Business Resources
Is your business tracking its customers and prospects?
By Susan Luongo, President, Stellar Technology Consulting
Does your business use Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Outlook to track customers and prospects? Then you’re not alone but it’s a mistake to use Excel or Outlook for contact management purposes because it is not their intended use.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is designed to give a business a 360 degree complete picture of its customers and prospects.
A CRM Solution at its basic level should offer:
1. Data Tracking and Integration
2. Sales Management Tools
3. Customer Support
4. Marketing Automation
5. Analytics
CRM, as it’s known in the software industry gives a business the ability to track all activity and sales opportunity related events with its contacts. With CRM, you are able to look up a contact by their business name or last name or a variety of other data and look at the overall picture of what has transpired with a particular contact or set of contacts. CRM is not just software but rather a complete, customer-related approach to a business's philosophy of dealing with its customers and prospects. It includes the application of a business’s policies and processes, sales, marketing and customer service.
Therefore, it is important for a business to give careful consideration into how and why it wants to implement a CRM system which will affect the business overall. In the last ten years or so, CRM software products have flooded the marketplace. There are so many CRM solutions with such varied costs and features that it can be hard for business to know what to look for when evaluating this sales tool. A business should consider hiring the services of a certified consultant in the particular CRM solution that it is investigating.
CRM software products serve a variety of business needs but the most basic is contact management.
