Note:  this article was originally published last week in our newsletter.  If you’d like to receive the newsletter you can subscribe here.

Have you ever thought that you need a better way to keep track of your customers or clients? Have you heard about CRM systems but not really understood how they could help your business?

If you have a service-based business…

If your business provides a service then a CRM system can help you in several ways. First, it becomes the single repository for all of the information about your customers or prospects – you and all your employees are keeping notes about emails, phone calls, quotes, deals and everything else in the same place. In that place you can make ticklers to follow up with contacts, create reports on who is calling on who and keep an eye on your pipeline. In one place you have all the information about the work you’ve done for a customer, making customer support much easier. Having lunch with a prospect you haven’t seen in a while? In your CRM you can look up references to his website, LinkedIn profile or Twitter account – won’t he be surprised when you are up-to-date on his business and congratulate him on his recent wedding anniversary!

Or if you are in the retail or hospitality business…

You can keep track of your vendors and suppliers. Create and newsletter and keep track of subscribers. To that list of subscribers you can provide special offers and incentives – and better yet, measure the effectiveness of those offers and incentives. You can create a relationship with your customers and reward their loyalty.

Of course, a CRM system isn’t one thing for one sort of business and something else to another. All businesses can be more effective, efficient and even more profitable by doing a better job of keeping track of customers and contacts. It is a smarter way to do business.