5 Reasons Why You Must Capture Any and All Contact Information

What was that phone number? Or that email? Or that mailing address?

When you need contact information, you don’t want to be scrambling around to find it at the last moment.

In these days of Internet and smartphones, it is amazing how important it still is to maintain a good address book.

The Power of Your Address Book

Capturing is one one the most important time management skills you can develop. In this case, I am referring to capturing contact information to your address book.

You would be amazed how many people don’t capture a contact’s email, phone number, and address. They assume that it will be available somewhere when they need it.

Yet, with all of our connectivity, it is amazing how hard it can be to find someone’s direct contact information. You can find almost anyone on the planet with LinkedIn, but good luck locating that cell phone number that you suddenly need in an urgent moment.

I’ve seen professionals who live and die by email signatures in their inbox. (Of course, these are the same individuals who frantically search their email achives when there is a work emergency.)

“Being disciplined in capturing contact information ensures you’ll have it in a pinch.”

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Business cards. Email signatures. A letter’s envelope. Incoming caller ID.

Make sure you are capturing contact information whenever, wherever it appears.

Here are 5 Reasons You Need to Always Capture Contact Information:

1. Never Know When You’ll Need It – Urgent matter or simple courtesy call, you’ll be glad you have that number when you need it. And you never know when a certain number will become valuable again.
2. Know Who is Contacting You – We have smartphones that can look up almost any piece of information of recorded history, yet cannot tell you who is calling. Keeping your address book up to date, allows you to pick up that “one important call” and greet the person by name. It can make all the difference. (It also makes it easier to ignore those other calls with confidence.)
3. Contact Information is Difficult to Find – You would think our smartphones would be smart enough to find that one cell number that you suddenly need. But, personal contact info is still difficult to come by. (And that is probably a good thing.) Make sure you capture any and all contact information the first time you encounter it.
4. Never Know When It Will Change – Some people have had the same number and email address for 20 years. (And are still on AOL!) Yet, for others, it seems to change by the week. Make sure you are always capturing new information and comparing it to what you have in your contact list.
5. Available at Your Fingertips – Address books are one of the productivity tools that thrives due to our technology. It is easy to maintain and magically syncs to all your devices. Whether you are at work or home, at your desktop or phone, all of your address book is available when you need it.

Always Capture Contact Information

Whether it is reaching a colleague via cell on a business trip, mailing a physical thank you note, or reaching a friend in an emergency… you never know when you will need that one piece of contact information.

Make sure your address book is maintained with the same discipline as your other productivity tools.

Develop the habit of capturing contacts, so you’ll never be caught by surprise.

Question: Are you disciplined at capturing contact information to your address book? You can leave a comment by clicking here.