Old School Customer Relationship Management

Published November 14, 2011 | By Jeramiah

CRM, or Customer Relationship Management, is nothing new. But today we have high tech software to keep track of everything. Honestly, all this new technology can be a major pain in the back side. Some people think that we couldn’t survive 50 or 100 years ago and we couldn’t be as productive because we wouldn’t have the same technology. This is just false. Silly is more accurate.

CRM today is the same as yesterday. It operates on the same principles. It just comes in different shapes and sizes. Well if you’re looking for a really inexpensive and proven method of keeping track of all your potential sales, clients, and leads, here’s an old school way of doing it. You might try this just to understand good CRM principles better, or perhaps to save money from costly CRM software. Whatever your motivation… here it is:

Step 1 – The box

The first part is to get either a card box or a shoe box. You need something that can keep something like a 3×5 note cards… a lot of them.

The box will be ordered in 3 sections. From front to back those sections are:

Days (in the front)
This section should have 31 separators. 1 for each day of the month.
Alphabetical Contacts (in the middle)
This section will contain all your contacts information in alphabetical order. Remember to put 2 copies of every contact card here.
Months (in the back)
This will contain sections for the 12 months.

Step 2.1 – Organizing Days

In the front you will have 31 sections, 1 for each day of the month. Make sure to have today’s date in the front. As you finish each day, move it to the back of the appropriate section. For each day, place a contact card for the meetings that you have. If you schedule a meeting for 2 weeks later in the same month, then add it to the specific date in question.

Make sure to keep notes on the note cards of when you last met, when your next meeting is, and any potential sales topics

Step 2.2 – Organizing Contacts

In this section you will want to keep cards for all your contacts. I make sure to keep details like contact names, spouse names, important dates, potential sales, and current projects. It’s important to keep 2 copies of every contact. 1 copy will always stay in this section. The other copy can be moved around in the rest of your old School CRM box.

Step 2.3 – Organizing Months

In the 3rd section, the one farthest in the back, separate it into the 12 calendar months. Any time you make a future appointment not in your current month, add it to the appropriate month. When you get up to that month, you take all the cards out from the month section and move them to the appropriate days section.

Bonus Tip

There are 2 things I HIGHLY recommend to help you stay on top of your competition. It works well for me and helps me provide fantastic customer service and not miss sales opportunities.

Create a 4th section for leads.
In this section add every single lead you come across. You can create 3 contact cards for your contacts organization, with 1 being for the leads section. It’s important to have all your leads in 1 area so you can quickly reference it, when you last contacted the person, and what the next step in the sales process is.
Go through all your leads and as you call them, move them to the back of the Leads section. This makes sure that you follow up with all your leads in order. Occasionally a lead source will ask you to call them back on a specific day. This is where it’s nice to have 2 lead cards, 1 for the leads section and 1 to be moved around.
Make sure to schedule something every hour of your day. And make sure to follow up on at least 1 lead every day if possible. This way you fill every hour with some productive work. By scheduling at least 1 lead to follow up on every day you are continuing to fill your lead funnel and help your leads towards becoming customers.

CRM Conclusion

And there you go – an old school CRM system that will cost you less than $10. And if you can’t afford to invest $10 in your business… you’re in a very bad place.

If you want to stay in touch with all your contacts, not drop any leads, and continue to work through all your sales and leads in an organized manner… this works awesome. And in fact, as far as CRM’s go today, they operate using these same principles.