Tour de Force – Entering Useful Data
Overview
Tour de Force (TdF) is tool that can help us share information with each other; it’s a single location containing all
customer interactions and that information will always be there. Data in TdF is efficiently shared with the entire
company (although security is applied), saving time from rehashing a story or finding the right email. In fact, the
data being entered into TdF is the same information you are entering into your own recordkeeping system
today, but that is an island of information. It can’t be pulled up and read by someone who is working on the
same project, or accessed by someone who received a call from a customer when you were on vacation or
otherwise unavailable.
So in summary, we are able to better serve our customers if we have all the details about our conversations,
projects, and strategies in TdF so everyone has access to them. If it concerns a customer, we know where to
look.
Entering data into TdF was a good start and now that we have some time under our belt, we wanted to provide
some comments on Appointments, Activities, and Opportunities.
Appointments
Appointments allow Nelson to see which customers (and contacts) we have been able to physically visit. Going
forward, Nelson wants to engage customers (and contacts) who haven’t been visited; this will occur through
Marketing and other means. It is a priority to extend our reach and depth within our customers to forge
stronger relationships with as many Contacts as possible.
Appointments are easy; every time you visit a customer, create an Appointment. You can reference the
document we handed out months ago, which shows how to create that Appointment through Outlook and TdF.
Everyone uses Outlook to schedule their meetings and linking it to TdF only takes two clicks.
Some Appointments will be scheduled in advance and others will be last minute, requiring TdF entry after the
visit (which is fine).
Activities
Activities document what we learned during a customer visit. Many people at Nelson have access to these
Activities, which is a good thing; they have access to information the customer already shared with “Nelson”.
Activities enable collaboration, so write them in a coherent manner for anyone to understand.
If you have a couple different conversations, it makes sense to enter an Activity for different topics.
[Example 1 - Pointless]
I created the Activity below as an example. This Activity entry provides no useful knowledge for the person who
entered it or anyone else who might be interacting with this customer. It was entered just for the sake of
entering an Activity; doing this is a waste of your time.
[Example 2 - Useful]
This is a fictional entry that contains some useful information about our Rockwell business becoming threatened
at a long-time customer. Potentially, this example could have had a couple more lines of detail or an
attachment, but now it can be referenced by everyone and accessed easily in the future.
Additionally, Activities can be used to document other things like phone calls or anytime you learn useful
information.
Finally, entering Activities does save you time. Frequently, you have to verbally tell multiple people about a
situation at a customer and that process is very time consuming. Entering an Activity for multiple people to read
is drastically more efficient and it will help keep the facts clear as time moves on and it fades from our
memories.
Opportunities
TdF is a great tool to organize information, like projects, and is sends us reminders to follow up on these
Opportunities. It will house all information related to this project in a centralized place for everyone.
 Contacts, Appointments, Activities, Support Records, Documents
 Sales Stage, Vendors, Product Groups, Dollars
 Notes, Summaries, Special Quote and Ordering Instructions
All people tied to that Opportunity will receive notifications when it has been modified, again simplifying our
collaboration process.
We are not tracking Wins\Losses, we just want Opportunities entered into the system so the company has
visibility into current projects. There are many reasons for this, but a simple one is Vendors are requiring Nelson
to do “business planning” and Opportunities fulfill this request. However, our goal is to use Opportunities
primarily to benefit Nelson, like marketing ancillary products to customers based on their active Opportunities.
The goal is to enter any possible project, even one you overhear, into TdF. Finally, it is even possible to create
an Opportunity and hand it off to someone else.
Summary
TdF is an efficient way to share information about customer interactions; the more quality information we enter,
the more benefits we get out of the system. The world is changing, Customers and Vendors are requiring more
from us and this trend will only increase as access to information makes people less tolerant to wait for answers.
For Nelson to exist for another 60 years, it has to thrive in this environment and having access to customer
interactions and projects is a primary goal.
Marketing material and website traffic will be logged to TdF automatically for us, just like emails are today. This
is in line with our desire for maximum information with minimal entry.
Management at Nelson has always let us focus on winning orders and that goal will continue, but change is
inevitable. However, we can benefit during this time of change; instead of simply taking 2 steps back, we can
also leap 10 steps forward.