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Customer Relationship Management

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Introduction Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is an important part of any companies ' sales mix. As part of a sales mix, companies must have a strong sales team; a well planned and executed marketing strategy, and a method to record pertinent information to manage customer relations. A CRM system is an important part in any company. They have a variety of uses from holding basic information such as names and address, to holding other information including relationship history, contract information, and recording customer satisfaction levels. What is a CRM System? Defining a CRM system is difficult to do at best. These systems can range from something very simple, to something that is very complex. With this being said …show more content…

While it is understandable why companies may try to do everything at once in order to get all of the headaches over with in one shot, this approach may not be the best solution for many firms. When a firm decides that using a CRM system is appropriate for their company, they are better off to have a much narrower scope of the system they are trying to implement. Therefore, companies should focus on smaller, but relatable activities within their company , such as customer and supplier information. Even before implementation of a CRM system, the company should develop a sales process so there are commonalities across the board when making a sale in order to better forecast. This mitigates the risk for buyers and sellers, and it also achieves standardized customer interaction in sale. A sales process can include such steps as qualifying prospects, proposal, closing, and deal transactions. Each step can be standardized with clearly defined milestones describing each stage, which will result in accurate forecasts. Finally, maintaining the database is crucial to the success of the system. This will help to avoid inconsistencies in the systems information. For example, writing I.B.M, instead of IBM, or Incorporated instead of Inc. By eliminating theses inconsistencies along the way, the firm will save time in the end when looking to send out that mailing list at the end of the

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