Email Software Delves Into Employees' Contacts

If you have a subscription to WSJ online--you can access the full article..but the story ( in excerpted fashion), brings to light the most integral element with respect to Sales. Its all about leveraging (some say 'exploiting') internal relationships.....at www.JLCgroup.net--resident guru Jay Berkman opines that "every single one of your employees is a salesperson--even if their job title is miles apart from traditional sales roles--and that secondarily...your most valued clients are the best third party sales executives..."

The article does point out that privacy concerns remain an impediment to full scale exploitation---but gee whiz golly gosh...contact information acquired by employees in the course of doing their job belongs to the company---NOT to the individual--and it merely requires a pragmatic, rational and mature business executive to determine the most appropriate way to leverage this data---taking into account relationships that exist between employees and their counterparts/relationships at other enterprises...

Bytes from WSJ article:

Companies are rolling out software that allows them to mine their employees' emails and electronic address books for contact information, in a bid to make it easier to establish relationships with potential clients and others.

The products work by examining the contact lists on employees' email programs, as well as other information such as lawyers' billing records or contacts stored on special programs for managing customer relationships. Then it checks how often individuals email the contacts and whether they have appointments for face-to-face meetings or phone calls on their calendars. The software uses that information to determine how strong a relationship a person has with the contact. For example, individual emails that get replies rank higher than a blast email sent to many people.

"We're able to infer where people have relationships, based on their electronic vapor trail of activities," said Geoffrey Hyatt, founder of Contact Networks in Boston. The company, whose product is called ContactNet, said the program is used at about 40 law firms, including Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, both in New York.

If an attorney at a firm using ContactNet wants to pitch his expertise to a particular company, he can type in the name of the company or perhaps the general counsel. The system responds by saying how many of his fellow employees have relationships with the general counsel or other people at the company. The lawyer can then ask his fellow employee to introduce him to the contact. At other firms, the program reveals which employee has the contact, but details like phone numbers aren't shown. The employee may offer to share just an email address, or they may advise against pursuing business with that contact altogether.