⌗Companies in practice

As soon as you deal with more than one person at the same business — and in business dealings that is almost always the case.

What it is for:

• All contact people in one place, each with their own history.
• What has happened with the business, regardless of who happens to work there.
• The context, when a person moves on.

The last is the most valuable: contact people change, businesses remain. Without a company file, when your contact leaves, the whole relationship leaves with them.

When you do not need it: if you work with private individuals. Then the contact is everything.

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One contact of their own per person, all assigned to the same company — not one contact with five names in the note field.

What you should record for each person:

• Function. Not the job title, but the role as far as you are concerned: who decides, who influences, who implements, who pays.
• How to reach them and their preferred channel.
• What has been discussed with this person.

The question worth asking early, which saves a lot: “Who makes the final decision on this?” It sounds more awkward than it is, and saves weeks of conversations with the wrong person.

And note down the answer. It usually still applies for the next project.

The separation is simple: whatever applies to the business belongs on the company. Whatever applies to the person belongs on the contact.

On the company:

• Industry, size, locations.
• Framework agreements, terms, payment terms.
• Notes about the business — conversions, takeovers, tenders.
• What you have done for them.

On the contact:

• Conversations with this person.
• Their role and preferences.
• Follow-ups.

What is regularly filed in the wrong place: a framework agreement in the note of one contact person. When that person leaves, it is gone.

Rule of thumb: if the information still applies once this person is no longer there, it belongs on the company.

The most common reason: different spellings.

“Müller GmbH”, “Mueller GmbH”, “Müller GmbH & Co. KG”, “Fa. Müller” — to a system, those are four businesses.

What you do:

1. Merge, do not delete. Otherwise you lose the history of one of the entries.
2. Decide which spelling applies — namely the one in the commercial register.
3. Check whether it really is the same business. Two companies with similar names do exist; a wrong merge is hard to undo.

And the prevention that saves the most: a fixed spelling when creating. Write the legal form out in full or always abbreviate it — but consistently. Decide it once and write it down.

When importing, the dry run is the best protection.

It depends on how you work with them:

• One contact person for everything? Then one company, with the locations as a detail on the contacts.
• Separate locations with their own decision-makers and their own budgets? Then one company per location, with a note on how they belong together.

The second form is usually right for larger businesses: if the plant in Chemnitz does its own purchasing, it is a customer in its own right as far as your work is concerned.

What you should record in both cases: how they belong together. Otherwise in a year’s time you will no longer know that the two are connected — and write to them twice in the same campaign.

And with group structures: note who belongs to what. That information is worth a lot in a tender.

This is the moment when it becomes clear whether the company file has been maintained.

What needs to be done:

1. Set the contact to “left”, do not delete it. The history stays assigned to the company.
2. Find out who has taken over — often it is already in the out-of-office message.
3. Create a new contact, with a note referring to the predecessor.
4. Get in touch, with reference to the previous collaboration.

Point 4 is an opportunity, not an obligation: a new contact person is looking for orientation. Whoever gets in touch early and knows what has happened so far has a head start, and whoever does not is forgotten after three months.

And the reason the company file matters here: you can tell them what has gone before. Without it, you start from zero.

Whatever applies beyond the individual person and will still matter in a year:

• How the business works. Decision paths, budget cycles, who really decides.
• What has happened so far — orders, quotes, rejections and why.
• Changes: takeover, relocation, investment, change of management.
• Particularities you need to know: delivery conditions, access rules, times to get in touch.

What does not belong in it:

• Judgements about people. They can be requested in a subject access request.
• Confidential matters you learned in confidence.

The test is the same as everywhere: write as if someone from the business were reading along.

From what you enter or what is supplied with an import — not by themselves.

What is worth maintaining:

• Industry. The most important division for campaigns.
• Size — employees or turnover, roughly. A business with 5 employees has different needs from one with 500.
• Place and surrounding area.

What you do not need to maintain: anything else. A field you never select by is just administration.

And the insight that surprises many: without industry and size you cannot write specific texts. A mail meant to suit both a two-person business and a corporate group suits neither, and the selection is what makes it possible to separate them.

Change the category, do not delete — and note the reason.

Why it matters: a former customer is one of the most valuable contacts there is. They know you, have paid, and the threshold for coming back is low.

What you should record:

• Why the collaboration ended. Price, quality, change of contact person, insolvency, group policy.
• When.
• Whether on good terms — that decides whether and how you get in touch again.

And set a follow-up for a year’s time. Contracts expire, contact people change, decisions are revised.

What you should not do: put the contact into the same campaign as prospects. Someone who knows you gets a different mail.

Five minutes, and you know enough for a good first sentence:

• Website: what do they do, for whom, how big do they seem?
• News: new building, award, tender, change of management — these are occasions.
• Commercial register: who is the authorised representative? Public and free of charge.
• Professional networks: who has which role?

What you gain from this: a connection. “You are expanding in Chemnitz at the moment” is a different opening from “I wanted to ask whether you have any need”.

What you must bear in mind: you may research publicly accessible data — but for approaching someone by email you still need a legal basis, and for processing there is a duty to inform under Art. 14 GDPR.

Note the source. That is the origin you will be asked about later.

Check first, then act — and do both promptly.

1. Check outstanding claims. What is still owed? Deadlines for filing claims in the proceedings are short.
2. Reconsider ongoing services. Continuing to work without security increases the damage.
3. Get legal advice where significant sums are involved. Insolvency avoidance (Insolvenzanfechtung) is a topic of its own — even payments you have received can be reclaimed.
4. Make a note in the system, so that nobody accidentally continues to deliver or sends a campaign there.

And with some distance: an insolvency is not always the end. Businesses are continued, taken over, restructured. Keep in touch with the people — they often turn up again elsewhere.

Through the opportunities that arise anyway — not through a systematic run-through.

What you can check in passing:

• With every phone call: are the contact person and direct line still correct?
• With every bounce: address dead, person gone, business renamed.
• With every out-of-office message announcing a permanent departure.

And once a year, for your most important thirty customers:

• Company name and address.
• Contact people.
• Size, if it has changed.

What you do not need time for: checking your whole database systematically. That is never finished. The opportunities take care of most of it — you just have to use them.