Consider what makes a newspaper successful and you’ll likely think of scooping the competition.Great newspapers do this, but to be truly successful, they have to perform in advertising sales,too. So, when The Seattle Times Co. realized it was losing advertising revenues because it was losing track of its advertisers, the company began looking for a solution.

“If a rep moved from one territory to another, the new rep coming in wasn’t given a whole lot of information. They started from scratch, without knowing who had advertised with us in the past,”says Brian Jonas, advertising CRM administrator for the company. “We wanted an approachable and intuitive tool that sales reps could use to capture who they were talking to and share thatinformation.”

After looking at three-dozen products, including GoldMine, Onyx, and Siebel, Jonas discovered Sage SalesLogix. He got in touch with a Sage Software business partner. “We decided Sage SalesLogix would be easily understood and would enable us to share information,” Jonas says.

Adams adds, “They liked the flexibility Sage SalesLogix provided and the way it could be customized to meet their exact needs. Plus, they could work with Sage SalesLogix very much like they did with ACT! by Sage. That combination of flexibility, familiarity, and ease of use really sold them on Sage SalesLogix.”

In addition to the problem of salespeople moving territories, Seattle Times Co. was faced with the complication of tracking occasional advertisers. These businesses place seasonal or special interest ads only during certain times of the year. “Many of these were falling through the cracks until we rolled out Sage SalesLogix,” Jonas says.

To address the organization’s unique business, Sage also recommended the use of Sage SalesLogix KnowledgeSync, which provides automatic business alerts and notifications. Sage created check boxes in Sage SalesLogix for seasonal advertisers so that 60 days before their advertising time, the appropriate salesperson receives a reminder to contact the customer. “That’s been a huge help!” Jonas adds.

Sage SalesLogix KnowledgeSync also generates alerts in Sage SalesLogix for advertisers who have been inactive for a time, encouraging sales reps to get in touch with them.

“Sales reps previously had that information available to them through business system reports, but they didn’t look at them, as there were too many,” Jonas says. “The simple, easy e-mail alerts that we’re generating from Sage SalesLogix have been very well received. Reps say, ‘It’s great. This is just what I need.’ I know we’ve saved a lot of advertisers from going inactive. It’s difficult to track that, but that surely translates into revenue.”

“ The simple, easy e-mail alerts that we’re generating

from Sage SalesLogix have been very well received.

Reps say, ‘It’s great. This is just what I need...”

Jonas has long been involved in helping The Seattle Times Co. apply technology to its sales processes, but his background is as a salesperson. In doing so, he said, “I’ve always taken my sales background and said, ‘You run the machine this way, but here’s how you sell with the machine.’ Here’s what you do to make a sale using this program.”

He expects to be applying Sage SalesLogix to the company’s business processes for a long time to come. The Seattle Times Co. currently has nearly 130 people using Sage SalesLogix and will soon expand that number to about 150. It’s just the beginning of a four-year plan the company has for its CRM initiative with Sage SalesLogix.