For many solopreneurs, a big part of their business is working one-on-one with clients, and that means having a way to keep all of their client information organized and easily accessible.

In this article, I’m going to share with you my top three tips for keeping it all together so you can easily access your customer information and know exactly where your customers are in your programs.

1. Physical: create a customer contact sheet

For most business owners, there will be a physical client file that you will need to create. One of the easiest ways to create this file is by using a manila file folder in which you simply place your documentation. This file will contain things like your client’s agreement form, appraisal forms, or details of any projects you’ll be working on.

Creating a customer contact sheet that contains your customer’s name, address, email, phone, fax, and any other contact information you want to keep on record is a helpful template. Just print it out and fill it out each time you hire a new client.

Once you’ve printed the client contact sheet, staple it to the left inside cover of your client’s folder. This way, any time you need to access your customer’s information, just open the file and the information is there.

I’ve been keeping track of my client’s contact information this way for several years now and find it very useful, more so than storing the data electronically (which I also do). It’s much easier to grab the file, open it, and find the information I need right away than it is to open the software, locate the client log, and find the information, assuming the PC is on and I don’t have to. wait for it to start!

2. Digital: create client portfolios

Since most of your communication is probably done via email with documents coming and going, you’ll also want to create an individual client folder on your PC. You may not need to print everything your customers send you, but you do need to store the information so it’s easy to find.

A couple of places you’ll want to create individual client folders are:

In your email program. For each of my clients, I have created their own email folder so that any email that is sent to/from my client goes to their individual email folder. This allows me to easily keep track of our communications, instead of having to go through hundreds of emails that arrive in my inbox every day.

Advice: In Outlook, you can also set up rules so that email is automatically filtered to the proper customer email folder, saving you a lot of time!

In your client’s main folder. I am a big believer in creating parent folders/sub folders to manage my filing system, both for paper files and PC files. (If you’ve been a member of my Easy Office Organization program, you know I walk you through it step by step.) So if I have a main Clients folder, inside the main folder I will create individual client folders. . I then use this folder to store all the documents I send to and receive from my clients. Again, having everything in one place makes access quick and easy.

Advice: On Windows, you can change the icon for individual folders, so if you’re more of a visual person, you may have different icons for different clients.

3. All Customers – Customer Tracking Worksheet

Once you’ve created your physical and digital individual client files, you’ll want to consider using a client tracking spreadsheet. If you’re a trainer or other service professional, your primary programs are likely working one-on-one with clients during sessions (over the phone or in person), so it makes sense to have a system to track where your clients are. clients in your programs

In the early stages of your business, it can be easy for you to keep track of just a few clients, but as your business grows and you work with more and more clients, you will quickly become overwhelmed if you don’t have some kind of tracking system in place. its place.

If your clients book a certain number of sessions, you create a simple spreadsheet that has the names of your clients in the left column, and a column at the top for each session will allow you to easily see how many sessions they have already booked. And how many sessions do you have left?

Setting up a customer tracking spreadsheet that shows you exactly where your customers are in your programs at a glance will give you a big picture view of your business.

(c) 2010 Tracey Lawton