Beginner’s
Guide
to
Contact
Management
and Sharing
Thank you for your interest in contact sharing.
This document will cover:


The importance of contact management and sharing among teams.
How to best do it.
Sansan, Inc.
Contents
<Contact Management and sharing>
•
Contacts
–
What we mean by business contact information
–
What has happened to contact information recently
–
The value of contact information
–
The diversification of contact information
•
Contacts Sharing
–
Definition of Contacts
–
Analysis of ineffective information sharing
–
Merits of Contacts Sharing ＜Case Studies＞
•
About Business Cards Management
–
What a Business Card is
–
Two Meanings of Business Cards
–
＜Statistics＞ Correlation between Business Cards Management and Income
–
＜Statistics＞ Problems regarding Business Cards Management
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Contact Management and Sharing
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Contacts
What we mean by business contact information
–
Business contact information is all the information the people in a company have
about companies and people outside of their companies, including lists that perhaps
only one person in the company has.
What has happened to contact information recently
–
Because of the growing popularity of SNS, the contact information people have is
becoming more and more diverse. And with the increase in usage of information
technologies, this contact information is spread beyond calendars and schedules into
tablets, mobile phones, PCs, and cloud resources.
The value of contact information
–
The value for individual employees
• Contact information makes it easier to contact someone.
• Contact information allows an individual to form a human network.
–
The value for organizations
• Clients are found and revenue is made from contact information.
• Connections are made and corporate strategies can be created from
analyzing contact information.
Contact information is a precious asset, and using it efficiently increases the productivity of
individual employees and the profitability of the company.
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The diversification of contact information
–
–
In the same way that we use a greater diversity of devices, social networking
services, and work styles, our contact information has also become more diverse.
Contact information can be divided into two parts.
1. The contact information itself
2. Information related to that contact information
1. Contact information contains
–
–
–
–
–
–
Names
Companies , departments, titles
Telephone numbers (office, mobile, IP, etc.).
Email addresses (including the multiple addresses people have for their work, their
home, their mobile devices)
Video meeting / conference call IDs (with the increase in the number of platforms,
there may be more than one of these as well.)
Social networking information (On the job as well, people are using LinkedIn,
Facebook, etc.)
2. Information related to this contact information
–
–
Who has this information
How, when, and where this information was gotten
Contact information is a precious asset, and using it efficiently increases the
productivity of individual employees and the profitability of the company.
However, the diversification of this information is causing it to become
unmanaged. This in itself causes opportunity loss.
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Summary
-
Contact information is a valuable asset for individuals and
teams, but it is getting harder to manage as it becomes
more diversified.
-
As this diversification has continued, there are more and
more people recognizing the need for organizations to
better manage their connections. This can be seen from
the increase in the number of contact management tools.
In addition to this, people are beginning to see that contact
information should not just be managed, it should be put to
use.
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Contact sharing
Contact sharing is
Team members together using all the information they each individually have.
•
It is said that 90% of business contacts bear no fruit. There are many reasons for this, but first of
all we need to take notice of this, and understand how wasteful it is.
•
We need to understand who in an organization can use what information and in what way.
Analysis of how information was NOT effectively managed by the CIA
(Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability)
Contacts of Individuals
Integrity
Availability
Confidentiality
Contacts of Teams
Information obsolescence of contacts
because not being used on a daily basis
Cannot grasp or manage information of
individuals comprehensively
Non-management of contacts without
using on a daily basis
Cannot supply useful management ways
or tools for individuals as a team
Because of individual bias, information is
not shared and is instead managed by
each person individually.
Cannot supply the common platform to
manage all contacts in a confidential way
for business use
# Sharing is to prevent internal information risk with information obsolescence, or unified
management of information. On the other hand, there is some risk to share with some ways, therefore
you can start after you understand those.
The big problems are:
1. Accuracy of the information was not maintained
2. Platform or tool for utilizing information as a team did not exist.
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The merits of contacts sharing: case studies
As mentioned above, here are some specific examples of the merits of sharing and utilizing contact
information as a team.
Case one
Contact sharing between a sales manager and a sales representative
Before Sharing: when trying to get new accounts, it often took three months for a
sales representative to get an appointment.
