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One
of the unavoidable chores of the financial advisory
business is Keeping Track - of clients, of the products
we’ve sold to those clients, and of the advisor’s interaction
with both. It’s a formidable task, and many systems
have been devised to allow us to do it efficiently.
Of course, it’s also a marvelously lucrative opportunity,
which is why the good systems focus, not just on record
keeping, but also on allowing us to use that stored
information, easily and quickly, in our marketing.
A reallygood “client/asset relationship manager”
(which is one label for the software tools which do
all this) is a good marketing tool.
ContactSage ProÔ
is one such program. It was designed for financial and insurance
advisors and agents and its layout shows it. The toolbar
at the top (see Fig. 1)
provides quick access to the tasks and content areas.
The notepad and remarks
tools are always available, and provide
a handy means to record notes on client conversations
(can you say “compliance”?). The calendar, (see Fig.
2) while a bit odd-looking, is useful, and permits
quick access to (and editing of) the appointments and
contacts for those appointments.
One
tool I reallylike is the Investment Profile
(see Fig. 3).
With the click of a button, you’re presented
with a neat, one-page summary of the client’s investment
positions, with a summary by Fund Family at bottom –
without leaving the client’s record.
The
reports available in Contact Sage
ProÔ are entirely adequate, but I had a bit of trouble
learning how to produce them. The procedure is not
all that intuitive. That said, it would have been a
lot easier if I had bothered to read the manual
first! (Most of my consulting clients, like
most software users, don’t, so I generally, when trying
out a new program, try to “jump right in”, to see how
easy (or hard) it is to learn the program that way.
Almost every time, it’s much more difficult than it
would have been after even a quick read of the manual.
There’s a Moral here!).
There’s
no offline Help in Contact Sage ProÔ. But the Manual,
and a brief User’s Guide (for those who insist upon
getting up and running right now and who
intend to ignore the above Moral) are available from
the initial menu, along with a button for the Activities
screen (which shows Contact Birthdays, Family Member
Birthdays, Appointments, and a To Do List for any chosen
date), and buttons for the Contacts, Reports, and Utilities
screens. There’s also a 65-minute multi-media tutorial
included on the program CD. That tutorial is also available
if you click on HELP while in Contact Sage ProÔ, but you must be connected to the internet to use it.
Finding
contacts, individually or in groups, based on specific
search criteria, is easy, using the SEARCH function.
Just select the values you want in the relevant fields,
in the Find Contacts screen (see Fig.
4), and Contact Sage ProÔ will provide you with a list of contacts meeting your criteria.
Clicking
on the Reports button produces a menu
from which the user may select Contact Report, Commission
Report, Premium Report, Status Report, and Labels.
The reports, by the way, can be done in WindowsÒ Notepad, Microsoft WordÒ, or ExcelÒ. The reports
can be selected to print any combination of fields in
any order.
Click
the Utilities button and you get a menu
(see Fig.
5) that lets you do some serious customization
of the program, to suit the way you want to use it.
You can change the names of the insurance and investment
fields (and choices for those fields) and add more of
your own, as well as general User Defined Fields. There’s
a lot of functionality in this program.
But
Contact Sage ProÔ isn’t a
full-blown Client/Asset/Portfolio Management program,
and wasn’t designed to be. It won’t let you download
from DST FanmailÒ or other information provider. You must enter the
values of the securities and insurance holdings yourself.
If automatic download of unit values, transactions,
etc. is something you require, this isn’t the program
for you. Try DBCamsÒ, EZ-Data’s “Client Data System”Ò, or the like. And figure on spending many times what Contact Sage
ProÔ costs.
One
thing Contact Sage ProÔ does offer which is normally available
only in higher-end packages is a PDA Interface. It
puts most of the information in the program in your
Palm PilotÒ or other “Personal Digital Assistant”
device with a simple synchronization. I can’t tell
you more about that particular functionality because
my PDA is a Sony ClieÒ NX70V, which uses PalmÒ OS5, on which Contact Sage ProÔ hasn’t yet been tested. But when that’s been done,
I’ll review the PDA functionality in a posting on the
software forum I moderate on Financial Planning Interactive
(www.financial-planning.com
/ Discussion / Software).
Contact Sage ProÔ is one of the best software values I’ve seen in
a while. It’s not just a generic “contact manager”
with a few customized fields. It was built for insurance
and financial advisors. The developer, Bill Jacobs,
takes that “custom built” part very seriously.
I know, because he retained me to help with the design,
and I will happily attest to the fact that the guy listens!
Contact Sage ProÔ costs $295 for the system and
support for the first year, and $100 per year after
that for the latest version updates and continuing support.
The PDA module is a one-time additional $95 (support
for which is included in the annual $100 support charge
for the program). That’s an introductory price, and,
like most (but not all) introductory prices, it’s a
real bargain. Program information is available at
www.contactsagepro.com
John
L. Olsen, CLU, ChFC
Principal, Olsen Financial Group and “Certified Software
Junkie”
131 Hollywood Lane
Kirkwood, MO, 63122
314-909-8818
314-909-7912 FAX
jolsen02@earthlink.net
www.olsenfinancialgroup.com
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