Blue Paper: Managing Your Contacts: The Business of Personal Relationships

Choosing a Sample

Start small. When setting up a new contact management system, don’t boggle your brain with thoughts of importing thousands of records from multiple sources. If you feel overwhelmed, you might give up before you get started. Instead, scoop up a sample that represents the information you want to collect. If you can, start fresh. A fresh start will allow you to get what you want from your new system. Limiting yourself to the output of your old, ineffective system could cripple a new system’s potential to meet your needs.

Where to get started? Find a representative sample of people you’re communicating with. Some places to find your sample:

• The twenty people you e-mailed most recently
• Customers you invoiced last month
• The first ten companies returned in a search of your target market
• Five reporters you would like to write an article about you
• Anyone you paid in the past month
• The last fifteen people to send you a message via Facebook

Ideally, this first batch will represent a diverse sample of your contacts, but it doesn’t need to represent every type of contact. You might start with a combination of prospects and customers, or a range of suppliers, or a mix of employees, customers, and nosy mothers-in-law. At this point you are simply getting a feel for how you will manage information for different people.

Setting Goals

Anyone choosing a contact management system must ask this question: What do I want to get out of it? There are many, many systems available, and they offer everything from storing address information online to tracking lead generation efforts. Think about your goals for a contact management system; list all of the kinds of information you would like to have and rank them in order of importance.

Goals for your dream-come-true contact management system might include:

• Keep contact information for clients updated in one place
• Share contact information with employees/partners
• Access contact information from a mobile device
• Manage leads that come in from the web site, e-mails, phone or social media
• Keep track of all communications between your business and customers
• See comments about your business or brands in social media
• Send e-mail newsletters or direct mail to customers and prospects
• Create call lists for your sales reps and follow their progress
• Track conversations you are having with customers or other contacts in Facebook, LinkedIn or other social media
• Create and follow leads from potential clients and customers
• Collect prospective customers via a public web form
• Follow up on referrals from current clients and partners
• Create customized reports

When selecting a new system, you may not find everything you need in just one package. But understanding your priorities will help you decide what functions are primary. Keep secondary goals in mind as you test your new system.

It’s also important to know how your information will be gathered and kept. Will it integrate directly with your accounting software? Will you have to go through a series of exports and imports to transfer information? How difficult or easy will this be?

Researching Systems

Below, we’ve outlined and explained the features you might expect to find when you’re examining contact management systems. Every business is unique, so take time to consider how important each feature is for you.

Features

1. Contact management

   The heart of any system is your contacts, whether they are customers, suppliers, employees or others. Any good system will allow you to keep track of people, their organizations, and their contact information (addresses, phone numbers, e-mail, web site, etc.)

2. Communications management

   Keeps track of what people have been saying to you and what you’ve been saying back. With communications management, track communications of all kinds: e-mail messages, phone calls, instant messages, direct mailings, online conversations in forums or social networks, and even good old-fashioned in-person conversations.

3. Task/Events management

   Helps you manage tasks and events of all sizes: to-do items pertaining to a contact (scheduling a follow-up call, buying a bottle of wine, documenting a deadline), simple events (board meeting, brunch, conference call), or full-on events management (conference, trade show, product launch.)

4. Project management

   Schedules multiple events, tasks, and contacts in one cohesive system. This is a more intricate form of Task/Events management for more complex situations.

5. Leads management

   Assigns prospective clients to sales staff, monitors the sales pipeline and determies the results of marketing and sales efforts. This is the feature that differentiates basic contact management systems from full CRM (customer relationship management) software. Many CRMs will also provide a public form that you can embed on your own site so prospective customers can enter their own information, saving you data input time.

6. Billing management

   Some small business owners consider their billing/invoicing software a contact management system. While generally not designed to allow list building, conversation tracking, and the like, invoicing systems can help you keep an eye on the financial results of your customer network.

Functionality

1. Usability

   When deciding on a system to adopt, ask, “Will it be easy?” And be frank with yourself. No matter what else it has going for it, a system probably won’t work for you if it’s not easy. Small business owners are unlikely to have the time to read a lengthy user manual and then train staff on a complicated system. The best way to determine the usability of a system is to jump in and use it. Don’t just add a contact or two, dig deeper. See if it’s easy to collect information, build a report, or send an e-mail message to a list.

2. Customization

   Based on your goals and priorities--as well as the personality of your business--you will want some flexibility regarding the information you are collecting, how you can analyze it, and what the screen will look like as you gaze upon your information. A small business needs lots of freedom to customize, both in terms of being able to change the layout and design of the system, and in being able to tweak and mold the system’s forms to suit its needs.

