Get to know your client contact more personally, not just their project specific details.

Find out their interests, other projects they are working on etc.

Possibly send them useful information, news clippings, etc on things you know they are interested in.

A lot of business is built on relationships, and knowing how a client works and responds can be very helpful when managing their projects.

Tagged with: business • relationships

Filed under: Client • Communication • Marketing

Make sure your company has a good system to record contacts information. This should include:

• Clients
• Suppliers
• Contractors
• Industry contacts.

Everything known about the contact should be able to be put in to the system.

• Name
• Address
• Phone
• Fax
• Email
• Industry
• Status (client, supplier contractor)
• Special expertise
• Reliability
• Comments on the contact
• Meetings
• Sales made to them
• Items or services bought from them
• Phone conversations
• Correspondence
• Their promotional literature

You should be able to have an entry for the company and a separate entry for each employee of the company.

You should be able to sort people or companies by:

• Industry
• Geographic location
• Expertise
• Potential clients
• Top list (most reliable suppliers or preferred suppliers)
• What they sell (multiple entries can each be searched, e.g. pumps, valves, compressors, concreting, signals design, etc). This information is useful for sales but it is also important for project managers, who might need to find a reliable supplier quickly without having to call around a lot of people.

A folder of business cards is not good enough. It is only available to the person who knows about it, it cannot be searched quickly, and it relies on remembering details about the contact. As soon as a contact is made, the details should be added to the database, ideally by the person who made contact. All employees, in particular sales, procurement and project managers should be encouraged to add to and use the system. A summary printout of the contact should be possible.

The database should be kept private (within the company) as ratings on reliability etc could embarrass or anger the contact if it ever got to them.

Tagged with: address book • contacts • database

Filed under: Communication • Documentation • Human Resources • Marketing

Selling and marketing your company’s projects is important. It builds future business, confidence in your company’s abilities, and pride within the company. So make sure your company has  a projects list.

If your system doesn’t already collect it a brief name and summary of each project (maximum of a couple of lines) should be made by each project manager (or tenderer).

This should be put on a highly visible board somewhere in the office. It could also be put on the company intranet and possibly the company public website.

It should be kept up to date, with a separate list of current projects and completed projects.

Each project listed should list the project manager’s name or the contact person for the project.

Doing this list means that all employees are kept aware of what is happening, what projects are underway, and what the company offers.

This means that if employees are asked what the company does or is capable of, they can easily give examples. It also makes it a lot easier for all employees to advertise the abilities of the company when the opportunity arises.

If your small or medium sized company doesn’t yet do this, it could be an opportunity for you to increase your value by taking on the role (in brief moments) of collating all the basic project info and making the list.

Tagged with: advertising • project list • projects list

Filed under: Communication • Documentation • Marketing