ASPEC calls the sales opportunity the ”IBO”, reinforcing that this is an “Identified Business Opportunity”. It’s also much easier to refer to a simple three letter acronym, i.e., IBO #29 when the opportunity is moving through the CRM workflow.

You found a new prospect who is interested in your product.  Great! Now it’s time to enter a new Opportunity (IBO in ASPEC terminology) under a new Contact and a new Account.   We recommend that IBOs are entered into ASPEC as soon as you learn about them. Please read this post if you are not sure if your Opportunity’s sales cycle has begun.

Before entering an IBO into ASPEC it’s good practice to record the account and contact to which it belongs.  First you click Create->Account to load a new Account and save it. Next, you click Create->Contacts to load add a new Contact and save it.  The third step is clicking Create->IBO to enter the IBO under the newly created Contact.

To maintain data quality, many organizations prefer that users enter each record type in separate steps described above.   This way users are less prone to work in haste, make mistakes or create duplicates.

Your ASPEC administrator can enable creating records on the fly.  In this case you can create an Account, Contact and IBO from a single action Create->IBO.   You start with a new IBO, but instead of linking this IBO to an existing Contact, you create a new one.   While you are creating a new Contact, you take a small detour to create a new Account. Finally, you save the new IBO.  It will be linked to the new Contact and the new Account.

The rest of this post describes this process as it happens in the ASPEC workflow.

To see how it works, please perform the following steps to create 3 new records from Create->IBO:

1. Click Create->IBO from any list view. Ensure that you don’t have anything selected (“ticked”) in that list view. This action loads a new IBO form.

2. Start creating a new Contact. Search for a Contact. Type in an Account or a Contact name In the Contact section.

If a Contact is found – so you were about to create a duplicate – then you can click on the result in the list to link it to the new IBO.  

If the Contact is not found, then click “ADD A NEW CONTACT”, appearing at the end of the list.

Clicking “ADD A NEW CONTACT” loads “New Contact” dialog.  

3. You are now creating a new Contact. Let’s take a small turn from here to create a new Account from the same “New Contact” dialog.  We’ll resume creating new Contact very soon.

Let’s search Accounts by typing in the “Account Name” box in the dialog.

After you type in a few characters of the Account, ASPEC will search Accounts and present the list of matching names.   It will display the list of Accounts. The list will end with “ADD A NEW ACCOUNT”.

Click “ADD A NEW ACCOUNT” to create – you guess it – a new Account.

4. Fill out information in “New Account” dialog and save the new Account.

Before filling out the required fields, you may take advantage of Google Place if it is enabled by your ASPEC administrator.

Type in Account name or the address and select from the list that will appear.

Fill out or overwrite the Account fields and scroll all the way down to click OK.  You may be prompted to override Contacts address. Click OK.

The new Account is now saved in ASPEC.  

5. Finish creating the new Contact.  

Now you are back in the “New Contact” dialog, with the address and other fields inherited from the new Account.  Its company name appears in the “Account Name” box on a grey background.

Fill out the First Name, Last Name and other Contact fields. You can override the address if it is needed.  If the Account and Contact addresses are the same, you can click “Same as Account” to hide the address section.

Scroll down and click OK to save the new Contact.   

5. Finish creating the IBO

Now the new Contact dialog is gone, and you are back in the IBO form, with Account and Contact – both newly created – already linked.

Fill out IBO Essentials, the Product and any other information that is needed.

Click Save when you are ready to save the new IBO.  

The result is 3 new records added to ASPEC – a new IBO, its new Contact and its new Account.

To avoid unnecessary steps or duplicates, we recommend that you check for the Contact and Account before creating a new IBO.   Please be aware the if you decide to cancel saving your new IBO, the new Account and Contact are already saved in ASPEC.