Organizing My Leads

[michellea]

Help, help, help........

Now you all know a little bit about what I do if you read the thread I started about the MA Plan Broker Referral Programs.

My biggest problem is keeping all of my leads organized.

Some of my leads are saved in word documents in various tables, some are paper lists that agents have given me, some of my leads I have saved webpages and then imported the tables into Microsoft Access, etc. I have leads EVERYWHERE.

When I call someone I try to take good notes. I keep track of what plan they are on, what doctor they see, if they mention income I keep track of that in case the dual eligible level increases, etc.

Frank I have downloaded the trial of YIO and have looked at it, but I am not sure if it is what I need for what I have on my hands. Let me know if you think it would work for me for my needs and if not do you or anyone else have any suggestions for me getting this all organized.

It may would take me a year to input all the leads I have on paper, but I am willing to do that (which I probably will) but I am not sure of what to use to imput them all to.

 

[Guest]

Help, help, help........


When I call someone I try to take good notes. I keep track of what plan they are on, what doctor they see, if they mention income I keep track of that in case the dual eligible level increases, etc.

Frank I have downloaded the trial of YIO and have looked at it, but I am not sure if it is what I need for what I have on my hands. Let me know if you think it would work for me for my needs and if not do you or anyone else have any suggestions for me getting this all organized.

If you are just starting out, do you really want to invest in YIO or something like that? I wouldn't. At this point it sounds like you need a good contact manager. Lots of folks like ACT which is inexpensive.

When on the phone, don't take notes on paper. Get a headset and type them directly into the computer... use Notepad if you like. I use something on the Mac called 'sticky notes' which is like post-it notes... that I can type stuff into. I find that it is faster and easier for me to type 'free hand' instead of having to move from field to field to get the info. An example of a note (I don't bother with spelling or anything at this point, I just type away as I get the data):

mary smith dob 3-8-87 zip-95672 takes vitorin and fempro. pay less 250/mo 3423 elmstreet, sacto, husb 4-6-84, programmer biz, broke foot last yr. no kids wants mat. no hsa, wants copay. has kaiser, too exp. he likes sailing, she rides horses. dog-golden ret: millie, one cat: popcorn, just bought house, refered B. Young for mow-blow, no life ins, saving for new boat marysmith at yahoo com. 876-7654 mornings only. quote ppo, no hmo.

From there I use my FREE contact manager. I'm a big fan of a free web service called www.freecrm.com . After I hang up I enter (copy /paste) all of the above in the right fields in FreeCRM.

Yeah, yeah, yeah... we've heard all the arguments about not having data on the web... yada, yada, yada. If this is a concern to you then don't do it!! It's not a concern to me... nor the tens of thousands of people who use FreeCRM. If you are not secure with it, than use ACT or YIO or something else.

And NO, this is not a 'knock' against the YIO program or its developer (comment edited out by author on direction of moderator). I have no doubt that YIO is better than sex. But for some folks who are just starting out or who don't want to deal with installing or maintaining software, sometimes "good enough" is good enough. It is for me... but I'm the king of cheap!

Take a look at FreeCRM. I have it running all day and it works for me. YMMV (which for new people means "Your Milage May Vary" ... a disclaimer from TV ads in the 1960s when oil companies would brag about their brand getting you three or four more miles per gallon. At end of commercial announcer would say "your milage may vary."

Al
www.Insurancesolutions123.com

 

[michellea]

I was thinking that I needed more of a contact manager then anything. I will give that website a look and check it out. Thanks.

 

[michellea]

I am looking at the site and the free version has a maximum of 10mb of storage. I am wondering if you know around how much information that is in the computer world??

 

[J.R.]

Frank's program is nice to use for simple tracking and performance. If you want something so easy a caveman could do it I would look into YIO.

Personally, I use ACT to keep track of everything and love the program. Having said that, it is a large program and does take a while to learn how to use all of the features, but it has a lot of features I like and use every day that has saved my butt more times than I can count.

They do have a 30 day trial available I believe.

 

[Guest]

I am looking at the site and the free version has a maximum of 10mb of storage. I am wondering if you know around how much information that is in the computer world??

If each contact is 2500 bytes of raw data, then you are looking at 4,000 contacts. However, each contact may be 2500 bytes of data but in COMPRESSED format may only be 500 when stuffed into the database. If that's so, you would get a lot more records. It depends on what database FreeCRM is using and how they have it configured.

Al

 

[arnguy]

Wow, al3, that's as clear as mud.

 

[michellea]

If each contact is 2500 bytes of raw data, then you are looking at 4,000 contacts. However, each contact may be 2500 bytes of data but in COMPRESSED format may only be 500 when stuffed into the database. If that's so, you would get a lot more records. It depends on what database FreeCRM is using and how they have it configured.

Al

Ha, thanks, I will call the company and see what they say!!

 

[Guest]

It all comes down to how many characters are in a contact... name, address, phone, comments, etc. I took a guess that it would take 2500 characters (bytes) of data to create one contact. So divide 10 million bytes of storage by 2500 for each contact and you get room for 4000 contacts.

However, lots of databases don't store the data in 'raw' format. They compress the data, sort of like a zip file, such that a 2500 character record might become 1000 bytes. If so, you get 10 million divided by 1000 room or 10,000 contacts in compressed format.

I hope that makes more sense.

I don't enter my lists into FreeCRM... only prospects. You don't get into my database until I've spoken to you and there is some interest. I keep my raw leads in a spreadsheet, as I get most of them from GoLeads in that format.

Al
www.insurancesolutions123.com

 

[michellea]

It all comes down to how many characters are in a contact... name, address, phone, comments, etc. I took a guess that it would take 2500 characters (bytes) of data to create one contact. So divide 10 million bytes of storage by 2500 for each contact and you get room for 4000 contacts.

It most definately makes more sense now, haha, thanks so much. That is what I am going to probably try out. I will just input those that I have spoken with that way I can keep up with the "real" prospects a lot easier! Thanks again!