If your first reaction to that title is: “What’s a Rolodex?” Then you might not need to read this article. (Although I would, of course, have to recommend staying anyway, you might still find the information helpful.)
The real question is: are you still using outdated and inefficient means for keeping your clients’ contact information? If the answer is yes, then we need to talk. Think about it, you’re trying to get your clients to use the latest and greatest products and services, yet you’re still stuck in the dark ages on contact management. Does that ever bug you? If not, it should. You are wasting so much time and energy working with paper and pencil.
Lets look at this from a technical perspective. How are you managing this information? The best way is to use some sort of contact management software. A good example is ACT just to name one type of software for contact management. It not only allows you to view and sort all your different information from clients, it can integrate into email programs, making sending out announcements to a large group of people very easy. Instead of having to type every address into the CC: field, you can just select who you want to receive the email, and boom, it’s all done, quickly and painlessly.
Now I’m sure some of you are muttering to yourselves: “I get a lot of business cards, I don’t want to have to type all of that information into some stupid software program.” Well, lucky you, we live in the technology age. You can get scanners that will scan all of your business cards and import that information directly into your management software. Then these people as well can easily be looked up and contacted.
That brings me to one of the great benefits of using software, as opposed to the Rolodex: ease of finding information. Instead of sifting through cards and the like, you can easily search for a persons name, address, business — anything that you have in your database of information. This can be a real time-saver when you need to find out who your contact is at a particular company, and your Rolodex is sorted by last name.
The time spent setting up a contact management program and getting all of your data into it is negligible compared to the time you and your employees will save looking up information and doing mailings. So, don’t you think its time to get rid of that old Rolodex?
*Originally published at LangDesign.com
Rebecca Lang is founder of Lang Design, Inc. an Internet web design and development with an emphasis on marketing website business. Serving businesses nationwide, we are located in Wilmington, Delaware, just south of the Philadelphia Metro area.
