BUILD RELATIONSHIPS WITH CRM

Business development is a continuous process. Most professionals who also deliver work have trouble fitting business development into their day. Having an easy-to-use system supported with customer relationship management (CRM) software makes it more likely that business development will happen even when you get busy.

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CRM software (e.g. salesforce.com, sugarCRM or many other competitors) can help you:

• Track your contacts

• Segment your contacts

• Interact with your contacts in an organized and scheduled way

• Generate reports on what is happening with your contacts

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CRM systems are also great when more than one person from your firm is involved with a prospect organization; you can communicate what's going on via the CRM system.

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Unfortunately, installing the software is not the challenging part -- using it well is. The biggest issues are

• Deciding how much time to devote to maintaining relationships and to documenting them

• Actually spending the time you've committed to

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If you do use the system though, you'll be able to understand

• How your activities compare against your plan.

• Your pipeline of incoming work.

• The state of your portfolio of relationships.

• Your return on your business development investment

You can do much of this much more easily with a CRM system than without.

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To learn more about building relationships with CRM, click on the link below.