Small Business CRM: How To Select The Right Crm Software For Your Company

You've decided that you need a better customer relationship management system ("CRM") for your small business. You need a good place to store and access your customer information just like bigger companies. You want to be able to generate meaningful reports and manage your marketing campaigns. But there are so many options in all price ranges.

So how do you choose the best CRM software for your company?

What is CRM, exactly?

In its simplest form, CRM is a database where sales and marketing teams store criticalaccount data such as contact & account information, lead source, sales activity history,purchase history, and marketing campaign data and projections.CRM can also be an important reporting tool. For example, you can use it to

* Generate revenue projections for a product, a sales rep, and your company as a whole
* Tie revenue to the original marketing campaign
* Pull up lists of leads and activities by sales rep
* View the number of leads you have at each step in your sales process
* Track your progress against your goals
* Manage marketing campaigns
* Capture leads from your website
* Minimize the time your team spends creating manual sales & activity reports

Choosing the right CRM

When you choose the right CRM software, you gain knowledge and power to keep your team on track and measure progress against goals.

Best case: Your CRM matches your marketing, sales, customer service and retention strategies. Its easy to use and provides reports that eliminate the need to generate tedious manual reports. It may integrate with other software like accounting and inventory,enabling your entire team to view important data and reports in real time.

Worst case: You dont have a solid system for managing customer information; its kept in various files or databases that arent linked. Its difficult and time-consuming to create revenue projections, sales reports and marketing campaign reports. The result: lost revenue, productivity and opportunity. Even worse: you use paper files.

How to compare CRM software

The key to selecting the right CRM is to analyze your needs.

* Decide what information your team should be able to access and how theyll use it.
* Identify who needs to use the system and where theyre located (i.e. in differentoffices).
* Determine what reports youll want to generate, particularly your revenue and pipeline reports.
* Identify the marketing programs youd like to be able to run and how that information can help you better manage your accounts.

If youve outgrown your current system, you may be able to purchase add-ins to give your existing system more power. You may also decide to evaluate new systems to give you the true functionality you need.

Select a CRM vendor

Once youve defined your requirements, look for a CRM package that meets your needs. Remember that many systems come in several versions; you can start with a basic version and upgrade as you grow, but make sure the upgrade process is seamless.

Manage CRM implementation

When youre nearing the end of your selection process, get ready for implementation.

* Create an implementation team.
* Develop a schedule for key tasks: configuring fields, migrating data, creating reports,training users.
* Create a solid training plan.
* Launch the software.

Do followup training to ensure that your team uses the software as planned. Most implementations fail because employees dont use the software properly. Gather feedback and modify the software configuration as needed; make it as intuitive and powerful as possible.

There are plenty of consultants who can help you through this process. But you can save a lot of time and money by educating yourself. We've created a free CRM selector tool to help you define your needs and narrow your vendor list -- contact us at http://www.marketingmo.com/marketingmo/contactus.aspx and we'll send it to you.

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James Sagar is one of the creators of the Marketing M.O., http://www.marketingmo.com, web-based software that delivers marketing strategy, guided best practices and interactive tools in 29 business marketing subjects. Entrepreneurs, consultants, executives and marketers use the Marketing M.O. to solve the hundreds of marketing challenges they face throughout the year. James also contributes to the "Marketing Tips from the Trenches" blog at http://www.marketingmo.com/blog.

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Spam Problem Of Vital Importance On The Internet

Almost everyone who accesses the Internet and uses e-mail knows about spam. The common definition of spam is e-mail that is unsolicited, undesired by the recipient. Spam is sent out by automated programs to thousands or millions email addresses at a time. In most cases spam emails offer you different services, products (medicines, goods, software programs etc.), and get rich quickly plans. You can simply delete them if you receive several unsolicited emails per day. But if you get tens or hundreds spam messages every day, it is a real problem. In order to understand how to deal with spam in your inbox, lets examine some core questions concerning spam:

Why send spam?

The right answer is to make money. If you have never opened a spam message, you should not think that others dont do it either. Among thousands or millions people who receive spam you can always find one or several persons who actually purchase services or products the spammers advertise, or join the get rich schemes the spammers offer. Of course, they lose and the spammer wins.

How do spammers obtain email addresses?

Spammers use special software programs that search websites, forums, newsgroups and harvest posted email addresses. They can use computer viruses and spyware to steal the email addresses from personal address books. Spammers often purchase lists of email addresses from other spammers, or from some dishonest companies, which do not care about the privacy of their customers information.

What danger lies behind spam?

Never buy pharmaceutical drugs such as Valium, Viagra, Cialis, Anatrim, etc. advertised in spam emails. These medications are counterfeited for 99% and can be dangerous.

Viruses - one of the most common computer security threats - can also be spread in spam emails. The worst thing is that viruses slip onto your computer without being noticed. You may think that you will download new free software when you click on a link within a spam message but actually you will get at least one virus infection - most probably a trojan virus. This type of virus can destroy data, steal your personal information such a user name, password, or just download other nasty software onto your computer that will cause more harm. A virus can hide itself in a picture, video or audio file. Certain anti-spam programs such as G-Lock SpamCombat let you preview the messages in a safe mode, i.e. they dont allow any suspicious pictures to be downloaded nor malicious codes to be executed.

A virus is a nuisance but phishing is a real danger. This type of spam is becoming very popular now. This is a method of tricking consumers with the purpose to worm them out of their personal information such as bank account numbers, passwords, user names, and credit card details. The spammers send a fraudulent email that usually appears to come from financial institutions like Ebay or Paypal saying that there is some trouble with your account and that you need to update it. There is a link within the message that you should follow to update the account details. The web site usually looks like a real companys web site. But as soon as you start filling the presented form in, the program starts recording your keystrokes and your private details are now disclosed to the spammer.

How to fight spam?

It is prudent to use an anti-spam filter to block annoying, time consuming, and sometimes dangerous spam emails. Anti-spam software checks your incoming emails and immediately moves spam messages into a special trash folder. If you want a good internet security suite that includes a spam blocker, consider BitDefender Professional Plus, Kaspersky Internet Security, F-Secure Internet Security or eTrust Internet Security. For a standalone spam filtering program, look at McAfee Spam Killer, G-Lock SpamCombat, Spam Assassin, Mail Washer Pro or ZapASpam.

Julia Gulevich is a technical expert associated with development of computer software like AATools, Advanced Email Verifier, G-Lock EasyMail, Spam Email http://www.glocksoft.com/sc/ Filter. More information can be found at Anti Spam Filter Resources http://www.glocksoft.net/sc/

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