Customer relationship management (CRM) software is the record of every customer organisation, every person there, every call and email, and every deal in progress. It is the main software that salespeople work in every day. Every other sales tool reads from the CRM and writes back to it.
A few words are used everywhere in sales, and they come from the CRM. A lead is a possible customer who has shown interest, for example by filling in a form. An account is a customer organisation, and a contact is a person who works there. A deal, also called an opportunity, is one possible sale, from the first call to the signed contract. Each deal moves through stages, such as "first meeting", "demonstration", "quote sent", and finally "won" or "lost". All the open deals together are the pipeline.
The CRM plays the same role for sales that enterprise resource planning (ERP) plays for a company's orders, stock and accounts. Each is the one official record for its area, which the industry calls a system of record. When a deal is won, the CRM usually sends the order to the ERP, so that the order can be delivered and invoiced. Most CRMs are rented as software as a service (SaaS), at a monthly price for each user.
Take, for example, a Kanpur company that makes industrial packaging for food and chemical companies. Its sales team of 12 used to keep customers in spreadsheets and WhatsApp chats. Now, when a purchase manager at a spice company asks for a price on the website, the CRM creates a lead. A salesperson calls her the same day and logs the call. She becomes a contact, under the spice company's account. A deal is created for 40,000 cartons a month, worth about ₹48 lakh a year. Over five weeks, the deal moves from "first meeting" to "samples sent" to "quote sent", and each email and call is recorded against it. If the salesperson leaves the company, the next one sees the full history. Every Monday, the sales head sees the pipeline by stage and by salesperson.
The CRM is connected to many other systems. B2B contact databases add new contacts. CPQ software builds quotes from its deals. Help desk software records the customer's complaints after the sale. An integration platform (iPaaS) connects it to the rest of the company's software.
India has its own CRM companies. Some build for high-volume sellers, such as education companies, lenders and insurers, whose salespeople call hundreds of leads a day. Others build field sales software for salespeople who visit shops and clinics in person. The newest kind is the AI CRM, in which AI agents fill in the record themselves.