As its name suggests, CRM software is a system for managing relationships with your customers.For most businesses, their most valuable and important asset is their customers.

With one central place to organize all the details of your leads and customers, it’s easy for everyone on your team to gain insight into the state of your business, and the status of every customer relationship.Who should use a CRM?Who uses CRM?

To get a little bit more specific, there are two groups of companies that often see the most benefit:B2B companies, which typically need to track leads and customers across long sales cycles and through upgrade paths (e.g., a software company, a recruiting firm)Considered-purchase B2C companies (e.g., a jeweler, a landscaping service, or a realtor)That being said, there are a lot of companies out there who don’t fit the above two profiles, but still see value in using a CRM system.

Does your sales team have a structured process they follow?If you answered yes to one or more of the above questions, chances are your business could benefit from a CRM system.When is the right time to adopt a CRM?If you’ve decided that a CRM system is probably in your company’s future, the next logical question is when.

This works fine for a while, but at a certain point, things start to break.It becomes tough to manage your data in a “flat” structure like a spreadsheet as it grows (e.g., visualizing the relationships between contacts, companies, sales opportunities, etc.

)An employee leaving results in a loss of data (e.g., a sales rep leaves, drops all of the deals he was working on, leaving you no way to pick things up where he left off)In short, the answer for most companies is pretty simple.