Data Is King Part 1

Hello friends,

This is a two part blog since there's a lot to managing your data and then using it to make a successful business.

If you've been in business for more than about 5 years, I'm sure you've had your share of experience in losing data. Whether it was something small like a customer's contact information or a whole database containing customer, financial or sales information...it's almost a given for anyone who's been around for a while. Having been through several instances of data-loss the one thing I've learned is that there is nothing that can replace a good data management process.

Real Estate, Mortgage and sales businesses especially need to have a way of managing their data BEFORE they start doing business otherwise one day they will end up having a business-ending event that they may or may not be able to recover from. I can almost describe to a T the sinking feeling you get when your IT guy comes in your office first thing in the morning and says "the database crashed" or getting paged at 2am "your site is down." To this day, it's still a dreaded feeling, even though I've done a lot to ensure I don't have the problems of the past. So if you're just getting your business started or have been in business for a while and haven't had any data loss experience (yet) then here are some things to consider now before you do experience the dreaded data loss.

1st - What data are you going to store? It's always smart to save more data than less, try to find a database or software program that lets you manage your whole business in one place. This will centralize all of your data and let you manage everything from one program instead of having to open a program for sales, marketing, advertising or property management. If you don't have the luxury of one central program make sure that ALL of the programs you use are storing as much data as you can input.

2nd - How is the data stored? Make sure that you can ALWAYS export or backup your data. If a program doesn't have an export or backup feature...then move on, it's not worth investing in. Look for things like CSV or Tab Delimited File export. These are data standards and if you decide to move to another program later or if you loose all of your data for some reason, you always have a lowest common denominator to go back to (like the CSV/Tab Delimited File).

3rd - How to save the data? Hopefully the system(s) you are using saves all of your information and does a good job at it. If you find that information isn't there the next day or "disappears" often, then it's time to look for a better program. Besides the program doing it's job, you REALLY need to get in the habit (or have a daily process setup or programmed to do it for you) of a daily backup. Make sure that every day an ADDITIONAL copy of your data is being backed up, preferably NOT in the same place as your live data. Try to save on a separate hard drive, DVD, CD-ROM, remote drive, USB drive or whatever you have access to, just DON'T save to the same hard drive as your primary data. Do it daily and check it weekly to make sure it's usable and save yourself the dread of the IT guy.

4th - Be ridiculous about your data. This is your business, don't just save your data before you close the program and don't just save a backup...be ridiculous about it and take a backup home with you on CD or in a USB Hard Drive at least once a week. Yea, it's not necessary but you'll find it lets you sleep easy at night.

Finally, know what kind of data you have at any moment and know how it can be used. I'm not an IT guy, and don't want to be but I know what data I have and how I can get it and use it at any moment because you NEVER know when or how you will need your information. We sign up new customers for myAgentPHONE every day and some of these people don't realize that their WHOLE customer or FARM list can be called with a professional and classy dialer product called Voicecast in just a matter of minutes but if and only if they have data in a usable format.
You'll find that your business is more nimble and your ability to make money is far greater when you know your data. Your data may be contact info for potential clients in your FARM or vendors such as lenders. Or may just be notes on past and future clients. Whatever your data is for you remember, DATA IS KING! Don’t put yourself or keep yourself in a position to lose it!

Next week I'm going to continue the data blog and discuss how you can use your data to make money without selling your customer data. Because data is all about being more efficient in your sales, marketing, advertising, promotions and customer retention.

Until next time,

Damien Zamora
CEO/President
myAgentPHONE
dzamora@myagentphone.com