Growing a company

Lots of companies are starting (sadly) to deploy CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solution in order to start understanding and "rewarding" the loyal customers, great move forward, however, is CRM still applicable today?

I often said CRM WAS a great tool to use 10 years ago to know what are our customer's preferences so we will know what to do with them. Today, what we knew about our customer's based on what they did even yesterday aren't applicable anymore as all of us change sooooo fast, historical preference will not be how we wanted to be known, we wanted to be known and treated the NEW and FUTURE me!

What do i mean? simply put, your life while single and dating your boy/girlfriends is absolutely different from after your marriage, and again this life is so that different after we have our 1st child...so not knowing the latest life cycle of any customer and use historical (previous life, single young and free... to predict or dictate our company growth direction is as good as selling horses as mode of transportation in today world.

So, how am i suppose to grow my company when i'm only depending on historical knowledge to "satisfy" current existing customer? How are we going to know our customer's latest life style and what they wanted in the future? Worst..what IF these old loyal customers started to get old and no more buying what they used to buy from us?

My humble opinion...keeping current loyal customers is very important, growing NEW customers are the key toward growing a company! Look at your customers now, and keep them with us as long as we could, and, most critically, start to locate and attract new and future customers because THEY ARE your company growth!