Public Speaking: Streamline Your Business with Database Marketing

Every public speaker is virtually a salesperson and all successful salespeople need a good tracking system. A paper index filing system is no longer the most efficient way of tracking your business contacts. A great tool for this is a computer database program. You can design a very simple system to tract basic information about your clients or a complex one that will perform many functions. The more you use your database, the more functions you will want to add to suit your needs.

Here’s how a computer database tracking system can help you manage your public speaking activities.

* You can record the contact’s name, address, phone number, e-mail, fax, type of business and any other pertinent data that will help you remember the person and provide the products and services needed.
* When I know I’m going to be giving a public speaking presentation in specific area, I will run a query and find all my clients from that area. Then, I’ll check the information I recorded about the individuals to see what I need to do for them and if it makes sense to schedule a consultation while I am in their part of the country.
* You can enter memos to yourself in the database to alert you to follow up with a client or to remind you of their next event so you can approach them about speaking well in advance.
* You can make a note of when you talked with a contact and record the topic you discussed, what you said and any future actions to take.

There are database software programs that will allow you to create a spreadsheet, and then there are database software programs that will do much more. My favorite is a relational database management system.

A relational database management system allows you create forms where you can easily enter information about clients, search and sort records according to specific categories and create reports. It even has the capability of inserting photos of your contacts, as well as emailing them directly from the database application. In addition, you can use the relational database program to create forms for your website to collect information and to accept requests from your site visitors.

Whether you stick with the basics or develop an extensive tracking system, a database marketing system will help you maintain contact with your clients and remember facts to keep you in touch.

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