Managing your Contacts

Small Fuel wrote this recently:

5 Tips for Keeping Your Contacts Straight

No matter what business you’re in, you need to know people. No matter how detailed your marketing or public relations plan is, there are times that you will need contacts who can help you promote your business. A reporter at the local newspaper or a blogger who covers your niche is a contact worth cultivating: these are the people who can help your company become a success.

But not all contacts are so clear cut. Maybe you have a list of past clients or sales leads that you want to use for marketing. You might have a list of local companies that might be interested in your product. All of these contacts, plus your friends in the media, make for plenty of names and email addresses to juggle.

Managing all of these contacts can be a major endeavor, but there are a few ways to simplify the process.

1. Choose an organizational system

The simple fact of the matter is that handy address book you have synced to your email account probably isn’t going to cut it for managing your business’ contacts. There are literally thousands of types of customer relationship (CRM) software and you want one robust enough to handle your needs and affordable for your business. Zoho CRM is a good place to start — it has a free version and can handle most of a small business’s needs.

2. Keep in touch

Sending a regular newsletter or otherwise communicating with your contacts on a regular basis is a good idea. You don’t need to touch base every day, but if you go months without a word, your contacts may forget who you are and what they like about your business. This point is especially true for media contacts: wish them ‘Happy Holidays’ and remember their birthdays. Send stories their way even if they don’t have anything to do with your company. Generally, build goodwill with both your media contacts and potential customers through contact.

3. Stop contacting people who ask

If you send out emails or other marketing materials to your list of contacts, give them an opportunity to remove themselves from your list. Any other choice technically makes you a spammer.

4. Get as much info as you can

One of the great things about CRM software is that you can make notes about your contacts — their birthdays, their children, their alma mater and anything else you can think of. It’s worthwhile to get as much information as you can about your contacts — and to use it. Make a practice of reviewing contact information before every interaction. Use it to ask after your contact’s children or health. Going that extra step will help you build a strong relationship with a client or customer.

5. Don’t forget real world interaction

These days, we all seem to rely on email and other online contract methods to stay in touch. But the value of an in-person interaction is incredible: if you actually meet someone in person, he or she is far more likely to remember you down the road. And if you can meet more than once, you’ll greatly improve on your relationship. Real world interaction should be one of the goals of getting your contacts organized. Maybe your CRM software can send you alerts when you haven’t met up with someone in person in a while or maybe you can just work your way down your list — either way, these interactions will help you go beyond a name and a phone number in your contact list.

More than a few business owners think that creating any sort of contact list is worthless — and maintaining one is just throwing more effort at it. But a good contact list will frequently come in handy. You know who to call when you have a great story for the evening news and you know which of your clients will be interested in the latest version of your product. You can easily get in touch with both groups and hopefully sell some product.

So, how are you currently managing your contacts?

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