The CRM of the Crop

Have you ever felt that you need to know more about your customers and prospective customers and in particular about the dealings that they have had with your company?  Well Customer Relationship Management software (CRM) is here to help.   CRM provides you with a platform to capture information about touch points with customers and potential customers.  These touch points include initial meetings, mailings, phone conversations and emails.  Once the sales lead becomes an actual customer the software can capture data such as ongoing interactions, product sales, issue management, etc.  All this information can then be shared throughout the organization and reports and dashboards can be made available to management to determine the effectiveness of company interactions. 

CRMs are not new but they have certainly evolved from the difficult to install and difficult to use software of the past to some very slick offerings.  In particular there is a new breed of CRM that provides online, Internet, access and is a breeze for even the most computer illiterate salesperson.  The software will also interface with email clients such as Outlook and with mobile devices such as cell phones to make it easier to capture interactions.  The benefits of successfully deployed CRM include more timely customer service, better up sell and cross sell opportunities, reduced sales cycles, better targeted marketing and improved communications in sales and in the rest of the organization.