Summary
Steve Shimek has spent more than a decade doing one thing exceptionally well: finding the right agency for the right company at the right moment. That sounds simple. It isn’t. As founder and CEO of Shimek Strategic, Steve has counseled over 1,500 companies — from scrappy startups to Fortune 500 names like Nike, Mattel, Google, and Zoho — and matched them with agencies and consultants from a personally vetted global network of over 400 partners.
The firm runs lean by design. Steve and Chief Strategic & Marketing Officer Sarah Daniels make up the full team, and together they manage a contact database of over 5,000 marketing and communications professionals. In a business built entirely on introductions, relationships, and reputation, the quality of that database is not just a nice-to-have. It is the product.
Client Profile
Company: Shimek Strategic
Industry: Agency advisory / professional services
Headquarters: United States
CRM Used: Zoho CRM
Background:
For agency advisory firms, the CRM is the business. Shimek Strategic, founded by Steve Shimek and based in the United States, connects marketing and communications executives — CMOs, heads of comms, and CEOs — with the agency partners best suited to their needs.
The Challenge: Manual CRM Data Entry From Business Social Networks Does Not Scale
Here’s the thing about working in marketing and communications: everyone moves around. CMOs jump to new companies, agency heads launch new ventures, heads of PR land at brands you’ve been trying to break into for years. It is a fast-moving industry, and staying on top of it — knowing who is where, who just changed roles, who was just introduced through a mutual contact — is the difference between a timely outreach and a missed opportunity.
For Steve, that meant three things had to happen constantly: researching new contacts on business social networks, updating existing Zoho CRM records when people changed roles, and logging new introductions before they slipped through the cracks.
For a long time, all of it was manual: Open a profile, copy the name. Copy the title. Copy the company. Check whether they’re already in Zoho. If they are, update the record. If not, create one from scratch. Repeat, dozens of times a day.
“Before LinkMatch, I could spend two or three minutes, at least, per new contact on Zoho to get the details I need,” Steve says.
That might not sound like much — but when you’re adding and updating contacts ten, fifteen times a day across a 5,000-person network in one of the most mobile industries there is, it adds up fast. The data was all right there on the business social network, accurate and current. Getting it reliably into the CRM was just… friction.
Why Shimek Strategic Chose LinkMatch to Connect Their Business Social Network with Zoho CRM
Steve found LinkMatch the way most of our users do: by going looking for a solution. He knew what he needed — a Chrome extension that could sit on top of his business social network and talk directly to Zoho CRM — and he ran a detailed search until he found something that fit. LinkMatch was it.
Two things won him over straight away. First, the overlay: LinkMatch sits directly on top of business profile pages and shows, at a glance, whether that person is already in Zoho CRM and what their record looks like. No switching tabs. No searching the CRM manually. Just open the profile, and the answer is right there.
Second, the one-click import: adding a new contact to Zoho CRM takes a single button press, and the fields populate automatically.
The email enrichment sealed the deal. LinkMatch finds a verified email address around 70% of the time — and when Steve already has an email on file, it confirms it with about 90% accuracy. For a firm where the first email after a new introduction can be the start of a years-long client relationship, being able to reach out the same day a contact is added to the CRM is a real edge
How Shimek Strategic Uses LinkMatch to Manage Zoho CRM Contacts Day-to-Day
Steve uses LinkMatch 10 to 15 times a day. The workflow is deceptively simple — but it shows up at every key moment in how the business actually runs.
Importing CRM Contacts Directly from Industry News and Trade Press
Steve reads PR Week, Ad Age, and similar publications as part of his daily routine — and anyone who surfaces in those pages is a potential contact worth tracking. When a name catches his eye, he pulls up their business profile, and LinkMatch tells him instantly whether they’re already in Zoho CRM. If they are, great. If not, one click and they’re in, email address included. “I’ll read an article and find someone interesting,” Steve told us, “and I’ll realize I might have 30 or 40 people in common with them. So I’ll immediately add them to the database, and it usually finds the email, and I’m able to email them that day.” That’s a cold outreach turned warm — in about thirty seconds.
