Volume 6, Issue 2

Links to this issue's topics:

SPAM Control
CCC Wins Sage Sales Award
Mediaweave: Our First Sage CRM Case Study
GoldMine 6.5 Is Here -- What's New?
eMarketing With GoldMine -- a Powerful One-Day Workshop
CCC's Referral Plan Can Be a Profitable Experience
Tech-Talk -- Sage CRM 5.6 and GoldMine 6.5
We Wander the Web (Weblinks You Should Know)
Upcoming Training Dates
Hardware Services Including News About Our New Asset Tracking System
Newsletter Archives

A Word From The President -- SPAM Control

I used to think Spam was amusing. That’s when I was getting 4 or 5 interesting messages each day. Some were offering me millions of dollars that were sitting in a Nigerian account just waiting for my bank account number so the money could be transferred. Others were offering to augment various body parts, some of which I don’t even have. Eventually I began seeing offers for pornography, some of which doesn’t seem physically possible.

Recently, I realized I was getting nearly 20 useless spam emails an hour. Every hour of every day. The amusement had worn off and this onslaught of undesirable email was sucking up more and more of my time. Every few weeks a new virus would appear and, for a day or two, I was spending even more time deleting hundreds of useless emails. Occasionally, a virus would get through and cripple us. Our administrator, Jane, was spending her first hour every Monday morning deleting more than a thousand emails that were coming to her address over the weekend. It was time for a solution.

Spam can be handled several ways. The method you select is often a function of whether you have

• an outside ISP handling it for you, or
• a central mail server (like an Exchange Server) in your office, or
• each user connecting directly to your mail service.

In our case, we have no central server in house. Our email first stops at a server living at our ISP’s site. Then, each of us accesses our mail using either GoldMine or Outlook.

We began exploring software options. Was there some inexpensive software out there that might help control this onslaught? The short answer is “yes,” there are many products out there ranging from absolutely free to not so free.

Without going through a complete review of every product, I can tell you there are a few basic features we were looking for:

• Our choice had to be cost-effective
• It had to actually eliminate unwanted emails – not just mark them as possible spam
• It had to work with both GoldMine and with Outlook
• It couldn’t eliminate any $100,000 orders that were coming in to us.

We found a product that met all our criteria. It costs just $37 per user. It allows full control over what actually gets through. You can design your own filters, although we can provide you with our favorite filters. The system learns as it goes and gradually homes in on the junk you don’t want. You can set up a list of friends whose junk you will always accept. You could even use it to exclude newsletters from your consultants and partners.

Click here for more details on this application.

Back To Top

CCC (and it's CRMworldclass coalition) Receives Sage Sales Award

Computer Control Corporation and our CRMworldclass Coalition are proud to be named Sage's Business Partner Quarterly Sales Leader for Q4, 2003. While our focus is on Sage's CRM product, this award recognizes us as Sage's overall sales leader for the Quarter. And we're just getting started... Read below about Sage CRM.

Sage CRM provides businesses with hosted and on-premise customer relationship management functionality that includes bi-directional integration with back office accounting as well as a unique level of integration with Microsoft^® Outlook^® allowing full access to CRM information from within Outlook.

Click here for more information on Sage CRM.

Back To Top

Mediaweave: Our First Sage CRM Case Study

Read All About It!

GoldMine 6.5 Is Here -- What's New?
We're currently running GoldMine 6.5 here at CCC. We're confident you can make the move and the upgrade will be smooth. Contact us for next steps to move up to GoldMine 6.5.

Click here for a list of the Top 10 New Features.
Click here for pricing, timeframe's, etc.

Back To Top

Included in GoldMine 6.x are some new, very powerful eMarketing capabilities. Coincidentally, there are some important decisions to be made setting up your GoldMine to take full advantage of these eMarketing capabilities.

The purpose of this one-day workshop is to identify the new eMarketing features in Version 6, and give you the skills to take optimal advantage of them. Several very handy pieces of eMarketing development software will be included, along with a good deal of "hands-on" development time.

Topics include:

• Optimizing your GoldMine for eMarketing
• Processing Web form requests
• Creating HTML Templates
• Defining your recipients
• Rules of the Road
• Performing the e-mail merge
• Increasing response rate (best practices)
• Processing the responses
• GoldMine E-mail Rules

Click here for details, dates and to register.

Back To Top

  The Referral Plan

Several years ago we had a client referral plan that worked rather well, but was an administrative problem at times. We are now re-instituting this plan with a little help from our technology.

Any client in good standing can send us a referral. If we close some business with this new client, you are entitled to 5% of the initial order. You can opt for one of several payment methods.

How to send us a referral:

1. there is a referral form on our website that you can fill out and submit (this is the best way)
2. a referral can be e-mailed to us at sales@ccc24k.com
3. a referral can be phoned in or relayed in person to Joel Scott at 860-529-6232

Your options for being paid:
We only pay referral fees once we close the initial business and get paid ourselves. Once that happens you will receive payment in the one of the following ways (at your option):

1. Direct payment to your company
2. Direct payment to you personally
3. A credit applied to your account with us
4. A credit to the company you referred
5. No fee required.

Resolution of Potential Problems:

1. Sometimes more than one client refers us to the same business. When this happens, the first person (company) that sent in the referral gets the fee. Occasionally we split it. We decide.
2. Sometimes we get a referral to a company with whom we are already working. In this case no fee is paid. Sorry.
3. If the initial business is under $100, we do not pay a fee. Send us bigger leads!

The average referral fee is around $400. We would like you to get as many of these as possible. It helps us and presumably works for you as well.

Back To Top

  Tech-Talk*
*For our Sage CRM clients, here's a Tech-Talk section specifically for you.

