How to Manage Your Contacts

The Chief
The Chief
Published in
5 min readJul 24, 2021

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Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

I had to laugh. I sat with a client for lunch the other day. We started with the normal post-pandemic small chat — both adjusting to re-socializing. You know, when you meet face to face for the first time in sixteen months, and you’re not sure if you shake hands or fist bump. Whatever you pick, it’s going to be the opposite of what your friend offers.

Anywho, After some small talk, he told me that he liked one of his colleague Sharepoint apps, but he couldn’t describe it entirely, so he asked that I contact him directly.

He began to scroll through his contacts on his phone. And he scrolled. And he scrolled. He was swiping faster and faster, growing more frustrated. F*ck, buddy, I can’t find him. His frustration turns to confusion. ‘Why do I have all these contacts on here?’

When you’re an IT Pro, it doesn’t matter where you are or what setting you’re in; you inevitably end up doing some tech support. Before I know it, he’s handed me his phone as if somehow I’m going to understand why he can’t find his contact. As I try not to get grossed out by handling a phone filled with face grease, I notice that he has 2800+ contacts on his phone. Okay, so I’m more curious than I am grossed out, so I start scrolling. The contacts aren’t in any particular order. Recent calls are mixed in there, contacts with no names, just numbers, email addresses in the name fields. Holy hell Mike, do you talk to 2800 people regularly? I already knew the answer; nobody does. At one point, he told me that Dr. Patel had died a year back. Time to clean up. I’ve perfected the system about describe over several years of trial and error and recommend it to everyone, regardless of industry, size or volume of contacts.

Before you start

You want to make sure that you’re using an email client that supports Exchange ActiveSync Exchange EWS or Google Sync. These are syncing technologies that allow for two-way sync between your Outlook or Gmail calendar, address book, and tasks. There are many email clients for your desktop, but you should be using Microsoft Outlook for either Mac or Windows if you use Office 365 or another Exchange-based email server (Zimbra, Kerio, Zoho, etc.). If you use Google Workspace, all you need is the Gmail Ui; no other 3rd party clients are necessary. If you aren’t on one of these platforms, you need to start with a migration.

You will also need to deploy a CRM, and good CRMs are inexpensive these days. Zoho CRM, Insightly, and Hubspot are all very robust and free to start or affordable. Many even have a free version. You should set one of these up for at least yourself, but I recommend setting it for each user in your office. They all have an excellent mobile app for either iOS or Android, so if you pick any of these, you’ll be in good shape.

Contact Prep

The first thing to do is to export your contacts to a CSV file. Both Outlook and Gmail will allow you to do this easily. If you have personal email accounts on your phones, such as iCloud or Gmail.com, sign in to those accounts to see if you accidentally uploaded contacts there. It’s easy to do if you entered their contact info from your phone and inadvertently synced to the wrong account. Check your phone for any contacts that you may be on the sim card or in some sort of service that might

Method

Create two new CSV files, call them Personal and Business, respectively. Make sure each of them is formatted correctly. Ensure that they’re all alphabetical; it’s up to you to sort them first name first or last name first. I use the latter, but it doesn’t matter, as long as you’re consistent.

Go through all of the contacts, delete the ones that you for sure you’ll never use again. My client, Mike, had deceased former clients in his address book. Check all the phone numbers. Put all the phone numbers in the same format, which means if you use (212) 123–4567, use that across the board. Remove unnecessary phone numbers. You don’t need your client’s toll-free numbers in there; just keep the main office number, a direct and a mobile. If you still do faxing, keep that number there and make sure you have that email address and physical address.

Do the same thing for your personal contacts.

How to split them up?

List One
This group will be the one that’s attached to your email address and synced down to all your devices. The list of people that you keep on your phone should be much smaller than the two lists. These should be people you communicate with regularly. This would include your employees, friends, family, and service providers that you use regularly. Your IT company, your CPA, your legal counsel, people like that. If you only speak to your legal counsel when necessary and that winds up being several times a year, that would go over into the list 2. This list is small. Maybe 50 or so. People that you text with regularly.

List Two
This is your extensive list and will live in your CRM. Good CRMs have a dedicated contacts or address book section within their mobile app. It’s here where you’ll keep the rest of your contacts. People you met at conferences. Clients that you email on their birthdays, their children’s birthdays. Your plumber. People you would text with infrequently.

Putting it all together

Once you have these CSVs set up and formatted correctly, go into Outlook or Gmail interface and delete all your contacts. Yes, clean ’em all out. Then go to your smartphone, force a sync. If all the contacts didn’t delete on your phone, delete them all. Now you’ve got a blank slate.

Start with Microsoft Outlook. Import List One CSV into your contacts area. If you have everything formatted correctly, they’ll automatically show up. Go over to your phone, and you’ll see the contacts downloading and syncing.

Next is to install the CRM app on your phone. Once you install it and sign in, you’ll be able to navigate your contacts from there. You’ll be able to call, email and/or dial directly from the app. This will be the bigger of the two address books. The great thing about this system is that the search is better than your phone’s address book. You’ll be able to log all your calls to any calls you make from your smartphone.

Some of these CRMs will have a card scanner companion app. This will let you take a picture of someone’s card, and through OCR, it will create the contact for you on the fly. There are a lot of other advantages to this setup. You can have your assistant help manage your address book, make notes in their records, add reminders, and more context.

While there are several steps, it’s not as complicated as it might seem. Once you’re set up this way, you’ll be happier. Switching and upgrading to a new device is way more manageable this way also if you won’t come off as such a caveman if someone is waiting for you to find a contact while you swipe endlessly for what seems like hours.

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