Ah people. Chances are, you know a lot of them. Apparently 15ish years in the workforce and 35ish years in the world has translated into roughly 6,000 email addresses in my ‘Contacts’.
A pile of email addresses does not a system make. What to do with those email addresses? How do you use them?
You may also have physical addresses, phone numbers, birthdays, and other information about the people in your life you want to track or organize.
To CRM Or Not To CRM
If you just want to make sure you don’t forget your college roommate’s birthday, a CRM might be an overkill solution. CRM stands for ‘customer (or contact) relationship management’. Most CRMs integrate with your social media, cell phone, etc. and track how often you talk to certain people, what they are up to, and otherwise help you understand patterns that could increase your sales and otherwise help achieve goals.
A CRM may be right for you if:
- you want automatic syncing/integrations.
- if you want to cultivate some of your relationships intentionally.
- if you are kind of scatterbrained and need occasional reminders.
- if you don’t mind paying a little something to get any of these things to happen.
If you want to see what your options are, this is a good place to start.
Managing Your Contacts
Now that you have a list of contacts, if you have decided to use a CRM, you can kind of skip this section since most CRMs have some kind of system to do everything below.
If you are DIYing (ex: using an online address book of some sort), this section is for you. Here’s what’s next:
- Get them all in one system. Maybe you want to make Facebook and LinkedIn contacts go to your phone then import into Gmail. Whatever you decide, figuring out where you want your contacts to end up and making a list of all places where you have contacts will dictate how you do this. My CRM syncs everything together and updates information when it notices, say, a new phone number for someone or an address change. The price of a CRM may be worth it for this function alone but you can totally bring everything together without one if you put in some thought.
- Decide what is worth knowing or tracking. If you want to know peoples’ birthdays but not their wedding anniversaries, that’s ok. The more information you are tracking, the deeper your relationship can get… but it’s also more of a PITA to stay on top of. Draw whatever lines you want, I won’t judge you.
- Delete duplicates/update. You may need to combine some people together (ex: your friend got married and changed her last name on Facebook but not in Gmail so it’s treating her as two different people). A lot of times, the easiest way to do this is on a spreadsheet that you either work on online or print off. I had one client who DREADED this task so she literally made an appointment with me to make her go over her 2,000 contact spreadsheet. Guess what? It took her less than an hour once she sat down and committed to the task. I only tell you this story in case you feel similar pain. Like most things, it won’t be as bad as you think.
- Decide on a system to regularly check things. One idea is to check in quarterly you make sure new contacts are added into your system. Another is to set up some auto-syncing tool on your computer where you are dumping everything right off the bat. Whatever you do, you don’t want to make something awesome then have it not be maintained. Every system needs maintenance, especially systems you use often, so schedule some time to do this. It won’t take much but it’ll work so much longer (and better) if you do.
Now since I’m lazy/sporadic/business oriented, my CRM does this stuff. And I am thankful it does every day, though I do want to figure out how I can get it to track birthdays automatically (I see it has ‘birthdays’ as an information field but no way for them to automatically get pulled in according to the documentation).
Managing How Often You Communicate With Those Contacts
OK so you have your contacts in a central location with useful information associated. Now the only thing to decide is how often you communicate.
Some people may be ‘happy holidays’ only, while some may be people you want to check in on more frequently. You may want to create groups for your use only ‘Acquaintances’ (the kind of happy holidays only types), ‘Contacts’ (happy holidays and birthdays), ‘Friends’ (happy holidays, birthdays, and quarterly hellos), or ‘BFFs’ (happy holidays, birthdays, and monthly check-ins).
Now you can name these groups (and add people to these groups) however you want, the point is you’re being intentional about how and when you contact people.
If you have a CRM (not to keep coming back to this), you can ‘set the pace’.
If you are DIYing, you may want to use something like http://www.miniwebtool.com/random-picker/ and put your list in there and have it pick someone random (or several random people) every day. If you said you’d contact someone at a specific time, make sure it goes in your calendar so you can keep your word.
Your network is a powerful thing, whether you want to throw the best holiday party ever or upsell your favorite clients on your new service. Making sure you have a centralized, organized system to keep their information at hand and your relationship a priority is a great investment of your time.