A CRM Should Help You Be More Human

building your sphere · principle

A personal CRM should help you be more human: aggregate everything, prioritize hard, record little, and spend your time reaching out.

The idea

If the hardware between our ears can barely remember what we had for breakfast two weeks ago, it won't remember everyone we've met, so we keep a digital record. That record's job is to help you be more human. More data doesn't equal better relationships; it just means you have more data. And most CRM problems are emotional (anxiety, guilt, overwhelm, boredom). Our mind avoids messes, so keep it simple and useful, and don't wait for a perfect database: organize a little, reach out a little, keep going.

How to do it

Let the tool pull people in and resurface them for you.

Sort people into A, B and C, and focus your proactive outreach on your A's.

Record only what passes the One-Year Test: what do I want to remember about this person next year? Write down one thing, maybe two. Then stop.

Keep the time small and daily. 750 seconds (12.5 minutes) a day beats a Sunday afternoon.

Put the tool inside a system: strategy, then tactics, then tools.

Example

In our second workshop I ask, "How many of you have spent more than three hours on a Sunday 'organizing your database?'" Every single hand goes up. I once spent two hours organizing my Tupperware cabinet because I thought everything needed a perfect system. And I've seen people spend 20 minutes updating a profile with every tidbit from a casual lunch, then not reach out to anyone for three months.

Watch out for

Treating the CRM as a comprehensive biography.

Sources

Relatable: I build Relatable around this. It pulls in your email and calendar and tells you who's gone quiet, so your minutes go to the message. How-to: Know who to reach out to next, Connect your email and calendar.

Related frameworks

Tools vs. Systems: Strategy first, then tactics, then tools. A tool is only as good as the system around it, so stop shopping for apps and build the system.

The One-Year Test: Before writing a note about someone, ask what you'll want to remember about them next year. Write one thing, maybe two, then stop.

Prioritize, Don't Organize: Organizing contacts by category tells you nothing about who matters; prioritizing tells you where to spend your time.

The 10 Contacts Rule: Organize 10 contacts at a time, about 10 seconds each, every day. Never a three-hour Sunday marathon.