Managing Sales Contacts

A sales contactA sales contact is a person affiliated with your company who is responsible for working with reps to encourage sales of your products. Sales contacts may be National Sales Managers, Regional Sales Managers, Internal Wholesalers or External Wholesalers. Some of the key functionality in SalesConnect revolves around tracking sales data for the territories and/or regions to which sales contacts are assigned. is someone who works to encourage sales of your products and may be assigned to territoriesIn a territory category, you can define as many named territories as you need to identify sales responsibilities. Territories are often divided geographically, and can include whole countries, states or provinces, or even ZIP/postal code ranges. Other criteria can be included for each territory, such as firm association or channel/subchannel definitions. If needed, you can filter offices, reps, partnerships, and teams to which a territory will apply by their firm association alone. Each territory can have one or more operators assigned to it; after territory assignments are set, permissions can be set to control the level of access each operator has to data (such as viewing or editing), based on his or her territory assignments. or regionsTerritory regions are optional, but they can be used to group together a number of territories overseen by the same regional sales manager. An unlimited number of regions can be defined for each territory category version, and each region may have an unlimited number of territories. However, a territory may only belong to a single region.. Sales contactsAny individual person tracked in SalesConnect is a contact, which is one type of connection. So, reps, firm contacts, and office contacts—are all contacts. Partnerships and teams are also treated as contacts in SalesConnect, because you usually need to work with them in the same ways. may be National Sales Managers, Regional Sales Managers, Internal Wholesalers or External Wholesalers. Some of the key functionality in SalesConnect revolves around tracking sales data for the territories and/or regions to which sales contactsA sales contact is a person affiliated with your company who is responsible for working with reps to encourage sales of your products. Sales contacts may be National Sales Managers, Regional Sales Managers, Internal Wholesalers or External Wholesalers. Some of the key functionality in SalesConnect revolves around tracking sales data for the territories and/or regions to which sales contacts are assigned. are assigned. Sales contacts may be linked to operators in SalesConnect; see Managing Operators for more information.

• When you search for contacts, you may see many different types of contact connectionsConnections are entities; they're the different types of companies and individuals you may need to track. SalesConnect is set up to display information about the types of connections you care about, based on the roles to which you are assigned. listed in search results. If you want to find only sales contacts, search for contacts with Sales Contact as the Snapshot. See Searching for Connections for help.
• Unlike repsA rep is perhaps the most important contact connection in the intermediary business hierarchy. Each rep is an individual who sells funds and is affiliated with an office (and through the office, with a broker/dealer firm). Reps may also be referred to as "financial advisors." Possibly the most critical information you can track for reps are aliases, also known as trading IDs. Aliases are the IDs that associate transactions and assets with each rep. If you need to write queries or reports: The primary data for reps is stored in the Contact and Rep Profile tables. The Rep Alias table stores trading IDs associated with reps., partnershipsA partnership is a contact connection in the intermediary business hierarchy, though it is really a name for a group of reps working together to sell one or more products. A partnership, sometimes called a rep partnership, is treated as a special type of rep: this means that most of the tools for working with reps may be used to work with partnerships as well. Most views of transactions associated with an individual rep generally don't include transactions or parts of transactions that the rep may have cleared as part of a partnership. Instead, these kinds of trades are listed only for the rep partnership. Each member's portion of rep partnership sales data is always based on the percentages currently assigned to each member; no long-term historical information about percentages is maintained. SalesConnect does not store any calculated trade or asset values based on rep partnerships. If you need to write queries or reports: The primary data for partnerships is stored in the Contact, Rep Partnership, and Rep Profile tables. The Rep Alias table stores trading IDs associated with partnerships as well as reps., and other types of contacts in SalesConnect, sales contacts are not associated with master firmsA master firm is a connection associated with intermediary business, an optional top-level organization in the intermediary asset management hierarchy, one step above broker/dealer firms. Each master firm may have one or more firms affiliated with it, and through these firms, may also have affiliations with offices and reps. A master firm may have associated master firm contacts, as well. If you need to write queries or reports: The primary data for master firms is stored in the Master Firm table., firms, or officesAn office is a connection in the intermediary business hierarchy, an organization subordinate to a broker/dealer firm. Offices are also sometimes referred to as "branches'; institutional firms have branches in SalesConnect. An office is affiliated with a single broker/dealer firm, and may have one or more reps directly affiliated with it. An office may have associated office contacts, as well. Possibly the most critical information you can track for offices are aliases, also known as trading IDs. Aliases are the IDs that associate transactions with each office. If you need to write queries or reports: The primary data for offices is stored in the Office table. Information about office trading IDs is stored in the Office Alias table., so you begin adding them from the Contact Search page. See Adding a Sales Contact for instructions.

• The detail page for a sales contact is very basic; you may be able to use it to start a couple of tasks.

  • You can use the Contact Information tab to change information for the sales contact:

    1. Select . Most of the fields change to ones in which you can edit values.
    2. Make changes as needed.

    3. Select to save changes. The fields should switch back to ones you can't directly edit.

       If you change the status of a sales contact to Inactive, the status of any operator ID associated with that contact is also automatically changed to Inactive. If the sales contact was assigned to a category, territory or region when he/she was inactivated, that assignment is automatically deleted.

  • You can merge the contact into another, better sales contact:

    1. Select , and then Merge.

    2. Use the displayed Merge Contact page to select the better sales contact to which you want to merge this one.

       1. Select next to the Contact field.
       2. In the displayed drill popup, enter search criteriaIn a query, a criterion is a single point of comparison. For instance, one criterion in a query might be reps in the state of Michigan. Query and search criteria are based on properties in the primary SalesConnect objects associated with the type of connection or other record which the query or search finds., and then select Search.
       3. When search results are displayed, select for the sales contact you want. The sales contact's name is shown in the Contact field on the Merge Contact page.
    3. Select Merge. You may be asked to confirm the merge.
  • You may be able to delete the sales contact: Select , and then Delete. You'll be asked to confirm the deletion.
  • You can use the Notes tab to maintain notes related to the sales contact.
  • You can use the Documents tab to maintain attachments related to the sales contact.