Team, we have contact: take control of your address book

Author: Anthony Sibillin
Issue: Volume 29 Number 2

A name, a phone number and an address. Once this was all the information you needed to keep in contact with players, officials and other coaches.But the ways to communicate have multiplied the size of a typical entry in an address book.

You now have to record not only an office number for the boss of your coaching association, but a mobile and, possibly, a home number too. Your athletes may want to share a similar number of email addresses. And you may even have to record more than one name for your tech-savvy contacts: dsmith for Skype, a service for making phone calls over the internet; smithy for exchanging messages, images and video on Windows Live Messenger; as well as plain old Daniel Smith.

As many coaches are discovering, this rising tide of personal information can overwhelm even the most carefully organised address book. So, increasingly, they are turning to one of the many computer programs or web-based services that promise to help stem it.

Take stock

Before leaping, however, it is worth taking stock of the information you have and how you use it. Is it mostly in a paper address book, business cards or emails? Do you prefer to email people or call them? Do you send similar letters to many contacts? How important is having access to your address book from any location? Yours answers to these questions will help guide you to a solution that fits your style of working.

Look for a flexible solution

Bear in mind that this style is likely to evolve over time in line with your coaching activities. So look for a solution that will allow you to use your contact information in unforseen ways.

This is doubly important if you are moving from a paper address book or a box of business cards. You already face typing out potentially hundreds of names and numbers once. Unless you can exploit an obliging underling or, in the case of business cards, splash out on a special scanner that will scan their details into a format computers can read, you won’t want to repeat the experience.

For the most part, if you stick to tools designed to hold contact information, you won’t have to. They will store the information in a way that other programs and services can understand.

Look beyond Microsoft Word

A common trap is to ignore this advice and choose a tool simply because it is familiar. This is how many coaches end up with a contact list in Microsoft Word. A Word document is certainly an improvement over paper: no messy crossings out, and you’ll never run out of space for new entries.

But the overwhelming downside becomes apparent when you want to send a reminder to the 20 members in your soccer team about paying their fees. Your email program won’t be able to use the email addresses in a Word document. Even Word itself can’t use any postal addresses for a mail merge (which automates the creation of personalised letters and mailing labels).

First consider your email application

Leaving behind Word doesn’t have to mean climbing the learning curve of an unfamiliar tool. Indeed, the perfect tool for managing your contact information could be your preferred - and very familiar - email application.

Most email applications, whether standalone like Outlook Express or Apple Mail, or web-based like Yahoo! Mail or Gmail, build in the ability to manage contacts. While that ability varies, it is more than adequate for most coaches, especially when it is either free or part of an existing investment (in Microsoft Office, for example).

It can also save you thousands of keystrokes if you already exchange emails with a good proportion of your contacts. For example, highlighting a message in Outlook Express and selecting Add Sender to Address Book from the Tools menu automatically adds an entry to your address book with the sender’s name and email address.

Of course, you still need to edit the entry manually if you want add a postal address or phone number. In any case, it is wise to cast your eye over all automatic entries so you can spot duplications and record how and where you met the contact.

Most email applications will also let you categorise entries under work, family, friends or some other category. And if you have groups of contacts whom you regularly email (you may send separate email reminders to your Monday and Wednesday groups to remind them of their lessons), you can set them up as a group that you can mail in one step rather than having to remember to include everyone individually.

Then consider a dedicated contact management tool

While stand-alone email applications can usually be extended to hold additional information about your contacts (age level, fee category, etc.), they are not designed to manage contacts as part of a sales process. For this, you will need to consider a dedicated contact management application like ACT! or Maximizer. If you give private squash lessons, for example, these applications will allow to track potential clients from an initial inquiry to a first booking.

Export and import

Both dedicated and email-based contact managers will allow you to export entries to a CSV (comma separate values) or other standard format which you can then import into another application.

One reason you might do this is to complete a mail merge in Word. Another is so you can transfer contacts information to your mobile phone. This is a must for coaches who regularly need to make calls while away from their PC or an internet connection.

Unfortunately, the applications used by mobile phones to hold phone numbers and other contact information do not always play nicely with others. In general, however, the manual that came with your phone or its maker’s support website can point you to a standard format your phone can understand. Many mobile phones can import vCards (think electronic business card), for example.

Synchronise

The ultimate bell and whistle for the coach on the go is the ability to synchronise contact information between a computer and a mobile device in a single step. This is most easily achieved if you use Microsoft Outlook. Nearly all PDAs (personal digital assistants) and a growing number of mobile phones can exchange and update entries with Outlook simply by connecting the device to your computer (via a USB cable or wirelessly over Bluetooth or infared) and hitting the synchronise option.

Even if you do not use Microsoft Outlook, there is a growing number of advanced mobile phones (so-called smartphones) and PDAs able to synchronise with other email applications. In every case, keeping to programs and services designed to hold contact information will ensure you don’t take control of your address book only to find it now controls you.

Team, we have contact: take control of your address book

Take stock

Look for a flexible solution

Look beyond Microsoft Word

First consider your email application

Then consider a dedicated contact management tool

Export and import

Synchronise

Related links

Sports Coach

Site tools

Legal information

Team, we have contact: take control of your address book

Take stock

Look for a flexible solution

Look beyond Microsoft Word

First consider your email application

Then consider a dedicated contact management tool

Export and import

Synchronise

Related links

Sports Coach

Login

Site tools

Legal information