How are you tracking your customer relationships? Have you got books and books of business cards? Have you looked at Act! and thought it looked too complicated and expensive? Or are you just trusting to your memory to keep everything straight?
If you could use a free, on-line tool to track and manage clients and contracts, take a look at Jibber Jobber.
While designed for the job seeker, I see Jibber Jobber as a broader relationship management tool. Here's what you can do with it:
- Track all your contacts - clients, potential clients, friends - in short, anyone who is in your Outlook contacts file (or those books of business cards). You can track meetings, phone calls, proposals, letters - any contact you have with a person. And you can have Jibber Jobber remind you when it's time to visit again, and when it's time to send a birthday greeting. You can send an email to a contact simply by clicking on the icon in that person's listing. And if you have Skype, you are just a click away from their phone.
- Track the companies you do business with - and those you hope to do business with. With a link to Google maps, you can see where all the companies in your database are, in order to plot out a sales trip, for example.
- You can use the "Jobs" section to track potential orders or contracts.
- There is a section which you can use to save key documents for easy retrieval.
- Jibber Jobber includes an expense tracking tool you may find helpful in tracking sales related expenses.
- The "interview prep" section is a perfect place to plan sales calls. You can prepare and store as many 30-second "elevator speeches" as you need, and call the appropriate one up as a reminder before a call. You can draft and store benefits statements (called Power Statements on Jibber Jobber) and have them ready for quick recall. And you can sort through the tough questions your prospect might ask and work out your answers.
Dane Carlson has more to add, over on his blog "Business Opportunities Weblog." Dane's blog is a moderated list of business opportunities for entrepreneurs.
The basic level of Jibber Jobber is free - and that may be all you will ever need. For $10/month, you get the ability to track unlimited companies and contacts. Check it out - it may be the solution for your customer relationship management needs.
