Technology for memory

- Something I've mentioned in past courses and continue to praise to anyone who asks for help is using software to remember key details rather than trust my own unreliable brain to do so. I have an awful memory. Outside of work, I'm always getting in trouble for forgetting names and birthdays or who's dating who, but luckily I have a partner who's much better at it and can remember all of those things for me. In the sales world, I don't have that luxury. Some things we need to remember and are important for closing business, such as when their contract comes up for renewal, how much they currently spend with your competitor or who the decision-maker is. And some things just help us build relationships with the prospect. So for example, which football team they support, or what their spouses job is, or when their birthday is. I could spend mental energy and crucially time trying to remember all of these things, but I'm better outsourcing it to technology. Let's say I go to a networking event and I meet a prospect I've been talking for a long time. We get on really well and he invites me in for a meeting next week. Before I go into that meeting, I could be thinking, "Right, James was the Operations Director of Acne limited. He's married to Rachel, the Sales Director of Widget Corp. He supports Arsenal. I think he said his renewal date for the IT support was June, or was it July? No, I think it was January. I'm sure it began with a J. Did he report into the managing director or the financial director?" That's really useful information. They'll be the decision maker or I could quickly check my CRM from the car and I can easily see, yup, he's married to Rachel of Widget Corp. I had a conversation with their finance manager a few days ago, maybe he can put in a good word. He supports Chelsea, not Arsenal, they beat Arsenal in a really exciting match, I can bring that up. Their IT renewal date is in July, that's in three months time, perfect. He reports to the financial director, I'll make sure I ask about them and involve them next time. Having that information stored has meant that firstly I didn't get anything wrong, and the opportunity has a much higher chance of success. This is saving you time because you didn't burn the opportunity and therefore have to find another one. And secondly, I didn't waste mental energy and stress trying to remember it all. Again, this is saving me time because I'm not sitting in my car racking my brain, I just had a look, took some notes and carried on. So, simply save the information will save you time and energy. A second way you can use these tools to save you time is to set reminders. Instead of coming in every day and trolling through your data looking for an upcoming contract renewal date, or prospect birthdays you can call about, or sports teams that just won a trophy, set up a system for each. Set a reminder in your diary for the renewal days, and set a reminder in your diary for birthdays and keep a centralized list of sports teams and who supports which team, and look and say Liverpool won the Premier League. The next morning you go to your list and you search for Liverpool fans, and bang, Joe, Rachel and Steve are all fans. So contacts them, and then the relationship is boosted and a conversation has been started. So whilst you're there, you can talk to them about your new product. Again, you're just removing the mental effort and the human error by outsourcing these tasks to robots, making you look good. And by the way, I have a list of a few of my favorite tools for storing details about prospective clients, again, in the exercise files.