   A few types of customization:

   • Changing the look and feel — add your own colors and graphics to the system, rearrange the layout of a page, or change the label of a field (for example, a church might rather have “religious organization” than “company” as a field name).
   • Editing the options — control the information that’s being collected. You can add new choices to a multiple choice form (esoteric ones that pertain to your niche), require certain fields be filled out, or set limits on the information being collected (e.g. the user must supply a dollar amount in the “annual revenue” field).
   • Adding new fields — collect the information that meets your unique needs. Perhaps you’d like to allow the option to add a new “notes” field where any extra information might be useful. More advanced customization allows a user to add an unlimited number of new fields — such as a date field, a multiple choice field or a text field.
   • Complex customization - building new relationships between fields is a more complex type of customization and is usually done by a third party integrator. This would include things like adding new fields to a system and then generating reports on those fields.

   BatchBook makes customization very easy. In fact, easy customization is one of the primary goals of BatchBook. SuperTags, our system for adding customized fields, makes it simple. Any information added using a SuperTag is searchable and available to use in custom reports or lists of contacts.

3. Security of information

   A hugely important issue is the security of your data. Security issues linger whether you store information on your own computer or use an online service product. Your personal comfort level with these options should determine what system you choose.

   Desktop/Local application: buy it in a box (or download to your desktop from the Internet) and install on your computer. If you use this kind of software, keep your anti-virus software current, back up your data frequently and keep the back-ups somewhere other than on your computer (especially if you’re using a laptop). Examples of this software include ACT, Excel, Outlook, and Access.

   Software as a Service (SaaS): access and use it over the Internet. It is available at any time from any computer that has access to the Internet. The company hosting the SaaS product is responsible for the security of your data. If you choose an online contact management system, check the security policies: is their software hosted by a reputable company? How often do they back up your data? How quickly can they retrieve a back-up if needed?

   BatchBook runs a multiple server environment, ensuring your data is always backed up. Our servers are hosted and managed by EngineYard, a recognized leader in the industry. EngineYard has a 0-downtime network and data center. BatchBook runs real time backups of your data to minimize any loss of data. All interactions with your data are over a secure connection, and you have complete control over who can access your data.

4. Ownership of the information

   Take steps to protect your information from the start; set up your new system wisely. Use the business name, business credit card, and be sure that a business e-mail address is used when registering the administrator on the account. These steps will protect you from legal ambiguity about who can access the data, ambiguity you’ll be thrilled to avoid if the employment status of the person who sets up the account changes.

5. Scalability

   As your network expands, your software must expand with it. The advantage of a spreadsheet program (such as Excel) is that it is easy, familiar and flexible. But as your client list grows, spreadsheets become difficult to manage. Once you have more than a few hundred contacts, you need a more sophisticated system. Software designed specifically for contact management allows greater flexibility when searching through a large number of records or when searching multiple criteria (e.g. searching for a person with a Master’s degree, a background in CS and living in the Boston area).

   If you plan to process large contact lists (and here, by “large,” we mean 10,000 records or larger) you should contact the vendor to ensure that their system can handle the volume. There might be an additional charge for the storage space.

6. Mobility

   In terms of mobility, online systems have a distinct advantage. They can be used from any computer with internet access. Many can also be accessed via your phone, Blackberry, or other mobile device. If you’re using desktop software, make sure it can sync with your mobile device, either directly or through an application like Outlook. If you’re using an online system, see if it has a mobile-ready version that will be easy for you to use.

   BatchBook offers a version designed for the BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and iPhone. This version is optimized for your mobile device, ensuring that it’s easy to use and lovely to behold.

7. Portability

   Being able to get what you need back out of the system--in a format that you can use--is essential. Portability allows you to export or otherwise retrieve information from your system in a format that can be readily understood by another system. For example, you may want to use a list of contacts you created to send an e-mail newsletter, or to send holiday cards, or to update your accounting software. Questions to consider: What information can be exported? What formats can be used? With what other software can it share data?

   BatchBook allows you to export all information stored in our system including any categorizations, any custom data developed in the SuperTags and all contact information. You can export information as a .CSV file or .VCF. We currently integrate with e-mail marketing software product MailChimp (http://MailChimp.com)and iCal Calendar Systems such as Google Calendar.

8. Internationalization

   Addresses and phone numbers from a bunch of countries are likely to confuse a contact management system. Globally, there’s no standard format for address information, postal codes or even phone numbers. (And watch out for Singapore, which has no cities.) So if you are doing business with anyone outside of your country, make sure that your system has the flexibility to handle a variety of formats.

   But don’t just make sure they allow for international information — make sure it’s easy to use. For example, if you are located in Nepal but are using software developed in the US, do all country selections default to “United States”? If so, it will be aggravating to have to change that option every time you use it. Meanwhile, some software might allow you to use umlauts and tildes when filling out a form, but not when importing a batch of contacts.

