Use aACE’s Quote Generation Feature to Get from First Contact to Final Sale

From your first contact with a customer, you know they want to have options. They want to know what an order will cost them before they place it. They need to know all the details before they confirm making a purchase from your business. And, they want a hassle-free way to get this information.Learn More

Managing Customer-to-Customer Relations with aACE

Relationships can be complicated - and that's just as true in the professional world as it is anywhere else. Whether you're dealing with franchisees, subsidiaries, divisions within a company, mergers, acquisitions, or any other type of business affiliation, it can be difficult to keep track of who is connected to whom and how.Learn More

Never Miss an Important Date with aACE

Recently aACME hired Shawn Russel as a new Production Assistant. When Pete McNeil, aACME’s Director of HR, creates Shawn’s Team Member record in aACE, he fills in Shawn’s date of hire and his birthday in the “Important Dates” section of the Human Resources tab.

For each date, Pete fills in a description of the date, any notes associated with it, which team member or team should get a reminder, and when that reminder should go out. For Shawn’s Hire Date, he has the reminder sent to the entire HR team; for Shawn’s birthday, the reminder will be sent to Shawn’s manager, Evan Phillips. Pete also flags the “Annual” check box, ensuring the reminders will go out every year.

When Shawn’s birthday rolls around, Evan receives a reminder via an aACE Notice.

Because Evan’s Team Member record contains his email and SMS addresses, the notice is also delivered right to his phone, reminding him to wish Shawn a happy birthday right from the shop floor — without needing to be logged into aACE at a physical workstation.

Because your customers and vendors have important dates too, aACE also allows you to store important dates in Company records.

Brightside Charter School is a longtime aACME customer. While placing an order, CEO Luisa Ramos happens to mention to her account manager Mara Harvey that the school is preparing to celebrate its 15^th anniversary the following summer on August 20^th. After ending the call and processing the order, Mara navigates to Brightside’s Company record to make a note of the celebration.

As in the previous example, Mara fills in the name of the event, a description, relevant notes, and the date. She has the notice sent to aACME’s entire Sales team, so if Mara herself is out of the office on that date, someone else in her department will be able to fill in. Since the 15^th anniversary is a one-time occurrence, Mara does not check the Annual flag.

Months later, it turns out that Mara is indeed away from the office on Brightside’s big day. But that’s no problem, because the notice goes out to the entire Sales team.

aACME Sales Rep Jamie Gianelli sees the notice and sends a nice email to Luisa and her team, congratulating them on the school’s milestone. She then marks the notice as completed in aACE, which also completes it for everyone else who received the reminder so that no one sends out a duplicate message.

And if an individual at another company has an important date coming up? aACE can remind you of that, too.

Alexis Kohn in aACME’s Accounts Receivable office has a close working relationship with Erica Dawson at the Montboro School District, one of aACME’s biggest customers. Erica goes on vacation every year for the second half of July to visit relatives overseas — so it’s important that any outstanding invoices are sent to her office by the first week of July. To prompt herself to get those invoices out early, Alexis sets an important date reminder in Erica’s Contact record.

On July 1^st each year, Alexis receives a Notice to email any outstanding Montboro invoices to Erica before her trip.

aACE’s Important Dates reminders help you nurture your professional relationships and strengthen your network. To learn more about how aACE can help you take your business to the next level, register for one of our upcoming webinars today.

You invest a lot of time building relationships with key contacts on behalf of your company. Whether it’s nurturing prospects through the sales pipeline, connecting with vendors who can provide vital services to your business, or keeping apprised of your employees’ important milestones, chances... Learn More

You invest a lot of time building relationships with key contacts on behalf of your company. Whether it’s nurturing prospects through the sales pipeline, connecting with vendors who can provide vital services to your business, or keeping apprised of your employees’ important milestones, chances are you have a long list of people and companies whose relationships are valuable to your organization. Wouldn’t it be great if you could set reminders to reach out to them on important dates right from within your CRM?

With aACE, you can.

aACE makes it easy to record important dates and send reminders to go out to one or more team members via aACE notices, emails, or text messages – so you’re always there for your contacts when it counts.

To learn more about this feature, let’s look at how our sample company, aACME Education Solutions, uses it in their day-to-day operations.

Out of the box, aACE contains a number of notices that can be auto-generated by the system and sent to designated teams or team members when certain conditions are met. The Important Date Reminder is one such notice. Merge fields allow aACE to pull relevant information — like the title, date, and description of the event — directly from the record that generates the reminder.

By default, the reminder is set to go out through aACE’s internal Notices system. But because not everyone who needs to receive these reminders is an aACE user, aACME’s system administrator also enabled the reminders to be sent out via email and text message (SMS). For notices that are sent out to multiple people or entire teams, the Single User Completion flag is checked so that one person can mark the notice as complete for everyone who receives it.

Recently aACME hired Shawn Russel as a new Production Assistant. When Pete McNeil, aACME’s Director of HR, creates Shawn’s Team Member record in aACE, he fills in Shawn’s date of hire and his birthday in the “Important Dates” section of the Human Resources tab.

For each date, Pete fills in a description of the date, any notes associated with it, which team member or team should get a reminder, and when that reminder should go out. For Shawn’s Hire Date, he has the reminder sent to the entire HR team; for Shawn’s birthday, the reminder will be sent to Shawn’s manager, Evan Phillips. Pete also flags the “Annual” check box, ensuring the reminders will go out every year.

When Shawn’s birthday rolls around, Evan receives a reminder via an aACE Notice.

Because Evan’s Team Member record contains his email and SMS addresses, the notice is also delivered right to his phone, reminding him to wish Shawn a happy birthday right from the shop floor — without needing to be logged into aACE at a physical workstation.

Because your customers and vendors have important dates too, aACE also allows you to store important dates in Company records.

Brightside Charter School is a longtime aACME customer. While placing an order, CEO Luisa Ramos happens to mention to her account manager Mara Harvey that the school is preparing to celebrate its 15^th anniversary the following summer on August 20^th. After ending the call and processing the order, Mara navigates to Brightside’s Company record to make a note of the celebration.

As in the previous example, Mara fills in the name of the event, a description, relevant notes, and the date. She has the notice sent to aACME’s entire Sales team, so if Mara herself is out of the office on that date, someone else in her department will be able to fill in. Since the 15^th anniversary is a one-time occurrence, Mara does not check the Annual flag.

Months later, it turns out that Mara is indeed away from the office on Brightside’s big day. But that’s no problem, because the notice goes out to the entire Sales team.

aACME Sales Rep Jamie Gianelli sees the notice and sends a nice email to Luisa and her team, congratulating them on the school’s milestone. She then marks the notice as completed in aACE, which also completes it for everyone else who received the reminder so that no one sends out a duplicate message.

