Keeping Your Contacts and Prospects Organized
as published in Get Clients Now!
by C.J. Hayden,CPCC, (AMACOM, 1999) p. 173

"Shannon Seek is a personal and professional coach and professional organizer who specializes in working with superacheivers. 'Keeping your contacts and prospects organized,' Shannon points out, 'is the only way you can expect to be effective at follow-up. You need a designated place to keep contact information until you act on it, a system for organizing the information until you act on it, a system for organizing the information, and a system for tracking what you do with it.

When you first meet someone, make a note on the person's business card of when and where you met, and what action you intend to take. Keep all the cards or others notes like this in one place until you make the call, send the letter, or whatever else you do. Then file the person so you can find him again, by either name or company. If you use a computer-based contact manager, enter the person now and make updates every time you contact him.

You should categorize your contacts as much as possible. With a computerized system, you can have multiple categories. Think about grouping them by:

• The product or service they are most interested in
• Their level of interest (hot, warm, cold)
• When you want to contact them next (two weeks, one month, six months)
• Their industry or field
• Significant affiliations (e.g., Chamber of Commerce or trade association)
• Geographical region