Debbie Mayo-Smith - March 2013 - How You Set Up Outlook As A CRM System

Hi Debbie, I do have a question and your advice would be really helpful.

We sell sponsorship for a number of our clients, and for some the contacts are the same. We want to build a master database which allows us to categorize - so that when we need to send out a prospectus to say "tertiary" related sponsors, that we just filter on that - and mail out to them - this seems pretty simple, i.e. just a filter out of excel, but then we want to be able to record conversations, i.e. - just notes of when we might need to follow up; what the sponsor said etc - and then if possible prepare an update report.

Do you think Outlook might be able to manage that?

Your advice is greatly appreciated.

Outlook will probably be easier than Excel for many reasons. This is exactly what I use. But one word of caution. You can systemise anything easily. The real task is ensuring your team faithfully follow up. It is just toooooo easy to ignore tasks.

First the system.

Set up categories. Then assign one or many categories to your contacts.  Each person can have multiple catagorise. Sponsors, Associations, press, FMG, Financial services.... You can do anything you want.

Then when you want to contact a segment - a category, simply sort contacts by category. They will all be aligned. If a client has three categories, they'll be listed three times.

You can then highlight the selection you want to email and select mail merge. You can then do a personalised email to them in one fell swoop, however you cannot add attachments.

When responses come in that you need to follow up on, simply drag and drop the email into the task icon. It creates a new task with the original email in the body portion. And of course a task can be created from scratch. Then when the allocated day arrives  - the task is due, a reminder pops up. This is how I follow up with conference speaking submissions. Once I did this for 5 years until I finally won the speaking engagement with Julie O'Donovan when she was with the QLD electrical contractors assoc.

Then when you want to see the activity that has occurred with a specific contact - you open that contact and click on the activity tab. Voila. It will list all the emails, meetings, appointments and notes you've had on them.

All outlook contacts can be exported into an Excel file and vice versa - excel pulled into Outlook.

The only thing I might suggest, and it is doubling up on work or perhaps substitute the use of a Google shared Calendar for Outlook. The whole team can have access to it and each person can have their own colour. This way they can put their follow ups/ specific appointments etc. on it and you or anyone can have access to it and see where you are as a group. Each person can also subscribe to have their own calendar prompts sent to them via email. It comes in at 5am each morning.

Thank you and best regards

Debbie Mayo-Smith

International Speaker - CSP (1 of only 4 in NZ, less than 7% in AUS)
Helping you save time, improve business
www.debbiespeaks.co.nz

Article by Ms Productivity Debbie Mayo-Smith, one of Australia's most popular business speakers www.successis.co.nz