And if an individual at another company has an important date coming up? aACE can remind you of that, too.

Alexis Kohn in aACME’s Accounts Receivable office has a close working relationship with Erica Dawson at the Montboro School District, one of aACME’s biggest customers. Erica goes on vacation every year for the second half of July to visit relatives overseas — so it’s important that any outstanding invoices are sent to her office by the first week of July. To prompt herself to get those invoices out early, Alexis sets an important date reminder in Erica’s Contact record.

On July 1^st each year, Alexis receives a Notice to email any outstanding Montboro invoices to Erica before her trip.

aACE’s Important Dates reminders help you nurture your professional relationships and strengthen your network. To learn more about how aACE can help you take your business to the next level, register for one of our upcoming webinars today.

Easily Manage Complex Business Relationships in aACE

With aACE, you can.

aACE’s CRM tools make it easy to connect parent and child companies, referrals, and other third-party relationships to give you a more complete picture of your business network. To learn more about this feature, let’s take a look at how our sample company, aACME Education Solutions, uses it in their day-to-day operations.

Montboro School District is a long-time aACME customer. They were referred by the Centerville School District, which is linked to their Company record as the Referring Company. Typically Montboro makes large purchases, like electronic whiteboards, at the district level. Sam Patel, the Assistant Superintendent, is usually the point person on new orders.

At the district level, there are multiple departments that may be used as shipping or billing addresses depending on which products are being ordered and by whom. These locations are stored as separate addresses, which can be flagged as billing and/or shipping addresses. Each address has its own designated contact person.

Let’s say Sam calls aACME sales rep Jamie Gianelli to place an order for 8 mounted whiteboards.

He’d like the invoice sent to the district’s main office but needs the whiteboards delivered to Erica Dawson in the Office of Technology. Jamie can easily do this right from the order by clicking on the icon above the Shipping Address section and de-selecting the “Use Bill To” flag. This makes the Shipping Address fields editable. Next, she chooses “Office of Technology” from the Addresses drop-down menu.

When the order is processed, the Shipping department will send it to Erica at the Office of Technology, while the bill will be sent to Sam at the district’s main address.

In addition to serving Montboro at the district level, aACME also counts a number of schools within the district as customers in their own right. While most orders go through the district office, some schools have the authority to place and manage their own orders. Some of those orders are billed directly to the school, while others are paid for by the district. These schools have their own Company records in aACE, which are linked to the school district as child companies.

Additionally, contacts from all of these child companies are rolled into a list of Linked Contacts within the district’s company record.

And in the individual schools’ Company records, Montboro School District is listed as the parent company. Now any aACME employee with access to aACE’s CRM tools will be able to clearly see the relationship between the school and the school district. Whether they’re viewing the school’s record, the district’s record, or that of a district staff member or school employee, aACE users can easily identify those relationships, giving them a 360º view of their business network.

Now let’s say Sam calls back to place another order, this time on behalf of one of the schools in his district. Douglas Fairbanks Elementary School needs 30 new tablets and software for their fifth grade science program. When Jamie enters this order, she unchecks the “Use Bill To” flag above the Ship To Company field. This allows her to select one of Montboro School District’s child companies as the Ship To address, while still using the district’s office as the billing address.

Child companies can also place their own orders with aACME. Over at Montboro High School West, Principal Amanda Denning places an order for new textbooks for the coming school year. Jamie enters that order using the high school as the customer. Since aACE automatically pulls in the school’s address for both billing and shipping, Jamie does not need to change those fields.

Now let’s explore those relationships from the Accounts Receivable side of the solution. Alexis Kohn, aACME’s A/R clerk, receives a check from the Montboro School District for $52,657.35. The check’s memo states that the amount should go towards the invoices for all three of the orders in the examples above. When Alexis creates a new receipt, aACE automatically pulls in all of the district’s open invoices – and any open invoices belonging to Montboro’s child companies.

Even when invoices are addressed to a child company, as is the case with the Montboro High School West invoice, Alexis can still apply a payment from the parent company.

aACE also makes it a snap for aACME's sales team to see a complete picture of the school district's orders, including orders that were billed to the district but placed by any of its child companies. Links to every order associated with the district are available in one place within its Company record.

But what about relationships that don’t have a hierarchical component — for instance, two companies who do business with each other as well as with your organization? aACE can help you keep track of those connections, too.

Tanya Glenn is an education consultant who works with aACME’s sister company, Education Elite, on designing in-school assembly programs. She also frequently makes purchases from aACME itself on behalf of her clients.

Sam Patel over at the Montboro School District hires Tanya to consult on their new hybrid learning model. The next time Tanya speaks with her account manager at aACME, Mara Harvey, she mentions that she’s now working with Montboro. Mara notes this in aACE by adding the Montboro School District to the Linked Companies section in Tanya’s Company record.

aACE enables you to manage the different facets of your real-world relationships right from within a single comprehensive Accounting, CRM, and ERP solution. To learn more about what aACE can do for your business, check out our success stories and register for any of our upcoming webinars today.

Relationships can be complicated — and that’s just as true in the professional world as it is anywhere else. Whether you’re dealing with franchisees, subsidiaries, divisions within a company, mergers, acquisitions, or any other type of business affiliation, it can be hard to keep track of who... Learn More

Relationships can be complicated — and that’s just as true in the professional world as it is anywhere else. Whether you’re dealing with franchisees, subsidiaries, divisions within a company, mergers, acquisitions, or any other type of business affiliation, it can be hard to keep track of who is connected to whom and how. Wouldn’t it be great if you could manage that information right from your business management solution, making it easily available to everyone from your order writers to your A/R department?

With aACE, you can.

aACE’s CRM tools make it easy to connect parent and child companies, referrals, and other third-party relationships to give you a more complete picture of your business network. To learn more about this feature, let’s take a look at how our sample company, aACME Education Solutions, uses it in their day-to-day operations.

Montboro School District is a long-time aACME customer. They were referred by the Centerville School District, which is linked to their Company record as the Referring Company. Typically Montboro makes large purchases, like electronic whiteboards, at the district level. Sam Patel, the Assistant Superintendent, is usually the point person on new orders.

At the district level, there are multiple departments that may be used as shipping or billing addresses depending on which products are being ordered and by whom. These locations are stored as separate addresses, which can be flagged as billing and/or shipping addresses. Each address has its own designated contact person.

Let’s say Sam calls aACME sales rep Jamie Gianelli to place an order for 8 mounted whiteboards.

He’d like the invoice sent to the district’s main office but needs the whiteboards delivered to Erica Dawson in the Office of Technology. Jamie can easily do this right from the order by clicking on the icon above the Shipping Address section and de-selecting the “Use Bill To” flag. This makes the Shipping Address fields editable. Next, she chooses “Office of Technology” from the Addresses drop-down menu.

