Best Practices For Keeping Your Business References Organized

Let's face it., keeping track of all your business contacts can be a real pain. All too often we have to gather information from dozens of different sources, whether its personal meetings, phone calls, PDA tags and show data. Integrating all that data into one place that makes it simple to bring it back to mind when you need it is essential if we're to be successful in maintaining that great professionalism we all want to achieve.

In order for us to be the best we can be in our jobs, having that information at our fingertips is a key element. One way to insure we have it is to put it in the instant we get it. Regardless of the source, whether its on the phone on the 'net from a contact site, at a show from a business card or PDA data exchange or simply as a lead from a magazine or even a name mentioned in passing, having that information in the database means we can find it again. This takes a bit of discipline, as it is easy to become sidetracked into another project or call, but the discipline pays off in the long run.

Verifying and maintaining our database in a consistent manner is required as well. Regardless of how often customers contact us, we have to have a methodology in place to ensure our customer references are up to date. It doesn't help to have a customer's name and have a need to contact them, but can't because our data is out of date. Not only is it counterproductive, but it can be embarrassing to have the need to call a customer back to ask for an email address or fax number simply because we didn't get it the first time. By taking that extra 10 seconds to say "Is your email address still%u2026" can save minutes later or even a lost sale from a customer who is disgruntled because you have to keep calling back for trivial information.

Granted, you can't help losing contact with a customer who changes jobs or moves on, but with several reference points such as email address and cell phone numbers, that means your odds are a lot higher you'll always be able to reconnect to the customer at a later time. Keep in mind that in today's economy, just because a customer changes jobs doesn't mean they'll want to change vendors. Keeping track of customers and contacting them on a semi-annual basis means your database stays current.