Efficient Contact Management Tips for New Consultants

[kristamk]

Hi, all. First time poster, "long time" lurker.

I'm a new consultant (4 months now. Woohoo!) and I'm getting a handle on getting organized but one thing I'm still struggling with is contact management. I know that P3 is pretty good for managing your contacts and tasks (and I like that shows, contacts, orders are all in one place without extra data entry) but it won't do a few things that I want. (Namely print a report of selected contacts with all of their information and notes, etc.) And then, of course, I have no idea when we'll all be switching to the new web.

How do you manage your contacts? For those of you using the new web, is the contact management more powerful or about the same?

Thanks for your input!

 

[pchockeymom]

Managing contacts in the new web is non-existant. You should be able to print reports of whomever you want in p3, just specify. I don't remember all the details but I know you can. P3 rocks for managing contacts.

Dont be in a hurry for the new web.

 

[kristamk]

Oh, that's not good! Does that mean we'll still need to use p3 with the new web??I think maybe I'll have to put a little more time into making p3 do what I want it to Thanks!

 

[byrd1956]

So, does this mean we cannot look at an individual contact (customer or host) and keep notes about them? If contacts do not exist in the new web how does HO expect us to keep information on our contacts, let alone set tasks related to them?

 

[pchockeymom]

I believe this is eventually supposed to work. Currently, the contacts system is totally screwed up. It does not have any order (click and they go from r to b to x to a, etc). If you click to have them alphabetized, it will do it until you select someone, go to their info, then back to your contacts. It is then again scrambled. Plus, my contacts were personally migrated in double. I have spent hours attempting to clean them up. You cannot go to a specific page (i.e. 12). you have to go one at a time or to the last page. With thousands of contacts, even selecting 60 per page, it is INCREDIBLY time consuming to do anything with the contacts. Yes, you can keep notes, but at this point just getting to my contacts is taxing enough. You cannot categorize them by show, only by their selected categories. But, you must first go in and select the categories you want for each person (i.e. host, guest, send enewsletter, potential host, potential recruit, etc). It's horrible.

 

[byrd1956]

I just sent this to the home office; I also posted this in the 'gifts not getting tracked' in p3 posts. I did send a message some time ago asking about consultant gifts, but never received an answer so I figured I would include it in my correspondence. "In P3 when run an income & expense report “Consultant Gifts” is not showing up.I have put"consultant gifts” as an expense this year. I was able to track this before. Why the change? It is very important that we track for expenses. What if the home office could not track expenses and needed to do it manually? That would not happen. Why burden their consultants with this? I hope this is only a temporary glitch. I have heard that in the new program there is no place to track our expenses. Again, would the home company track their expenses manually? Hopefully this is just a rumor. I also want to know about keeping track of customers/hosts & keeping notes on them. How will this work in the new web? Someone told me we will not have a way to do this. If that is the case are we to continue to use p3 for this application or are we going to be offered some program that will do this? I use this application all the time to keep a running record of my contacts & interaction with them. I appreciate your response. All the above questions have me worried as if the response to them is negative we consultants are going to be spending more time with paperwork; that does not make it appealing to a future recruit. Sincerely,"