How to Choose a Contact Management Software for Your Startup

Published in

The Startup

4 min readFeb 22, 2019

Whenever you go to make a big investment like purchasing a house or a car, don’t you mull over various factors like price, requirements, and features. You have certain expectations and criteria in mind. You’ll explore various cars/properties, and read different reviews to ensure you make the right decision. Same is the case with contact management software. You need to explore everything before making a buying decision.

Effective contact management can introduce you to lucrative opportunities. So, you need a smart tool like a contact management system for staying organized. Yes, this intelligent software can help you in collecting and streamlining every important detail about your contacts. But, you need to be very careful while choosing one for your small business.

The best contact management software will allow you to:

Access your contacts from anywhere at anytime
View all your contacts and their activities on a single page
Sync your data from your emails
Import your contacts from google or other platforms
Reduce contact duplication
Track your communications
Keep a tab on the appointments and schedule related to each contact
Perform bulk activities on multiple contacts together
Easily create and manage the list of contacts for marketing and sales campaigns
Integrate with third-party applications and sync your data
Get up-to-date insights for each contact. Know how many calls were made and emails were sent to each contact

Factors to consider while choosing a contact management software

Contact management system doesn’t only help in storing your contact’s information but also keeps it secured. It can help you in several ways, provided you choose the right contact management system for your business.

Here are certain things that you need to consider while choosing a contact management software:

1. Price

Price is an important factor to consider for a growing business. Some market leaders offer the contact management system at a price that is not feasible with every business model. Besides, there are certain features that a small business doesn’t even require; they are designed for large scale enterprises. So why pay extra for such features. Choose a solution that is cost-effective yet have all the necessary features to manage your contacts efficiently.

2. Contact list limit

Most of the contact management tools have a certain limit to store or import contacts. Try to find if the solution you are opting for has any such limits. Don’t fall into any hidden traps. As there are chances, you might have to pay an additional amount to add more contacts. So, clear out everything, in the beginning, to stay on the safer end.

3. Tagging and ease of use

Ensure that the contact management system you choose allows you to tag your contacts. Tagging saves your time and eases your work. You can quickly find the data you need using the tags. Moreover, you can perform bulk updates with the help of the tags.

Even make sure it has a user-friendly interface. Sales and marketing teams don’t have the time for learning complicated technologies. They already have high targets to focus. You surely would want a tool that supports your team efforts. So, select a contact management software that is easy to adapt and use.

4. Profile enrichment

Isn’t finding the missing data of a new customer is a hectic task? Well, you don’t even need to worry about it. You can effortlessly automate this task with the right tool. The best contact management software offers integration with third-party apps for enriching customer profile.

Using this feature of the contact management tool you can get your customer profile automatically updated with all the necessary information. It easily fetches contact information, social media profiles, company information and many other details in seconds.

5. Mobile access

In the fast-paced environment, you cannot afford to cease communication when you are out of your office. Clients expect replies in real-time. So, you need to choose a solution that has a mobile app too. With the mobile contact management system, you can access your contacts on the go and schedule meetings from anywhere. You can communicate with the clients more confidently as the information you need about your contacts is at your fingertips. This improves efficiency and boosts productivity.

Wrapping up

Don’t miss any opportunity, take control of all your contacts with contact management software. Choose this system wisely. Explore various systems before settling on one. Either you can opt for an individual contact management system, or you can use it within a CRM.

Nowadays contact management has become a part of the CRM software. Instead of investing in two different solutions, companies prefer to use CRM having a contact management feature. By doing this, they even get access to a wide spectrum of features that helps them in managing their sales, marketing, and customer support. Sit with your team, analyze your business needs and find out what do you need for your business. See whether you need a single contact management solution or a tool that can help you in your sales and marketing as well. After evaluating and considering everything take a decision that can be beneficial for your business.