dan_sim

A CRM is the memory of a business. You will never remember what you forget and it's amazing the number of opportunities we forget.

Import your contact list, put _each_ conversation and email in your CRM. Before calling a client, take a look at what happened recently. Your clients will be amazed of how much things you remember.

If someone is talking about a future project/dream, add it to your CRM with a low priority (I use % of probability of winning). Add a task (in the CRM) to call about the project in a couple of months.

When a conversation ends with the client saying "I'll get back to you", ask when you should follow up on the project and add a task at this date. When it is time, follow up! Clients don't call back and it's ok because it means they are busy with their business.

A CRM is not a task manager but it's essential to add tasks related to contacting your clients in there.

I use CapsuleCRM. Not because it's the best but because it was the easiest to use at that time. I tried the old version of ZohoCRM and it wasn't that good, but they changed it recently so you should take a look. Try them all, you'll find the one that fits you best.

I pretty much hate Pascal as a language but I recently used it on one of my project. I wanted a executable that would just WORK on any computer without any installation, dependency or a specific version of a .NET framework. I used Lazarus and it just worked.