What is a Personal CRM and Why Do You Need One?

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We’ve all heard the old adage: “your network is your net worth.” The way we grow our networks is by not only connecting with people but also by following through with all of our follow-ups to gain our contact’s trust.

We meet people on a regular basis and it is oftentimes difficult to keep track of all these interactions as they come up. We end up having to dig deep to figure out where it is that we connected with them. 

Are they a contact on my phone? Did I talk to them on Facebook? Did they send me an email? If so, which email address? 

This is where a personal CRM comes in. CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management tool, but let’s not focus on the word “customer,” but instead on the other two words: “relationship” and “management,” with a heavy emphasis on relationships. 

using a personal crm to manage relationships

using a personal crm to manage relationships

A personal relationship management tool can help us organize all our contacts from various different places into one place. It also ties our contacts with the history of communications and upcoming calendar events, enabling you to be totally prepped for every meeting. 

This is crucial because it gives you the complete picture of the relationship and you know right away what is it that has been done with this person and also what the next steps are.

A personal CRM will allow you to organize your contacts by tags so you can immediately pull up the group of people that you need and then take other actions, like sending group messages to them.

What’s a Personal CRM?

A personal CRM is usually a Customer Relationship Management System that is used by a single person: be it for business or to organize family matters.

However, there is a blurred line between business and hobby nowadays. 

If you make your living as an Instagram blogger, you are still doing what you love but making money for it.

If you cook cakes and sell them to the coffee shops in your neighborhood, you are still doing what you love and making money out of it.

If you are a mom of 3 and a wife of a working husband – your schedule is probably busier than that of a president, but you are still not making any money out of it.

If you are working half a day rescuing animals off the streets and not making money out of it – you still have so much to do with all the fundraising, adoption, vet clinic visits, and social media work.

In the era of digital nomads and remote work, the lines between freelance, volunteering, hobby, and solopreneurship are not so clear. 

using a personal crm to manage relationships

using a personal crm to manage relationships

This is why a personal Customer Relationship Management system is a broad term that describes software for all single users out there who need to organize their contacts, manage calendars, and handle meetings.

Key Features of a Personal CRM 

A personal CRM, or personal relationship manager, is a tool people use to keep track of their personal relationships. Personal CRMs allow you to jot down important details or facts about your close friends and family. Think of it like an address book, calendar, notebook, and smart reminders all in one.

Like any software solution in this league, the fundamental functionality of the tool is contact management. The Nimble Prospector browser extension takes this feature to a new level by providing an access to an automatically enriched contact profile anywhere on the web: on the internet, within your inbox, while using social media – as well as inside of the SaaS solution itself.

Here are some major personal CRM features Nimble provides:

  1. Contact management
  2. Email marketing, automation, and tracking
  3. Calendar, scheduling, and reminder module
  4. Task management
  5. Deal management
  6. Pipeline management
  7. Social media integration & insights
  8. Reporting & analytics

What Problems Does a Personal CRM Solve?

It’s hard to imagine that there’s a one-stop-shop for all your business needs. However, a personal CRM solution covers all the bases solopreneurs and business people need:

  • Unify contacts from various different places into one place
  • Automatically link contacts with calendar and email 
  • Auto-enriches contacts with social and other data to save time on data entry
  • Replace spreadsheets, post-it notes, and other ineffective ways of contact organization

using personal crm to manage relationships

using personal crm to manage relationships

Who Can Benefit from a Personal CRM?

The short answer is everyone! But, to name a few:

  • Freelancers
  • Side hustlers
  • Entrepreneurs
  • Passionate networkers
  • Anybody that wants to organize their contacts

What Are the Main Benefits of a Personal CRM?

Get organized

A CRM keeps track of all the conversations you’ve had with a certain person. CRM systems keep tabs on when you last spoke, what you talked about, and where the discussion was had. Was it a phone conversation? An email? A Twitter DM? 

Just look this person up in your CRM database to have all the information at your fingertips. No more searching through your inbox or tracking down Post-it notes.

Stay top of mind

Human touch creates real connections. When you show people that you’ve made the effort to get to know them, they warm up to you on a personal level. When you remember somebody’s birthday, congratulate them on a promotion, or acknowledge their major life moments, or even recall what you talked about in previous conversations, you are much more likely to make a lasting connection. 

Your CRM gathers all the details you need about the people that matter most to you and your company. Log notes, set contacts as important, and schedule reminders. Most CRMs have mobile apps now, allowing you to be on top of mind on the go. Cloud-based CRM software solutions update themselves automatically, allowing you to have the up-to-date information you need about all your contacts. 

Be more insightful

We have to be on the lookout for expanding our network all the time. 

Every time you see someone in your community having a great discussion about a topic that interests you, jump in and contribute. Provide value and learn from what others are saying. 

You also want to have a 360-view of who these people you are having these conversations with are. Maybe you share an alma mater with one, or you might find out that another person participating in the conversation works for a company that you used to work at five years ago. 

Boom. 

From there, you might want to shoot them a LinkedIn connection request. Perhaps you will even take the conversation offline. You never know when somebody from your network will need some information somebody else you know can provide. Never stop growing your network. If you help people out, they will remember and you will be on their radar. They will be open to help you if you ever need their help in the future. 

With Nimble tracking their social streams, you stand a much better chance of hearing about that friend’s job search in your area, or that previous client’s announcement about being downsized and needing to sell again. 

 It centralizes the social media profiles of your contacts, provides opportunities to engage with them on social media, tracks all interactions over time, and makes sure your data follows you wherever you work online. There are many solutions available, but Nimble is the chosen solution for thousands of professionals around the world. 

Want to see why? Check it out for yourself. Start a 14-day trial today

How to Get Started

If you do not have a Nimble account yet, we invite you to try it for free for 14 days.

Stay tuned for more product announcements as we evolve Nimble into the best CRM for Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace teams!