How good is your Customer Database ?

One of the first things anyone discovers when starting up in business is that you begin to quickly acquire lots of information, both about the business activity in which you are involved, and also contact details of potential customers, suppliers, and other useful contacts.

These latter contacts can be used as the foundation of your business Customer Database, which becomes the means by which you generate both new sales opportunities and repeat business.

Unfortunately, in the early days of my own business, I soon found I ended up with piles of other people's business cards, which just gathered dust on a shelf and were little used afterwards. It's easy to accumulate several hundred such cards very quickly.

I soon realised that I needed to store this information in a more accessible way.

There are several ways in which this can be done.

Contact Management

These include using a business card reader to scan the card details for storage on your PC or PDA, or entering the information directly into a contact database using applications such as Microsoft Outlook, Google, and Yahoo.

Once done you can then search for individuals by name and organisation, send emails, makes notes, reference websites and more. You can also make backup copies to protect your valuable database.

Marketing Management

Very soon new businesses will want to start marketing their products and services to potential customers. This includes sending out business information, brochures, and newsletters, online website registration, and tracking prospects and customers by sector, buying potential, and product interest.

These features are available using online Email Marketing tools, which can verify prospect registration.  They also allow recipients to de-register if they no longer want to receive your communications - and this is a requirement under current EU privacy legislation.

As well as sending out information, these tools can also track the numbers of emails which were opened, bounced, and unopened - and provide useful follow-up reports.Such systems can also be used to download data for use in physical Direct Mail campaigns, including letter writing, and bulk mailing.

Using these tools helps to make your communications more professional looking and easier to manage.

Customer Management

Once your business starts to make sales, its important to bear in mind the value in maintaining ongoing customer contact. This helps ensure a high level of customer satisfaction, increases the likelihood of generating additional sales, and retaining the customer for the longer term.

Tracking these contacts is provided by Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools, which are now available both as standalone and online tools, and at a price within the reach of smaller and even startup businesses.

CRM tools are useful to a wide variety of businesses, and cover the whole range of business contacts - including sales, delivery, and support.

Sales leads can be tracked from initial opportunity, through quotation and bidding to won/lost.
Once a project or order has been won, the CRM system can track the project delivery, with timings and deadlines for the tasks involved.

And finally the CRM system can be used to deliver ongoing support, including logging and handing of customer service calls.

So whether your need is for basic contact storage, marketing management, or ongoing customer management, having a good Customer Database is a vital investment that every business owner should make.

Regards

George Montgomery

GBS Group - Business Development Consultants

http://www.gbs-group.co.uk