Customers have a life cycle like products. If marketers can understand customers, they will have better profitability. The stages are: Reach & Awareness – Customers become aware of the company, Acquisition - Here company can identify the specific prospect by collecting information such as name and address on them and entering it into the CRM database, Conversion – In this stage, a company converts a prospect into a customer which includes the initial sale, Retention – Here first time customers are converted into continuing customers , and Advocacy – this is the final step in the life cycle where regular customers  are converted into advocates for your company and its products. Read more at: http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/insidecrm/customer-lifecycle-and-crm-75251

CRM systems are mainly designed to make sales management easier and to enforce regimented selling process and the secondary reason is to make selling easier and more efficient. Companies during purchasing a new CRM system, examine the analytics features. Analytics is the summarization and presentation of information from the CRM database in such a way that salespeople and management can gain insight by looking solely at individual records and varies from company to company. Read more at:  http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/insidecrm/building-analytics-into-or-onto-old-crm-systems-71056

Most businesses nowadays set aside money for lead generation. This is useful for automotive brands where lead generation is utilized as a key tool to generate consumer interest, reach new buyers and develop internal CRM databases. Claudia Di Maglie (Head of Affiliate Marketing at iProspect UK), writes in her article about some points which can help a business generate lead in the automotive industry. Read more at: http://digitalmarketingmagazine.co.uk/digital-marketing-lead-generation/lead-generation-top-5-tips-for-automotive-brands/1677