CRM TOOLS MADE EASY

Nick Roberts 

In my last article I talked about the importance of Customer Relationship Management (CRM), a way of selling products and services by recognising the value in building a relationship with prospects and customers.

There are a large number of CRM tools on the market which will help you build a relationship with your customers. These will enable you to maintain contact details throughout your company, create e-mail, telemarketing or mail-merged marketing campaigns, automate your sales process (by setting up pre-designed e-mails, tasks or appointments with automatic follow-ups), synchronise jobs and quotes on your accounting software to boost your business pipe-lines and automate your sales reporting to ensure you never run out of work as well as maximising each sales opportunity.

However, the better systems allow you to "harvest" the data on your accounting software to instantly create communication-ready contact lists of customers. For example:

• Identify all customers who've bought a particular item, have spent over a $1,000 with you over the past year and offer them an exclusive price on a complimentary item.
• Identify all customers who've spent more than $5,000 with you and invite them to a function to say thanks.
• Identify all customers who haven't bought from in the last two years and then lure them back by offering a special package of added-value benefits with a time-limit.

Given the benefits they bring, CRM packages are not expensive and enable you to work more efficiently on increasing your revenue. In the current climate, there are not many business owners who don't need to do that!

If you have any tax or business queries of any kind telephone 0800 ASK NICK, e-mail nick@abac.co.nz or use "Contact Us" on www.abac.co.nz. The information in this article is of a general nature and should not be relied upon as a substitute for specific advice.