Get the most from contact management

Having too much information in your contact manager about a client or prospect rarely poses a problem. Not having enough, though, can put you at a disadvantage. The bare minimum–name and at least one piece of contact information–is hardly better than no entry at all unless you also know if that person is a past client, current prospect, or a vendor. Every piece of additional information gives you another opportunity to sort your data by helpful criteria. And the more you know about a person, the more meaningful your communications can be. Here are some entries you may want to include with contacts:

• Gender (not always apparent from names or salutations)
• Saluation
• How and when you met
• Age
• Spouse’s name
• Children’s names and ages
• Occupation
• Interests/hobbies
• Pets
• Birthday
• Anniversary
• Type and description of current home
• Neighborhood where home is located
• Name of person who referred this contact to you
• Names of others this contact has referred to you
• Type of contact (e.g., previous buyer, potential seller and buyer, etc.)
• Date of previous closing
• Rating for how promising this prospect is
• Schedule for frequency of contact
• Notes about previous contacts

How in the world will you get all this information from people? Ask and observe. Not every contact field must be completely filled out when you create a new listing. Add to it as you go. Of course, none of this information will be worth the effort of gathering it if you don’t have a good system for pulling out the details you need, sorting groups by the various criteria you have identified, and actually contacting these clients and prospects by mail, e-mail, or phone.

Photo © Digital Vision.

Buyers & sellers, visit www.texasrealestate.com.
REALTORS®, visit www.texasrealtors.com.