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Who Owns Your Contacts?
Let me preface this post by noting that it has nothing to do with data portability.
Earlier this year, an ad salesperson for a tech magazine left his job. He sent out an email to his contacts which I received noting that he was leaving effective at the end of the month. The following week I received another email from him — this time from his new job at another magazine. All of his emails were always sales oriented — and the new one was no different.
His series of emails got me thinking…who owns the contacts that a person gathers when they work for a company? Let’s assume that you begin employment at a company today as a salesperson. You are provided a laptop and a cell phone. You work at the company for 2 years and during that time you collect 750 business cards. In addition, through networking at company events and conferences paid for by the company, you gather an additional 1,250 contacts. At the time you leave the firm, you have 2,000 total contacts. When you leave the company, the laptop and cell phone must be returned. But what about the contacts?
Do you have the right to take the contacts with you to your next employer? Are the contacts you gathered the same type of “property” as the cell phone and laptop?
How many salespeople are hired simply because of their book of contacts from their previous employment history? It’s a practice that appears to have been going on for ages. But with the increased value of contacts as we move into a more digital and social space, should contacts be the property of the company you work for? Or is it ok that an employee can take their address book and business cards with them when they leave? Does the nature of the separation play a role in your answer to the previous question?
If your answer is that the employee should be able to take his or her contacts when they leave, should the company also have access to those contacts? I’ve never seen a company scrape a former employee’s contact list or ask for their business cards before they exit the building.
We can also extend this conversation to network services including LinkedIn and Facebook.
Many of you know that I run a startup that deals with contacts so I find this topic particularly interesting. I am very interested in your feedback – please leave your thoughts in the comments.
Contact lists are a commodity. So are business cards. You could have every business card in the world but just having them does not mean that the person will pick up the phone or answer an email. The value in this is the relationship. A good sales person “owns” the relationship and her clients trust her. A salesperson shouldn’t worry about leaving her business cards behind (or sharing them) as the company probably doesn’t have as strong a relationship as she does with the person.
I think both/neither. It’s all about access and the relationship itself. That is, there’s no important legal question here but rather a practical one.
If I have your email address, I can (practically) use it to email you. If you don’t know who I am, the address is of no value. So me taking that with me is, well, bupkis. On the other hand, if we have a relationship, and my former employer operates outside that relationship, the email is of no value to him.
There are two sides to “owning” contacts. A – the physical/virtual contact list, and B – the relationship equity.
Smart businesses recognize that good relationship/sales leads have built real relationships and that these cannot be replaced without a fresh investment.
However, smarter businesses will realize that their departing relationship/sales leads have built a valuable bridge they can still utilize by having their outgoing lead introduce and facilitate an introduction to the new relationship lead.
The discussion over who owns the business cards is ridiculous. Getting an email address or phone number is not what wins business. People win business.
Contact info to sales is like maps to a limousine company. You need a driver to make the business happen. (PS – people sell maps, and you can get a lot of them free over the internet)
agree about the outgoing training the incoming
I’d say you both own the contacts. It’s the contacts’ point of view whether to continue their relationships with you as an individual or with the company you formerly represented. A lot of that is going to depend on how your former company handles the relationship.
It’s not about what’s right, it’s about reality – and the reality is that star salespeople are always treated as if they were freelancers with their own rights…etc.
Btw, a few years ago Xeequa had an interesting concept of a CRM system that recognized that as sales reps move on, they should continue to have access to the contacts, but not the company-specific business data associated with them. Have not followed them, no idea how far they got with it.
Technically he contacts are the property of the company as you only made contact with these people during your working routine.
However, many if not all of these people will become friends and associates over time and so the line of contact/relationship is blurred.
It is both and is treated as such. Most companies have some sort of CRM system that employees and specifically sales folk, have to enter their new/old contact lists. Sales folks are also generally monitored from leadgen to across the entire sales funnel. This is how companies keep their contacts. That the salesperson has a copy as well, is just part of life.
good point about the CRM system management
Plus, The Sales person in most cases was hired by the company because of his previous contacts on most cases. SO They are prepared for them to leave the company with incremental contacts which they make in the company in question.
CRMs are generally true for very large consumer base , in most of the B2C businesses ( as it addresses the need for people to Scale the sale , by telecalling). B2B space has seen pretty less use of CRMs as sales are mostly relationship based.
Thus, Its a standard strategy for companies to buy out the sales person, if they want to clinch a contract , because there have been stories of clients moving with the sales person.
Some company has however an exit clause for not working for competitor or client firm for a period of 24 months from the exit.
Companies try to protect their rights to the contact and to the value of the salesperson’s relationship with the client by putting non-compete clauses in place. These non-compete documents try to restrict the salesperson from using that relationship for a period of time.
If using a CRM correctly, the real world is that the company has the contact data. I also have the contact data. I own the relationship, but the company has the right to restrict my use of that relationship for some period of time.
Where many companies fail is when they try to restrict my use of the relationship for too long of a time period.
@Zoli – I guess it was too early back then but we revitalized the concept in our new SRM System (Social Relationship Management).
@All
Here is the “Xeequa Contact Share Process” we invented about two years ago:
1) A Person (future, current or former employee) has contacts and those contacts are that persons own social relationships. There is no way – and should not be a way – to force the person to ignore, forget or reject the social relationships they have.
2) As that person joins a business network he/she may bring all the relationships with them. And it would be more than fair to share them with the new employer in a way that the new employer has access to the contacts they “bring with them”.
3) During the employment a lot of company specific business activities are happening and all the business process related data stay with the company once the person leaves.
4) If the person leaves the company he/she may take the contact they brought in plus the new contacts they made. All company related data stay in the company system.
Axel
http://xeesm.com/AxelS
(my social map)
This is a great write up. This practice has been going on forever. In the age of “Social Media” this now becomes a problem. Companies can no longer let one person be the face or there social brand. In the event that they leave people will follow them with the click of a mouse. Now more then ever there is a better chance of conversion.