When the order is processed, the Shipping department will send it to Erica at the Office of Technology, while the bill will be sent to Sam at the district’s main address.

In addition to serving Montboro at the district level, aACME also counts a number of schools within the district as customers in their own right. While most orders go through the district office, some schools have the authority to place and manage their own orders. Some of those orders are billed directly to the school, while others are paid for by the district. These schools have their own Company records in aACE, which are linked to the school district as child companies.

Additionally, contacts from all of these child companies are rolled into a list of Linked Contacts within the district’s company record.

And in the individual schools’ Company records, Montboro School District is listed as the parent company. Now any aACME employee with access to aACE’s CRM tools will be able to clearly see the relationship between the school and the school district. Whether they’re viewing the school’s record, the district’s record, or that of a district staff member or school employee, aACE users can easily identify those relationships, giving them a 360º view of their business network.

Now let’s say Sam calls back to place another order, this time on behalf of one of the schools in his district. Douglas Fairbanks Elementary School needs 30 new tablets and software for their fifth grade science program. When Jamie enters this order, she unchecks the “Use Bill To” flag above the Ship To Company field. This allows her to select one of Montboro School District’s child companies as the Ship To address, while still using the district’s office as the billing address.

Child companies can also place their own orders with aACME. Over at Montboro High School West, Principal Amanda Denning places an order for new textbooks for the coming school year. Jamie enters that order using the high school as the customer. Since aACE automatically pulls in the school’s address for both billing and shipping, Jamie does not need to change those fields.

Now let’s explore those relationships from the Accounts Receivable side of the solution. Alexis Kohn, aACME’s A/R clerk, receives a check from the Montboro School District for $52,657.35. The check’s memo states that the amount should go towards the invoices for all three of the orders in the examples above. When Alexis creates a new receipt, aACE automatically pulls in all of the district’s open invoices – and any open invoices belonging to Montboro’s child companies.

Even when invoices are addressed to a child company, as is the case with the Montboro High School West invoice, Alexis can still apply a payment from the parent company.

aACE also makes it a snap for aACME's sales team to see a complete picture of the school district's orders, including orders that were billed to the district but placed by any of its child companies. Links to every order associated with the district are available in one place within its Company record.

But what about relationships that don’t have a hierarchical component — for instance, two companies who do business with each other as well as with your organization? aACE can help you keep track of those connections, too.

Tanya Glenn is an education consultant who works with aACME’s sister company, Education Elite, on designing in-school assembly programs. She also frequently makes purchases from aACME itself on behalf of her clients.

Sam Patel over at the Montboro School District hires Tanya to consult on their new hybrid learning model. The next time Tanya speaks with her account manager at aACME, Mara Harvey, she mentions that she’s now working with Montboro. Mara notes this in aACE by adding the Montboro School District to the Linked Companies section in Tanya’s Company record.

aACE enables you to manage the different facets of your real-world relationships right from within a single comprehensive Accounting, CRM, and ERP solution. To learn more about what aACE can do for your business, check out our success stories and register for any of our upcoming webinars today.

Gain Visibility Into Your Marketing ROI with aACE Campaigns

With aACE, you can.

aACE’s Campaigns module allows you to track the return on investment (ROI) of your marketing campaigns, giving your marketing team greater visibility into the impact that their efforts have on your company’s bottom line. And aACE’s Lists feature enables you to link customer records to your email marketing solution, allowing your order writers and account managers to see which newsletters your customers have received – making it easy to give your clients a seamless experience from that first communication through the end of the sale.

Gabby Velasquez, aACME’s VP of Marketing, is running a marketing campaign on student tablets for the fall. The campaign, which will run in educational magazines, TV commercials, and aACME’s monthly newsletter, will offer customers free shipping and 20% off of accessories like styluses and cases when they purchase a deluxe 9” student tablet.

First, Gabby creates a template with all of the items that are part of the sale. She enters “20% Off Tablet Accessories” as the template’s title and “20TAB” as the abbreviation. This will make it easy to use the template again in future campaigns with the same sale. She fills in the transaction information, description, and shipping, then begins adding products to the template’s Items section.

Gabby starts with the tablets; because they’re being sold at full price, she leaves the Apply and Amount fields blank. For the case, she selects “Unit Adj %” from the Apply drop-down field. This tells aACE that the price of each case will be adjusted by a percentage. In the Amount field, she enters “-20.00%”. She repeats this for each of the tablet accessories included in the sale. Finally, she adds Shipping to the list of items, setting the Apply field to “Fixed Price” and the Amount field to “0.00”. This will override any shipping costs in orders associated with the campaign.

To track the results, she creates a new Campaign record in aACE and titles it “Fall 2020 Tablet Campaign”. In the abbreviation field she enters “FALLTAB20” – this will be the coupon code that customers will refer to in order to get the discount. Whether they mention the code while ordering in person or over the phone, or type it into the Coupon Code field while checking out via aACME’s website, this code will allow aACE to tie the sale back to the campaign.

In the Campaign Type field, Gabby chooses “Discount Incentive” from the drop-down menu. She enters herself as the Campaign Manager, and sets the campaign to run from August 1st through November 30th. Then she chooses “20% Off Tablet Accessories” from the drop-down list of templates. In the Description field she records a brief note about the parameters of the campaign and where it’s being advertised. Finally, in the Lists section, she selects the “K-12 Education” list; customers associated with this list will receive a newsletter about the campaign.

Now that the campaign has been created, it’s time to start producing the ads. First, Gabby creates an internal order for the campaign linked to aACME’s “2020 Marketing” project. She enters labor codes for the expenses that will go into the campaign — for instance, project management, video production for television ads, content development for things like a newsletter and blog post, and funding for services like Google Ads. In the Campaigns field she selects “Fall 2020 Tablet Campaign” from the drop-down, ensuring that any costs incurred will be properly tracked within the campaign record.

Once Gabby processes the order, aACE automatically generates a job for their marketing staff to apply any time and materials that they spend working on the campaign.

The campaign begins, and Gabby prepares to send a newsletter out to current aACME customers informing them of the sale. First she opens her list and reviews the contacts. Once she confirms that her contacts’ information is all correct, she opens the Actions menu and chooses “Open Email Marketing”. This takes Gabby to her email marketing solution, VerticalResponse, where she creates and sends a newsletter about the promotion to the list that she had put together in aACE.

Shortly after the campaign begins, Jamie Gianelli in aACME’s Sales department receives an order from the Douglas Fairbanks Elementary School. Arnold Ruiz, the Assistant Principal, orders 25 9” student tablets along with cases and styluses for his second grade classes. He includes the code “FALLTAB20”, so when Jamie enters the code into the Campaign field, aACE automatically pulls in the 9” tablet as well as the case and stylus at 20% off of their normal prices. Jamie updates the quantities of each item and the prices update to reflect the discount. Because free shipping was also included in the template, the order’s Shipping field is automatically set to “0.00”.

