CRM – Manage Your Business Better

How would you feel if you had a system that tells you how to manage your customers, clients and your sales deals? Great, isn’t it? Well, there are plenty of software applications available in the marketplace. These have been launched, since businesses have started understanding that managing customers and taking active steps to retaining them is the key to running a successful business?

So, what exactly is CRM and how does it benefit a company? CRM – Customer retention management is a process that helps corporations manage their customers more effectively by having certain processes in place. Most of the time, the sales team has data. The data is quite varied, since the sales team has to follow too many steps, right from the time of making the first contact to closing the deal.

A CRM tool allows the sales team to manage data, to have a look at their customer lists, understand how many clients need to be managed etc. In short, the application allows the sales team to access any data pertaining to their customers. Apart from managing individual customers, businesses will be able to manage groups of customers with ease using a software application.

Most managers believe that almost 80% of the data that is available is never used by their managers. If something like CRM software is in place, chances of the date being used would significantly go up. Sales people need not waste time remembering when they made their first call, when to keep in contact with their client next, how often to follow-up etc.

These CRM tools serve not just the sales associates, but the sales managers too. It allows managers to streamline the available data, allocate territories, in order to ensure that one member gets credit for something that isn’t actually due or someone does not barge into someone else’s territory etc. It also allows sales managers to make sales plans more effectively, since they would be able to understand the ‘sales cycle’ completely. By sales cycle, it refers to the total time it takes to make someone a customer, the number of phone calls made, personal visits, samples handed out etc.

There are different kinds of CRM software packages available in the marketplace. However, what price you pay for the same depends on what package you opt for and who you choose to buy it from. Ideally, it would make business sense to choose a basic package and keep adding to it, as you feel the need to graduate to advanced levels.