   BatchBook is used globally, and takes international differences into consideration. BatchBook supports unicode, the standard support for international characters. Users can designate their primary country and preferred date format.

Resources

Some resources for finding good contact management systems:

• SalesTeamTools.com maintains a comprehensive list of systems, with juicy reviews of each system
• Blogtrepreneur published a list of 101 Tools for the Online Entrepreneur that includes a section on contact managers (and some other great stuff!)
• Small business CRM consultant and guru Brent Leary publishes information about what the CRM industry is doing to embrace social media. You’ll find information on a number of social CRM solutions on his site at BrentLeary.com
• Inside CRM keeps a comprehensive directory of CRM and ERP companies. Search their directory for small business-focused CRM solutions insidecrm.com/vendors

Take Your System Out for a Run

You’ve done all of the leg work, now the fun can begin! Give your new system a thorough trial run. We suggest the following:

• Ask a few employees to participate in the trial, particularly any staff who will be responsible for the upkeep of the information. Most systems offer a free trial of multi-user accounts and it’s worthwhile to get multiple perspectives.
• Use the sample contacts list you created. Start with the very basic contact information and then, as you are working with these contacts, determine what information you want to keep in your contact management system. You’ll get a better sense of what customization you need and whether there are any critical deficiencies in the system.
• Try the system in real-life situations to get a good feel for it. While the system might appear to have the functionality you want, if it takes twice as long to use as you can bear, you are not a match made in heaven.
• Give it some time. Any change has a learning curve, so don’t be too quick to judge. Try the system for at least a few weeks to give yourself a comprehensive experience with it.
• Call, e-mail, post to the forums, Tweet and otherwise pepper and poke the product’s support staff to see how responsive they are and how willing they are to get you set up and running. Read their blogs, customer quotes and forum posts. Do searches in Google and on Twitter to see what people are saying about the product.
• Look back through your existing system to find any information that you haven’t moved into the new system. Determine what needs to be accommodated in the new system and what can be left behind.

Prepping Your New Contact Management System

Once you’ve chosen the right system, you need to make sure that you set it up in a way that will work best for you and your team. Helping your team understand the basics of the new system, and more importantly understand how you intend for them to use it is key to your ultimate success.

Here are a few things to remember:

• Set up accounts for any users that you want to have access, and make sure they have the appropriate administrative rights
• Set up the customizations you want in the system, including:
  • Tags/categories you want your staff to use
  • Regional/International settings for addresses, phone numbers
  • New fields or new options in the system fields
  • Custom reports
• Tell your employees how they should be using the system. Document these instructions for their reference. Good things to include:
  • Explanation of the tags/categories you are using
  • Explanation of reports being used
  • Information on what communications should be documented (just customer communications, internal communications, communications with vendors, just e-mails, calls, meeting notes, Facebook messages, etc.)
  • Contact information for customer support (both internal and with the software vendor)
  • Any tutorials, FAQs, webinars or other resources supplied by the software vendor

Preparing Information for Inclusion

Now that you have your chosen system set up to your specifications, it’s time to rope in all of the information you’ve got squirreled away in other places. You will first need to get your files in good shape for moving to your new system. Below are the best ways to prepare data currently stored in some common formats.

Excel

If you’ll be importing from Excel, your spreadsheet needs to be prepped before it can release its info. These tips and tools will help you get the data in your spreadsheets ready for their move:

• Columns in your spreadsheet that contain financial information should be formatted as “currency” or “numbers” (columns formatted as text will not transfer to the database correctly)
• Column names should be one word and should accurately describe the information in the column. (For example, home_street_address)
• Microsoft Excel offers tools that will help you format your data:
  • Name Splitter will split the different parts of a person’s name (first name, last name, middle initial, salutation, etc.) into separate fields for better sorting, labeling, etc.
  • Address Splitter will split fields into street, city, state, etc.
  • Converting numbers stored as text into numbers.
  • Convert a number field into a currency field.

Outlook

Valuable contact information might be tucked away in your Outlook Inbox. Ingenious tools can convert that information into a format that’s ready for transfer. Some suggestions:

• Data Extractors crawl through the text of your e-mail messages and grab contact information, including e-mail, street, city, state, phone numbers. Two examples:
  • Data Extractor
  • Intelliaddress
• VCard Converter takes all of the contact information being stored in the Contacts section of Outlook and exports them en masse. (By itself, Outlook allows the export of only one at a time)
  • Sperry Software

Microsoft Word

Word documents do not have standardized formatting, so it’s challenging for a software tool to recognize what’s what. Tips for converting lists of addresses in Word into a useful format:

• If your addresses are in a standard format (each address contains the same information and all are displayed identically), convert the text into a table using these instructions.
• Use a Word plug-in to search through your document and convert any address information found into a CSV file which can be imported into a new system.

