Customers instinctively know a good salesman when they see one. In the case of a small business you are quite often the salesman yourself. Which is where the problem lies: You do not get enough time to analyze and manage your sales process from a broader perspective. What you need is a CRM salesforce automation tool that suits your business needs and helps you to monitor your customers purchase behavior. To keep a client interested and turning them into a repeat customer requires an innovative strategy through your CRM so that you have pre defined triggers ready for each customer based on their status.

A good CRM tool with sales management features uses a staircase approach. Starting with a zero status where the customer does not yet exist, contacts graduate up the scale to become a lead, a qualified lead or potential customer, new customer all the way to high value customer. Each status of customer requires a different level of interaction, with some stages of the customer lifecycle being more high touch or sensitive than others. CRM systems allow you to easily identify which contacts fall into each of the status categories so that you can communicate with them on an appropriate level and keep them engaged. Also, by recording their response to marketing campaigns within your CRM system it is easier to evaluate the overall response and plan follow up activities.