Adding Zoho CRM Records From Business Profiles Seconds Before a Sales Call
Before any call or meeting, Steve opens the contact’s business profile to review their background — career history, shared connections, and education. If they’re not yet in Zoho CRM, LinkMatch captures them on the spot. “Even as the call is starting, I can start populating the field and who introduced us and get all that information down before the call even starts,” he says. It is the kind of low-friction habit that ensures important contacts are never lost due to a skipped data-entry step.
Sourcing and Logging New Agency Contacts to Zoho CRM Mid-Search
Client searches rarely go in a straight line. Sometimes, a company like Nike will mention an agency Steve hasn’t come across yet, and suddenly, he needs to research their people fast. LinkMatch makes it easy to pull those contacts directly into Zoho CRM while the research is happening — so by the time the search moves forward, the database is already up to date. No catching up later.
Keeping Zoho CRM Contact Data Accurate When Professionals Change Roles
This is the feature Steve keeps coming back to. Marketing and communications is a revolving door of job changes — and stale CRM data means reaching out to someone at a company they left two years ago. When Steve visits a business profile and sees LinkMatch’s green checkmark, he knows that person is already in Zoho CRM. A click lets him check for updates and refresh the record selectively. The ‘selectively’ part matters a lot to him. “I can pick and choose,” he explains, “because I know all of these people. Sometimes the data from the professional profile is a more business-focused update — but I also have personal notes and context in those records that I don’t want to lose.” LinkMatch gives him the control to keep both.
Scaling CRM Contact Management Across the Team
When Shimek Strategic launched a company newsletter, the volume of contacts Sarah needed to manage in Zoho CRM grew quickly. The manual approach that worked for one person became a real drag. Steve’s solution? A second LinkMatch seat. “She started pestering me about LinkMatch,” he laughs, “and that’s when I reached out and said, I’m ready for two seats.” A tool that started as a personal productivity shortcut had quietly become part of how the whole team operates.
Results: Faster Zoho CRM Data Entry, Cleaner Contact Records, and More Time to Sell
The most concrete measure of LinkMatch’s impact is time. Contact management that used to take two to three minutes per record now takes a fraction of that — and Steve knows exactly how much.
“Before LinkMatch, I could spend two or three minutes, at least, per new contact on Zoho to get the details I need. With LinkMatch, it cuts that in two thirds — I save 66% of my time.”
Steve Shimek, Founder & CEO, Shimek Strategic
At 10 to 15 uses a day, that saving adds up to meaningful hours every week — hours that go back into the actual work: making introductions, advising clients, building new agency relationships. The kind of work no CRM tool can do for you.
Beyond speed, the accuracy gains matter just as much. The update workflow keeps Zoho CRM records current as people move roles, reducing the risk of a wasted outreach to an outdated contact. Email enrichment means new contacts are actionable right away. And having confidence in the data — knowing it’s fresh and complete — makes every follow-up Steve and Sarah send a little more deliberate.
The proof that it works? When the workload grew, neither Steve nor Sarah went looking for a different tool. They just got a second seat.
What Steve Shimek Says About Using LinkMatch with Zoho CRM
“The ability to just go and click that little green check mark and check for updates is reassuring and satisfying. It saves a lot of time too.”
— Steve Shimek, Founder & CEO, Shimek Strategic
“For me, it’s a big time saver and it helps keep things accurate.”
— Steve Shimek, Founder & CEO, Shimek Strategic
The Bottom Line: LinkMatch Turns Business Social Network Activity into Zoho CRM Data — Automatically
Shimek Strategic is a good example of something we see a lot: a small, relationship-driven team doing impressive things with a lean tech stack — but losing real time every day to the gap between where their contact data lives and where their business actually runs. LinkMatch closes that gap. Business social network profiles flow into Zoho CRM contacts in one click, records stay current as people change roles, and email addresses arrive enriched and ready to use.
If your team manages a large professional network and runs on Zoho CRM, that gap is probably costing you more than you think.
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