Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Organizing Your Customer and Prospect Marketing

As your small business grows and you pick up clients and solicit prospects, it becomes very important to organize your customers and manage them properly. That's where customer relationship management (CRM) software earns its money.

With a CRM solution, you can easily keep track of your customer and prospect contacts, their status in the sales funnel and even create a unique marketing program for each. The latter is especially important. If you lay out a series of steps in your marketing program (e.g., send customized greeting, sign up for email newsletter, send autoresponder set of special offers, etc.), then you can rest assured that you will not neglect to nurture your customers or pursue possible new clients.

Remember, it costs a lot more to capture a new customer than it does to retain an existing one. Also, it is easier to sell more products or services to an existing customer than a new one. And finally, nurturing prospective customers through ongoing marketing messages helps to close sales.

For small businesses, an easy CRM answer can be found online at www.zohoCRM.com. This Web-based service is free for up to three users in your company. I use it and recommend that you take a look at it.