CRM, otherwise known as Customer Relationship Management, is a term that means different things to different people.

• To sales people it means coordinating and following up with each prospect until they close a deal or a new account.
• To customer service people it means making sure that every customer inquiry is properly answered.
• To marketing people, it means understanding who is receiving and responding to their campaigns and promotions.

More importantly, CRM helps business owners answer this question: are the people I’ve hired to get new customers and keep them happy staying productive and doing their jobs?

And if you’re part of the growing number of small businesses equipping employees with smart phones (or hiring employees who have smart phones), there are many applications out there that can help everybody stay productive while on the road:

Salesforce.com for Mobile

Brings your account’s data from Salesforce.com to iPhones and Blackberries. You can edit things such as leads, contacts, opportunities, and use those idle times on the road to send emails and review your sales pipeline.

Highrise for iPhone

If you’re into simple and elegantly designed applications, and don’t want the sophistication of Salesforce.com, Highrise may be for you. With Highrise’s iPhone application you can focus on sales tasks and sales follow up with an incredibly simple to use service.

Mobomo’s Pocket Biz

Mobomo’s Pocket Biz is a standalone mobile application. For $10 (one-time) you get similar functionality to Highrise and Salesforce.com. The advantage: a dead simple mobile application. The disadvantage: you won’t be able to use this data when you’re sitting on your computer as the data lives on your phone.

Zendesk for Android and iPhone

If you are a Support-centric person and want to have a simple workflow to answer your inquiries, Zendesk is a great solution for you. Their online service allows you to set up an online community, and as an agent, you can take your customer inquiries on the road. They email you at support@yourcompany.com and the Zendesk system routes the inquiries among a team of support people.

Zendesk’s iPhone and Android applications show you the vital information that allows you to answer inquiries on the go.

(Image credit – Android Guys — http://www.androidguys.com/2010/06/12/zendesk-android-helpdesk/ )

Mailchimp

For the marketing person on the go, Mailchimp is neat (these guys have a great sense of humor, check out their FIFA World Cup login screen below).

With the Mailchimp iPhone application, you can grab information on your email marketing campaigns and quickly determine the effectiveness of your customer outreach activity.

Ringio for Android Phones

Finally (a shameless plug), if you’d like to be able to show CRM data on your Android device when you get a phone call, Ringio has a great solution for that. With the Ringio application you get a screen pop before every phone call that shows you who is calling, who they’ve talked to previously within your company and any notes that you or your colleagues may have entered.  In short, you have the power of a Mobile PBX at your fingertips.