Database Systems

If you have your information in another database system, you’ll first need to export it from that system in order to import it into the new one. Check the maker’s documentation for instructions on exporting. A few things to keep in mind:

• Some systems allow partial exports only. They might allow you to export basic address information, but not categories, communications, etc.
• This is a good chance to weed out what’s no longer useful: decide what you can shed when you make the switch
• The most standard formats for importing/exporting contact information between systems are .CSV files (text files saved in comma separated values) and .VCF files (VCard files)

Business Cards

You know that collection of business cards you have accumulated? Relatively inexpensive scanners can convert their information and make it ready for import. Some good business card scanners:

• CardScan
• IrisCard
• PenPower WorldCard

There are also a number of services (such as Shoeboxed) that will take your business cards (and other documents, such as receipts), scan them, and provide you with a digital file. Some of these include:

Merging/De-Duplicating Records

If you import information from a number of sources, be wary of duplicates. It’s likely you’ve got some people listed in more than one place. There are a few ways to prevent dupes:

• De-dupe your existing system. Some de-duping products include:
  • For Excel, get the de-duping tool
  • E-mail Address Manager can de-dupe or merge records
• Some contact management systems offer you the chance to remove duplicates from a file as they are being imported.
• Some systems merge two records for the same person or company. If there is unique information in each record (e.g. a person’s work address in one and their home address in the other), the information will be merged it all into one tidy, complete package.

BatchBook allows you to import and sync contact records with third party services such as Google Contacts, FreshBooks, and Shoeboxed. BatchBook also offers users the option to remove duplicates as they’re imported, and to merge the records with each other or with records already in the system. You also have the option to merge records as you are using your account.

Maintaining the Relationships

Relationships are growing all over the Internet, thanks to social networking sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, blogs, and Twitter. (See our guide on using these social media tools). More relationships are good news for your business, but as the number of connections grows, it’s harder to keep up.

There is much being written about social CRM, or the shift to integrate traditional CRM products with the new social media. Brent Leary, owner and consultant at CRM-Essentials has a great blog where he describes the theory behind social CRM and what different manufacturers are doing to support it.

Keeping Contacts Up-to-date

Most online social networks (LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, etc.) allow you to maintain client lists (or friend lists as some call it) and communicate within that network. Most do not let you send messages to all of the contacts at once, or to export your client information for any external communications (e-mail newsletters, holiday cards, invoicing, etc.). So while these networks are a great resource for marketing and communication, it’s important to maintain a client list outside of the network.

Here are a few restrictions of some of the more popular social networks:

• Facebook and MySpace: allow you to organize your contacts into groups, but prohibit the number you can message at a time, and do not allow you to export e-mail addresses or send a group message outside of the network.
• LinkedIn: allows you to export the name, title and e-mail address of your contacts or anyone who joins a group that you sponsor. Your new contact management system should allow for an import from LinkedIn, including the option to merge new data with the old so that you can keep the information up to date.
• Twitter: does not allow you to export the information of any of your friends/followers.
• Plaxo: is an online address book that can help sync up personal contact information across a number of social networks and online applications. It does not manage business connections nor can you share the information with other users.

BatchBook allows you to import contact information from any service that will export to CSV (such as LinkedIn, Yahoo, Hotmail and more). BatchBook also shares contact information directly with e-mail campaign management software MailChimp.

Tracking Communications

As important as keeping up with the changes in address for your wandering customers is keeping track of the conversations you are having with them on your blog, on Facebook or on Twitter. Your contact management system should have the flexibility to allow you to add communications from a wide variety of sources — for example, you may have comments on one of your blog posts that you would like to like to save as part of a customer’s record.

BatchBook allows you to view information pulled directly from your customer’s blog postings, Twitter messages, Flickr images and Delicious bookmarks right on their contact page. You can log blog comments from your own blog or those you post on other sites as communications in BatchBook.

What Are They Saying About You

Listen in! Social media provides great opportunity for learning what your customers and prospects are saying about you. There are a number of ways to keep track of what is being said about your company, your employees, and your products.

Google provides services for searching through online news and blog posts. You can subscribe to these searches and use an RSS reader (such as Google Reader) to view them all in one place.

BatchBook allows you to subscribe to a person’s Twitter messages and have them automatically displayed in their record. You can subscribe to a display of anything that a specific customer is saying about your company. You can subscribe to their blog messages. You can also subscribe to a feed of any mentions of your own company or a client’s name or brand, which will be displayed in their record.

Grow, Baby, Grow!

Like your brain, a good contact management takes some care and nurturing. You can use the technologies available to keep your contacts neat and tidy, but ultimately the value of the system depends on you and your team taking the time to incorporate it into your regular routines. We hope we’ve given you some good tips for making this transition as easy as possible. Establishing good habits early will help you enjoy the relationships that are so important to the growth of your business.