As many successful sales organizations know, managing contacts properly and understanding when to follow up with them is one of the most difficult to manage element of sales. While many sales personnel shine in actual communication and presentations with prospects and existing customers, knowing precisely when to make contact is a subtle skill that can help turn prospects into customers.
Contactually, a Washington, D.C.-based company with a solution that brings all of an organization’s contacts into one place, helping sales personnel organize and identify important relationships and promping them to take meaningful action, announced this week a $1 million seed round led by Point Nine Capital and Boston Seed Capital. Contactually says it will use the funding to expand its sales and development teams and partner with other products (which use Contactually’s API to add contact management to their apps). Previous investor 500 startups and other existing investors participated in the round.
Contactually’s product tracks a sales organization’s weekly progress to see how many follow-ups have been completed and allows users to customize their own follow-up goals to drive sales forward. Contactually’s service supports any IMAP-connected account, including Gmail, Google Apps, Yahoo, AOL and others, as well as Microsoft Exchange. There are also plugins for Outlook and Gmail/Google Apps that allow users to bring Contactually directly into their inboxes, and there’s even a “bucket game” designed to make organizing contacts less painful, according to TechCrunch.
Contactually is unique because it works not only with e-mail, but also with social media, importing information from social media sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Tumblr, Skype, Flickr, Quora, Klout and many others.
Contactually was launched in January 2012 and says it has tens of thousands of users.