Applying The 80/20 Rule To Social CRM – Final Chapter

I’m beginning to think that I should convert this into an e-book or something (smile). When we left off on the last post we had successfully loaded all of our email and social media contacts into Gist in order to create a centralized CRM database. If we have not already done so, our next step would be to create a tag or tags for each contact that we have. Doing this from scratch could be challenging based on the number of contact records that we have but, it is necessary. Doing this as new contacts are added should painless.

Adding tags to Gist is pretty self-explanatory. You will, however, want to make sure that your tags are consistent. Let’s say we create tags for “A Client”, “B Client” and “C Client” (these tags are created on the fly and are free-typed). I have good news and I have bad news (smile). In order for you to make a decision regarding how you are going to classify a contact, you will probably want to go to each contacts record and evaluate the information found there in order to make an informed decision. Mind you, you do not have to do this as you can open up your “People” tab in Gist and go down the list and check boxes and then do a bulk tagging for all those who you have selected.

Why then, would I want to look at these records individually?

1. Maybe you would like to get to know these people better? LOL
2. You will be able to properly discern just how important they are as it pertains to your efforts.
3. Gist does give you the ability to add notes to each record and that can become invaluable.
4. Your record review will also allow you, through Gist, to request missing or additional contact information.  While Gist is great at mining most information, there will be occasions where you will want to manually add things like links, addresses, personal information, etc.

Once we have everyone classified, the magic can begin. Now when we open our “People” tab on Gist you will see each of your tags listed up top and you will now be able to click on any tag and see just those people who are associated with this designation. Sweet!

Finally, if it were me, I would want to establish some sort of reminder system that could be as simple as setting a reoccurring task in my calendar. Something like a monthly reminder to contact your “A” clients, bi-monthly for “B”, and quarterly for “C”. You will need to decide what that schedule needs to be and what is appropriate. Through the use of the Gist “note” field, you can keep track of what methods of contact you have used with that particular contact although Gist will automatically register emails etc. However, Gist does only hold these email records for 90 days (they will still remain within your actual email client after that as long as they have not been deleted).

Retaining good clients and developing them into better clients is largely based on showing them some love. Moving second tier contacts to first tier is based on the same principle. I would strongly suggest you view this slide show from one of our NetWorks! Boise members, Tom Gay with The Alternative Board – Boise, on this subject.

Happy hunting and thanks for staying tuned!!

Craig

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