Building an Effective CRM to Drive Leads for Your SMB with Jason Kramer, Cultivize: Show Notes & Transcript

Post | Feb 17, 2025

Welcome back to Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business! Looking for Marketing Smarts? You’re in the right place. After almost 4 years of helping to make you savvier marketers, we decided to broaden this podcast to include more business-oriented topics that will make you savvier business leaders.

In this episode of Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business, we’re talking how to make your CRM effective with Jason Kramer. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your other favorite podcast spots – follow and leave a 5-star review!

Episode Summary & Player
Show Notes
Strategic Counsel Summary
Transcript

***Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business*: Building an Effective CRM to Drive Leads for Your SMB with Jason Kramer, Cultivize**

Do you have a CRM system (Customer Relationship Management)? CRM tools have become a bit diluted over the years. But, a true CRM system can drive leads for your business like no other. We wanted you to learn from a bright mind who knows exactly how to make your CRM effective, so we welcomed on Jason Kramer, the Founder & CEO of Cultivize. They’re your CRM guru for sales, marketing, and agency teams. Visit AfterTheLead.com and use code: StrategicCounsel to get $50 off the Profit Path sales tracking tool. Here’s a small sample of what you will hear in this episode:

What can CRMs do besides abandon cart email sequences?
What to do when the business is too busy to use a CRM?
What happens after the nurture sequence?
What are the right things to do in order to fuel my business?
Why the people matter more than the system?

And as always, if you need help in building your Strategic Counsel, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at: ForthRight-People.com.

Check out the episode, show notes, and transcript below:

Show Notes

Building an Effective CRM to Drive Leads for Your SMB with Jason Kramer, Cultivize
- [0:29] Welcome to Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business
- [2:15] Visit AfterTheLead.com and use code: StrategicCounsel to get $50 off the Profit Path sales tracking tool
- [4:36] What are some of the common issues people have and how does a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) fit into business?
- [8:51] If you’re not prepared to spend thousands of dollars on HubSpot, where do you start?
- [11:30] Why do we even need to have a system or a process?
- [16:29] CRM can help to educate and nurture clients before they’re ready to buy
- [20:02] What happens after the nurture sequence?
- [23:43] What are the right things to do in order to fuel my business?
- [26:01] What is your process? (and how to develop one)
- [32:04] What to do when it feels like the business is too busy to use the system?
- [37:58] It’s the people first and then the system
  Rapid Fire Questions
- [44:43] What is Jason’s favorite dessert?
- [45:40] What’s his favorite Halloween costume?
- [46:40] If he could be someone else for a day, who would it be?
- [48:30] Last thoughts on CRMs
- [49:47] Visit AfterTheLead.com and use code: StrategicCounsel to get $50 off the Profit Path sales tracking tool
- [50:56] Make sure to follow Strategic Counsel on your favorite podcast spot and leave us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts
- [50:56] Learn more at ForthRight-People.com and connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, and Linke dIn

What is Strategic Counsel?

Thanks for listening Strategic Counsel. Get in touch here to become more strategic.

Transcript

Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.

00:01
Welcome to the Strategic Counsel by Forthright Business podcast. If you’re looking for honest, direct, and unconventional conversations on how to successfully lead and operate in business, you are in the right place. In our discussions, we push on the status quo and traditional modes of thinking to reveal a fresh perspective. This unlocks opportunity for you, your team, and your business. Now let’s get to it.

00:29
Welcome to the Strategic Counsel podcast. I am Anne Candido and I am April Martini. And today we’re gonna talk about how to build an effective CRM to drive leads for your small medium business. Now, Anne’s point of view here, CRM systems have really become, I think, a bit of a diluted tool over the years, but at its core, a CRM system, which stands for Customer Relationship Management,

00:53
is a software platform that helps business organize and manage all interactions with their potential current customers, allowing them to track customer data, sales pipelines, and communication history to nurture relationships and improve sales efforts. So it’s supposed to be a big tool to really help fundamentally lead your business. But what it has become for many businesses is an email list that people use for drip email campaigns. That’s not what is.

01:19
all meant to be. Yes, yes, so right, which means that many businesses aren’t getting the benefit of a true CRM system. So what’s happening are things like relationships are held by individuals, which as we know is very risky because if those individuals disappear, so do the relationships. Another one is there’s no accountability for following through and building the relationships, which results in lead stalling or falling through the cracks overall.

01:45
And finally, sales are left to a select few whose job is to quote unquote, sell. Many small and medium businesses require more of a seller doer model because they can’t quite frankly afford sizable headcount for just new business development. Yeah, and today we’re gonna talk about how to effectively remedy these struggles. And we have a very special guest up us with this, that’s Jason Kramer. He is the founder and CEO of Cultivize. And that’s a consulting firm specializing in lead nurturing strategies and custom CRM.

02:15
So Jason, it’s great to have you. Do you want to introduce yourself and give the listeners a bit of your story? Sure, Anne and April. And wow, what great energy. I now have to, I’m all pumped up, ready to follow that. So my quick story is I started out as a graphic designer working in Manhattan for agencies, worked on some really great global and local brands. And the short of it is that after a few years of doing that, I was freelancing a lot.

