The question sounds odd, doesn't it, when every month I write a column about CRM -- and you, presumably, read it? But do we all really know what we're talking about when we say customer relationship marketing?

I remember being in business school, and one of our real professors (a full-time executive, part-time academic) started discussing different career paths that his bright-eyed and bushy-tailed disciples might choose to take.

In conversation with a prospective client recently, the team was asked to justify the move to CRM and what that would look like. While I checked the calendar to be sure it was 2011 and not 2001, we moved to convocation about what CRM really means to brands and what is the best definition.

Every day, it becomes easier and easier for your competitors to reach your customers. That's not an opinion; it's reality. Look at all the opportunities they have: Groupon coupons, social media information bombardment, Google placement and advertisements, Rue La La ... the Internet has opened doors that no one dreamed existed ten or even five years ago. How can you compete?

Clients or prospects will often ask for the "free trial." Therefore, wherever I worked in sales, sales management or executive management, I have made it a point to communicate to my sales people and to customers and prospects that nothing is truly free.

Once you've figured out what your audience wants to see, you can start thinking about what kind of content to produce. Much of that content probably already exists in raw form within your company. But before you publish it, there are guidelines you'll want to follow.

The science of targeted reactivation is pretty simple in its definition: waking up the seemingly dormant connections you already have in order to make them more frequent purchasers or reigniting their interest and "passion" for your product or service.

This is likely to provide incentive for customers to continue suggesting input in the future, knowing that someone is listening to their comments.

The online marketer must never abuse the trust that is core to the opt-in process, but take advantage of the flip side of the loss of privacy and use it to bolster customers' convenience.

Over the past few decades, CRM has evolved extensively. The genesis of CRM was really database management. For the last 25 years, I have worked in sales and sales management for several organizations, and I don't think there is a CRM tool that has existed in that time span that I haven't used. Lotus spreadsheets, ACT, Siebel, SAP, Oracle; you get the picture.