How do I add a Contact (Parent) profile?

What is a Contact?

Contact profiles are for the families you are recruiting and working with as clients. Contacts allow you to group family members including parents, step-parents, students, siblings, legal guardians, etc. into one Contact record. By adding Contacts to CollegePlannerPro you can easily and efficiently maintain profiles. You can save time and energy by documenting all your interactions with parents and students. You’ll know how your prospects are finding you, how many families you are actively recruiting, and also if any previously client families have younger students that may be interested in your services and other valuable information that helps you establish a business workflow from the beginning with prospective families to working with paying clients. You can build a sales pipeline that ensures you continue a healthy client base while still maximizing the amount of time available to work with your Students.

How to Add a (Parent) Contact

• Navigate to the Contacts Main page by clicking on the "Contacts" tab
• Click on the button labeled, "Add Parent(s) Contact" in the toolbar. 

• A window will open with a form prompting you for basic information about the primary parent. The asterisked/shaded fields are required. You may click to expand the panel and add complete data, or simply provide the minimum required data: Name and Recruitment Source (For more on Recruitment Source, check out the article, "What's the Recruitment Source?"

• IMPORTANT: keep the Contact Type field to "Parent Contact" (see below for more information on Professional Contacts).
• When finished, click the "Save Contact" button at the bottom of the window. You'll then be taken to the newly created Contact profile page.

Setting a Recruitment Source

Your prospective clients are reaching you from various sources. Perhaps they’re referrals from a current client or they attended a workshop or seminar you hosted. By tracking their Recruitment Source you can easily pin down where your clients and prospects are coming from and thus focus your marketing efforts. Learn more about Recruitment Sources and how to set them up.

Setting a Contact’s Status

The most popular status settings for a Contact are “Client” and “Recruiting.” However, there are two additional options you might find handy as you group your Contacts. Check out this article on grouping your Contacts: What are the four different Contact Status categories all about?

Keeping Notes

It’s important to know exactly what’s happening, where you stand with a prospective client, and the interactions you’ve had. Contact Notes are a fast and easy way to document all of that information. You can even have notes appear on your Calendar to remind you of any follow-up you have with a Contact. Check out this article, What are Contact Notes and how can I use them? to learn more!

Video Tutorial

This video covers adding a parent contact within CollegePlannerPro and a details overview of the parent profile page.

Adding a (Professional) Contact

While working with other professionals in the IEC space, you may find it helpful to keep a digital address book with their contact details. You may add Professional Contacts to your CollegePlannerPro account and interact with their profiles very similarly to that of a Parent Contact profile. The biggest difference between a Professional Contact and a Parent Contact is that you are not able to add students to the record of a Professional Contact. 

To add a Professional Contact head to your Contacts Main page and click on "Add Professional Contact". In the pop-up window, fill in the information with at least the required fields populated (name and company name), then hit save contact. You may click to expand the panel and add additional data, if you like.

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