How are you Managing Your Professional Relationships? EPS 193
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On episode 193, Kevin begins by sharing some recent glowing iTunes reviews that listeners have recently posted in praise of RNFM Radio. We are so grateful for your reviews and ratings!
Here’s a question we received from one of Keith’s clients, who is also an avid listener of RNFM Radio:
For now, one of the more technical concerns I have lies in my organization of professional relationship management. I feel that I am better at establishing connections than I am at maintaining the relationships that blossom over time… I have realized that I’m not intentionally setting goals to maintain those ties, and I know that this needs to change. I’ve heard of customer relationship management software, and I haven’t used any of it. I want to better honor the awesome people I’m blessed to know and meet in person and online in pursuit of my calling, and I need to figure out how to use tools I already have, like spreadsheets (?) to help me roughly map out timeframes to follow up with emails, calls, etc.
Is there an app for this kind of thing? Maybe this could be a question shared for RNFM Radio. I use my phone as a phone, and as my way to look at emails when I am away from home- I’m not a new adopter of technology, and use a paper calendar at work instead of the Outlook calendar function (unless it’s for larger scale meetings). I’m thinking I might need to group people but get overwhelmed trying to figure out a system. So, any advice in this regard is something that doesn’t have a timetable for me- but the “nuts and bolts” of actually how to do this well—that’s something that I could use help with and think that maybe others could, too.
Relationships are so important, don’t you think?
Here are some questions to ask yourself about relationships and your career:
- What can I learn from people I meet?
- Can this relationship be taken to the next level?
- What’s the potential here?
- What value do we have for each other?
Triage your relationships, friends; use your instincts! Watch for so-called “energy vampires” who only want to use you
Quantity is not always the most important when it comes to your professional network; focus on quality.
Managing Relationships
Elizabeth uses spreadsheets to manage relationships; she’s a spreadsheet queen, and Keith is right behind her on their usefulness.
Here are some of the things we mentioned during our conversation:
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM) apps and software are abundant
- Zoho: (a free cloud-based, multi-user software platform)
- Insightly
- SalesForce: high-end contact management system
- MailChimp and other email management platforms
- CoachVantage, the coaching management system that Keith uses
- The Coaches Console
Other hacks and strategies we discussed:
- Three simple Gmail hacks for productivity
- Gmail labels are very useful for Keith
- Gmail contacts can be arranged in groups
- Gmail has Boomerang, which allows you to write emails and schedule them to be sent later
- Google Drive is a great place to create shareable, cloud-based documents and spreadsheets
- LinkedIn’s contact management includes tags and other ways to manage contacts and connections
What strategies do you use, friends? Share them with us! what works? What doesn’t? How do you keep your contacts and network top of mind, and how do you make sure you’re following up?
And remember to always follow up with RNFM Radio!
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