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As salespeople we have to manage a million emails and files. We constantly need to find information on customers, products, proposals, presentations, etc. that is found in emails and files scattered throughout our computer.

It’s there somewhere, but we have no idea where to find it or when we created it.

There is an answer and it’s called Google Desktop. It’s free and provides search capabilities that will save you hours of wasted time trying to find information.

I’ve been using it for years and it definitely falls into the, “How did I manage without this?” category. People think I have magical powers of recall, but Google Desktop is doing all the work.

Once you download the program from Google Desktop it will index your emails and files and will instantly retrieve your documents and emails based on search terms. It works exactly like Google’s search engine except it’s searching on your files and emails.

Recently I needed to find a customer presentation from an event that occurred in 2005. I had no idea where to look. Was it attached to an old email somewhere? Was it in an old Word document stored in some folder? I just typed in “presentation, Chicago, 2005″ and it brought up the email with the attached Word document I was looking for in about one second.

In addition to finding emails and documents it will also help you find web pages you’ve viewed and it will even help you retrieve deleted files that you accidentally deleted but now need.

Microsoft’s latest version of Windows (Vista) has this feature built in, but Google beat them to the punch and has a product that is better suited to sales professionals and their needs in my opinion.

Get it on your computer and let me know what you think.

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Tags: technology

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