As the sales continue to roll in, Gabby checks the campaign’s progress periodically. She uses the advanced reporting tools in VerticalResponse to check on open, unsubscribe, and click rates; to review the promotion’s impact on sales, she navigates back to the Campaign record in aACE. In the Performance section she can see the total number of sales and their estimated costs and profits, as well as any active leads or recurring transactions.

The Gross Profit tab shows her a graph of profits from orders linked to the campaign for each month that the campaign is active, minus any expenses that were captured in the Job record associated with the campaign.

Finally, the Gross Sales tab shows her a bar graph of sales that have made as a result of the campaign, also broken down by month.

aACE’s Campaigns and Newsletters help you focus your marketing efforts and measure your success at a glance. To learn more about how aACE can help you cultivate strong relationships with your customers, check out our feature highlights on sales leads and the aACE CRM App as well as our success story on Restylers’ Choice’s experience with aACE+ VerticalResponse. And to see aACE in action, register now to save your seat in one of our upcoming webinars.

"Since moving to aACE + VerticalResponse we have been able to keep our mailing lists much more up-to-date. Our email marketing campaign has grown exponentially since introducing this system, and we are seeing excellent results. The best part is that it is super simple for us to use, making it much more likely to be used time and time again." – Doug Jacobs, former President, Restylers’ Choice

Your team has worked hard to craft an engaging marketing campaign, and now the sales are rolling in — but to know that it’s really been a success, you first need to know how much the campaign cost, which customers interacted with the campaign prior to placing an order, and the total profit... Learn More

Your team has worked hard to craft an engaging marketing campaign, and now the sales are rolling in — but to know that it’s really been a success, you first need to know how much the campaign cost, which customers interacted with the campaign prior to placing an order, and the total profit generated by those orders. Wouldn’t it be great if you could see all of that information at a glance, right from within your business management solution?

With aACE, you can.

aACE’s Campaigns module allows you to track the return on investment (ROI) of your marketing campaigns, giving your marketing team greater visibility into the impact that their efforts have on your company’s bottom line. And aACE’s Lists feature enables you to link customer records to your email marketing solution, allowing your order writers and account managers to see which newsletters your customers have received – making it easy to give your clients a seamless experience from that first communication through the end of the sale.

Gabby Velasquez, aACME’s VP of Marketing, is running a marketing campaign on student tablets for the fall. The campaign, which will run in educational magazines, TV commercials, and aACME’s monthly newsletter, will offer customers free shipping and 20% off of accessories like styluses and cases when they purchase a deluxe 9” student tablet.

First, Gabby creates a template with all of the items that are part of the sale. She enters “20% Off Tablet Accessories” as the template’s title and “20TAB” as the abbreviation. This will make it easy to use the template again in future campaigns with the same sale. She fills in the transaction information, description, and shipping, then begins adding products to the template’s Items section.

Gabby starts with the tablets; because they’re being sold at full price, she leaves the Apply and Amount fields blank. For the case, she selects “Unit Adj %” from the Apply drop-down field. This tells aACE that the price of each case will be adjusted by a percentage. In the Amount field, she enters “-20.00%”. She repeats this for each of the tablet accessories included in the sale. Finally, she adds Shipping to the list of items, setting the Apply field to “Fixed Price” and the Amount field to “0.00”. This will override any shipping costs in orders associated with the campaign.

To track the results, she creates a new Campaign record in aACE and titles it “Fall 2020 Tablet Campaign”. In the abbreviation field she enters “FALLTAB20” – this will be the coupon code that customers will refer to in order to get the discount. Whether they mention the code while ordering in person or over the phone, or type it into the Coupon Code field while checking out via aACME’s website, this code will allow aACE to tie the sale back to the campaign.

In the Campaign Type field, Gabby chooses “Discount Incentive” from the drop-down menu. She enters herself as the Campaign Manager, and sets the campaign to run from August 1st through November 30th. Then she chooses “20% Off Tablet Accessories” from the drop-down list of templates. In the Description field she records a brief note about the parameters of the campaign and where it’s being advertised. Finally, in the Lists section, she selects the “K-12 Education” list; customers associated with this list will receive a newsletter about the campaign.

Now that the campaign has been created, it’s time to start producing the ads. First, Gabby creates an internal order for the campaign linked to aACME’s “2020 Marketing” project. She enters labor codes for the expenses that will go into the campaign — for instance, project management, video production for television ads, content development for things like a newsletter and blog post, and funding for services like Google Ads. In the Campaigns field she selects “Fall 2020 Tablet Campaign” from the drop-down, ensuring that any costs incurred will be properly tracked within the campaign record.

Once Gabby processes the order, aACE automatically generates a job for their marketing staff to apply any time and materials that they spend working on the campaign.

The campaign begins, and Gabby prepares to send a newsletter out to current aACME customers informing them of the sale. First she opens her list and reviews the contacts. Once she confirms that her contacts’ information is all correct, she opens the Actions menu and chooses “Open Email Marketing”. This takes Gabby to her email marketing solution, VerticalResponse, where she creates and sends a newsletter about the promotion to the list that she had put together in aACE.

Shortly after the campaign begins, Jamie Gianelli in aACME’s Sales department receives an order from the Douglas Fairbanks Elementary School. Arnold Ruiz, the Assistant Principal, orders 25 9” student tablets along with cases and styluses for his second grade classes. He includes the code “FALLTAB20”, so when Jamie enters the code into the Campaign field, aACE automatically pulls in the 9” tablet as well as the case and stylus at 20% off of their normal prices. Jamie updates the quantities of each item and the prices update to reflect the discount. Because free shipping was also included in the template, the order’s Shipping field is automatically set to “0.00”.

As the sales continue to roll in, Gabby checks the campaign’s progress periodically. She uses the advanced reporting tools in VerticalResponse to check on open, unsubscribe, and click rates; to review the promotion’s impact on sales, she navigates back to the Campaign record in aACE. In the Performance section she can see the total number of sales and their estimated costs and profits, as well as any active leads or recurring transactions.

The Gross Profit tab shows her a graph of profits from orders linked to the campaign for each month that the campaign is active, minus any expenses that were captured in the Job record associated with the campaign.

Finally, the Gross Sales tab shows her a bar graph of sales that have made as a result of the campaign, also broken down by month.

aACE’s Campaigns and Newsletters help you focus your marketing efforts and measure your success at a glance. To learn more about how aACE can help you cultivate strong relationships with your customers, check out our feature highlights on sales leads and the aACE CRM App as well as our success story on Restylers’ Choice’s experience with aACE+ VerticalResponse. And to see aACE in action, register now to save your seat in one of our upcoming webinars.

