Best practice for cold call list

[umayxa3]

I want to import about 500 business contacts from a Chamber of Commerce list.
I will be using this list to cold call businesses about how they like membership with the chamber of commerce. This is meant to be a networking tool and eventually lead to new accounts.

I can't figure out the best way to import this list.
Do I import them as TARGETS under a campaign?
Do I create the campaign then a TARGET LIST?
I tried a test import, asign, then convert and their does not seem to be an easy transition from a campaign target, to a coverted account.

Is there 'best practice' documentation how to handle a list like this? Or could someone list me the steps I should take to best handle the list?

Thanks for any help.

-Allen

[casperl]

This is not a STUPID question!!!

As a beginner that recently started with SugarCRM, I had the same question.

Eventually (after a few false starts) this is what worked:

I had 1,200 companies that had to be contacted.

I edited the initial list in Excell and exported a .CSV file with these headings that correspond to Sugar CRM fields:

"Account Name","First Name","Last Name","Office Phone",Email,"Primary Address City","Fax","Mobile","Rubbish","Primary Address Street","Primary Address Postal Code","Description","Lead Source","Lead Source Description","Status"

First I attempted to perform as much as possible "data munging" in Excell since that saved a lot of time and pointless clicking vs editing the same data in Sugar CRM.

I created a drop down catergory item for LEADS - Lead Source named "INTRO" which described all the cold calling leads in this category. Of course the value in the "Lead Source" column in Excell had to be set to INTRO as well.

This was then imported into LEADS wih the result that I could do a custom search for "INTRO" in the Lead Source field and "New" in the status field to view the full list in SugarCRM.

As I would contact the leads in this list, I would change the status to "assigned" and add I would create a record through "Schedule Call" that creates a history for that lead. Ditto to for emails sent. In this way a history of client contacts is compiled at a surprisingly rapid rate.

One problem was that lastname is a required field and often there would not be a surname for the lead contact. At first I substituted a ? character for the incomplete field, but in many lists it would be difficult to identify the company or lead name. Then I added the company (or account name) after the ? to indicate that this was a temporary value.

As I started doing business with the leads, the lead was converted into a contact and an account record with the convert link.

For all that I know there may be a better way of doing this, but after wasting quite a bit of time initially, I went through the list speedily. Of course as I progressed through the search list, the list became progressively shorter since the status of the contacted LEADS was changed from "New" to "Assigned".

Lets hope this answer helps the next person with this requirement.

Casper (Cape Town, South Africa)