Besides your computer, contact software can be one of the most powerful tools available for maximum productivity. It’s designed to assist you with farming, marketing your services and follow up with your clients. It’s a place for you to keep your contact information. It can even give you alerts for birthdays, holidays, any category you desire.

Now, finding the right software option should begin with a look at how you currently work and the organizational changes you’d like to make. Since the contact management software is a database application, you can retrieve the information from your contact records to produce personalized correspondence. When you set up your contact management system, you create a profile of prospects, buyers, sellers, and former clients. You can then develop a system of tracking all real estate activity related to each profile. For example, the profile might contain fields for names, addresses, phone numbers, fax numbers, e-mail addresses, professions, marital status, family size and the names of a client’s children. By adding the specifics of a desired home such as type, square footage, target date for move, neighborhood preferences and any other choices, you can quickly and effectively organize your records and search criteria. This information can then be used to create mail merges for contacting your clients.

Here are some factors to consider when deciding on a software package. 

Device compatibility. Does the software operate on the hardware devices you currently use in the office, at home and in the field? Will the software permit data synchronization, or data from one device to another, so your information is always current?

Ease of use. Are records easy to set up and customize? Do search, sort and reporting features allow you to retrieve data quickly?

Scheduling. Does the software include a calendar, to-do list and automatic prompts for scheduled activities so you can organize your time more effectively?

Communications support and tracking. Does the software allow you to integrate your full range of communications tools as part of your contact manager? Can you launch e-mails, attach letters and log phone calls from within the application? Are you able to attach letters and create logs of phone calls with notes as part of your contact records?

Data export. Does the software let you easily use some information from your contact manager in other applications or devices (Treo or Palm)? 

There are software packages that are considerably less expensive, but remember that they will be less feature-intensive and the old adage probably applies, ”You get what you pay for.” Also, software companies come and go, so you want to put your efforts into a package that is backed by a reputable company.

We took a look at several contact management software options. Here are the details on three of the products. 

http://www.act.com

http://www.contactplus.com

http://www.microsoft.com

http://www.microsoft.com/office/outlook/contactmanager/prodinfo/faq.mspx