Altimeter - Networking to Help Your Career Soar

Recently, a friend replied to one of my "personalized" emails and asked me what software program I used to create the emails. The answer is that I used the Mail Merge feature in Microsoft Word. However, here are a few other great free CRM tools that you can check out.

A long time ago, when I was working at an Internet startup called Wishclick, we used a software package called ACT!. However, there are now several "free" CRM applications that you can check out. They all have paying versions that offer more functionality, but if you are just using it for your own networking, the free version should be fine.

Salesforce.com is probably the leader in the market. They have a single user version which is free. FreeCRM.com is another good choice. The free version actually allows you to have more than one user sharing the data. However, you have to put up with advertising. I think my favorite is SugarCRM. Their product is based on open source code. The free version, which you can download, seems to be very good. Your data actually resides on your own computer, so it is not a "hosted" application. I just downloaded it today and will be trying it out.

Regardless of which one of these programs / services you use, I do encourage you to take advantage of them. Even if you use it only once in a while, it's a good idea to keep track of your contacts, your networking follow-up items, referrals to other people, birthdays, etc.