The most successful businesses understand the market that they serve. They understand that talking with a customer about their needs is more effective than babbling about their own product or service. We can use the marketing perspective to analyze actual customers, potential customers, business competitors, and society at large. Although we have a fair amount of internal data about our own customers, we also look for other data resources to examine other market variables.

One of the internal data sources that we can exploit is the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. This includes data about current customers that isn't necessarily related to actual sales, such as visits, sales opportunities, and service calls. It also stores sales opportunities with potential customers. In addition to a CRM, we can also use the same sales data from Chapter 2, Sales Perspective, to better understand our current customers' purchasing behavior.

Depending on the company...