Converting to Salesforce

We have a new remote Salesperson located in Las Vegas. Since we will have more remote sales folks, we figured it was time to use something like Salesforce to make it easy to track information and what not. Here's my recent email to my account rep, explaining how frustrating it is to get our existing data imported:

===============
(Dude's Name),

OK, since we can't cancel our account, we've decided to try to make the best of it and see if we can make use of Salesforce.

The biggest problems we have are with data manipulation. For example:

I've tried importing our Accounts data. There are several problems with this:
a) I'm exporting a csv file from MS Outlook 2007 Business Contact Manager's Accounts folder. The import process in Salesforce tells me that "The file you uploaded does not meet the requirements for the encoding you specified. The file may be in a different encoding or may be corrupt." There are no encoding options available to me when I select the 'Microsoft Outlook' option. So, I try the Other Data Sources option. I choose UTF-8 as the encoding option.

b) Lack of address data importing. I get to the mapping fields part and there are simply no address fields available to map. My CSV file has address fields, but the import field mapping list doesn't. Account data without addresses? Really? But then it's there inside Salesforce. So, how do I import it?

c) Even if I import all of my contacts and decide to hand enter all of my Accounts, assigning Contacts to Accounts is very laborious and time consuming. I have to, one at a time, do this to every contact:
1- Open the lead.
2- Convert the lead.
3- Set the Account value
4- Uncheck the opportunity box.
5- Uncheck the reminder box at the bottom.
6- Go back to the Leads tab.

I have 2,000 records to do this with. Tell me there's another way. Here's what I'd expect:

I want to select a set of Leads and Convert them all at once.
I want to select a set of Leads and assign them all to an Account, all at once. Some of our Accounts have dozens of contacts, s your import's limitation on 2 contacts per Account at import is really disturbing.
I want to be able to select a set of leads and mass-update any number of details about them, from Lead Source to future reminders, active/inactive, change owner, etc, etc.

So, that's where we are stuck with wanting to cancel Salesforce. Just getting my data ( a paltry 2000 records ) into your system has been strange and difficult. I can pass my 2000 records from Outlook to  Thunderbird to Mac and back to Outlook without losing any information. Why can't I upload the same data to Salesforce?

I am willing pay extra for someone else to do the import for us - just tell me who to go to. Now that we are beginning to hire folks in other parts of the country, Salesforce is a natual solution - IF we can get our data imported.

One more item:
Trying to import accounts - there's no Account Name field in your import field list. Nor Company Name, or anything like that. Just Full Name, First Name, and Last Name. Those Name fields aren't even present in the Accounts field list when I hand enter an Account. What gives?

(Your devoted fan, etc...)
==============

I can't even find that they have a data importing service. I'd think that would be a profit center for them. $500 to map the fields, remove duplicates, setup Account/Contact associations, etc.

Oh well, what do I know? I'm just a customer will to pay more to make things easy for me.

- by Gryphon MacThoy

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