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Guest post by: Bob Ready Become an Author

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One of the biggest mistakes that I see entrepreneurs making time and time again is trying to bring in the customer for that initial sale, and then just letting them go. They place on their focus on that first sale that they forget to look at the potential long-term advantages of keeping in touch with their customers. That is where customer relationship management comes in – a set of tools and practices that help business people perform customer-related tasks.

Whether it’s collecting personal information from your customers or taking surveys to figure out their needs and wants, it’s important to try and build up your relationship with customers. No matter what your business, it’s often far more rewarding to have your past and current customers continue to buy more from you than trying to reel new ones in. That is why you need to do whatever you can to build up customer loyalty.

It doesn’t need to be as hard as you think. Entrepreneurs continue to come up with creative ways to keep their customers coming back for more. From simple incentive or rewards programs, to using thank you notes to follow up from a first purchase, to calling customers to inquire about their post-sale feedback, there are a wide variety of things you can do to not only keep in touch with your customers, but make them feel valued and make them want to keep giving you their business.

It is estimated that more than 70 percent of large U.S. corporations are trying some aspect of customer relationship management. Whether through training, technology, or strategy, these companies are all trying to improve their returns on investments and build lasting positive relationships with their clients. They want to not only generate better sales leads, but also improve their responses to the changing market and the time it takes to do so.

This strategy first began in the 1960s with the likes of Sears and a number of different book clubs. They were the first to start recording and keeping track of customer information. Customers were no longer forgotten about once their invoice had been printed. These entrepreneurs knew there was more where that came from.

But lately, smaller companies tend to be falling behind their larger counterparts in adopting these kinds of techniques. Micro entrepreneurs need to start to realize the vast payoff that can come from such practices. It is especially important to them, seeing as how they usually need every advantage they can get in order to compete in the same leagues as the big boys.

Customer relationship management is not a single simple process. It involves first analyzing your current customers, and selecting your best customers based on sales volume and trends. Then, identify their needs and adapt to that. Finally, continue to seek out customers like those and try to sell them more. The payoff from CRM techniques don’t come right away. But with due diligence and patience, you will begin to see the long term benefits.

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