We're implementing several new Sage CRM systems, and we'll be reporting right here on tips and tricks regarding this powerful, web-based CRM application.

Here's a tip when converting a Lead to an Opportunity. First, the context type of Lead is very handy in Sage CRM, it allows you to track contact information about non-qualified leads in a separate area of the program, thus avoiding the pollution that's typical in databases where non-qualified leads are mixed in with legitimate prospects and current clients. However, when converting the Lead to an Opportunity, the lead must be turned into a Company and/or Person. So, in the process of converting the Lead you're also adding them as a new Company or Person into your Sage database. Here's the tip: click on Add or Find This Company (not Add or Find This Person).

This way, you gather both Company and Person information in the resulting Create New Company window. If you click on Add or Find Person, you'll only get person info, not company data.

Setting Fonts
From our Data Diva, Jill Messier:

Here's how to change your default font setting (this will appear in all Notes fields and e-mails). This is done at the operating system level.

Click the Windows Start button. Select Settings|Control Panel|Display (in XP "Display" may be called Appearances and Themes -- unless you're using "Classic View"). Select the Appearance tab and click the Advanced button. In the Advanced Appearance window select Message Box from the Item drop down list. Select the desired font, size color and style from the Font drop down list and associated menus. Note: Crystal reports and certain GoldMine reports don't do well with the Tahoma font. Click OK on any open windows and restart your computer. The selected font now appears in all goldmine note fields.

Selecting Contacts in Calendar Reports
Also from Jill:
When running Calendar reports the section for specifying which contacts to report against is grayed out (see screenshot below).

So you can't change the specified contacts from Current Contact Only to All the contacts in the following filter or group. The trick is to open a different kind of report (e.g. Contact Report) and select Current Contact Only or All contacts in the following filter or group (this will be the setting for the Calendar Report you'll open in a minute). Run the Contact Report and immediately Cancel it (this can be a bit of a drag if the Contact Report you selected is a big one).

Now, when you select the desired Calendar Report, the selection you made on the previous Contact Report "sticks" and will be displayed for the Calendar Report. It will be grayed out but at least it will be the option you wanted. The rule is, whatever option you selected in the Contact Report will be pre-selected in the Calendar Report.

If You're Going to Word 2003 You'll Lose Your GM Link
Jill gets the hat trick!

If you're upgrading to Word 2003 and you GoldMine is earlier than version 6.5 your Word link will break. And uninstalling the link after you've upgraded is tough because Word 2003 hides normal.dot, a file you'll need to delete to re-install the Word link. So, you must uninstall the link before upgrading. Then re-install the link using the GoldMine 6.5 Office link install program (this installer works with earlier versions of GoldMine).

The Strange Case of the Missing E-mail Attachment
From GoldMine Tech Support:
Ever noticed how your GoldMine e-mail attachments tend to - you know - not be there from day to day? Or how the links in the Links tab work on some computers, and not on others? The info center might even be worse! And, when you fixed them all by hand from the server, they were fine - but then didn't work on any of the work stations?

This has to do with how GoldMine remembers links. As a database-driven contact manager, GoldMine puts a file on your network somewhere (or you do) and then writes the location of that file to its ContSupp.dbf table. From there on, there is no active program that updates or verifies that location. If the file is move or the PATH to the file is moved, then the link is broken.

The same with e-mails. GoldMine is a database-driven e-mail engine, which means that, when you send or receive an e-mail, its attachment is not bundled after creation with the e-mail. It exists as a file on your network with a link in your email to it.

This is unlike Outlook, which is a message store. It bundles the email and the file so you have one and the other. With GM e-mail, if you make a link to a file that can't be seen any longer, GM ignores it. An example is a link like 'c:\my documents\mypic.jpg.'

If you send this to me from GM, you will be able to see it whenever you open that history entry from your PC. However if someone else opens it as a history item from their computer on your network, they will see either nothing or the wrong file, as GoldMine looks in THAT PC's 'c:\my documents' for the file.

Link Magic will fix this. You can use it to find the bad links and to rewrite them. It is available as a free demo from http://www.integrationwizard.com/LinkMagic.aspx

Back To Top

We Wander the

2. NCAA Hoops
We know it's late in the tournament but this is the best non-video sports tracker site we've seen. The Scoreboard is almost real-time and the text descriptions of the last ten plays and diagrams of made and missed shots (per player) is very impressive. Add this to your Favorites for next year's Tournament.
http://www.ncaasports.com/basketball/mens (and follow the links to the scoreboard).

Back To Top

Training Center of the Year Upcoming Training Dates

This is the schedule for the Rocky Hill, Connecticut Training Center.

Click here to Register.

Click here for detailed Course Descriptions.

The First Recognized Training Center for Sage CRM Upcoming Training Dates

This is the schedule for the Rocky Hill, Connecticut Training Center.

Click here for more information on Sage CRM Training offerings.

Back To Top

Reminder - Hardware Services

Did you know Computer Control Corporation does hardware and networking?  Keep us in mind when purchasing or servicing computers, printers, or networks for your company.

Corey Constantine, our new hardware tech, has developed an Asset Tracking Program. It's called SysPro2.1. Click here to view a pdf. Basically, we'll do a detailed inventory of your network. The program stores detailed info on servers, workstations, printers, other peripherals and software. Our techs will run a report based on the inventory and provide you with a complete system analysis. Could your server use a memory upgrade? Got a printer that has an outdated driver? Running version 3.2 of a software application that's now up to version 6.4? The analysis will help you easily allocate budget resources where they're needed most.

Contact Corey for more information.

Click here to send the hardware guys an e-mail.

Back To Top