Eighty percent of your business comes from 20 percent of your customer base. The best new business is referral business. The premise of CRM is that by identifying individual customers, businesses learn the customer's specific needs and desires. This allows the business to provide the service that differentiates it from competitors. The concept moves a business' focus from the singular transaction to the lifetime value a loyal customer holds.
Big business realizes the necessity of managing customer relationships.
Its efforts to do so have resulted in the development of computer software that focuses on such things. Big business' fatal error in attempts at CRM lies in the fact that a corporation is incapable of having a good relationship with an individual. Only individuals can have good relationships. Most small businesses practice good CRM in their daily routine. The question becomes how to incorporate technology into a CRM routine.