Day 8 of #productidea — CRM for networking
This is part of my #productidea 30 day challenge on which each day I write about a new product idea.
As an entrepreneur or professional who meets new people every week, it has happened to me several times that I meet someone interesting who is not related to my current job, I may be in contact for some weeks but I end up not talking to him/her anymore because I’m busy with work. However, a year later I talk to that person again and I realize I‘ve lost great conversations over that year.
Each new time that happens, I try to make a bigger effort to keep in contact with those people. Actually, you can say that if I’m interested, I’ll have that person in mind; and if not, it’s because he/she is not interesting for me. But it’s not as simple as that. Nowadays our network is much bigger than 10 years ago, but more links are weaker so we need to work more on those links.
The idea is to build a CRM for networking, to maintain relationships with people you find interesting. It’s not a CRM to close deals or for teams (like all CRMs are for). It’s a CRM for you and your network.
You could add the people you want to keep in contact in different buckets, depending on their area of expertise or how often you want to be reminded to talk to that person. The CRM would read all your emails, tweets and messages to check on your relationships; and remind you of catch ups you should do.
The interface should be really simple. The on-boarding should be like a game (like Tinder with your email, LinkedIn and Twitter contacts) to categorize everyone into buckets; and it should remind you of the first catch ups you should do. Each week it can send you an email with the most important news from your contacts and new catch ups you should do.
I’ve tried several CRMs and they are way too complex for this: SalesforceIQ, Contactually or Rexter. In Quora someone asked about this several years ago but most products have closed or pivoted. This may indicate that having a successful business model around this is not easy.
