Managing Contacts

Understanding Contact Types

This system provides a way for you to automatically organize your contacts by type and then automatically group and list them by these types. You also can set a default tracking mode for each type of contact. Types are common categories, such as prospects, customers, and partners. Each type is represented by a color coded icon, and each icon has a corresponding label. A default set is established by the system, as shown here:

• Other: Generic type for those that do not fit the other type categories.
• Prospect (sky blue): Someone you may do business with at some time.
• Target Account/Lead (orange background): Someone who has expressed interest in your product(s) or service(s). When an account is defined as a lead, the default label is "Target Account", but you may change this label to suit your business.
• Customer (gold): Someone you have done business with.
• Key Customer (purple): Useful to differentiate your best customers.
• Business Partner(blue): Useful to keep track of partners.
• Reseller(green): Someone in your sales channel
• Competitor (red)
• Professional Service (gray w/blue tie)
• Personal/Friend (white w/blue tie): Acquaintances, not for business.
• Intercompany: Someone within your organization.
• Inactive/Opt-Out (dark gray): These are contacts that have been deleted from the system either by you, or by opting-out themselves.

You can change these default labels to fit your own business needs.  For example, you may refer to your customers as clients.

Contacts also have various states or statuses (such as shared, or undeliverable). These are represented by modifications to the basic contact icons:

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