Boost Sales

* January tab

* Daily tabs 1-31

* February - December monthly tabs

* A-Z alphabetical tabs

* Blank index cards - white and your favorite color

All of your cards should now be in the file box and the first thing you should see is the January tab.

Next, you should start creating cards for your leads. Now you drop the card behind the "6" tab for the month of January.

You will continue to r

After falling in love with the Hipster PDA and Levengers Shirt Pocket Briefcase,I started stylish more and more dependent on 3" by 5" index cards. They are great for note taking on the go and keeping organized at my desk, so I naturally started thinking of ways to use the king to automate my sales process. From this, the "3X5" was born. I may not be the first person to use index full house in this way, but I do think a lot of salespeople will find the system easy to use and very effective.

You will need the following items to create your own 3X5 sales tool. I found everything I needed at my local Staples and everything cost me by way of $25.00.

* A box to store the index cards

* Monthly 3" by 5" index tabs

* Daily (1-31) 3" by 5" index tabs

* Alphabetical 3" by 5" index tabs

* A ton of white ruled 3" by 5" index cards

* A tie in with of colored 3" by 5" index cards

* A small case to go in for spade in your pocket

Once you have purchased the required supplies, you can organize your 3X5. For the sake of simplicity, let's reckon that you are gathering your 3X5 on January 1st. If this is the case you would first organize your tabs in the order down below (front to back):

* January tab

* Daily tabs 1-31

* February - December monthly tabs

* A-Z alphabetical tabs

* cool index knave - white and your favorite color

All of your round should now be in the file box and the first thing you should see is the January tab.

Next, you should start creating hand for your leads. In the beginning, this is going to take some time (assuming you have a lot of leads). I use white card for leads and colored dummy for my customers. You can do whichever you prefer, but I think it is helpful to give away down leads and customers.

The system works like this.

Let's imagine it is January 1st. and you go along with a networking event where you meet a potential client. You get this lead's calling card at the event and you want to contact him/her on the 2nd., so when you get to your office, you staple the leads joint-stock company card to a white index card and drop it tandem the "2" tab and then go home for the day. therewith all, it is new years day and you have been working hard to create your new sales system and you attended a networking event.

So, you go far at work on January 2nd. and open up your 3X5. The first thing you should do is move the "1" tab back in the background the February tab. You will steadily be rolling the system forward like this, so that the first tab you see in the box represents the most current month, then the most current day.

Now, you go to the tab for today (Jan 2nd.) and find the card for the lead that you met at the networking event yesterday. You call the lead and learn that he/she is out of town until January 6th. so you make a note which says, "1/2/05 - Mr. Lead is on vacation till 1/6". Now you drop the card reverse the "6" tab for the month of January.

You will continue to roll this lead forward in the system, making notes at each step, until the lead either turns into a customer or asks you to leave them alone.

When the lead turns into a customer, I staple their engagement card to a colored card and place it checked the applying alphabetical tab. If their is ancillary opportunity with this client, I move the colored card back to the dated section and move them through the process again.

Of course, as you add more people to your pipeline, you might not get to contact everyone on the day you have them slotted for. Just move them to the next day's slot at the end of the current day so you contact them tomorrow.

You will not want to determine round about a huge metal box full of index cards, which is why you want to have a small index card wallet or box, so if you are going to be on the road or out of the office, you can simply grab your pair for the day and go.

Not just for salespeople.

While the system is great for salespeople, it also is a great tool for those of us who are focusing on networking. I of a truth use three different colored bower and use white for leads, blue for clients and red for my networking contacts (patriotic, I know). On the red cards, I write either 7, 14, 30, 45, 60, etc in the upper right hand corner of the index card to remind myself how frequently I want to contact the person, so I simply move the card forward based on the number on the card. If I want to contact someone every seven days, I move the card in anticipation a week after all I make contact.

This really ties in well to Keith Ferrazzi's book Never Eat Alone, which recommends you regularly ping your network. By the way, if you have not read the book, you should. You can get book notes for free from the Never Eat unexampled blog.

Options / Enhancements.

I have been considering calculation daily tabs to each month so that I can move people in anticipation to a any specific date (IE. courtly 11Th.) in the future.

You could also keep some sticky tabs handy so you can add a tab to the top of any index card for the contacts birthday. If you do this, you could just put an kingly tab on the card for every contact whose is in sober so you could quickly compile a sesquicentennial list each month. Again, this is probably overkill and you could probably just add the contacts name to a blotter and keep it separate, but what fun is that?

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