I listened to a webinar a few months ago that discussed ways to sort your database so that you are focusing on the people with the most potential to do business with or who could refer business to you. Assigning them a number code – 0 to 5 – with 0 being people you really don’t know and who don’t know you (although I see your point about not really knowing if they know you or how they know you) – and 5 being people you can ask for anything. Of course, your 0-5 could have slightly different words attached.

After thinking a lot about what 5 actually means, I cannot think of one person I could go to and say, “Hey, I need some work, send me some!” Perhaps I missed the point.

I have a lot of 3’s in my list – which I assigned to people who know me generally (business related), have worked with me, and have been happy with what I do. My 4 at the moment is more personal – people who know me face-to-face and with whom I interact socially as well as on a business basis.

Perhaps I am overthinking it – but you have to have SOME sort of system.

I can relate to the difficulty in eliminating people from the database. But it is easier when the emails bounce back and the websites are parking places for the domain. But that takes time to determine.

Keeping track of people is an ongoing battle for me. I tried having LinkedIn go in and update come folks in my database and somehow it managed to wipe out the comprehensive contact info, leaving behind a single email address in many cases. Said email address often being the person’s gmail or hotmail account.

I currently have 8,000 or so people in my database. It’s hard to tell how many are duplicates, represent information that is 10 years out of date, or whether I actually have met 17 people named Robert Michaels.

But in today’s world, where many jobs may come from someone who referred me to someone, or where people change jobs more often than they change underwear, it’s also difficult to eliminate anybody.

And in a world where a few hundred bucks for a website and a quick trip to Vistaprint gets you some shiny new business cards, it’s sometimes almost impossible to tell whether a commercial “producer” is somebody who recently lost their job at a radio station, or a person that has won 2 or 3 Gold Lions.

I tend to think that the unique selling proposition often loses out to well leveraged SEO.

A few nights back, I attended our local big industry mixer (film, tape, commercial, etc). There were actually only a few people who I have had as clients in attendance and as I engaged them in conversation I heard emerging patterns that included, “we have a guy working with us who has taken some acting classes and we try to use him as much as we can” or “I do the scratch tracks and after listening to them, the clients want ME to do the v.o.”

It got worse as I made my way through the crowd introducing myself to others in attendance. There was the make-up girl, who also did voice over. There was the location scout who also did voice over. The food stylist that also did voice over. The graphic designer who also does voice over and the bartender who was starting voice over classes in a week.

There was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

Unfortunately, they all knew my name and what I do and they all wanted to corner me, in an attempt to get me to hire them to do voice over or to share my “secrets”.