Who needs expensive Contact Management Software?!???!

March 28th, 2007 | email

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Today’s real estate market, you need to watch your pennies. There is a lot of software out there to make your contact management much easier, but you will pay for it. Everyone in Long & Foster has free software that you are not even close to using to its fullest capabilities. I consider myself a power user and still have not captured all of the power it has to offer. You can have the best software or all the bells and whistles, but it’s no good unless you unleash the hounds (use it) I have gone over how to make labels with outlook, and form letters, now here are some more tips on getting the most out of FREE.

Take a look at the actual contact information. Have you ever tried clicking the other tabs? Details; don’t you keep track of personal information on your clients? Isn’t that what our industry is about? Making contacts and keeping it personal! The more you know about someone and can work it into a conversation, doesn’t that build on your relationship? Activities; when was the last time you talked to them? What did they say in their last email? Here is a link to the Microsoft Tutorial http://office.microsoft.com/training/training.aspx?AssetID=RC011036431033 You can use this at your own pace and in front of a computer for some hands on training. You can make your own categories. This is useful when you want to group contacts together based on how you know them, conducted business, hobbies or whatever… I use this extensively to track my business. Where did I get the lead? Go to my contacts and select Category view and wah lah… there they are all lined up in their cooresponding category. You can see where your business is coming from if you categorize it. They can have multiple categories.

The ACTION list is where everything happens. Look at the amount of items you can do with your contact. Make appointments, or follow up on you calendar for you. Messages, letters, Journal entries,.. Journal entries??!?! What’s that? Well you can log your conversations, activities that you have done for this contact, etc. It logs the time for you. Open one up and see what its all about. You put the information on starting and ending. Start and stop the timer for your work.. You know did you ever wonder how much time you are spending on working a project? This (if you use it properly) will do just that. Like I said before, you can have all the bells and whistles, but you gotta use them in order to benefit from it. Below and next page you will see the journal for the phone call.

Give it a try. Make sure to click create a journal entry. This will start tracking your time once the journal entry opens up. The journal is a great way to track time you spend on projects. You can go back and start the clock where you left off. It will let you track your progress and so forth. Don’t be afraid to look around on the menu drop downs. There is so much to offer… and to think you want to pay for software with all the bells and whistle and you haven’t even tapped the whole FREE product you already have!!! Have fun and remember practice makes perfect!