->
After Sharing: sales representative searches for new accounts from shared
information lists of people who want to get an appointment. The boss, a sales
manager, had a good relationship with a client, so the client was visited on the
boss's introduction. It took just three days to get an appointment, and by thus
using this introduction, new business was started.
Case two
Contact sharing between a CXO and a business development
representative
Before Sharing: the business development representative who is in charge of
new business has been struggling with searching and finding a corporation to
work with for a new product for three months.
->
After Sharing: by sharing information on a business card which the CXO had
from meeting a director at a party, the business development representative
discovered that this company was the best company to work with. After visited
this company with the CXO's introduction, the project progressed smoothly, and
the business started three months ahead of plan.
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Business Cards
What a business card is
A business card is proof of a meeting and proof of the potential asset that the
meeting contained.
•
A business card is one type of contact information.
Business cards, as paper media which are NOT SNS or digital information, are very useful
and many people exchange them, but they are nevertheless very difficult to manage.
Business cards do not have a standard format, and thus are harder to optimize into an
exclusive management platform. Also, the way of using them depends on the individual
person, as many people do no recognize the value of them and manage them properly.
John Smith
Sansan Corporation
Business Development Manager
Phone +1-123-1231-3421
Email [email protected]
12 Building123 ABStreet
De ,12345
Many business people have business cards. They are a global standard and a versatile business
tool, and they have a high diffusion rate..
In sales, people meeting at trade shows or at meetings will exchange business cards, which are
the evidence of the business encounters at those places.
There are said to be 10 billion business cards exchanged every year worldwide, and even with
the rise of information technology, no alternative has taken the place of business cards as a
global standard. In fact, business cards are still being printed and exchanged.
Business cards, when we just glance at them, are wasted. If we manage them well, however,
they don’t disappear, and the information on them and the proof of the business encounter
remain.. Business cards are a necessity and have value in business.
Next we will look at what kind of value business cards have.
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The Two Meanings of Business Cards
Business cards have two kinds of information on them, and when those are combined,
value is produced.
First, the information on the business card is the latest and most accurate contact information for
this person, and it connects that person and you. It is thus necessary for your future business.
Second, the information of when , where, by whom, the cards are exchanged is subordinate
information not on the card itself, but nevertheless important for managing the relationship with
this person.
Accurate contact information for this
person
When, where, by whom this person was
met
(Contact Information)
(Subordinate information to the contact
information /meeting log)
Information about a customer
or a prospect
Company name
Department, Position
Name of contact
> This is a source of information
Circumstances of a business
encounter
Who met who and when
> This is a record of a
business encounter
Business cards are the information that forms the base of doing
business.
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＜Statistics1＞
Correlation between business cards management and income
The higher the annual income, the more often people change their contact information
In the following chart, you can see that as annual income increases, the frequency of changing
contact information also increases, from 23% for the lowest group, to 48%, and then 63%.
$80,000 $40,000 - $80,000
$0 - $40,000
ALL
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
Have changed before
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
Have NOT changed before
The higher the annual income, the more care taken to manage business cards
In the following chart, the blue part shows the what percent of people do not manage their
business cards at all, the red shows the percent of people managing it in traditional ways, and
the green shows the percentage of people using IT to manage it. This increases significantly as
income increases.
$80,000 $40,000 - $80,000
$0 - $40,000
ALL
0%
NOT to manage
10%
20%
30%
Analog management
40%
50%
60%
Digital management
70%
80%
90%
100%
Manual management
The higher annual income, the more often people change their contact information.
The higher annual income, the more care taken to manage business cards.
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＜Statistics 2＞
Business card management has been a problem for a long time
Two Major Features
With the progress of information technology, a number of solutions have been created for
the business card problem. These have been based on the ideas discussed before,
namely, the ease of use of business cards, and the difficulty of managing them.
Nevertheless, these solutions have not solved this problem yet.
<1>
The blue part of the graph shows the amount
of business people who have trouble managing
business cards.
<2>
Here the blue part shows the number of
people who have been dissatisfied with the
digital business card management available
until now.
Because of the trouble of managing paper-based business cards and the absence of a
perfect solution for business card management, the precious encounters that business cards
are the proof of are not used properly by either individuals or teams.
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Click here!
for more details
on our website.
https://en.sansan.com/
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