I remember within the first 6 months of helping agents I was speaking in a remote part of Maryland and an agent and her husband asked me to dinner after my presentation. I was new and didn’t realize many times an invitation was actually a chance to learn more about the subject I had presented. It turned out to be a nice evening, but I learned more than they did; the agent wanted my input on contact management, I asked how many contacts she had in her contact management system, she proudly answered 3,000! She was a successful agent so I decided to take a look at what her contacts looked like. My first question was, “how many are dead of this 3,000?” Her answer, she didn’t know! Next, I asked if she had the contacts divided up by anything like level of interest, possible leads or past customers? Her answer, no! I told her she did not have a contact management system, she had an old expired phone book.
Now is the time, with what is going on in the world, to tackle a project you have been putting off for months or even years: CLEAN UP YOUR CRM SYSTEM! Let me share how I think you should clean up your contacts. First, design your own categories and don’t make more than 6 or 7 categories. My suggestion would be to simply put: Contacts that can make you money within the next year, Contacts that can make you money in the next 2 years, other contacts which might make you money someday, past clients, support people like lenders, title companies, home inspectors etc., Family and finally friends. That would be my 7 categories, but feel free to make what works for you. Every contact in your CRM should fall into a category so we can discuss next steps.
“Why do we need to have categories in our CRM?” you might ask. Simple; in marketing, whether it’s emails, phone calls, or postcards you need to know who to invest time and money into staying in touch. The category “Make Money in a Year,” you would dedicate more resources than the “Make you Money Someday” category. This is how and where you start building a marketing plan and how to execute the plan. We can discuss more in the future about marketing plans, but for now clean up your contacts!
Oh, the agent from that remote part of Maryland with her 3,000 contacts, the agent, the husband and an assistant went to work cleaning up the contacts and about a month later proudly called to tell me she had gone from 3,000 contacts to 1,200 alive, maybe interested contacts