Is Your Next Opportunity Stuck in a Drawer?

How to, Small business0 comments

During the Christmas/New Year break, I made a real effort to get my business cards sorted out and input all the details on to a database.  By doing this, I was able to organise my contacts and see whether there were any opportunities for working together, either as potential clients, partners or suppliers.

As you know, you can easily collect quite a lot of business cards over time, especially if you’re like me and attend a lot of networking events.  It’s great to have all these contacts but you need to have some kind of strategy to manage them, otherwise you could be missing out on some potential opportunities.

So if you’ve got a pile of business cards sitting in a drawer, then here are some tips on how to manage your contact information effectively for your business.

• First of all you need to get your contacts uploaded on to an Excel spreadsheet or simple database system such as MS Access, if you haven’t done so already.  You don’t need much information to start with, just the name of the contact, company name, telephone number, email address and location.

• Whatever program you decide to use for your database, I would suggest that you save a copy in Excel as a CSV file as this means that you can easily upload it to other programs at a later date, whether it be a CRM system or email marketing program.

• If you’ve got 100+ cards to add, it can seem overwhelming, but there are various ways of tackling them.  You can either work through them yourself, doing a certain number a week; buy a business card scanner and scan the contact information direct on to your PC; or better still, you can make better use of your time by outsourcing it to someone else to do it for you, such as a virtual assistant.

• Once you’ve got the basic contact information on to a spreadsheet or database, then you can add filters to sort your contacts by profession, location, where you met them etc.  For example, if you were looking for website designers in London, you could easily find them by applying filters to the appropriate industry and location columns.

• Once you’ve got your contact information sorted then where do you go from there?  As I mentioned in my previous blog What is CRM and how can it help your business, if you put everything on to a spreadsheet then you can easily upload it on to a CRM system once you need a more sophisticated system.  CRM systems are great for organising your contacts, tracking opportunities and managing your sales pipeline.  You can also upload the details from Excel on to other programs to manage your accounting, invoices and email marketing.

So don’t leave potential opportunities sitting in your desk drawer!  Get your business cards organised and start to see how you can use your contacts to grow your business.

What is CRM and how can it help your business?

Customer care, How to, Small business1 comment

If you’re running your own business, you probably go out regularly to networking events.  Face to face networking is a great way to promote your services and build relationships with other business owners.  However, once you start networking on a regular basis, you suddenly find that you’re starting to accumulate a lot of business cards.  So the question is, what do you do with them all?

Well, if you’re not careful, they can end up in the bottom of a drawer!  This is obviously not doing a lot of good for your business and means that you could be missing out on potential opportunities.  So if you are meeting people you want to stay in contact with or think may become future partners or suppliers, then you need to be able to find their information quickly and easily.  One of the best ways of doing this is to use a CRM system – CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management.

So how can a CRM system help your business?  Well, here are a few tips.

When I first started up in business, I used an Excel spreadsheet to capture my contact details.  This is great to start with but as my contacts grew then I decided that I needed a more sophisticated system to manage my contact information.  One of the great benefits of having a CRM system is that you can use it to manage your sales pipeline.  For example, you can tag and sort your contacts by their relationship to your business, eg supplier, lead, potential client etc.  From this you can quickly spot any opportunities, and what action needs to be taken by adding tasks and targets to the contact profile.  So if you met someone at a networking event who is interested in working with you, then you can flag that on their profile, add a reminder to follow them up and then track progress of your contact with them.

There are 2 types of CRM: software you can download to your computer or a cloud-based application.  I personally prefer a cloud-based system because it allows you to access your information from anywhere.  OK, you will have to pay a monthly or yearly fee but the time saving advantages it brings to your business will far outweigh the cost.  For example, many cloud based systems integrate with each other, eg CapsuleCRM works with Kashflow, Xero, MailChimp and Google Apps.

So, as you can see, having a CRM system will help you spot any potential opportunities, and when used in conjunction with other applications, can help you work more effectively.  And if you don’t have time to do this yourself, then many virtual assistants have experience of working with CRM systems, leaving you to focus on following up and making that sale!