Power-up your contacts - part 3: Stay in touch with key contacts
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The third of five short webinars providing business professionals with the best practices and tools to manage and leverage their contact network for effective business development. Stay in touch with key contacts. Best practices and tools that will help you stay in touch with key contacts: How to plan communication How to log communication and how to use that info How to integrate different solutions How to achieve that with a standalone address book or working along a CRM Covve is the next generation online address book. Specifically designed for business professionals and is being used by international business services firms, alumni networks and professionals worldwide. http://covve.com
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Power-up your contacts - part 3: Stay in touch with key contacts
- 2. Power up your contacts 5 Steps to a tidy address book October 5 Things a modern address book can do, you’d never imagine October 19 Stay in touch with key contacts November 2 Lead generation using your address book? Yes! November 16 Use your awesome address book for some business development November 30 WEBINAR SERIES http://covve.com/blog/
- 3. Stay in touch with key contacts 1.Why Stay in Touch 2.How to Stay in Touch 3.Challenges 4.Stay in Touch using Covve
- 4. Why Stay in Touch
- 5. Why Stay in Touch According to Bain & Company, 60-80% of customers who describe themselves as satisfied do not go back to do more business with the company that initially satisfied them. Often it’s due to a lack of connection. http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrymyler/2016/06/08/acquiring-new-customers-is-important-but-retaining-them-accelerates-profitable- growth/#6ca4b20317f1 Just 4% of people will be willing to do business with you the very first time they hear about you and the other 96% will do business with you only when trust has been established http://www.socialbuzzclub.com/keep-in-touch-activity-is-more-important-than-you-think/ If you simply store contacts in your address book, only reaching out when looking for a specific introduction, you might as well not have a network at all http://www.forbes.com/sites/dailymuse/2013/08/29/simple-ways-to-keep-your-network-from-growing-cold/#3cf36f05aebf
- 6. How to Stay in Touch
- 7. How to Stay in Touch – Calendar entry – Reminders / To-do list – CRM activities – Manual Address Book Scan – Covve
- 8. How to Stay in Touch Calendar entry Reminders / To-do list CRM activities Manual address book scan Covve Multiple accounts Tricky if using different platforms e.g. Gmail & Outlook Tricky if using different platforms e.g. Gmail & Outlook ✓ ✓ Recurring entries ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Past communication info available ✓ ✓ Smart Reminders ✓ Mobile phone access ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
- 9. Challenges
- 10. Calendar entries / To-do list - Clutter - Missed reminders – easy to dismiss - Ending up with huge backlog of pending tasks - No differentiation / weight based on the importance of each reminder - Limited info linked to the reminder - Sync issues – especially for multiple accounts
- 11. Calendar entries / To-do list A couple extracts from frustrated user, complaing about their calendar sync experience: “Some people find their calendars won’t sync at all, others have trouble getting new events to show up – and I had a peculiar problem whereby only certain shared calendars were appearing.” http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/google-calendar-wont-sync-ios-try-fixes/ “Every time the Google cal syncs, it’s having a problem. It makes my Outlook close.” http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_outlook-mso_other/error-google-calendar-sync-to-outlook- calendar/71ae5613-0429-4291-af19-6d9251c33e8f
- 12. CRM activities - Complexity Extremely hard to setup properly and achieve high adoption rates - Mobile access CRM systems can be accessed on mobile, but not an efficient way to communicate and log daily interactions - Too focused on the sale CRM systems organize all communication around a sales opportunity, but many times there is ongoing communication before there is a sales opportunity http://www.forbes.com/sites/lisaearlemcleod/2013/08/12/is-your-sales-force-being-sabotaged-by-your- crm/#41f81a95244f
- 13. Manual Address Book Scan - Inefficient with larger contact networks - No record of past communication
- 14. Stay in Touch with Covve
- 15. Stay in Touch with Covve Reminders Smart reminders make a call at a specific time review and set communication frequency
- 16. Stay in Touch with Covve Reminders - Smart snooze – taking into account the frequency of communication and upcoming schedule - Urgency – Losing touch! - Next touchpoint
- 17. Stay in Touch with Covve Full communication history - Type of communication - Date - Notes
- 18. For your free 1 month Pro subscription, email: alex@covve.com Next in this webinar series… Lead generation using your address book? Yes! November 9 The ultimate professional address book
Editor's Notes
- Hello and welcome to today’s webinar – the 3rd in the Power up your contacts series! My name is Chris and I am Head of Customer Success at Covve – Firstly for those who don’t know what Covve is… it’s the next generation online address book. Specifically designed for business professionals – you’ll have a chance to see what it can do later on as well… we literally deal with contacts and address books all day every day and we are happy to be sharing some of the best practices…
- So thanks again for joining and hope you make the best of it… In the first 2 webinars we covered the 5 steps to a tidy address book, and the amazing things a modern address book can do! The recording is available in case you missed it on our website This webinar will cover how to stay in touch with key contacts… different approaches and challenges Just a reminder that after the webinar we will be sharing all the material and the recording for future reference We are keeping it brief on purpose – we know you guys are super busy
- So we have broken this down in 4 sections… Why stay in touch How to stay in touch Challenges of each approach And lastly a brief intro on how you can use Covve to stay in touch
- We touched briefly on this during the last webinar… And there are multiple super important reasons why you need to Stay In Touch in the business world…
- Business is built on relationships… Deals take long to happen… Customer support is ongoing… And these relationships and business opportunities take time and need a structured plan… Sharing here some interesting articles on the topic… Now the issue is that this has to be a simple enough plan… and the market is moving away from monster CRM systems to achieve that… Many companies are trying to enforce ways to achieve that, but it’s one of the hard things to achieve and most end up with over complicated methodologies… and as a result it creates more clutter than anything else… Let’s steer away from the strategic part… and break it down to see how most professionals deal with this activity…
- So we are assuming that at this stage you are convinced that you absolutely need to take care of your business contact network… Let’s look at the most common options to organize this…
- One of the most common ways, it to add calendar entries – i.e. call Mike on Monday November 7 at 11am And this can be in Outlook or Gmail or iCloud Other prefer to use a to-do list – or reminders… again offered by Outlook / Gmail and Phones Another way that companies that have a CRM systems encourage is to plan and log everything using the CRM activities There is the old school way – but still widely used – method of scanning or browsing your contact book and reaching out to whoever jumps out the screen And lastly I will give you a short intro on our take on how to stay in touch Running a quick poll here to see what this group prefers… Great… got votes for all options… with Calendar entries slightly ahead!
