Remember that Cold Calling is challenging enough without further complications to reduce your effectiveness as a Network Marketer. Having trouble keeping track of who you called and when, what they said or if they answered the phone, if you have to call them back, or where you got that contact in the first place? Do you need to report your activity to someone on a regular basis?
Join the club! You, like me, need to keep a log of calls.
You probably have contacts coming from a few places, in a variety of formats. Perhaps most of them come from your autoresponder service, but they are printed on individual sheets of paper for each contact. And I bet you, like me, write your notes on the edges of those papers.
Join the 21st century, I did it! You must start a Microsoft Excel workbook for your call log. That is how!
Open Excel and save your new blank workbook as Call Log 09, or whatever year or month you want. Now customize your columns and rows. Row 1 (going from left to right, horizontally) will contain your category headings. You can put them in whatever order is most comfortable for you, but I like it like this:
Column A, Row 1: Report Time Period
Column B, Row 1: Contact Name
Column C, Row 1: Date of call
Column D, Row 1: Contact Email
Column E, Row 1: Contact phone
Column F, Row 1: Time Zone
Column G, Row 1: Company
Column H, Row 1: Contact Attempts
Column I, Row 1: Sent to call (or other action)
Column J, Row 1: Notes
Column K, Row 1: Close Attempts
Column L, Row 1: Contact Address
Now that you have each of those cells filled with their headings, it’s good to color them, so you can easily refer to whatever information you want. Click on row 1 in column A and drag your mouse across that row until you get to row 1 in column L. Keep that row highlighted (don’t click on it again) and click the color icon of padding in the toolbar at the top of the page. Pick a color and click on it. Maybe you’d also like a section to have a special highlight or its own color, so you can see it instantly: Call Date, maybe. Just click on that cell, click on the fill color icon again and choose a different color. And of course you can write bold in your header if you want.
Depending on where your contact information comes from, you will have to enter it manually or (much more preferably) download it from your answering machine on a daily basis. This is easy to set up with your autoresponder; if you have problems, use their live online help service. You will need the name of the Excel file you just created.
You’ll probably want to keep a separate worksheet for each month, or whatever your reporting period is. All you have to do is add a worksheet to your file: click the Insert dropdown menu and select Worksheet. Then copy your original formatted sheet to the new sheet: click on the cell that is the axis point for both columns and rows; this is in the top left corner of your worksheet. Your entire worksheet will now be highlighted and you can right-click and select Copy, or click the Copy icon on your toolbar. Go to your new worksheet (the locator tabs are at the bottom of the workbook), click in that same axis point cell again and right-click and select Paste, or click the Paste icon on your toolbar. Clever! Now all you have to do is rename each worksheet so that it has a separate name for the time period you want (say, Jan 09 or 9/1 – 9/14): Go to the little tab at the bottom of the page that says Sheet 1 (or Sheet 2, etc), right-click on it and select Rename. Now you can type whatever you choose to call that individual worksheet.
You can send your worksheet by email; you can print it and fill it out by hand; or write your updated information. Remember, though, if you’re printing, be sure to format your file so it looks good when printed. Click the File dropdown menu and select Page Setup. You’ll probably want to select Landscape for Orientation, and you can also adjust your Margins, etc. here.
Imagine how productive you will be and how much time you will save!
Good luck!
