Contact Groups

Protection of business information

Business information is always among the most important assets in a company, so protecting it deserves attention.

Did you know: More than 60% of salespeople admit that when they leave a company, they take customer contacts with them?

Sensitive business information

Sales teams need a variety of business data for their work, especially:

• What each customer buys
• Product margins and what discounts can be offered
• Who has the final say on purchases at the customer
• Which communication approaches work with which customers
• How individual customers pay
• Communication history

If you do not provide this information to the sales team, the whole department will be much less effective. At the same time, you need to ensure that the information cannot leak outside the company.

How to provide and protect business information

The most effective advice is quite simple: prevent exports to Excel, PDF, and other formats as much as possible. Creating and taking away documents is tempting. If it is easy and uncontrolled, you effectively have no control over the data. If you fail to implement this simple step, most other protections become almost useless.

Protection also assumes that the data is stored in a system that supports security controls (for example, AyMINE).

Additional recommendations:

• Salespeople must know that data usage is monitored
• Salespeople should communicate from the CRM, not directly from their personal email
• Monitor how salespeople work
• Use customer groups for segmentation. Do not allow exporting customers together with their group membership (AyMINE does not support this by default). There is no reasonable business case for needing such exports.

Protecting communication with customers

Customer communication is generally visible to employees who have permission to see customer information. However, there are ways to protect it:

• Give each salesperson and employee access only to the contacts they actually work with
• Store messages in separate folders for sales and delivery teams so operational staff can focus only on implementation
• Provide the KAM (Key Account Manager) with complete information—but only about the customers they work with
• If communication relates to a project, assign messages to the project so that only users with project access can see them
• Marking a message as private ensures only the recipient can read it, although others may still see that a message was received

Business classification of contacts

In marketing, the terms lead, prospect, and customer are commonly used. Let’s look at their meaning and some limitations.

These labels originated to divide contact groups according to how they are handled within the marketing process. We can describe them as types and subtypes of potential customers.

First, however, it should be noted that contact groups are not suitable for classifying leads, prospects, or other marketing types. Status flags (business status) from a classification list are more appropriate.

Lead

A lead is contact information for someone who is already interested in the products. The concept of “interest” is very broad, and often includes people who show curiosity but are not seriously considering a purchase or cooperation.

Because this category is so broad, it is usually divided more precisely:

• Cold – a person showing minimal interest, for example someone who visited the website once but did nothing further
• Warm – someone who has shown repeated interest or requested more details, such as viewing technical documentation, using a calculator or visualization tool
• Hot – someone actively communicating and expressing interest, for example by calling for information or agreeing to a meeting

Historically the term “lead” refers to someone who has already been guided toward interest in the company or its products.

Prospect

A prospect refers to a contact who is already actively interested in doing business. Typically they are asking about price lists, business terms, or arranging a meeting to discuss cooperation.

Like leads, prospects are often further classified by salespeople. The exact categories depend on the products, services, and sales process. The following are examples rather than formal stages:

• Bargain Hunter – waits for the most advantageous offer and focuses primarily on saving money
• Staller – hesitates because they are afraid of making a mistake and tends to compare alternatives
• Value Buyer – looks for the best price/performance ratio and may respond well to add-ons or additional services
• Sitting Duck – initiates communication because they want to solve their need and are interested in cooperation; typically they have not yet explored alternatives and may become a customer if the communication is convincing

Dead contact

A dead contact is someone with whom communication has taken place or who was once a lead, but it is clear that they have no real interest. Communication may still continue even though the salesperson knows it will never lead to business.

For example, a representative of a very small company requesting services that are clearly designed only for large organizations.

This type rarely appears in sales manuals—authors prefer to ignore it. However, experienced salespeople know many contacts end up here.

Why not use customer groups for marketing types

• Changes between these types usually do not affect internal responsibilities, so using groups would provide little benefit
• Status changes can occur frequently—sometimes a single phone call can turn an interested prospect into a dead contact