Easy answer! Your CRM’s Calendar!

You use your CRM’s calendar exclusively to originate activities and calendar items. Why? Because it’s the only way to build a consistent, cohesive history of your interactions with your contacts and properties. You can view them anywhere you like, but you need to originate them in the CRM.

One of the most important aspects of a CRM is that you are building a relational database. What that means is that contacts, properties, appointments, To-Do’s, emails, notes and more, have relationships with each other. The goal is to have all of your information on a contact, listing or transaction in one place. This makes retrieval, dissemination, and reporting easy and fast. In most cases, the state requires that you retain all your emails, notes, correspondence, and other information with regards to a transaction. Do you? If so, how many places would you have to go to get it? Can you find it all?

The information in your relationships is built over time.

It starts when you add the contact information. Then you get your first email from them and you store it in their contact record. Eventually you make a note in their record about a conversation you had with them. Hopefully at some point you sell a house to them or for them and that creates a whole new set of information. That information is stored in the Transaction or Property record. but is also stored or linked with the contact record.

Let’s look at other kinds of activities. A To-Do reminder comes up on your To-Do list in your CRM. Because you cited this transaction and contact in the activity when you created the activity, it will automatically be stored with them. Note the ability to relate the Contact and Property or Transaction on the left. It’s the same every time you create a calendar activity in your CRM and associate it with something. It is automatically stored. It will be in the associated contacts and properties for future reference and reporting. By contrast, every time you create that calendar activity on your existing calendar, that’s as far as it goes. That appointment never displays as completed. It doesn’t get stored or associated with anything else in your CRM. It just sits there providing pretty much no help for future reference. 

This is the point of the whole post.

If you use Google, MAC or Outlook calendars versus your CRM’s calendar to create your appointments, they will not be associated with the contact or transaction. That ability does not exist in those calendars because that is not what they were created for. You always want to originate the CRM’s calendar activities.

Most people are very accustomed to adding their appointments and reminders to their existing Calendar. You’ll need to get into the habit of creating the activities in your CRM.

Change! We do tend to have a problem with change in our daily habits don’t we? If you have, or are planning on getting a CRM, you want to be aware of this. It’s really not that bad. You just get used to a new habit. If you want to use a CRM, there is really no point in continuing to use your other calendar. If you want to continue to use your calendar to view your day, that’s no problem. It’s likely that once you get used to your CRM’s calendar, you’ll realize that if you have no need to share your calendar with others outside the CRM, there is no need to continue using it. The one in your CRM will do just fine.

If you have a team, that adds twists to this whole topic. If you’re interested, contact me!

1) Why is it so difficult to stay with a CRM?

2) How long will it take to learn?

3) The pain of growth

4) Mobility with your CRM

5) Efficiency with organization and consolidation of data

6) Which calendar should I use?