How to group customers by products ordered or interested in?

[debbiekipt]

Hi
I am new to Sugar and CRM and am trying to set it up to work best for us.
Almost all our contacts are customers and I am looking for a way to group them by products bought (or interested in) Some buy several over time.
I did think maybe I could use 'Account Name' for our different products, but after looking on the forums and wiki do not think that will work as contact can be assisgned to only one account successfully it seems?

Can anyone suggest the best (non coding) way to do this?
CE 6.3.1 installed.

Many thanks in advance!

[kbrill]

Just create a new module called products and give it a many-to-many relationship with contacts. Then you can assign as many contacts to each product as you want and as many products to each customer as well.

[gates2u]

I do exactly as you suggest, Debbie. I did NOT create a new module called products.

I use account name for each of my product lines. I run multiple small to mid-sized stores online, so basically each name is mapping to one of my niche stores.

There may be thousands of contacts per account.
And, my opportunities trace to accounts, as well -- which means I track sales by store. I use opportunities for some of my stores, because the sales are not instant, but are delayed (the customers receive quotes which they can use for up to 60 days).

So, yes, exploiting the "account" field will work just fine!

PS - I only want customers mapped to their "latest" product interest. So, I do not need 1 customer mapped to multiple accounts.
Cheryl

[debbiekipt]

Hi and huge thanks to Kenneth and Cheryl for your helpful replies.

As I found trying to create a new module a challenge, I'm going to follow your lead Cheryl and maybe look at creating a module again when I know a bit more! :-)

Thanks to you both and great to know someone else is already doing similar Cheryl -gives me confidence to have a go! :-)

Debbie