You may be familiar with the idea of prioritizing your task list but have you thought about prioritizing your contacts? If you are in a sales or account management line of work this might be a good idea to consider prioritizing the people you work with or want to work with. However, anyone could benefit by keeping an orderly contact list.
The A,B,C method: To use this approach create three separate categories one for each A, B, and C. Next, identify who your top customers or prospects are and put them in your “A” category. Depending on your situation you might only have 20 people on your “A” list. Your A list might be made up of people who you would like to see monthly. Your “B” list might be people who you call Quarterly, and your “C” list might be people who get a phone call once a year from you.
Key Accounts Method: To use this approach you can create a category called “Key Accounts” and include your best customers in the list. This can work if you are using your phone contacts by creating them as a label or group or as a category. Depending on the size of your book of business you might have about 10% of your total clients/customers in this Key Accounts category.
The Zone Method: In this method you will assign a zone number to each of your contacts, this works well to use a limited number of zones like 1 through 5. Each of your contacts are placed into a zone based on their geographic location. This way if you are in a position where you travel to meet with your clients you can group them together and view them based on zone. It makes visiting numerous clients who are in similar locations much easier.
If you are using PlanPlus Online you can use the Category field or create a custom field to create these groups. If you are using a contact manager like Outlook or your phone you can customize the Category menu dropdown to accommodate any one of these methods.
