smallbusiness.co.uk: Helping your business think big

Yes, your adviser is right in saying that. I am not sure that you need a completely integrated one though. A good CRM and a telephone I have always found to be enough. It will depend on exactly what sort of business you are, what you want to achieve with it and how much you have to spend on it.

There are 3 main ways to grow any business. Get new customers, increase the amount your existing customers spend with you and increase the frequency with which they do business with you. It is easier and less expensive to build on the existing base you already have, than it is to develop new customer relationships.

You will need a marketing plan to maintain your relationships and build business with existing customers in the same way as you would to attract new ones. You will definitely need a good CRM system to keep track of your business relationship and set up a regular communication process. This needs to be one that is easy for you to use and maintain. To build and grow your business with existing customers you will need to think about the activities that will help you do that. The system you use will need to facilitate those activities. The activities may include regular review meetings, selling up on existing services, cross selling to other products/services, telephone contact, email and newsletter contact invites to hospitality, invites to special events etc.

A valuable and interesting online newsletter is a good way of keeping in touch with your customers and keeping you in the forefront of their mind and for that are many good online services that are easy to use. I can recommend two in the resources section of my site www.moneymakingmarketingideas.com

I hope this helps. There are loads of ideas and ways to increase the business you do with your existing customer base in my book www.85ways.co.uk. There is a whole section all about boosting business with existing customers.