What Do Bell Bottoms, 8-Tracks & Floppy Disks Have To Do With Database Management?

And what do these three items have in common, besides residing in my basement?

At one time, they were all on the cutting edge.

Now, they are in boxes in my basement, waiting to be thrown away, recycled or garner me an appearance on Hoarders.

So what does this have to do with new business development? Two words – database management.

Sometimes it might seem like your prospecting efforts are about as organized as those 100 boxes you have in your basement, garage, attic or other area in your home that is not up for public inspection.

And just like your unorganized basement, you don’t have the time to clean it up. I hear you.

Why. . .

. . .should you clean out those prospects?  Because it will make your prospecting more efficient.

I love to segment my databases, by city, by state, by sector, by title.

I’m not normal.  However, I am efficient.

So if I find an article that would be great to send out to Public Relations departments of hospitals in the state of Ohio, I can build a filter and in a few minutes and send out my email.

Chances are many of you would have to go through your Outlook contacts manually and send each person who qualifies your email.

No wonder you don’t like prospecting.

But before you go out and spend the equivalency of your mortgage payment on CRM software, think about the how you want to segment your database.

Here are my recommendations:

Sector :

Get as specific as you need to here but keep the titles consistent so you can easily build a filter.

For example, you could specify some prospects as being in the “Hospital” category and others in the “Specialty Practice” category – while they are all considered to be healthcare prospects.

Make a list of what you name each category so as you add more people into your database, you keep the fields consistent.

City :

This is important say if you’re going to another city to visit a client, or relative, or because the Nordstrom on Michigan Avenue is superior to the one in the Kenwood Town Centre, think about how much more productive you could be if you could pull up a list of your prospects in Chicago and try to set up appointments to visit them while you’re also in town.

Title/Job Function:

In prospecting, you will often times receive referrals.

Who is responsible for one job function at Company X might not be the same function responsible for that at Company Z.

As you work your way through a company, you will talk to people in a variety of job functions.

Status:

You want to be able to quickly identify prospects who are hot.

You don’t want to have to scroll through 1000+ prospects to find that one person you spoke with last week and need to follow up with RIGHT NOW.

There are a lot of other things you could use for segmenting your prospects, such as High Priority prospects, prospects you met at a trade show, etc.

The key is to be able to walk to your washer without breaking your neck over those 8-tracks.

Or in your case, make prospecting a bit less time consuming and easier to manage.

So I’ll clean up my basement, if you clean up your database. Deal?

No one wants to be that person on Hoarders.