Synopsis: One simple step can amplify your business development efforts and save you tons of time in the long run. Save
Time is precious. And so is building your business. One piece of advice I give every attorney, professional and business owner I work with involves an everyday habit with email. Do you save your contacts? Your best marketing and business development tool is hiding in your inbox. It’s your contacts’ email addresses.
Your Email Inbox Isn’t Designed to Efficiently Store Contacts
Too many of us, simply rely on our email inboxes to store and find email addresses and phone numbers of contacts when we need them. That works well for contacts you’ve worked with over the past couple of weeks or month. But beyond that, it can take too much time to search your email to find the contact details for someone you worked with six months ago.
You might have to guess at part of his email address and hope it auto-populates, you might have to search your email to find an email exchange that includes your contact’s phone number in the email footer, or you may have to ask a colleague to provide the contact details. Worse, if emails at your firm or business are archived or deleted after a period of time, you might lose those details altogether. Yet, simply taking 30 seconds to add each new contact you work with to your contact list can save you oodles of time in the long run.
How to Save Contacts in Outlook
Start today. Follow these simple Outlook instructions for each person you email today. Hint: just click on the person’s email address, and select Add to Contacts. Keep it up as you work; if you find yourself searching your email for someone’s contact details, be sure to save that someone as a contact. You’ll thank yourself later.
Give Contacts to Marketing
And if you’ve already developed this habit, don’t forget to provide appropriate contacts to your marketing department as well. They can ensure your contacts are receiving thought leadership content and invitations to seminars.
You can’t rely on your clients searching out information they might need or don’t know they need. Provide valuable content at regular intervals. And to do that, email addresses are one of your most valuable marketing tools.
Related Posts: The Number One Risk with Your Business Emails and Three Easy Ways to Avoid Fumbles
I agree. Saving your contacts is simple – just a few mouse clicks that can save you loads of time later.