Implementing CRM into your existing business workflow can seem a daunting affair. Like many things in life, the first step is often the hardest. I find that whether I’m planning to hike up a large mountain or give the house a spring clean, taking small steps to achieve my goals is the best way to go about things.

At OpenCRM, we very much advise the same approach to the implementation of our product into your business. By following some small logical steps in the right direction, you will be up and running in no time at all.

For example, at first it may be a good idea to try and familiarise

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Traditionally the close of a sale might have been seen as the end of the sales journey; today it is often seen as one of the very early stages of the journey if not quite the beginning. Parallel to this shift in the typical customer relationship, sales marketing orientation techniques have been replaced by various models over the past decades and for many of you, relationship marketing is where you are right now.

I’m sure lots of you subscribe to the theory that the cost of customer retention is considerably cheaper than the cost of acquisition. Following the various steps on the lead

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Consumers are more empowered than ever before. Whether sat curled up on the couch with a tablet on their lap, stood waiting for a bus with a smartphone in their hand or on a rail journey with the laptop plugged in, people are online all the time. They can find the best deals, the newest offers, the latest trends there and then. How on earth are you and your business meant to keep up?

Well each touch point with a customer will tell you something about them. The method of communication used – a customer may have completed a webform, visited a website, clicked through from an email, sent a

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Not all your customers are the same, they all differ – and they do that in all sorts of ways. You may have important clients that invest heavily in your products and services, or casual clients that spend a small amount of money with you every now and then. Some customers may focus on one tiny area of your product portfolio; early adopters may just buy the latest gadget out there regardless of price whereas another customer group will hunt out what’s on special offer, happy to buy last year or end-of-season models for a cheap price.

With this in mind, it’s clear that a blanket

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I have just finished a college course. It kept me busy for over a year and was a fairly intensive thing to do on top of working full-time at OpenCRM and so in all honesty I can’t really say that I’m missing the added workload right now. I learnt a lot during the past year, and one thing I noticed was that every new skill picked up or knowledge gained not only provides you with answers but also opens doors to many more questions. In short, it highlighted the fact that learning never reaches the “Game Over” stage – we are always located somewhere on the learning curve.
Far from being

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