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I left for work today without my product book.  My product book has all my product and customer information.  Oh oh.  But then I figured it would be a good time to see if the Advantage was worth the investment.  And it is a heck of a lot smaller than my product book.  So off I went.

The first thing I did was open PI 8 and checked my appointments.  I had time before my first one, so I decided to visit a nearby customer first.  I set the filter in PI 8 Contacts to open just my local customers.  I checked the address and opened Tom Tom 6.

Off I went.  I have Arnold Schwarzenegger’s voice programmed in my TT6, so I was entertained along the way.  You can download his voice and others for free here.

When I arrived at my first customer’s business, I checked my notes in PI 8.

I followed up on my previous quote, asking him for his business.  He said, “Come back when your pencil is sharper.”    I asked, “How sharp?”  He replied, “I want to see cuts on your body.  I want to see blood.  I want agony.  Show me some effort!”

Some customers are just not worth it.  But some are pretty cool once you get to know them.  He just wants to make me feel like I earned his business, so I have to come back a few times until he’s satisfied.  I wrote notes in PI 8 to remind myself.  I use ZoomBoard to enter them because it works great and the included keyboard really sucks.  It’s too small to touch type, and too large to thumb type.

My next customer is interested in our Kit Line.  We make the quilting for mattresses, and small companies buy our quilting cut to size so they can put mattresses together themselves.  Well, what do you know?  My Kit Price List is in my product book.  But suddenly I remember that the Advantage comes with a PDF reader, Adobe Reader, and I had put a copy of the Kit Price List in the Advantage.  Sweet!  So I showed my next customer the line and he picked a few he liked.

So far so good.  I have seen two customers and only needed my Advantage.  I could get used to traveling light.

My next customer always has issues.  He buys tons of stuff from us, but always shops us.  I now I need to take a lot of notes.  I open PhatPad and begin writing.

I write faster than I type, plus sometimes I have to make sketches of what he wants, so PhatPad comes in very handy.

Since I created a category in PI 8 called Local Customers, it’s easy for me to weed through almost 700 contacts for the small group I want to see.

I pick my next victim and navigate to them.

This customer wants to check prices on our line of thread.  Luckily, I have PlanMaker, the ultimate spreadsheet program.

This story is true.  Today I used every one of these programs to assist customers.  I actually traveled with just my Advantage.  I didn’t use a pen or paper or have to use my product book.  Everything went really well.  Finding and opening software and documents in the Advantage is faster than using my humongous product book, plus it’s far less cumbersome.  A couple customers actually got a kick out of it and asked me lots of questions. I showed them the camera, my family photos and I even showed them a movie I have loaded in TCPMP.

Above: my son and his first cousin sucking their thumbs and watching cartoons.  The good life!

Above: Anchorman.  It’s a must-see.

I could get used to traveling light.

Steve Laser (136 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook