RoloFlex Release: Press Release and Marketing

RoloFlex 12.5 Released November 2007
Featuring Visual DataFlex

Rated highly by submission to download sites listed herein, the RoloFlex CRM/PIM [customer relations management/personal information manager] is going out to major download sites and features the upgraded RoloFlex product released with the Visual DataFlex 12.1 platform.

The marketing effort for RoloFlex is just beginning!

Soon, RoloFlex will be available at most major download sites featuring anonymous download under the Visual DataFlex 12.1 evaluation period and subsequent registration/licensing when registered through http://www.roloflex.biz/

Under Construction: RoloFlex Time Tracker 12.5 for billing hours and invoicing.

Nearing Release Now: RoloFlex EMail Module, due for distribution on November 15 2007

Please Note the RoloFlex Blog Site http://www.roloflex.blogspot.com/ for future news!

Sincerely, Peter and Kimberly Donovan

RoloFlex Companion #1

The first RoloFlex Companion Product *for Professional Version Only will be Launched on November 15th.

Contributed by longstanding custom app developer Garret Mott of Auto-Mate Software.

Note: Garret has done a number of custom email managers, adding in features such as disclaimer, logo as an image, signature with custom field placement capability, attachments, well... it has a lot of features. Any developer looking for a custom email attachment to their product please contact http://www.automatesoftware.com/.

Note: This is intended as a launch of companion products, both for RoloFlex, and a platform for getting your Visual DataFlex product out in a new market. Please contact http://www.applausesoftware.com/ for more details and a prototype agreement.

Thanks! Good luck to the pooch - "Rolo".

www.RoloFlex.Biz - New Home for RoloFlex

RoloFlex: now 2 flavors:

Personal and Professional

*The professional version simply has a valid VDF client license sold for commercial/business clients.

The new home is:

http://www.roloflex.biz/

And a more professional interface is coded to accomodate the release.

Regards, Peter & Kimberly Donovan

RoloFlex 12.4 Released Today

RoloFlex 12.4 Released:

RoloFlex 12.4 was released today as a small upgrade to RoloFlex 12.3 which features finishing work to isolate 2 small bugs and add 4 small features.

Features Added:

• Print List Of RoloFlex Entries
• Print Envelope
• Active Toolbar with more choices and data aware highlighting courtesy Peter Brooks [Australia] based on work by Vincent Oorsprong [Netherlands].
• Color (or colour if you prefer) added to notes courtesy Nat St. Pierre [Canada].

Bugs Fixed:

• [export all and re-import all did not function properly in all cases]


• [print lead card was not programmed]

In addition, RoloFlex has been featured in some web articles, and is starting to be offered by some free software download sites:

http://www.freewarehome.com/index.html?http%3A//www.freewarehome.com/Business_and_Productivity/Business_Specific/Sales_t.html

and featured alongside the release of Visual DataFlex personal edition:

http://www.dataaccess.com/enews/2007/Jan_18_2007.htm

Thanks to all who contributed to this revision,

Regards,
Peter and Kimberly Donovan

Modern Sales Theory Explained: The Funnel Theory

Author: Peter A Donovan of Applause Software.

The Funnel Theory:

First: The Funnel:

The Funnel is a way of describing your prospect base that is used by ACT and GOLDMINE as their basic premise. The problem with both of these 2 most popular packages in my opinion is that they include so many extra functions in order to sell their product that the basic intent of their system gets lost by users with little or no training and even by veteran users.

Imagine a funnel, like a megaphone with a large open side on one end and a small open side on the other.

Many businesses find themselves in business for 30 years and the sales department has information on about only 20% of the potential market due to turnover, record keeping on paper (unusable in many cases because of being outdated), and general policy of not understanding the funnel theory.

The premise:
The large side represents how many potential accounts you know about in order to be able to contact them and sell your services to.
The small side represents prospects who are ready to make a yes/no decision on a quote or proposal or bid you make and a percentage of these will fall through the small end and become sales.

4 Goals:

1. Increase the funnel by marketing, cold calling, meetings, conventions, inbound phone calls, etc. Premise: The more in the funnel, the more fall thru as sales.
2. Increase the number of prospects at the small rim of the funnel, thereby (making the assumption that your closing ratio stays the same) you get more sales.
3. Skew the funnel with leads that are more likely to be sold. This is done by accessing your funnel lead base and marketing (cold call/direct mail, etc) to a proven segment of the market with a higher closing ratio, or customers where you have an add-on product for what they use.
4. By whatever means including skewing the funnel and teaching modern sales tactics to the field reps, you increase your closing ratio.

