The effective administration and utilization of customer contacts is the most important element of a customer relationship management system. Ultimately, all business activities are targeted on customers. The CRM offers you to enter any kind of information to contact types and to link organisation and individual persons to other CRM entries if appropriate.
During the work with the CRM system, contacts should always be linked to the different stages of the sales process, such as leads, potentials or help desk. By referencing to sales stages you will be able to handle your contacts efficiently.The following example describes a typical sales procedure:
-
Based on a first contact to a prospective customer a Lead will be created. As this sales stage it is not clear whether there will be a business opportunity. This Lead will contain all the information about the contact or the account available at this sales stage.
-
The Lead status of this contact will be maintained until it is clear whether there is a business opportunity. All activities related to this Lead will be listed within the CRM.
- If there is a business opportunity, the Lead will be converted to a Potential. At the same time contacts and accounts are created automatically and the Lead will be deleted. All the information collected for the Lead is still available but will now be presented based on the basis of their content in contacts, accounts or potentials.
By using this procedure, only those contacts and accounts are created which have a chance to become a business. The CRM system will not be overloaded with useless data. In addition, you may enter new accounts or contacts directly if they do not fit to the described procedure. This might be true for your own employees, partner of your company, personal contacts etc.
