Leverage simple technology for relationship selling

- The most intimate relationships we have in life are usually with our immediate family. I want you to think about your immediate family. Think about the important dates and events in their lives, birthdays, holidays, anniversaries. It's endless, right? Did you forget to call your aunt this year for her birthday? What about your sister's wedding anniversary? (laughs) It's difficult to stay on top of these things, but we try because we know how important it is to building and maintaining relationships. Business and sales relationships are no different. We need to know when to make those phone calls or send that email. We need to know when special events are going to happen, like contract expirations, or other business-impacting events. If we can barely stay on top of our personal relationships, how in the world are we expected to stay on top of our business relationships? Fortunately for business, we have the technology to lend us a hand. Our relationship-centric seller's best friend is A CRM. A CRM is a software that helps you to manage your customer's engagement and track and organize your customer communication. Here are a few of my favorite CRM tools for you to check out to get you started. These are in no particular order. I suggest you check them out and figure out which is the best fit for you, Salesforce, Zopto, Pipedrive, HubSpot. In your CRM software, you can collect and input all important business facts regarding your customers. Here's the most critical business information to add to your CRM. Company info, I'm talking about addresses, phone numbers, and websites. Contact person info, you want, contact names, titles, emails, and phone numbers. Here's a next-level tip. Always try to obtain cell phone numbers, secondary emails, and social media handles. You're building relationships that will transcend that person's current role and company. If you don't have that secondary information, you could lose touch with that person if and when they move on to other opportunities. Task and calendars, your CRM can tell you when and how to follow up. You can schedule all your follow-up activities from inside the platform and never miss an important date. Email, integrating your email into a CRM helps with tracking all communication with your customer. Your CRM will link your email communication to the customer profile so you can easily reference them in the future. Phone integration, most CRMs have the ability to integrate with phone providers. This gives you the ability to dial and track your phone calls from inside the platform. All these features allow you to completely manage your customer relationships on a user-friendly, all in one platform, so you never miss an opportunity to connect and nurture relationships.