Using Call Plans

This chapter provides an overview of call plans and discusses how to:

• Create new call plan templates.

• Work with call plan templates.

Understanding Call Plans

Call plans enable sales representatives making customer calls to view a template containing question prompts, goals, and reminders. You first create call plan templates to meet the business needs, and then you can attach them to activities and action plans within the Calendar system.

Creating New Call Plan Templates

This section provides an overview of call plan templates and describes how to create a new call plan template.

Understanding Call Plan Templates

Use the Call Plan program (P90CA65) to create call plan templates for different purposes. For example, you might have a new customer template, a template for introducing new products, one for unhooking competitors' customers, and so on.

The only required field when creating a new template is the Name field. However, you might also want to enter values in the Purpose and Premise fields, as these fields appear on the grid when you search for call plan templates from the Activity and Action Plan programs.

When you create a call plan template, you can specify whether to make it the default template. When you select the Default Template check box, the current template becomes the default template.

Forms Used to Create New Call Plan Templates

Creating a New Call Plan Template

Access Add Call Plan.

Default Template	Specify whether you want to make the template the default template.
Name	Enter a unique name for the call plan template.
Purpose	Summarize the purpose of the template.
Ask	Enter any business, technical and functional questions to ask the customer.
Action	Enter any tasks to perform after the call, such as a product demonstration.
Attitude	Enter the attitude or perception you would like the customer to have after the call is completed.
Ability	Enter examples and tasks that demonstrate the ability to meet the customer's needs.
Premise	Enter the broader purpose of the call, such as to establish a long term relationship.

Working With Call Plan Templates

This section provides an overview of how to work with call plans, lists a prerequisite, and discusses how to attach a call plan to an activity.

Understanding Working With Call Plans

After creating call plan templates, you can attach them to activities that you create within the Calendar system. When creating the activity, you can set up recurrence patterns and reminders, and you can assign the activity to others. If a particular call plan is part of a group of standard activities that would be performed for multiple customers, you can create an action plan that includes the call plan activity. Action plans are groups of related activities that can be used as templates.

When viewing the call plan templates from within either an activity or action plan, you can make changes to any of the template fields. For example, when you are speaking with a customer, you might think of additional questions that you would like to ask other customers. When you save the changes, the system attaches a copy of the call plan template to the activity or action plan, and the original call plan template is not affected.

See Understanding Foundation Calendar.

See Managing Activities.

See Creating Action Plans.

Prerequisite

Before you complete the steps in this section, you must set the processing options for the Activity View program.

See Setting Processing Options for Activity View (P01301).

Forms Used to Work with Call Plan Templates

Attaching a Call Plan to an Activity

Access the Add Activity form.

With the exception of the Call Plan field, the fields that appear on Add Activity form are the same as those that appear when you access the form from the Activity View program (P01301) on the Foundation Calendar menu (G01A).

See Managing Activities.