To marketeers, CRM is an extension of the marketing mix. It is the P for people and the S for service. It is the after sales revenue opportunity – where careful presentation of up-sell and cross sell offers creates further revenue from an existing customer with little if no selling effort what-so-ever.

But how do CRM teams fair in such an equation? They see their role a vital support – aftercare and satisfaction to a customer that may suffer cognitive dissonance or have found the selling pitch story bigger than the products real delivery capacity.

If both work together they are the ultimate selling and supporting machine – inbound and outbound opportunities maximised. If however, they are not synchronised, do not balance against each other and result in discord then this causes customer dissolution. It’s a matter of integrating the two disciplines under a single holistic strategy – two tactical approaches with one goal.