6 Assumptions:

1. The more leads in the funnel brings more opportunity to sell your product. If you don't have a way of regularly contacting the entire funnel this assumption is meaningless. Therefore you must generate advertising directed individually at each funnel listing via phone and mail and email.
2. The more information you gather about each funnel lead brings you closer to a sale. You can't sell an account unless you know the name of the decision maker or beginning contact person. You can't determine the value of the account to you without knowing what size the account is, what potential they have to be a client, or information that would make them non-desirable as a customer. If you don't have this information, and a way of using it to select segments of your prospects for contact it's useless.
3. The more frequency of calls to your best market segment leads to higher sales volume. You must have information to fuel this market segment and identify it.
4. Price is meaningless in many cases. You must present yourself to situations where you are the only bidder or have identified the needs of the customer properly and prove both in speaking to the prospect and backup in print that their needs will be best addressed by your company. If you don't save this information for future use [assuming no sale] you put yourself back in time having to do this all over again and lose the ability to skew the funnel based on the information you gather.
5. You must have a way of reporting the funnel. You must have a list of prospects considering a quote ready to make a decision. You must have a list of each field rep's active accounts that they are pursuing. You must have a way (mail merge, email blast) of regularly putting your name in front of the target market based on the info collected.
6. From #5 you must have a way of determining if the inner funnel leads are sold or lost or postponed. This gives you a closing ratio which is the heart of the funnel. To explain, you must log a history that a quote was given, and have a history of which of these resulted in sales (otherwise you can't compute a closing ratio) after the fact. Monitoring activity of leads (the number active), the prospects on the inner edge with quotes, and keeping track of field rep closing ratios over time gives you a pulse.

2 Rules.
1. If a field rep produces many sales you can't touch them and they can do anything they want until the sales stop flowing. To keep this salesrep on top of the heap you must provide them with incoming leads of a high quality which they will only pursue a percentage of due to their status.
2. Longevity and Burnout. The longer you keep the top salesreps as employees, the closing ratio will increase and sales will increase, and it will become easier to project budget and rely on your projections. The supply of quality leads to these reps is the key to keeping them longer.

Your goals as business director is to make everyone understand the funnel theory as explained above and make the:
FUNNEL, the HEART, and the KEY in your sights and produce the needed reports, mailings, etc. to make it happen. You must skew the funnel to do this and keep your eyes on the pulse.

Regards,
Peter A Donovan

Applause Software
Wakefield, MA USA
(781) 968-5240

Upgrade For Free ROLOFLEX Published Today

In a previously announced release, a fully featured contact manager and personal information center named RoloFLEX written in Visual DataFlex by Applause Software was upgraded to include the following features:

*** UPGRADE TO ROLOFLEX AVAILABLE ***

Please see http://www.roloflex.biz/ for downloading the free RoloFlex.

New Features Include:

1. An active toolbar that has these features:
* Shadows the find keys when not in an indexed field.
* Shadows the delete key if a record is not found.
* Shadows the save keys if no changes exist to be saved.
* Puts the DELETE button WAY AWAY from the SAVE button.
* Offers A Save and Clear, or a Save and No Clear. etc.

Thank you to Vincent Oorsprong of DAW Netherlands and Peter Brooks of
Soft Sys/Australia (www.MembershipAdmin.Com) for the ActiveToolbar.

2. VDFQuery is part of the file structure now (The 2.4 beta)
* You can compile now right away without having to path to VDFQuery.

Thanks dearly to Sture Anderson of DAW Netherlands for sharing VDFQuery.

3. VDFSORT Included.
* International Downloaders not in USA English must reindex prior to using.
* This tool is now included without having to use database builder.

There have been over 1000 visits to the download page of RoloFLEX and if you
haven't tried it yet please give it a shot as it is well constructed and highlyuseful.

Thanks to all who visited my website in the process.

Peter A Donovan
Applause (TM) Software
Wakefield, MA USA

***NOTE: THIS UPGRADE DOES NOT INCLUDE THE DATA OR LETTERS FOLDER SO IT IS SAFE TO DOWNLOAD OVER YOUR EXISTING APP. I DID.

Steps:
1. Install Personal Version Of VDF12.0 (Link On My WebPage)
2. Install RoloFLEX 12
3. Install Updgrade1

Hope you enjoy.

Note: this fully featured RoloFLEX is totally free and includes source code (open source)
and is based on a free personal edition of Visual DataFlex studio by D.A.W.
(Data Access Worldwide of Miami USA)

Note: If you find this RoloFLEX useful for BUSINESS NEEDS there are 2 comments I would
like to make:

1. A runtime license (extremely inexpensive) is required for business use. I would be happy
to quote you pricing on this license.
2. Customization: If you would like RoloFLEX muscled up for your specific business needs
please contact Peter Donovan of Applause Software for a quotation on such.

All the elements mentioned above are freeware with no expiration date for personal usage and to get accustomed to ~the best kept secret~ in the Database Visual Studio industry.