"Since moving to aACE + VerticalResponse we have been able to keep our mailing lists much more up-to-date. Our email marketing campaign has grown exponentially since introducing this system, and we are seeing excellent results. The best part is that it is super simple for us to use, making it much more likely to be used time and time again." – Doug Jacobs, former President, Restylers’ Choice

Reward Loyal Customers and Entice New Prospects with aACE Rate Cards

With aACE, you can.

aACE Rate Cards enable you to offer flexible pricing for a variety of situations. To learn more about this feature, let’s take a look at how our sample company, aACME Education Solutions, uses it in their day-to-day operations.

Longtime aACME customer Highbridge Academy is a charter school that formerly served elementary school students only. Over the next three years they’ll be expanding to include a middle school, adding a new grade level each year – and they’ll need everything from textbooks to technology in order to outfit their new classrooms.

The school’s Senior Purchasing Specialist, Stephanie Medina, calls Mara Harvey at aACME and negotiates a deal: Highbridge will commit to purchasing electronic whiteboards for their new classrooms as well as student tablets for each class in their new grade levels exclusively from aACME over the next three years. In exchange for that long-term contract, aACME will give Highbridge a 15% discount on the whiteboards and a 10% discount on the tablets and their accessories.

To enter this agreement in aACE, Mara creates a new rate card and titles it “Highbridge Academy Expansion”. In the General Info section, she first sets the Rate Type to “Discount %” and the Rate Value to “10%”; this sets the rate card’s default discount at 10%. Next she sets the rate card’s start date to begin immediately, and the end date to expire three years later at the end of the 2022-2023 school year. The rate card won’t affect the commission rates of the sales reps that take Highbridge’s orders, so she sets the Comm Type field to “Not Applicable”.

In the Description field, Mara records the deal that she negotiated with Stephanie so that anyone who has questions about the rate card can refer to that note.

Finally, in the Rate Card Items section, Mara enters the products that Highbridge will be getting at a discount. For the whiteboards, she unchecks the Default flag next to the Rate Type field, then sets the Rate Type to “Discount %” and the Rate Value to “15%”. For the tablets and tablet accessories, she leaves the Default flag checked so those items will be discounted at the “10%” default rate. Any products that Highbridge orders that are not on this rate card will use standard pricing.

After saving and activating the rate card, Mara needs to attach it to Highbridge Academy in order to ensure that they receive the discounts automatically each time they make a purchase. To do that, Mara navigates to the Customer Details tab in Highbridge’s Company record. She enters Edit mode and chooses the correct rate card from a drop-down menu in the Billing Setup section.

Now whenever Highbridge places an order, aACE will automatically apply the correct rate card – saving aACME’s sales reps the time and potential for human error that comes with having to remember each customer’s discounts and apply them manually.

When the sales rep hovers over the Unit Price field, a tooltip breaks down the pricing by retail unit price, rate card price, any volume or other discounts, and suggested price.

But what if you want to offer special discounts to particular customers, like first responders or members of the military? aACE Rate Cards make that easy, too.

aACME typically sells educational materials to schools and afterschool programs, but due to the recent widespread shift towards distance learning many parents have reached out directly to inquire about their products. To help ease the burden of digital education on already-stressed families, aACME institutes a special 20% discount on student tablets and educational software for homeschoolers. To do this, aCME’s VP of Sales Martin Stroman creates a new rate card.

He starts by filling in the general information, including the 20% default discount rate. He sets the rate card’s start date to begin on August 1st; because he plans to run the program indefinitely, he leaves the end date blank. He wants to incentivize his sales team to encourage sales from this new market, so he sets the commission rate to “4%”, up from the usual 2.5%.

Martin records the program’s rules in the Description field, and then adds the tablets and software to the Rate Card Items section. Due to the number of software titles aACME carries, Martin adds them all using the  button instead of manually looking up the product code for each one.

Because all of the tablets and software programs are being discounted at the same 20% rate with the same 4% commission, he simply leaves the Default flags checked and activates the rate card.

aACME sales rep Jamie Gianelli gets a call from Abby Ellison, a parent who is preparing to homeschool her third- and fifth-graders. Although they’ll be following along with the curriculum provided by her children’s teachers, Abby wants to supplement those daily Zoom calls and worksheets with some fun yet educational games. And of course, her kids will need their own tablets in order to keep up with their schoolwork. Jamie talks Abby through a few options and fills in her order accordingly.

Once all of the products that Abby wants to buy have been entered, Jamie selects the “Homeschool” rate card from the Rate Card drop-down menu. aACE automatically updates the prices of each line item code to include the 20% discount.

And if you want to set special rates for a group of customers all at once, aACE also supports batch updates!

aACME implements a new rate card for high schools, offering a 5% discount on whiteboards and other classroom technology. Rather than attaching the rate card individually to each high school’s order, Martin searches for all customers with “High School” in their names in the Companies module. Once he has that list, he opens the Actions menu and selects “Update Rate Card for List”.

A dialog box pops up asking Martin if he wants to update the rate card for all of the companies in his list.

Martin clicks “Select”, and aACE opens the Rate Card Selector. This allows him to choose the applicable rate card from a list of rate cards that are currently active.

Martin chooses the “High School Tech Discount” rate card, and aACE automatically attaches it to each of the companies in his list.

We’ve seen how aACE’s Rate Cards help you automate flexible pricing for particular customers, groups of customers, or groups of items. But what if you need to adjust the pricing on a long list of items — too many to enter manually?

aACE helps with that, too.

As part of their back-to-school offerings, aACME is holding a sale on all of their educational technology. Rather than enter each product individually, Martin navigates to the Rate Card Items module. From there, he can import a spreadsheet containing each of the thousands of products that are going to be on sale — along with their adjusted price rates. He can also adjust the rate types and values, the commissions types and values, or the volume discounts and commissions for all of the items in the list, all with the click of a button.

Rate cards also offer aACME the ability to store their own customers’ billing codes in aACE. The New Start Academy Charter School, a longtime aACME customer, requires both aACME’s product codes and their own product codes to appear on various documents. Their rate card lists all of the products they buy from aACME along with their own product codes.

When Jamie receives an order from New Start Academy for three electronic whiteboards, she enters aACME’s code for the item, “Tech-001”, into the order. aACE automatically pulls in New Start’s product code, “ELEWB3307”. Only New Start’s code appears in the order’s print view, which is sent to New Start as confirmation that the order has been processed.

aACE’s Rate Cards allow you to set flexible pricing and commission rates, allowing you to take control over your pricing and eliminate the manual data entry that can lead to errors and wasted time. To learn more about what aACE can do for your business, register for a webinar today.

