I received a comment to a previous post that got me thinking. It seems that there needs to be parallel efforts in maintaining both Acquisition and Retention, with equal focus, and not one at the expense of the other. In my post I said I thought that Acquisition was the mandate of Sales Force Automation (SFA), whereas Retention was in the realm of CRM. I did that, because I am fixated with trying to disentangle these two terms.

If we drive down to the departmental level, it seems that Marketing and Sales should drive Acquisition, and after sales service should drive Retention. In my book I discuss the “long winded title of Acquisition and Retention loop” (page 27) – long winded, because I could not find any other description that was suitable.

So after I write this, I realize that I was wrong—sales is not the only group responsible for acquisition, marketing is in there too.

Definitely everything falls under the umbrella of CRM, but that term has become so all encompassing that it is tough to look below and see what it all means.

Perhaps, if companies are focusing too much on Retention at the expense of Acquisition, or vice versa, one department may be more powerful than the other, in other words they don’t have a unified CRM program that’s working well. If they did the normal departmental interplay would help them achieve the right balance.