Do you have a way to follow up with your potential customers? Maybe you are already using a tool that works for you. But if you are just keeping those “call me in about a month” messages in your head then you need to get a system.
We aren’t going to get into all the Customer Relationship Management (or CRM) systems out there. There are a ton. Some are free and most are paid systems. But one free system that is sitting right under your nose is LinkedIn.
Hopefully you are already using LinkedIn for your business. If not, get started with some of these LinkedIn tips. What you may not know about is LinkedIn’s built in system for storing notes about your contacts and reminders to follow up with them in the future.
All you need to do is to log in to your account and navigate to someone that you are connected with. Right below person’s bio is a space to add Notes, Reminders on when to contact them, and information about How you met. Hat tip to Phyllis Khare on showing me this handy section of LinkedIn.
Notice that you can also access all your past activity within LinkedIn for a history of your interactions. If you don’t see this feature yet on your contacts, it is still rolling out to all users and you can request it by going here: http://contacts.linkedin.com/ and click Get Started.
The other thing you can do is add a Tag to each profile so that you can group your contacts. Notice that I have Phyllis tagged as a Partner. There are many different ways to add tags to your contacts. You can do this individually or you can go to your Connections area: http://www.linkedin.com/contacts and add tags to your list of contacts.
When you add tags to your connections, you can then easily e-mail all of the people who have that tag within LinkedIn.
Use the LinkedIn e-mail sparingly as you don’t want to spam your connections. Make sure you are providing value in your e-mail messages. And always always make sure you un-check the box that shows everyone’s e-mail address.
Now you are keeping your contacts organized, following up with them in a meaningful way and growing your business!
Hope that was helpful and let me know how you use LinkedIn in the comments below!
I have my gmail address tied to my LinkedIn account. I have been using the gmail notes section for years and it will pull those notes in to LinkedIn (whether I want them or not) as well as my most recent email. I am not crazy about LinkedIn as a communication tool so this is much more effective for me.
Hey – thanks for the hat tip acknowledgment! One of the best bits is the Reminder system. I can go through all my contacts and set reminders to connect with them. I have it set up to notify me through the LI app. I also use Google Calendars heavily and this is just a little extra icing.
Great to know Janet! Always good to see how others are using all the tools we have available!
You rock Phyllis! Just trying all you do to be organized since you are the queen of organization!
I’ve been meaning to get more in-the-know about LinkedIn, and this is a great way to get started. Thanks so much for sharing these great tips (and for illustrating them so beautifully – pictures help!). 🙂
it is very useful…….
seoeducation
Great tip @andreavahl:disqus . Thanks!. Will be checking it out
I still don’t think that Linked in may replace CRM systems created esspecially for business. For example my company uses this program- crm , and I believe it was the best decission we made when choosing this crm system
Thanks for sharing such interesting information.
I am really glad that I came across this article on using LinkedIn as CRM system. I am currently searching for a CRM for my new real estate business. This is one of those rare articles that really concentrate on the key points, rather than stories and global issues. I totally agree with the tips provided and as to me they are really the most important ones as I have been searching the right CRM system for my real estate company for several months. I have been searching for a CRM that provides free demos and trials not to pay money and get disappointed later. And even did not have an idea that Linkedin site can be a good free alternative in this case. However I also thought about Bpm’online solution or Salesforce crm. Now I see that there is no point in spending money on these apps