By Tom M Chapman

I recently had a stay in a very nice hotel in the country. It was a small affair and its familiarity was part of the charm. The furnishings and decor were old-fashioned which was pretty nice. However their contact management was similarly antiquated, and this could be the difference between only managing to keep a business afloat and having a business that is booming.

When I asked for some local information, they referred to a sheaf of pages on the counter, which contained names and numbers. Their plumber, greengrocer, contact for the advertisement in the local paper, the

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Its always interesting when you meet someone that has done well in their chosen profession and you get the chance to understand a little about what makes them tick. Recently I had the opportunity to do just that with an old friend. Circumstances led to us spending time together with plenty of opportunity to discuss life, love and business.

What came out of these discussions was the balance that he has in his life between Risk taking and Gambling. He would freely admit that in the early days, when he had less to lose, he would err more towards a 'gamble' but now he is more interested in looking

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You have a very valuable resource and that is your customer base. As well as containing name and address details of your customers, your CRM solution is able to link quotes, sales orders and invoices to those records, allowing you to build up a complete history of the business you have conducted with each of your clients.

As well as locating new potentials, following the lead nurturing process and establishing new customers, you also have a list already created of those that are prepared to spend their money with you, meaning there is a good chance they are prepared to do this again.

One of

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The sales cycle can be a long and convoluted journey – both for the customer and for the supplier. The customer expresses an interest in one product, gets passed from the marketing department to the sales department, who then pass the customer onto finances, before the post-sales support team picks up the pieces. The customer may have to re-explain their requirements and order at each of these stages to prevent “no, I didn’t want that one, I want the same one that the marketing brochure showed me”, “why am I being billed for postage when I picked the item up”, to “why haven’t

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