As businesses grow, they very sensibly begin to delegate or outsource “administrative” tasks. One such task is often the inputting of contact details from business cards into the contact management or CRM system. The task is typically delegated to junior staff, or nowadays a virtual assistant or service such as Shoeboxed.

As a sole practitioner I need to outsource as many administrative tasks as possible to preserve my time to focus on marketing, sales and client work. But inputting contact details is one task I keep myself.

The task isn’t hugely onerous – but it does take time. I’m prepared to invest that time for three reasons:

1. I always recall useful details of my interaction with the contact that I can enter in my system – but that I didn’t capture at the time in a way an assistant would be able to transcribe. Like many people I write useful notes on the back of people’s business cards. But, of course, I never capture everything. Typing in the contacts details often triggers useful memories which I can then put in the system.
2. It embeds the contact’s details in my mind and makes it easier for me to remember them in future – particularly if I spot something interesting for them, or think of something I can do to help them. As I’ve discussed before, I review my contact list monthly (weekly for high priority contacts) to try to see if there’s anything I can do to further my relationships. By embedding the contacts details in my mind, a lot of this activity happens automatically during the month anyway.
3. It triggers me to think about immediate follow-up. If there’s something useful I can do for them within a few days of the event we met at, I will become much more memorable to them and be remembered with gratitude rather than just as a contact. A few minutes invested in thinking about what they said, the needs or interests they expressed and about the resources I might have access to that could help them always pays dividends.

Now, of course, you could get an assistant to type the raw details in, and then review yourself and do the tasks I’ve just talked about. But that has really never worked for me. I need the physical prompt of being forced to type the details to make me get round to thinking about the contact and potential follow-up.

So for me, this admin time is time very well spent indeed.

In my previous post I pointed to Jan Visser’s SalesTeamTools site for a great overview of the best online Contact Management Systems.

Spurred on by my own recommendation I tried to find a system that met my own criteria:

• Simple – just the basic features I need
• Easy to use
• Some form of compatibility with my iphone

After trying out a bunch of systems, I’ve settled on BatchBook

It’s got all the basic features I need for simple contact management; it’s easily tailorable via the “SuperTags” feature; and it has a simplified online iphone version which works just like the iphone contact book.

From reading the user forum it looks like the developers are very much on the ball. They respond quickly to requests from users and are working on features such as open format sync-ing which some of the other easy-to-use systems (ahem, Highrise) don’t seem to want to bother with. Best of all, the lead developer seems to be an iphone user – hence the prioritisation of the mobile iphone version and hopefully some more nice features in the near future.

Another neat feature is the ability to forward any emails you get from contacts to the system where they are automatically logged and linked to the contact details. There are other features which I don’t really need – like To Do lists and the ability to have the upcoming ones emailed to you every day. But these don’t get in the way of the ease-of use side. The pricing is great value too.

Anyway, I’ll shut up before I begin to sound like a geek….

Ian

Jan Visser’s SalesTeamTools is a great site. Lot’s of useful articles, features and resources.

One area I’ve found very useful recently is the section reviewing and comparing online CRM/contact management tools.

If your contact/prospect list is longer than a handful of people, you really ought to be using something better than a spreadsheet or your normal emai address book. I’m currently using Outlook’s Business Contact Manager which works fine for a small practitioner like me (and came free with my copy of Office) – but for sharing information between sales teams and automating the sales management process you need something a bit more. I also have the problem that Outlook BCM doesn’t sync with my iphone.

The modern trend is toward online CRM and contact management. I first trialled saleforce.com over 8 years ago when it was just starting out – but it’s too big & costly for a small business like me. However, looking at Jan’s reviews has helped me identify a number of different options which would work well for me – including cut-down easy-to-use contact management, built-in pipeline management, and integrated email marketing.

Head over to the site and take a look – and make sure to read the useful comments people have posted on the reviews too – it’s real feedback from real users. Even if you’re not looking for a contact management system, there are also a number of other great posts and resources too.

Ian