A Hallmark card once said, “Friends are like flowers, you can’t have too many.”

That may be true—unless we are talking about your contact list. Any salesperson knows a contact list is an essential tool. And they also know it takes a lot of work to manage this vital resource. But how many salespeople are setting up a contact list to work for them? If the maintenance of your contact list is taking valuable time away from sales opportunities, it’s time to join the cloud. Today’s CRM and contact management systems bring new life to your sales strategies by offering easy-to-use tools for creating meaningful and profitable connections with customers. Here are five things you deserve from a contact management system.

 

1. Step away from the spreadsheet.

Yes, a spreadsheet format “excels” at organizing names and contact information, but it doesn’t provide a brief overview of that person’s future company goals, favorite sports team, which sales rep he or she has worked with in the past, or whether he prefers ketchup over fry sauce. And information like that may come in handy when tracking hot sales leads or planning a practical approach. It’s time you moved away from the headache of dissatisfying spreadsheets and into cloud contact management.

 

2. Hello, my name is…

The ideal contact management system should feel much like the ice-breaker at the beginning of an industry conference. One associate introduces you to an acquaintance, who introduces you to someone who graduated from the same college as you, and—over clam dip and crudites—you bump arms with the controller of an expanding local company. It’s not enough to list names. Sometimes it’s helpful to know why and how you happen to know this person, where they work, what they do, and how you may best provide a solution to the business challenges they are likely to face shortly.

 

3. Bring some snap, crackle, and pop.

There’s a name for a quiet contact list that merely takes up computer space. It’s called a database. Boring! With the right contact management system, however, a contact list can have personality and pop. It should speak to you about who is sitting dormant (and probably needs to be updated) and who has been vocal about business growth (and likely a potential customer). A dynamic contact management system can do just that. 

 

4. It goes where you go.

An effective sales team is always on the go and so should your contact management system. Since Salesforce is a cloud-based operating system, access to a new contact field is easy. So when you make that connection at your daughter’s soccer game over the weekend, you can quickly add the new information and set the sales team in motion for contact the following week—all without missing the winning goal.

 

5. Build a collaborative united front.

An impactful sales team is one that provides seamless and receptive customer service. With Sales Cloud, the experts at Simplus can design a customized contact management system that reinforces your active sales processes and improves communication between team members by including an open forum field that allows sales team members to discuss customers, share ideas, and find information. And, since it’s cloud-based, the Sales Cloud contact management system is easy to update.

Look at how Simplus implemented Sales Cloud and its contact management system for sPower, a solar energy company. sPower was previously using an array of manual processes and spreadsheets, meaning their contacts were hard to find and visibility into the sales process was poor. After using Simplus and our Custom Configuration services for their Sales Cloud instance, however, sPower enjoyed a streamlined and effective contact management system that actually worked for them. We cleansed data from each of sPower’s “tracker spreadsheets” to provide one central repository for all types of contacts, including clients, landowners, utility contacts, CAISO engineers, and legal representation. We also provided training to make sure the Sales Cloud instance was understood by all end users.

“Everyone was very timely and on point with communication. This tool is going to change how we do things around here. I refuse to update one more Excel pipeline!” —Polly Baranco, Sr. Manager, Commerical Power Marketing at sPower

 

You can leave your Christmas card list on a spreadsheet. But, it’s time to introduce your business contact list to the 21st century. Computing systems like Sales Cloud make tracking your contacts, history, and sales leads easier than ever. And with the help of Simplus, your contact management system will be ready to get to work for you.

 

For more about Sales Cloud and Simplus’ custom offerings, call us today!