In a retail store, customers come and go. The store owner recognizes an old customer by seeing a familiar face, but never knowing any other information about that customer, not even his name. That scenario should be in the past, no longer at present.
Today, an application on managing information about customers can be found from different developers around the world. This application is called CRM or Customer Relationship Management. Here is a definition of CRM that I found in Webopedia:
"CRM entails all aspects of interaction that a company has with its customer, whether it is sales or service-related. While the phrase customer relationship management is most commonly used to describe a business-customer relationship, CRM systems are used in the same way to manage business contacts, clients, contract wins and sales leads."
Leads originate from several sources like seminars, trade shows, or even a simple chat in Facebook or other social networking sites. It would be good to record not only the information about a lead but also the source for statistical analysis later.
When a negotiation with a lead is made, such as sending a quotation to a lead, the lead should be converted to an account if it is a company, or a contact if it is a person. This conversion process can be automated by a CRM application. The nature of the negotiation made with the account or contact, like the quotation sent, should be recorded as a “Potential”.
As long as a “Potential” is not categorized as a “closed sale”, the expected revenue is not final and the “Potential” will be in the “Pipeline”. A good CRM application can show these types of transactions so that they can be monitored and followed-up.
The essence of a CRM I believe, is not only knowing what a customer will need based on information that was recorded about him, but also making each time spent on a customer valuable and can be a possible source of a potential revenue or customer experience.
Today, an application on managing information about customers can be found from different developers around the world. This application is called CRM or Customer Relationship Management. Here is a definition of CRM that I found in Webopedia:
"CRM entails all aspects of interaction that a company has with its customer, whether it is sales or service-related. While the phrase customer relationship management is most commonly used to describe a business-customer relationship, CRM systems are used in the same way to manage business contacts, clients, contract wins and sales leads."
Leads originate from several sources like seminars, trade shows, or even a simple chat in Facebook or other social networking sites. It would be good to record not only the information about a lead but also the source for statistical analysis later.
When a negotiation with a lead is made, such as sending a quotation to a lead, the lead should be converted to an account if it is a company, or a contact if it is a person. This conversion process can be automated by a CRM application. The nature of the negotiation made with the account or contact, like the quotation sent, should be recorded as a “Potential”.
As long as a “Potential” is not categorized as a “closed sale”, the expected revenue is not final and the “Potential” will be in the “Pipeline”. A good CRM application can show these types of transactions so that they can be monitored and followed-up.
The essence of a CRM I believe, is not only knowing what a customer will need based on information that was recorded about him, but also making each time spent on a customer valuable and can be a possible source of a potential revenue or customer experience.
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