Software Makes Most of Your Time

It’s morning. You are a sales representative and you have a long list of things to do.

The manufacturer wants to clear some inventory, and you can give your best customers a price break if they order more than their usual quantities this month. You also want to send cards to clients who have birthdays later in the week. And there’s a host of sales prospects to contact.

Maybe some people in your position have secretaries to handle the letters, but you don’t. All you’ve got is a cubbyhole of an office, a telephone, a personal computer, a decent printer and a $295 program called the Maximizer.

So you start the IBM compatible computer and run the Maximizer. Using just the arrow keys and the Enter key, you quickly display your day’s schedule--to the minute, if you previously gave the program that much detail. Tap the F2 key and you’ve got a printed copy.

All the program’s choices are displayed for you on a series of short pop-up menus. You simply use an arrow key to highlight your choice and press Enter.

Might as well get the birthday cards out first. Back up to the main menu with the Escape key and with a few more key taps you have printed a list of everyone whose birthday is that week (assuming you had previously entered their birthdays into your customer data list.)

If you like, the computer could also print a personalized birthday letter for each of them. But you think it would leave a better impression to hand-address the humorous cards you bought for the purpose.

In just a few minutes you are ready to hit the telephone, calling all your customers who have previously bought the product that has gone on special. Based on the customer notes you have kept in the Maximizer, you select just those clients who buy large quantities.

With the list displayed, you tap another couple of keystrokes and the computer dials the first customer. As his phone rings, the Maximizer pops his file onto the screen so that you can easily make notes as you talk. All you do is press the Insert key and start typing. You also could put a sales script on the screen to help you make your pitch.

Glancing at your previous notes on the customer as you talk, you see that his wife was pregnant when you called four months ago. The customer is pleased that you asked about her, and he places the order you wanted.

While you were on the phone, the Maximizer automatically tracked the time you spent with that customer and the program automatically entered a note recording the date and duration when you hung up. It also displayed a blank for you to fill in the date you should next call the customer. You can print a report accounting for all of your calls at the end of the day.

If you’re like most salespeople, you have some customers who buy all the time and others who seldom do. If you’ve used an ordinary database program, you’ve probably found that the space allotted for data on each customer is fixed, likely giving you too little space for your best customers and too much space for the infrequent buyers.

The Maximizer is flexible. As long as you have disk space, you can attach as many notes, names of contacts, product descriptions or special dates to the record of any customers you wish.

There are other good features, too. You can keep a diary, and it automatically records the date and time of each entry. You also can create your own personal accounting system to track income and expenses. Adding a new income or expense category is as simple as pressing the Insert key and typing the name you want to give it. No cumbersome account numbers to fiddle with.

Then there is the payment-analysis section. The Maximizer was created by Pinetree Software of Richmond, British Columbia, which has been creating software for real estate companies since 1983.

Naturally, the Maximizer works very well in realty offices because it takes just a few seconds to compute how large a mortgage a customer can afford, how large the down payment and monthly payments need to be, and even print a monthly payment schedule showing how much principal and interest would be paid over the next 15 years or 30 years or whatever period you choose. There is also a “creative financing” feature that computes how much more a property is worth if the loan is below market rates.

You don’t have to become much of a computer whiz to run the Maximizer. Most tasks can be done by using just the Enter, Escape, Insert, Backspace, Delete and cursor keys. Printed reports are always made with the F2 key. Pressing F1 always explains what action you can take at your present location in the program and how to do it.

Typical business letters are included with the program, each of which can be personalized automatically with names and addresses from your database. You can customize those letters to meet your needs or create your own with the simple word processor included in the Maximizer. Once written, it is easy to pick which letter to send because you give each a title and choose them from a list that also displays the first nine or 10 words of each.

The Maximizer works on most PC local area network systems. Its files can be password protected, and each user can decide what data to share with others on the network and what to keep private. Thus, a salesperson can make enough of the contact list available for a co-worker to fill in during vacation or illness, but retain the secrecy of those confidential little details that give an extra competitive edge. Pinetree charges $495, beyond the initial $295 price, for each additional three users added to a network.

For work away from the office, the Maximizer runs well on portable computers with the MS-DOS operating system and just a single floppy drive, but the amount of data that can be stored will be limited to about 700 listings. If you have a second 3 1/2-inch floppy drive on the portable, you can store about 2,000 listings.

Computer File welcomes readers’ comments but regrets that the author cannot respond individually to letters. Write to Richard O’Reilly, Computer File, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, Calif. 90053.

SPECS: The Maximizer

Features

The Maximizer is a program for sales crews and others who need to keep tabs on large numbers of people. It uses a fast and very flexible database built around a name and address list. Each database entry can be expanded to include an unlimited number of additional names, notes, descriptions and date references. Entries can be sorted and selected by any data field or combination of fields. The program places phone calls, records lengths of conversations, keeps schedules and diaries, performs word processing, merges names and addresses with letters, prints envelopes and labels and calculates payment schedules.

Requirements

IBM-PC, XT, AT, PS/2 or compatible computer, desktop or portable, with 640 kilobytes of RAM, at least two 5-inch drives or one 3 1/2-inch drive. Hard disk is preferred.

Publisher

Pinetree Software Inc., 9th Floor, 8100 Granville Ave., Richmond, B.C. V6Y 1P3. U.S. phone number: 800-663-0375.

Los Angeles Times