"[With aACE 5] I can pull up the appropriate rate card and change the pricing on all the products in one window. That’s a HUGE time saver! Overlapping promotions are more possible and simpler to manage in aACE. I also like that I can affect the same change on multiple accounts with one or two simple steps. The more I use this program, the more I love it!" - Joni Jarnagin, Marketing & Key Accounts Manager, Redd Remedies

Whether you offer flexible pricing to all of your customers, discounts for certain groups of clients, or just operate on a complex pricing model, it can be hard to keep track of who is paying what for which products. In some businesses that information lives in one person’s head or in... Learn More

Whether you offer flexible pricing to all of your customers, discounts for certain groups of clients, or just operate on a complex pricing model, it can be hard to keep track of who is paying what for which products. In some businesses that information lives in one person’s head or in hard-to-read spreadsheets that only a few even comprehend, creating the potential for chaos as employees move on and take that institutional knowledge with them. Wouldn’t it be great if you could track your different rate levels in a single solution that automatically enters the correct price when the order is entered?

With aACE, you can.

aACE Rate Cards enable you to offer flexible pricing for a variety of situations. To learn more about this feature, let’s take a look at how our sample company, aACME Education Solutions, uses it in their day-to-day operations.

Longtime aACME customer Highbridge Academy is a charter school that formerly served elementary school students only. Over the next three years they’ll be expanding to include a middle school, adding a new grade level each year – and they’ll need everything from textbooks to technology in order to outfit their new classrooms.

The school’s Senior Purchasing Specialist, Stephanie Medina, calls Mara Harvey at aACME and negotiates a deal: Highbridge will commit to purchasing electronic whiteboards for their new classrooms as well as student tablets for each class in their new grade levels exclusively from aACME over the next three years. In exchange for that long-term contract, aACME will give Highbridge a 15% discount on the whiteboards and a 10% discount on the tablets and their accessories.

To enter this agreement in aACE, Mara creates a new rate card and titles it “Highbridge Academy Expansion”. In the General Info section, she first sets the Rate Type to “Discount %” and the Rate Value to “10%”; this sets the rate card’s default discount at 10%. Next she sets the rate card’s start date to begin immediately, and the end date to expire three years later at the end of the 2022-2023 school year. The rate card won’t affect the commission rates of the sales reps that take Highbridge’s orders, so she sets the Comm Type field to “Not Applicable”.

In the Description field, Mara records the deal that she negotiated with Stephanie so that anyone who has questions about the rate card can refer to that note.

Finally, in the Rate Card Items section, Mara enters the products that Highbridge will be getting at a discount. For the whiteboards, she unchecks the Default flag next to the Rate Type field, then sets the Rate Type to “Discount %” and the Rate Value to “15%”. For the tablets and tablet accessories, she leaves the Default flag checked so those items will be discounted at the “10%” default rate. Any products that Highbridge orders that are not on this rate card will use standard pricing.

After saving and activating the rate card, Mara needs to attach it to Highbridge Academy in order to ensure that they receive the discounts automatically each time they make a purchase. To do that, Mara navigates to the Customer Details tab in Highbridge’s Company record. She enters Edit mode and chooses the correct rate card from a drop-down menu in the Billing Setup section.

Now whenever Highbridge places an order, aACE will automatically apply the correct rate card – saving aACME’s sales reps the time and potential for human error that comes with having to remember each customer’s discounts and apply them manually.

When the sales rep hovers over the Unit Price field, a tooltip breaks down the pricing by retail unit price, rate card price, any volume or other discounts, and suggested price.

But what if you want to offer special discounts to particular customers, like first responders or members of the military? aACE Rate Cards make that easy, too.

aACME typically sells educational materials to schools and afterschool programs, but due to the recent widespread shift towards distance learning many parents have reached out directly to inquire about their products. To help ease the burden of digital education on already-stressed families, aACME institutes a special 20% discount on student tablets and educational software for homeschoolers. To do this, aCME’s VP of Sales Martin Stroman creates a new rate card.

He starts by filling in the general information, including the 20% default discount rate. He sets the rate card’s start date to begin on August 1st; because he plans to run the program indefinitely, he leaves the end date blank. He wants to incentivize his sales team to encourage sales from this new market, so he sets the commission rate to “4%”, up from the usual 2.5%.

Martin records the program’s rules in the Description field, and then adds the tablets and software to the Rate Card Items section. Due to the number of software titles aACME carries, Martin adds them all using the  button instead of manually looking up the product code for each one.

Because all of the tablets and software programs are being discounted at the same 20% rate with the same 4% commission, he simply leaves the Default flags checked and activates the rate card.

aACME sales rep Jamie Gianelli gets a call from Abby Ellison, a parent who is preparing to homeschool her third- and fifth-graders. Although they’ll be following along with the curriculum provided by her children’s teachers, Abby wants to supplement those daily Zoom calls and worksheets with some fun yet educational games. And of course, her kids will need their own tablets in order to keep up with their schoolwork. Jamie talks Abby through a few options and fills in her order accordingly.

Once all of the products that Abby wants to buy have been entered, Jamie selects the “Homeschool” rate card from the Rate Card drop-down menu. aACE automatically updates the prices of each line item code to include the 20% discount.

And if you want to set special rates for a group of customers all at once, aACE also supports batch updates!

aACME implements a new rate card for high schools, offering a 5% discount on whiteboards and other classroom technology. Rather than attaching the rate card individually to each high school’s order, Martin searches for all customers with “High School” in their names in the Companies module. Once he has that list, he opens the Actions menu and selects “Update Rate Card for List”.

A dialog box pops up asking Martin if he wants to update the rate card for all of the companies in his list.

Martin clicks “Select”, and aACE opens the Rate Card Selector. This allows him to choose the applicable rate card from a list of rate cards that are currently active.

Martin chooses the “High School Tech Discount” rate card, and aACE automatically attaches it to each of the companies in his list.

We’ve seen how aACE’s Rate Cards help you automate flexible pricing for particular customers, groups of customers, or groups of items. But what if you need to adjust the pricing on a long list of items — too many to enter manually?

aACE helps with that, too.

As part of their back-to-school offerings, aACME is holding a sale on all of their educational technology. Rather than enter each product individually, Martin navigates to the Rate Card Items module. From there, he can import a spreadsheet containing each of the thousands of products that are going to be on sale — along with their adjusted price rates. He can also adjust the rate types and values, the commissions types and values, or the volume discounts and commissions for all of the items in the list, all with the click of a button.

Rate cards also offer aACME the ability to store their own customers’ billing codes in aACE. The New Start Academy Charter School, a longtime aACME customer, requires both aACME’s product codes and their own product codes to appear on various documents. Their rate card lists all of the products they buy from aACME along with their own product codes.

