I work with individuals or organizations of 4-5 people. I like that I can list all the members of the organization as "contacts" and link them with the "organization."

I label either the individual when it is one person or the organization when it is more than one as a "prospect" and later a "client".

What is missing for me is the ability to see all "prospects" or all "clients." Seeing all of the individual members of an organization is confusing and seems to be my only option unless I list the organization twice - once as an organization and once as a contact - but the double record gets confusing too.

Would much rather have a button to press to pull and display all prospects from contacts and organizations and another to display all clients.

Hi.
A couple of points that may help

1. use the categories to label your contacts as clients or prospects. Although as this is a sales database you might assume that if they are not a client then they are a prospect already (without the need to label them as such).

2. create a smart list that searches the category Client or prospect or supplier or competitor or whatever you choose. Name the smart list appropriately so it relates to what it is looking for. Then to see your list of clients just click on the source list. As you add new clients the smart list will grow too.

Hope that helps

Thanks for the suggestions!

You are right - Daylite will work as is if I ignore the whole organization side of the DB and list organizations as contacts.

I have several smart lists set up but I could only see all contacts OR all organizations. If I stop listing organizations as organizations and list them as contacts instead - they will all appear together like I wanted which would be really helpful.

Hi Vallaur
One other way to do this is to use groups aand create a smartlist using the keyword prospect. I find this method to be very effective. I use this for mailing and such in groups.

quote:

Originally posted by Michael Altringer:
Hi Vallaur
One other way to do this is to use groups aand create a smartlist using the keyword prospect. I find this method to be very effective. I use this for mailing and such in groups.

Michael, can you pleas elaborate on your use of groups. I do not understand your use of smartlists to group prospects. I thought that using smartlists in the groups panel simply find all *groups* that meet that criteria.

Can I offer my .02?

The problem here is that the main display of any list is limited to that type of object only, i.e. the Contacts list shows only contacts and the Organizations list only Organizations. There is no place where both are actually intermingled into one MAIN list. Daylite does deal with this in an interesting way though. You have the "multi-column" views. These views cascade the data so that you can have orgs (from now on my abbreviation for organization) in the first (or Main) pane and all it's employees in the second. That can help in many ways.

For instance, you can have a smart list that shows only those orgs whose keywords includes Client. This would give you all client orgs in the first pane and the second pane would then become a list of all contacts that are clients too. The problem occurs when a contact is a client and has no Org. Then you would be forced to work off of 2 lists. One of them would be the Orgs list which can be filtered to either Clients, or Leads and the other is a list of Contacts, also filtered to Leads or Clients. If that is a problem for you (switching between Contacts views and Orgs views and not seeing them both in one list), then there are two other ways that I can think of that would produce a single list of mixed orgs and contacts. Here goes:

First method: Create 2 Groups. Call the first one Leads and the other one Clients. Now, whenever you enter a new contact, or organization, give them the keyword of either Lead, or Client. (This isn't necessary for this first step but may prove useful later and is more easily done at the time you create them).

The next step is to add this new contact or Org to the appropriate group - either Lead or Client. The easy way to do this is with the "Hover and Drop" technique. You use this method by dragging the contact (or org) from the corresponding list over the Groups shorcut navigator (on the upper left) and hovering over it until it opens the Groups view (much like spring loaded folders in the Finder). Once the Groups view springs open you drag and drop the Contact (or Org) onto the correct Group - either Lead or Client.

Now, if you view either of these Groups (Leads or Clients), you'll see an integrated list in the second pane of all Leads AND Contacts, mixed together. You can work from this second pane in many ways by selecting objects there either singly, in groups, or all - sending emails, etc.

Having said all of that though, here is how I work personally:

I make sure there is an organization for EVERY Lead or Client I enter. If they really are individuals without a company affiliation, I still give them one. (This is very easy to do at the time you create the Contact - in the Create New Contact Pane there is a field for Organiztion). You have 2 choices here. Create an Org for them and just make up a name, i.e. John Doe's Company, or, Create one master Organization and add all these contacts to it. You could call it "Unaffiliated", or whatever you like. In any case give both the Contact and Organization a Keyword of either Lead or Client (as appropriate). Now you can work pretty much only in Org view and see in the first pane all Lead or Client Organizations, and in the second pane all the contacts. Just create 2 smart lists in the Orgs view that filter to Keyword Leads or Client respectively. There is some maintenance required with this approach, though it is not much different from any other method. You would have to remember to move the Contact or Org from the Leads group to the Client group at the right time. That's easy to do with drag and drop right in the Groups list view, but don't forget to unlink the contact from the Leads group when they are moved (otherwise you'd have the contact or org in both groups).

To make your life easier, don't forget that you can also drag a source list from the left up to the top of the window and drop it there as a "bookmark" so you can quickly get to it with a single mouse click from any view. These bookmarks also work with keyboard shortcuts such as cmd-1, cmd-2 etc. (they are automatically assigned). So right at the top of the window you'd have shortcuts to Leads and Clients. I also have shortcuts for my main TODO lists and Recent Contacts and Recent Organizations.

I usually don't mind working from either the Contacts list or the Orgs list. I find I do different actions anyway for Orgs that are leads compared to Contacts that are leads. But if you are adamant about having them both in a single list I think the above 2 methods are very workable. It would take a day or two and then you'd be able to forget about the "newness" of it and just proceed to make money (hopefully!).

Sorry for being a bit rambly. I hope it helps!