What is a CRM and Why Is It So Important


A CRM (customer relationship management) is a type of software program that can be purchased to do exactly what it sounds like, manage building and nurturing the relationship with your leads, contacts and customers. This helps to keep the relationship fresh from the initial meeting through purchase and beyond.

Most CRMs allow you to create groups for your contacts. This helps to ensure that your prospects, current customers, vendors, referral partners and inactive customers are all receiving timely, relevant information that is geared specifically for them no matter where they fall in your pipeline or sales funnel.


You can create a different email campaign to send to each of your groups. Typically, these campaigns can drip emails out to each contact, in intervals that you choose, based on the action that they took on the last email. These drip campaigns keep you on the forefront of the contact’s mind. When your prospect is ready to buy an item you sell or a referral partner hears of someone looking for a product that you have, then you are the first person that they think of. They won’t have to do any research because you have been educating them on who you are and what your product is or does throughout the course of your relationship.

The CRMs will also track every interaction that has been had with each individual contact so that anyone in the company can review every email, phone call, newsletter and note that the contact has been sent. This comes in very handy as the contact crosses over from one group to another (prospect to customer) and a different team is working with them.

There is also no more searching for the paperwork that might go with a contact as most of the programs also allow file uploads directly into the contact’s record. There will be no missed conversations or misconstrued information because every interaction is logged and time/date stamped. This allows for seamless customer interaction by anyone and everyone within the company even if employees are out on leave or terminate employment with you. This leads to improved customer service, improved reporting and increased sales and profits. 

If you would like to schedule some time to talk about how Beacon Virtual Assistants, LLC can assist with your CRM needs, please visit my online calendar.

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