When Jamie receives an order from New Start Academy for three electronic whiteboards, she enters aACME’s code for the item, “Tech-001”, into the order. aACE automatically pulls in New Start’s product code, “ELEWB3307”. Only New Start’s code appears in the order’s print view, which is sent to New Start as confirmation that the order has been processed.

aACE’s Rate Cards allow you to set flexible pricing and commission rates, allowing you to take control over your pricing and eliminate the manual data entry that can lead to errors and wasted time. To learn more about what aACE can do for your business, register for a webinar today.

"[With aACE 5] I can pull up the appropriate rate card and change the pricing on all the products in one window. That’s a HUGE time saver! Overlapping promotions are more possible and simpler to manage in aACE. I also like that I can affect the same change on multiple accounts with one or two simple steps. The more I use this program, the more I love it!" - Joni Jarnagin, Marketing & Key Accounts Manager, Redd Remedies

Nurture Your Leads from First Contact to Final Sale in aACE

With aACE, you can.

aACE’s comprehensive CRM tools make it easy to track the progress of each lead from the first hello to the final handshake. To see this feature in action, let’s take a look at how our fictional company, aACME Education Solutions, uses it in their day-to-day operations.

Sales Rep Jamie Gianelli gets a call from Megan Lloyd, the principal at the Haughton Day School. Megan is in the market for new electronic whiteboards. She heard about aACME from a friend who works for the King’s Rock School District, a longtime aACME customer. Megan is gathering information from several vendors and is looking to make a decision by the end of August.

Jamie creates a new sales lead in aACE and begins entering all of the information she gathered from Megan over the phone. The Haughton Day School hasn’t previously purchased from aACME, so Jamie uses the Companies selector to create a new company record without leaving the lead interface.

Because the Haughton Day School is located on the West Coast, aACE automatically assigns the lead to the sales rep covering that area. aACE also automatically populates the Customer and Contact fields with information from the newly-created company record. Jamie then fills in additional information about the type of lead this is and where it came from.

Jamie sets the lead type as Sales Inquiry, prompting aACE to look for a quote template with the same name. aACE finds a Sales Inquiry template and uses it to automatically create a new quote. When Jamie saves the Haughton lead, that quote appears in the Orders & Quotes section at the bottom of the lead record.

The lead type is also linked to task groups, so when aACE finds a Sales Inquiry task group, it automatically generates the needed series of tasks. Each of these tasks represents a step in aACME’s sales process. The first task, Client Research, is assigned to Jamie. Beside the Client Research task, the Next flag is marked, prompting aACE to pull that task and its due date into the Next Step and Next Step Date fields.

After learning a little about this potential customer, Jamie marks the Client Research task complete. aACE automatically moves to the next task, Introductory Email; the Next Step and Next Step Date fields are automatically updated. Because Mara Harvey is the sales rep assigned to the lead, the rest of the tasks are assigned to her. When Mara opens the Leads module, she’ll immediately see what action she needs to take.

In the Leads module, Mara sees a list of all of her active sales leads, including the new lead for Haughton Day School. The list view makes it easy to see which leads need her immediate attention, where each lead is in the sales process, and more.

But what happens if a lead doesn’t quite fit the predetermined sequence of events?

Let’s say Mara’s going to be attending a trade show in the near future. During the initial email correspondence with Megan, they realize she's going to be at the same event. Mara can manually add “Trade Show” as the Next Task, then set the date of the trade show as the Next Step Date. This overrides the template, giving Mara the flexibility she needs to tailor the standard sales process to suit this particular lead.

Megan likes what she hears from Mara at the trade show, so she asks Mara to send her two quotes – one for six freestanding whiteboards and one for six mounted whiteboards. Mara makes a note of that request via the CRM App on her phone.

When she returns to the office, she first opens the quote that was automatically generated by the Sales Inquiry template. She populates the Order Items field with six freestanding whiteboards and saves the quote as “Option 1”. Next, Mara duplicates the “Option 1” quote and titles the duplicate “Option 2”. Here she changes the freestanding whiteboards to mounted ones. Once both quotes have been created Mara emails a PDF to Megan showcasing both options, with separate grand totals for each. aACE’s email integration feature archives the email with the Lead record.

A few days later, Megan lets Mara know that she wants to move ahead with the order for six freestanding whiteboards. Since this deal has progressed from a lead to a real order, Mara closes the lead record and aACE prompts her to record whether it was won or lost. She selects Won and chooses “Option 1”, the quote for the freestanding whiteboards. She also enters any other relevant details, such as the customer’s purchase order number and any additional notes from her conversations with Megan.

When Mara closes the lead, aACE automatically changes the quote she selected into an open order. The quote for the mounted whiteboards, “Option 2”, is automatically voided.

Now that the lead has been won, Mara takes a 10% deposit on the whiteboards. She can do this directly from the lead record by selecting Apply Payment from the Actions menu. Mara takes Megan’s credit card information over the phone; a token representing that credit card is stored in aACE while the sensitive card information is kept secure on the payment processor’s servers. Mara flags the payment as a deposit, and the order is ready to be fulfilled.

Now that we’ve seen how aACE takes a successful lead from start to finish, let’s take a look at what happens when a deal doesn’t end up closing.

Jamie Gianelli receives another phone call, this time from Sam Patel at the Montboro School District, a longtime aACME customer that has been assigned to Jamie. Sam is thinking of buying new tablets for the sixth grade math programs at his district’s middle schools. Jamie records her notes from the call using the New Call Entry screen; this allows her to review a summary of all of Montboro’s previous orders, leads, activities, and more.

From that screen, she creates a new lead based on the conversation with Sam.

Jamie nurtures the lead through the sales process, but Sam is ultimately unable to make the purchase due to budget cuts.

After getting the news from Sam, Jamie closes this lead for Montboro School District. Just as we saw in the previous example, aACE prompts her to choose whether the lead was won or lost. She selects Lost, and aACE prompts her to fill in additional information about the lead, including a reason for why the deal failed to close. Jamie selects the reason from a drop-down list, then adds her own notes to explain what happened.

Later, aACME VP of Sales Martin Stroman is able to see at a glance how many leads have been lost this quarter as well as how many are still in the pipeline. This arms him with the information needed to adjust aACME’s sales strategy to be sure the department is targeting the right audiences in the right ways.

From these examples, you can see that aACE’s Leads module is flexible and robust enough to support your business’s particular sales workflow. aACE can assist your sales team in quickly setting goals, recording activities, managing next steps, and closing deals. Check out our feature highlight on the aACE CRM App to learn how your sales team can take aACE with them wherever they go.

To learn more about what aACE can do for your business, join a webinar today.

