Business: CRM For Beginners – Customer Relationship Management Basics

CRM For Beginners – Customer Relationship Management Basics

Written by Matt Hogansworth

In order to maintain a successful business, repparttar

business must understand and maintain a positive relationship with its customers. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is repparttar 141777

process of bringing repparttar 141778

customer and repparttar 141779

company closer together. There are many different areas in which Customer Relationship Management can be implemented. The goal of CRM is to help a company maintain current customers, as well as gain new customers.

Targeted Marketing

Targeted marketing is accomplished through collecting information about repparttar 141780 customer. This information can be buying habits or simply demographics. The idea behind this is that a business analyzes what a customer buys and then markets specific products to that customer based on his or her buying habits. Businesses track buying habits using discount cards, and special store credit cards. Targeted marketing can also be implemented on repparttar 141781 Internet. Amazon.com has product recommendations based on buying habits, and product ratings. Customers can also be sent e-mails that market targeted products. Marketing repparttar 141782 right products to repparttar 141783 right customers can significantly increase a business' sales with minimal associated costs.

Call Centers and Customer Service

Have you ever called a business to complain or ordered a product and encountered an automated call response (I.E. “please press 1 for questions, 2 for comments” etc.)? That’s CRM. Call centers that take calls and monitor customer/business interactions are often running on hosted CRM programs. CRM managers want to make call centers as efficient and customer-friendly as possible. A customer who can easily navigate through an automated system is more likely to do business with repparttar 141784 same company in repparttar 141785 future. In repparttar 141786 case of a complaint, a customer whose problems are responded to immediately is more likely to forgive and forget a company’s transgressions. Customer service is repparttar 141787 backbone of all CRM processes and strategies.

Sales Forecasting For New Business

Written by Ben Botes

Sales forecasting is repparttar

process of organizing and analysing information in a way that makes it possible to estimate what your sales will be. This Micro Module outlines some simple methods of forecasting sales using easy to find data. Books containing simple and sophisticated techniques of forecasting sales can be found in libraries and business oriented book stores.

If you sell more than one type of product or service, prepare a separate sales forecast for each service or product group.

There are many sources of information to assist with your sales forecast. Some key sources are: Competitors; Neighbouring Businesses; Trade suppliers; Downtown business associations Trade associations; Trade publications; Trade directories;

Factors that can affect Sales can be divided into external and internal influences. Examples of these are:

External: Seasons; Holidays; Special Events; Competition, direct or indirect Competition, External labour events; Productivity changes Family formations; Births and deaths; Fashions or styles; Population changes; Consumer earnings; Political events Weather

Internal: Product changes, style, quality; Service changes, type, quality; Shortages, production capability; Promotional effort changes Sales Motivation plans; Price changes; Shortages, inventory; Shortages/working capital; Distribution methods used Credit policy changes; Labour Problems

Creating a sales forecast can be divided into four steps.

Step 1 Develop a customer profile and determine repparttar 141747 trends in your industry.

Make some basic assumptions about repparttar 141748 customers in your target market. Experienced business people will tell you that a good rule of thumb is that 20% of your customers account for 80% of your sales. If you can identify this 20% you can begin to develop a profile of your principal markets.

Sample customer profiles: male, ages 20-34, professional, middle income, fitness conscious.

Young families, parents 25 to 39, middle income, home owners.

Small to medium sized magazine and book publishers with sales from $500,000 to $2,000,000

Determine trends by talking to trade suppliers about what is selling well and what is not. Check out recent copies of your industry's trade magazines. Search repparttar 141749 Business Periodicals Index (found in larger libraries) for articles related to your type of business.

Question: What are five customer profiles for your business?

Question: What are some customer trends for your customers/clients?

Step 2 Look at repparttar 141750 area where you will be trading

Establish repparttar 141751 approximate size and location of your planned trading area.

Use available statistics to determine repparttar 141752 general characteristics of this area.

Use local sources to determine unique characteristics about your trading area.

How far will your average customer travel to buy from your shop? Where do you intend to distribute or promote your product? This is your trading area.

Estimating repparttar 141753 number of individuals or households can be done with little difficulty using national census data to be found at your library or town hall. Your local statistics office or chamber of commerce can identify what repparttar 141754 average household spends on goods and services.

Neighbourhood business owners, repparttar 141755 local Chamber of Commerce, repparttar 141756 Government Agent and repparttar 141757 community newspaper are some sources that can give you insight into unique characteristics of your area.

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