I've heard this question from a lot of small business owners and small sales and marketing department leaders. Organizations with small budgets often see CRM as a luxury item.

If you are a marketing and sales team of one, you might be able to continue with your current index card or MS Excel tracking system. However, if you need to share information across even a handful of team members (or plan to as you grow), then CRM is worth a closer look.

There are considerable benefits for any company considering CRM. Those potential benefits could include:

• Get a 360-degree view of your customer - be aware of every targeted marketing activity, customer complaint, and sales history before picking up the phone.
• Improve targeting of marketing campaign activities, allowing you to spend your marketing budget wisely
• Improve cross-selling and up-selling
• Indentify potential sales opportunities
• Initiate additional communication between marketing, sales, and support departments
• Measure customer value - use CRM to quickly differentiate high-value customers
• Anticipatory CRM - ability to anticipate customer needs based on sales history
• Improve customer service responsiveness when handling customer questions or concerns
• Web-enabled CRM can reduce the cost of handling customer orders by more than 50%
• Ability to measure individual and company-wide metrics

Do you need CRM? Maybe not. However, it would certainly be worth a second look. There are real benefits in CRM for organizations of any size.

Interesting in additional information on affordable CRM options for your business? Check out the ShoestringCRM archives for free resources and tools to help your business.

• CRM Software Selection Guide - CRM selection in 6 steps
• Small Business CRM Software - listing of top CRM software applications for small businesses
• CRM for the Online Business - a fresh look at how CRM factors into the online business model
• CRM Required Reading - top recommendations for small businesses looking for more information about CRM