Are Customers Necessary?

Posted by Mark Hess

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As a business owner, could there be a more idiotic question?

But many businesses focus intently on making their service or product as efficient and useful as possible without really thinking about who’s buying; why they're buying from you, and how can the buying process be made more efficient and effective.

Is your purpose to make widgets or is it to sell widgets? Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software sets up the most trusted techniques to keep satisfied customers coming back for more. It also helps land new customers and gets existing customers to spread your name around.

There are great, new, modern sources for learning about and implementing game changing CRM techniques that will help you grow your business and make your competitors quack in their boots at your awesomeness.

Find, Attract and Win New Customers

Of course you’re concerned and focused on selling, but today there are sophisticated systems that you can leverage to short cut the trial and error methods most people use. You need a proven system for managing your company’s interactions with customers and potential customers.

Reasonably priced technologies exist to organize and automate sales activities, as well as those for marketing, customer service, and technical support. If your goals are to find, attract, and win over new customers; nurture and retain past customers and bring back former customers; there’s a system out there for you. Customer Relationship Management can be a company wide endeavor of broken up into individual pieces that you think are most important. Valuing customer relationships through measurement metrics is one of the more sophisticated aspects of CRM.

Hurray! It’s Today.

If you were a small business owner just a decade ago, you’d have a hard time developing the strategies and methods necessary for competent and effective CRM.

But today there exists a world of different software solutions and low cost service providers that can set you up just like a Fortune 500 company. Sales force automation software can put in place, and streamline any phase of the sales process so it’s simple and less time consuming.

CRM systems for marketing can help you identify, target and reach potential customers and generate leads you can sell to. 

Info Makes You King (or Queen)

Find out who your typical customer is; where they live, what their shopping habits are, manage requests and questions, track and record info, automate sells strategies, deal with problems, and even track specific web activities that can help you develop a relationship with your customers unequaled by your competition. Relevant analytics can help with sales, marketing and customer service, and especially small or medium sized businesses like yours can benefit from contact manager systems designed to track and record all customer interactions including contacts from emails, phone calls, social sites and more.

And you know what has proven to be invaluable to large businesses? The more you know about your customers, the easier it is to gain new ones. Good CRM does that.

It’s Simpler Than You Think

Programs, apps and service providers exist to make all this complicated stuff easy to implement and take advantage of for the betterment of your business. Get started today by checking out all the great Vendors we’ve gathered for you; and the great deals on CRM that save you big money. Do it before your competition does.

Mark Hess is a marketer and small business expert as well as an award winning illustrator, painter, graphic designer, entrepreneur and co-founder of BizSaves; with a passion for online marketing and small business success.
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More Great Articles About CRM:

Entrepreneur: Review: Capsule, CRM for Small Business Inc.com: How to Choose CRM Software Entrepreneur: The Best Online Tools for Managing Your Business Contacts