"Without much training you can logically understand how this program fits into our work environment. It has a comprehensive Customer Relationship Management section that leads into prospective customers becoming real customers. From that point, you can take an order from start to finish by capturing deadlines, resources and material costs spent on a project, as well as extensive accounting functions. The program is user friendly and easy enough for our whole staff, who have varying levels of technical skills, to embrace." - Lili Hall, President, KNOCK, Inc.

Whether you’re selling to a new prospect or a loyal customer, it’s important to manage your relationships with sales leads carefully. Wouldn’t it be great if you could track every interaction with your leads in a single solution? With aACE, you can. aACE’s comprehensive CRM tools make it... Learn More

Whether you’re selling to a new prospect or a loyal customer, it’s important to manage your relationships with sales leads carefully. Wouldn’t it be great if you could track every interaction with your leads in a single solution?

With aACE, you can.

aACE’s comprehensive CRM tools make it easy to track the progress of each lead from the first hello to the final handshake. To see this feature in action, let’s take a look at how our fictional company, aACME Education Solutions, uses it in their day-to-day operations.

Sales Rep Jamie Gianelli gets a call from Megan Lloyd, the principal at the Haughton Day School. Megan is in the market for new electronic whiteboards. She heard about aACME from a friend who works for the King’s Rock School District, a longtime aACME customer. Megan is gathering information from several vendors and is looking to make a decision by the end of August.

Jamie creates a new sales lead in aACE and begins entering all of the information she gathered from Megan over the phone. The Haughton Day School hasn’t previously purchased from aACME, so Jamie uses the Companies selector to create a new company record without leaving the lead interface.

Because the Haughton Day School is located on the West Coast, aACE automatically assigns the lead to the sales rep covering that area. aACE also automatically populates the Customer and Contact fields with information from the newly-created company record. Jamie then fills in additional information about the type of lead this is and where it came from.

Jamie sets the lead type as Sales Inquiry, prompting aACE to look for a quote template with the same name. aACE finds a Sales Inquiry template and uses it to automatically create a new quote. When Jamie saves the Haughton lead, that quote appears in the Orders & Quotes section at the bottom of the lead record.

The lead type is also linked to task groups, so when aACE finds a Sales Inquiry task group, it automatically generates the needed series of tasks. Each of these tasks represents a step in aACME’s sales process. The first task, Client Research, is assigned to Jamie. Beside the Client Research task, the Next flag is marked, prompting aACE to pull that task and its due date into the Next Step and Next Step Date fields.

After learning a little about this potential customer, Jamie marks the Client Research task complete. aACE automatically moves to the next task, Introductory Email; the Next Step and Next Step Date fields are automatically updated. Because Mara Harvey is the sales rep assigned to the lead, the rest of the tasks are assigned to her. When Mara opens the Leads module, she’ll immediately see what action she needs to take.

In the Leads module, Mara sees a list of all of her active sales leads, including the new lead for Haughton Day School. The list view makes it easy to see which leads need her immediate attention, where each lead is in the sales process, and more.

But what happens if a lead doesn’t quite fit the predetermined sequence of events?

Let’s say Mara’s going to be attending a trade show in the near future. During the initial email correspondence with Megan, they realize she's going to be at the same event. Mara can manually add “Trade Show” as the Next Task, then set the date of the trade show as the Next Step Date. This overrides the template, giving Mara the flexibility she needs to tailor the standard sales process to suit this particular lead.

Megan likes what she hears from Mara at the trade show, so she asks Mara to send her two quotes – one for six freestanding whiteboards and one for six mounted whiteboards. Mara makes a note of that request via the CRM App on her phone.

When she returns to the office, she first opens the quote that was automatically generated by the Sales Inquiry template. She populates the Order Items field with six freestanding whiteboards and saves the quote as “Option 1”. Next, Mara duplicates the “Option 1” quote and titles the duplicate “Option 2”. Here she changes the freestanding whiteboards to mounted ones. Once both quotes have been created Mara emails a PDF to Megan showcasing both options, with separate grand totals for each. aACE’s email integration feature archives the email with the Lead record.

A few days later, Megan lets Mara know that she wants to move ahead with the order for six freestanding whiteboards. Since this deal has progressed from a lead to a real order, Mara closes the lead record and aACE prompts her to record whether it was won or lost. She selects Won and chooses “Option 1”, the quote for the freestanding whiteboards. She also enters any other relevant details, such as the customer’s purchase order number and any additional notes from her conversations with Megan.

When Mara closes the lead, aACE automatically changes the quote she selected into an open order. The quote for the mounted whiteboards, “Option 2”, is automatically voided.

Now that the lead has been won, Mara takes a 10% deposit on the whiteboards. She can do this directly from the lead record by selecting Apply Payment from the Actions menu. Mara takes Megan’s credit card information over the phone; a token representing that credit card is stored in aACE while the sensitive card information is kept secure on the payment processor’s servers. Mara flags the payment as a deposit, and the order is ready to be fulfilled.

Now that we’ve seen how aACE takes a successful lead from start to finish, let’s take a look at what happens when a deal doesn’t end up closing.

Jamie Gianelli receives another phone call, this time from Sam Patel at the Montboro School District, a longtime aACME customer that has been assigned to Jamie. Sam is thinking of buying new tablets for the sixth grade math programs at his district’s middle schools. Jamie records her notes from the call using the New Call Entry screen; this allows her to review a summary of all of Montboro’s previous orders, leads, activities, and more.

From that screen, she creates a new lead based on the conversation with Sam.

Jamie nurtures the lead through the sales process, but Sam is ultimately unable to make the purchase due to budget cuts.

After getting the news from Sam, Jamie closes this lead for Montboro School District. Just as we saw in the previous example, aACE prompts her to choose whether the lead was won or lost. She selects Lost, and aACE prompts her to fill in additional information about the lead, including a reason for why the deal failed to close. Jamie selects the reason from a drop-down list, then adds her own notes to explain what happened.

Later, aACME VP of Sales Martin Stroman is able to see at a glance how many leads have been lost this quarter as well as how many are still in the pipeline. This arms him with the information needed to adjust aACME’s sales strategy to be sure the department is targeting the right audiences in the right ways.

From these examples, you can see that aACE’s Leads module is flexible and robust enough to support your business’s particular sales workflow. aACE can assist your sales team in quickly setting goals, recording activities, managing next steps, and closing deals. Check out our feature highlight on the aACE CRM App to learn how your sales team can take aACE with them wherever they go.

To learn more about what aACE can do for your business, join a webinar today.

"Without much training you can logically understand how this program fits into our work environment. It has a comprehensive Customer Relationship Management section that leads into prospective customers becoming real customers. From that point, you can take an order from start to finish by capturing deadlines, resources and material costs spent on a project, as well as extensive accounting functions. The program is user friendly and easy enough for our whole staff, who have varying levels of technical skills, to embrace." - Lili Hall, President, KNOCK, Inc.