CRM or Customer Relation Management Software is a broad category of business automation technology that can mean many things to different sized businesses.
For instance, for a global corporation with a 500 person call center, Customer Relation Management Software means a system that allows the person you talk to when calling for customer service to enter your account number and quickly retrieve your account status and history of previous customer service issues.
For most small and medium sized businesses, CRM or Customer Relation Management Software probably has more to do with sales and marketing automation than customer service.
How can customer relation management software benefit a small or medium sized business quickly? Here are 3 ways any business should expect to improve the bottom line within days:
1) Sales Lead or Prospect follow ups. The most common problem expressed by sales managers is that the sales team is not following up properly with leads, prospects and customers. CRMs give sales people reminders to call back regularly and provide management with visibility into which sales people are making their calls and which are not. SalesNexus.com CRM gives sales reps the ability to schedule an entire multi-step campaign or sales process for a new lead or an entire list of leads.
2) Collaboration. Not only does customer relation management software give the sales person a history of previous calls, meetings and emails with a prospect or client but, the rest of the team can see this history too. This allows sales support, marketing, the receptionist, the order fulfillment department, etc. to see notes, emails, proposals so they can proactively serve a customer when the sales person is away calling on other customers. SalesNexus.com CRM automatically archives email correspondence with the customer so that all involved in serving those customers can reference previous requests and conversations.
3) Data Mining. Customer relation management software is a database application. It allows searching for customers based on various criteria from the state they reside in to the specific model of product they have purchased or are interested. This allows targeted lists to be retrieved for focused marketing and sales campaigns and for proactive customer service initiatives. SalesNexus.com CRM allows the customer to create their own database fields so they can search for customers based on the criteria most important to their business.
The fact is that most small and medium sized businesses do not have the advantage of these capabilities today. They should select customer relation management software that allows them to reach the plateau of managing sales follow ups, collaborating and data mining within the first day or two of use. Of course, this is just the first step. Within a few weeks they should expect to be automating outbound marketing including emails and direct mail, measuring leads and marketing ROI and forecasting sales revenue by product, sales person and territory, among other things.