Leak-free System for your Contact

We all know how important it is to keep up your relationships in business but how confident are you in your tools?



The importance of a leak-free system for recording the contact details of your colleagues, customers, potential business partners or anyone you know cannot be over emphasised.

The standard response to such a question is they keep it in Outlook, Gmail or some other mail system. Others worship at the alter of Blackberry or have the company CRM forced upon them while others keep it "old school" with a paper address book or organiser. The point they are missing is that these are stores for some of your contact information not a system and certainly not a complete leak-free system.

Ask your self the following questions about your current system, what if:

• You lose your phone/PDA/organiser, could I recover everything in a day
• your employer let you go taking PC, phone, PDA back with no notice
• I need to call an acquaintance that I have never emailed before
• I lost my electronic data, do I have a recent paper copy
  

The details of my own system are for another post but you need to look at how you are recording your contact information and ask the big question, do I have one place (master record) for all my contact details and have I a procedure to ensure it is kept fresh.