Can you do Act to Sales Force conversions? Boy, do I hear that question a lot! Sometimes I get a variation (feel free to substitute the name of the current CRM product du jour for Sales Force).
Here’s the deal. I know folks like you – I call them ACT fanactics. I had 500 of them wait in line to get into a seminar I ran in August, 2002 on a not so sunny night in South Florida introducing the all new ACT 6. I guarantee I wouldn’t have had a crowd like that for a seminar on Excel or QuickBooks, not to mention Sales Force which was just a dot on the horizon in 2002.
If you were brand new to CRM it might be a different story, but you obviously know ACT and have liked it for years. If you move to another product you’ll constantly be missing core ACT features like dynamic groups and lookups.
When the “new” ACT SQL version came out in 2005 the developers asked me for a dozen of my ACT 6 Dummies books which I thought was strange until I realized that the programmers wanted to maintain ACT’s “look and feel.” That means that although there are lots of cool new features in ACT (Outlook integration, e-marketing, companies, opportunities, web info tab, dashboards, secondary contacts and relationships) the old “tried and true” features (adding contacts, deleting contacts, groups, lookups, mail merge) remain exactly the same.
I’ve written books and produced training videos on a number of products (Sugar, BCM, Sales Force, Outlook) as well as on ACT and I have not found anything I like better for a number of reasons:
- There’s safety in number s. ACT has a lot of longevity and loyalty going for it. It’s been around for over 20 years and has millions of existing users.
- ACT has widespread availability. You won’t find a box of Sales Force on the shelves of your local computer store.
- Each new version expands the core functionality by adding new functionality that typically matches current technology trends.
- ACT is extremely customizable. There are hundreds of consultants to help modify your database to exactly what you want – or you can learn to make those changes yourself.
- ACT is easy to use and intuitive. I recently found out that Sage actually has a “click counter” (OK, that’s not the official title but you get the drift) who’s job function is to “count the click” required for basic functions such as mail merge to insure that the number of clicks is much fewer than with competing products.
- ACT is one of the least costly solutions around. Compare a one-time purchase of ACT to the recurring monthly Sales Force charges and it’s a no brainer.
Hope this helps you in your decision!
