CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT

In one sense, managing customer relationships is as old as the hills Peter Drucker said "The purpose of a business is to create customers". Implied in his words and his work is the importance of keeping those same customers and of growing the depth of their relationship with you. After all, as research by Frederik Reichold and Earl Sasser of the Harward Business School shows, most customers are only profitable in the second year that they do business with you. That's right. Initially, new customers cost you money - money spent on advertising and marketing and money spent learning why they want and teaching them how best to do business with you. Customer relationship management (CRM) can be the single strongest weapon you have as a manager to ensure that customers become and remain loyal.