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Networking became an integral part of our lives. Growing your business is impossible without establishing new contacts and getting partners. But over time our contact list increases to eternity and you can hardly remember who is who.
However, networking is not only about the number of new acquaintances, it’s more about contacting all these new people from time to time. Sometimes a gentle reminder can turn your LinkedIn connection into the new reliable partner. But how to remember each person and keep in contact with all your professional connections? How to develop better relations with the prospective partners?
The solution exists and it’s called personal CRM.
- What is a personal CRM system?
- Who needs personal CRM?
- Features of the personal CRM software
- Business idea: building Personal CRM for Sales
- Benefits of Using Personal CRM System
What is Personal CRM System?
Probably everyone has worked with or at least heard of client management systems or CRMs. As it is proven to be extremely effective in managing clients, there is no reason not to implement this successful experience in personal life. Personal or individual CRM app (contact relationship management application) is a business tool that allows users to organize their contacts in order to improve their network, grow and nurture both business and personal relations. Unlike sales-focused CRM’s personal CRM is focuses not on the customers but on the personal and business contacts of an individual. A personal CRM ensures that you stay on top of all your relationships with no crucial information being slipped away.
Who Needs Personal CRM?
Do you have a large list of clients, subcontractors, and сontacts that can be useful? You tried to keep all information in Google sheets but now it seems like a mess? If you want to increase efficiency, become more organized, and increase your income than you definitely need to consider personal CRM. Nowadays such a system may be useful for any person from real estate agent to top manager of a large enterprise.
CRM an indispensable tool in case you want to build long term relations with your customers and partners. If you have ever lost a contract сause you forgot to check the planner and call your client at the right time then having a system that keeps all data in one place, allows you to schedule an email newsletter, set a reminder about an important meeting, etc.
The contact relationship management app is aiming to simplify digital communication and help you develop close and authentic relationships. Well-timed communications help to show your colleagues, customers, associates, and friends that you care, which is the key to success.
Benefits of Using Personal CRM
- You have all the information regarding your business partners and personal contacts stored neatly in one place. Unless you have a super memory remembering every single detail can be hard.
- All the data that is usually scattered across emails and social media accounts can be organized in one account along with all the communication channels that can be used with a person.
- You can organize your contacts according to their job position, the industry they work in, places you met them, locations or any other parameters you may find important.
- By adding tags to your contacts you can easily and fast separate your professional connections from personal life and simply to group people according to any criterium you find helpful.
- Add personal interest to find out which contacts share the same hobby or overlapping interests. This will help a lot if you are organizing a business event or a party.
- By spending little time on filling in the contact details, adding filters and tags for sorting in the future, you save your time and enhance the quality of your business and personal relationships.
Features of the Personal CRM Software
Though personal CRM (contact relationship management) is very similar to the CRM tools which are customer relationship management tools, it’s made for individuals, so the features might differ.
- Arrange emails. Import your contacts for Gmail and Outlook to your CRM. Merge duplicates or add personal/work emails to the same contact.
- Social media profiles. Add social media pages to your contacts so you can reach them using different channels.
- Attach calendars to personal CRM so you can see all the tasks and important events in one place and never miss them.
- Take notes. Write down what is the food preferences, favorite place to meet or any other important personal details. Show your personal and professional relationships that you care.
- Set up reminders. Birthdays, professional holidays or any important dates would never be missed if you keep this data in your CRM. In addition, you can set recurring reminders for routine tasks.
- Create follow-ups. Stay in touch with your contacts by sending them follow-ups from time to time. You can not only set up regular reminders but also create templates that will save your time.
- Schedule meetings. When connected to a calendar, your CRM turns into your personal assistant who is always aware of every meeting you have and sends you reminders in advance.
Using your individual CRM system allows you to be a highly organized person and save money on hiring a personal assistant.
Business idea: Building Personal CRM for Sales
There is a great need for such an app among specialists. Journalists, entrepreneurs, business owners, HR managers, sales managers and any other professional whose work is tightly connected with meeting new people need special tools for managing their business relations simply and effectively.
Nevertheless, they would hardly contact web development companies in order to build their individual CRM. What they are going to do is look for a ready-made solution that fulfills their needs and requirements.
Though the market is full of CRM solutions for business needs, they would barely fit individuals needs. Therefore, a personal CRM software development seems to be a good business idea for entrepreneurs willing to sell the product.
How to monetize the personal CRM system?
Personal contact management system can possess various custom features that fit the needs of different types of clients. You can provide your users with the possibility to customize their own set of features and ask them to pay for it. Below are the features that can be monetized:
- Storage size. For example, users can upload up to 1000 contacts for free, and have to pay for extra.
- Email marketing integration (such services as MailChimp).
- Customized branding for emails.
- Chat integration such as Slack, Skype, etc.
- Real-time email tracking. A user can receive notifications when the letter is read.
- Advanced reporting to track if the message is read or not.
- Cloud services. Online access might be given only to premium users.
Development time and pricing
To build a personal CRM system which will be an efficient tool is a complex process preceded by a research of your individual needs and business goals. It is important to define the functions of a system clearly not to overload with unnecessary options. The development process may take from 4 to 9 months depending on the number of functions you want to install and the complexity of the project as a whole. The price of building CRM may vary from 50K to 150K for more precise information it better to contact a development team and a Business Analyst because it’s hard to name the price at all.
FAQ
Conclusion
The limit of people a modern person needs to keep in touch is growing each day, but unfortunately, our brain is not yet used to such flow of information. Therefore, in order not to be labeled as an inconsiderate person, we need to use special tools to keep our connections organized. Personal contact management system is one of them. That means you can forget about huge and messy spreadsheets or notebooks that can be lost together with all your contacts.
Keeping your connections in one place and accessing them from any device would make you a guru of networking. Or, you can build your own product and make money on it.
