I tend to talk about CRM a lot outside my professional circle, and it astounds me that so many people haven't the slightest notion what "CRM" means. In many cases, I'm talking to small business owners who could benefit directly from a CRM system, and who have been the targets of many a big-budget marketing campaign over the last several years. For whatever reason, the message has yet to penetrate the consciousness of a vast percentage of decision makers.
Yet almost to a person, these small business owners are confronting the issues at the core of CRM - lead generation, customer service, customer loyalty and sales information management, among others - and handling them through home-grown and usually totally unconnected systems. In many cases, it never occurs to them that they are practicing CRM. These are simply the activities they need to do to run their businesses.
