How To Decrease Forgetfulness & Win More Clients

‘Forgetfulness’ is a part of human nature, some suffer more and others less. Often forgetfulness is related to trivial issues that don’t really have much of an impact. In business, however, forgetfulness can of course cost money - and worst of all, the mistakes add up. If you make a costly forgetful mistake once a week, then you’re potentially making 52 mistakes a year. I won’t quantify an exact amount that this could cost you per year, but I’m sure you’ll agree the less forgetful mistakes you make the better! I’ve been playing around with various techniques to try and decrease my level of forgetfulness, read on for the results..

Only the other day I was on the phone to a client who was about to make a purchase from me - something came up however and I was asked if I could call the client back within an hour. As I had just made the call I felt like there was absolutely no need to write a reminder down as it was only within an hour that I had to call them back. Guess what, the reality was that in the course of the following hour I got so absorbed in another project that I completely forgot to call the client back. I had to phone back and apologise the next day, luckily this time the client understood and was still willing to make the purchase, however it could easily have been the other way if they had contracted someone else or changed their mind. In this way, forgetfulness can definitely cost, however if my memory was better or if I had written a reminder, or set an alarm then I wouldn’t have forgotten.

There are two different strands to decreasing forgetfulness. The first is to acknowledge that the human memory is fallible and can always be improved by memory management techniques. I’m sure there are a few lucky individuals out there who never forget a thing (or don’t admit they do!), but I think they must be the exception to the rule, as I’m sure that 99% of people forget even some things at some point. The second strand is to automate the tasks with To-Do lists and CRM systems acting as a backup.

Memory Management Techniques

One method of decreasing your levels of forgetfulness is to attempt to ‘train’ your brain into remembering more things. This is a long-term process, however just ten minutes a day of practise will no doubt help to improve your skills of remembering. The first technique involves mental association - although this sounds like a term used by psychiatrists, it’s quite a simple (and effective) method. I will try and explain this by applying it to the example I gave above (missing a call to a client). Imagine I had just put the phone down after speaking to the client, and we had scheduled another call in an hour or two. First, try and think of something distinct that you will be doing at the time you want to make the call - for example if you’re planning to check your bank account online in an hour, then take a breather, close your eyes, try and relax, and then try and visualise logging onto the bank’s website. Then implant in your mind the notion that when you next see the bank’s website, you will make a call to the client. Visualise actually typing the web address in, and imagine seeing the website and watch yourself remembering what you’ve told yourself to do. Then come out of your visualisation, and when you next go to the website in an hour, you will have mentally programmed this reminder into your brain. Of course this isn’t foolproof, but if you practise it then I’m sure you’ll be surprised by the effectiveness of this technique. It will also help if you choose mental triggers which don’t happen every minute - for example I have successfully used putting the key in the door of my home as one such trigger, and this works really well. If you try it out, feel free to leave a comment below and let me know how it went.

CRM Systems & To-Do Lists

Okay so if it is vitally important for you to remember a task then you need something a little more reliable than memory management techniques. Customer Relationship Management systems and software is available which helps you organise all of your customer details, notes, phone calls, emails, documents etc.. There are a variety of software packages ranging from the free (eg: SugarCRM) to the relatively expensive (eg: Salesforce.com) which will help you automate and record all the information you need to store about your customers. You can also set call reminders, email reminders and much more. Of course a simple to-do list, either online or offline would also suffice for recording tasks to do. I personally just use Google Notebook for my to-do list, as you can access it from any computer, and best of all, it’s free! Whilst not a CRM, the other Google tools (such as their Google Calendar, Contacts within Gmail) are also useful. Whatever you do, in order for the system to be effective and work, it HAS to be in one place, easy to access, and most of all you have to access it regularly. It is no good having multiple to-do lists and a CRM system that you rarely log into, you’ll just get overwhelmed with trying to coordinate the resources - just stick to one or two systems and use them efficiently and regularly.

Over time if you diligently use your CRM software and To-Do lists for the essential tasks, and try and improve your memory for the smaller tasks, this should help to decrease your levels of forgetfulness and make you a more organised, in control person.

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Tags: decrease forgetfulness, memory management, crm systems, to do lists, small business, crm