Goldmine and GTD

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Anonymous

Guest
Anyone in sales using Goldmine to implement GTD? I would love to hear how you are implementing it into everyday use of Goldmine. Thanks.
 

TPorter2

Registered
I'm not in Sales, but I support people who are. Goldmine is our company's contact manager and has been for 5 years (3.2). We are now on 5.7 and will be moving to 6.0 when we get our new server.

Our sales staff uses Goldmine extensively, and syncs to a Palm using CompanionLink Pro so they can take Goldmine info with them on sales calls. We have 170,000 history activities dating from 1-1-00, so I do mean extensively.

I don't know if any of our sales staff are GTD advocates, but the Goldmine next action works very well with the GTD next action concept. Hope that helps!
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Ok, I'm sort of in sales :) I run my own business, which means I have to track suspects, prospects, source, projects, opportunities, etc. etc. I also create sales material for my clients, and I've used GoldMine for 5 or 6 years. I started with version 4.0, and am now on 6.0. It is my primary, critical desktop tool for pretty much everything.

With that said, I also use my Palm extensively. My latest is a Tungsten T. I prefer to handle most of my GTD stuff on the Palm. I haven't found a good way to handle all of it in GM, but I can give you some tips.

Projects: GM holds my client based projects, and prospect opportunities. I do this primarily for tracking/historical reasons. I do NOT put all of my GTD projects into GM though... those are held on the Palm. The projects I have in the GM project manager are also on the Palm, in the form of a Todo item. This allows me to see and manipulate ALL projects, Actions, etc. in one place.

Next Actions: I use the NA features of GM extensively. This helps me keep the Palm and GM up-to-date with everything that's going on, including project actions/tasks, opportunity followups, and so on. I use these in place of the Project task/gannt chart function. If you use the project todo/task feature, you cannot put it onto the Palm... even if you're using Companion Link. This was a major hindrence for me, and that's why I started using NAs all the time instead. In order to get my NAs on the Todo list instead of the calendar, I do not put a time on them. Instead I use ABC in the time slot, which changes that label to "Priority" instead of time.

All of my actions, context lists, etc. are on the Palm in the Todo database. These sync with GMs todo list, but I rarely use that. You can filter and sort the GM list so that you're viewing by context, but I don't care to do that myself. I don't show my incomplete todo items on the GM calendar/task list either, because that would be information overload for me.

I have a lot of reference material in my Palm Memo app. This does not sync with GM by default (though it can if you're using Companion Link). I have mine sync to the Palm desktop. I also have lesser used reference lists in Bonsai, and those sync to the Desktop version of Bonsai.

I don't use Companion Link. I have registered the pro version but I removed it after about a week of use. I really liked the ability to sync sales opps, choose whether "Other Actions" went to the calendar or todo app, and I LOVED the ability to see GM history in Palm contact notes. Unfortunately, the software made a mess of my palm (duplicates and all sorts of other things), and it was unable to limit contact synching to a filtered group.... this meant I had thousands of contacts transfered to my Palm. I didn't want or need that, and it drove me crazy. It also allowed me to see action codes on each item of my Palm, and link things from the Palm to the appropriate contacts. This however, ended up creating more clutter on my screen than I was willing to deal with.

So, now I'm back to the default GM sync. I have modified my systems/routines slightly so that I now have an event listing on my Palm for pending sales. I simply make an event entry with the contact's name, brief note, and amount of sale. That then shows on my Palm calendar.

In any case, not sure if this helps any but there it is :)
Kathy
--
Kathy Burns-Millyard
http://www.ElectronicPerceptions.com
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Thanks for the great tips. Does not seem like there are a lot of Goldmine users around. I think it a an awesome application.....now I just need to implement GTD principles with it and it will be perfect.
 

TPorter2

Registered
If you haven't been to contactreview.com yet, it is a great site where Goldmine users and VAR's answer questions and solve problems. Check it out!
 
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