- So let’s have a look at a small comparison table… And how each option fares in some features… Wont spend time on this, since I will go into each section in more detail right now… but you can refer back to it
- So what are the challenges for each of those options, starting with the popular calendar entries
- When it comes to calendar entries – used as reminders to contact people… or even a to-do list There are a few well documented and clear disadvantages… Firstly – the reminders are easy to dismiss… and if you don’t dismiss then it’s very common to end up with a huge backlog of pending tasks… and at that point you lost the game, because they just keep piling up… and you lose track of what is really important and what is not… and this just becomes noise… clutter… an inefficient way to work The 2nd challenge is that a reminder is either recurring or standalone – but in either case there is only a limited amount of info you can add related to the deal… some notes or link an emial And then there is the big issue of syncing calendars… sounds simple enough but if you tried to bring all your entries e.g. Gmail, Outlook and iCloud together then you know exactly what I mean! Really not as easy as it sounds… and one of the most common reasons of confusion… entries appearing in one calendar and another one… on the phone but not on the pc
- Sharing here a couple extracts from frustrated users, complaining about their calendar sync experience…
- I will definitely not argue against a CRM!! Just pointing out that when it comes to using a CRM to maintain ongoing communication, There are some specific challenges… Most importantly the complexity… most CRM tools say they can do sooo much… and the actually can… but it’s extremely hard, complicated and expensive to set up… Another big shortcoming is that they still are too complicated for mobile use… And when it comes to logging simple things such as a catchup call with a prospect – the number of required fields may discourage users… Also, they are more centrered around deals – so it’s not designed to bring forward communication that needs to happen at the very early stages of a deal, or even communication unrelated to a deal… which is many times so much more useful and productive!
- There is also the very common habit of browsing through our contacts… and saying, ahh let me call so and so. And some companies – serious companies – have even structured this by allocating specific times for doing this… A couple very obvious shortcomings is that it: becomes very inefficient with larger contact networks very hard to keep track of past communication, which as we said is very important!
- Now – let’s look at the Covve approach for staying in touch which we believe addresses many of the challenges previously discussed
- So with who and how often should I be in touch? Covve offers two approaches… One is setting up specific reminders… like what you know and you are used to… because there are certainly instances when you need to make a call at a specific time Then again, Covve offers something very different as well! A set of cards (contacts) to review and set the communication frequency… Weekly, monthly, yearly etc. This we believe replicates how we operate in the business world… some things are set in stone, and some communication can and will be more flexible
- When it comes to reminders… Covve is clever to treat and put weight according to the communication frequency and your upcoming schedule… So if you snooze a reminder for a contact you indicated that you want to have yearly communication, Covve will alert you again in a few months time, checking your schedule so it’s not cluttered! Also, if it’s an important contact – one you have weekly communication with and haven’t spoken for a while… Covve will alert you that you are losing touch! Lastly – Covve takes care of the next touchpoint so you don’t have to worry about setting a specific follow up date, unless you need to
- And most importantly, when staying in touch or maintaining relationships, it’s important to be prepared… So Covve offers a communication log, including notes that helps you immediately remember what the communication history is and use it before your next touchpoint… so you get on the phone with all relevant in hand Including what communication you had before, Dates, notes etc.
- So we’ve covered how to stay in touch with key contacts… and and if you like how Covve approaches this need, then please email Alex for your free Pro account!! For the next webinar we will be looking specifically at how you can generate leads using nothing but your address book! You don’t want to miss that one… Thanks again and feel free to reach out with any questions, comments, suggestions Many thanks, have a great day!