Lead Conversion to Win More Deals

Once a lead comes in the door whose job is it to convert that lead to a sales opportunity;

marketing or sales? The lead conversion black hole has long been a cause for dispute between marketing and sales teams in companies. Marketing will argue that it has generated sufficiently good leads and passed them on to sales to do their job. Sales will complain that the leads they receive aren’t qualified.

If this sounds like your organization it’s time to break down artificial departmental walls and work together on lead processing, qualification, follow-up, and nurturing so you can convert more leads into customers. The challenge is to achieve what everyone wants: improved sales revenues through qualified leads.

Reading this White Paper on Lead Conversion, you will learn five keys to improving lead management to ultimately win more deals.

One of the cooler features of Maximizer is the ability to customise your interface. You can change the background colour, font and font size and you can even have a picture of your loved ones looking at while you work. Hmm, not so sure about that!

Go on, create a different view for every day of the week. To do this select the menu item WINDOW, WINDOW SETTINGS and choose either SET FONT or SET COLOUR. Get creative and if you find you have overdone it click on RESET DEFAULT LAYOUT to undo the madness and get you back to normality. Ho Hum!

Once you have created the best layout you can save it by holding down the Ctrl key on the keyboard and pressing F. You can let go now. Select ADD and give it a name and you are done. Well done in fact!

Workflow Automation Powered by KnowledgeSync is a separate Maximizer application that allows you to monitor business data within the Maximizer database and other systems. Potential issues are identified before they create problems so that the people who need to know can act on the information. With Workflow Automation you can apply business rules to all of your data—no matter where it resides—and learn of potential issues while there is still time to act.

Using Workflow Automation you can send flexible real-time alert messages via e-mail, fax, pager, PDA and webcast. It’s easy to schedule and deliver reports. Lead qualification, lead assignment and lead tracking are completely automated. Powerful and flexible, the Workflow Automation Suite is quickly deployed, simple to use and easy to administer so you can focus on building successful, profitable customer relationships.

Should you require Workflow Automation, please don’t hesitate to get in contact with us on e-mail.

A small but very useful feature in Maximizer is the world clock. It’s accessible via the menu functions at the top of the screen. Select TOOLS and then click on WORLD CLOCK. That brings up a dialogue box with a list of world cities and their current times. So next time you call cousin Bruce or Sheila down under you won’t wake them up!