02:43
and I decided to start my own boutique agency. So we built, you know, hundreds of websites, did really great work, ran that business for 16 years. And at the tail end, before I sold that business, what you guys talked about a little bit is that there’s this gap, if you will, where companies are spending a lot of time and effort to start a relationship, right? They’re doing lead gen, they’re doing the trade shows, doing webinars, all these things, but their process is terrible or it doesn’t even exist. You know, they don’t have the CRM or they’re not using it.

03:13
And so to me, I’m always looking at what is the problem and what is the solution. And the solution was that it’s not difficult to fix that, but the problem is people are not educated and they don’t really know where to begin and it’s not their fault, it’s just, there’s so many options out there and it’s really like a flooded market. So I started Cultivize just about six years ago where we don’t do any marketing at all, we’re not an inbound agency. But as you said, we focus on CRM implementation.

03:42
but more importantly, how to use technology to help the sales teams and marketing teams work cohesively to gain insight into really what’s working at a marketing and sales level, but also the bigger objective to close more deals. I think we have everybody’s attention now. So this is going to be a really good GC episode. And we’re going to go into actionable tactics for people so that they can really truly understand how to take this episode. And

04:09
and drive that immediate action like we always intend for in these episodes. So Jason, let’s just kind of go right into it. You mentioned that people struggle because they don’t know where to begin. And at the same time, there’s generally like one of these issues like we mentioned up in the intro. And I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of them. You mentioned one being like, they just don’t have the processes or don’t know how to implement processes. Can you speak a little bit more to the environment that you’re seeing and some of that.

04:36
and extrapolate and kind of bring us down the road of some of the struggles that people are having and how CRM is kind of fitting into that, if you will. So a big broad juicy question to get going. Okay, we could definitely go down the rabbit hole in this one, but I’ll try to keep it, you know, kind of high level and we like rabbit holes sometimes. So if you want to go down the rabbit hole, we could go down the rabbit hole with you, Jason said, don’t hesitate. How many hours do you have? The simple of it is, is that

05:06
there’s a lot of shiny objects out there. When I say shiny objects, I’m talking about CRM tools, about sales tools, about email marketing, about drip campaigns, all these different things, right, to run your business. And it’s kind of often the case where you’re gonna look at that shiny object, you’re gonna see a demo or your best friend or you’re the owner of another company you know, says, hey, I love this, I love that, it’s helping my business. And so you automatically, instinctively think, well, if it’s helping them,

05:35
It can help me. And like I always say, technology doesn’t solve problems. It’s the people that solve the problems. And so one of the biggest things we often see is that companies are jumping into technology for their business, but they’re not realizing and understanding what are the goals that I have, right? What am I trying to achieve, right? Another thing they often overlook is, well, who on my team is gonna use this? And what’s their learning curve? You know, like how easy is it gonna be

06:04
for us to adopt this technology and who’s gonna help us do that. And then they’re also not also looking at fundamental things like what type of reporting are we expecting to be able to get out of this system? What type of automation do we need? Customization. And so they’re not asking these critical questions of themselves before they even start talking to a partner like Cultivize or a software company. And so they’re just immediately jumping into a demo into like a sales call.

06:31
And they’re not asking the right questions because they haven’t figured it out themselves first. And that’s like the biggest mistake. That could also be not only a mistake financially, but it’s also like an emotional mistake because now you, you’re like committed or you have a bad taste in your mouth because you didn’t follow the proper steps. I can also go down a million rabbit holes with what you just said. You know, so my background is agency originally as well. So we shared that in common Jason. And I remember the point in time where

06:59
technology really ticked up, but also we were getting lots of questions about CRM systems and we had no Business at that period in time making recommendations, but that didn’t hold us back from doing that anyway So I can you know, I’ve lived through a lot of what you just said, but I think the piece that is An innocent mistake, but happens a lot is where like I said in the beginning CRM

07:28
is a black box, but also people think it’s gonna magically fix things for them. So you started down the path of the things that aren’t considered. And I would love to hear kind of how you deal with that with clients when they come to you and how you kind of solve for that. Because I think that’s one of the hardest things is like, all those things, all the symptoms, how much customization do I need, who’s going to use it, all of that. Like how do you help people crack the code? Because…

07:56
More often than not with our clients, we see them in a situation where they’ve done one of the things of maybe like picking one and now they’re stuck or not using anything because they don’t know. So I would just love some more insight there. We’ll talk about at the end of the show, but if you go to afterthelead.com, which is connected to the Cultivize website, but afterthelead.com has a lot of guides. And one of the guides addresses what we’re talking about right now, which is the ultimate CRM research guide.

08:25
And it’s not a guide to compare any specific platform. It’s more about the things we’re talking about, what to look for, what mistakes to avoid. You know, a lot of times you’re not also looking at the total cost of ownership. So you might download. So for example, and I love HubSpot, we work with HubSpot a lot, but there you fall into a trap with like products like theirs, where you get the free trial, you’re not really using HubSpot, you’re using a very small sliver of what it can do with the free trial.

08:51
But if you’re not prepared to spend thousands of dollars a month on HubSpot, then why even do the free trial? Right. Or they say, okay, well, we could afford this software. It’s $1,500 a month, whatever the price tag might be. And that’s our budget. But what happens when you start adding more tools to it, or you add more contacts to more users, and now it’s $3,500 a month, and you can’t afford it. Now you’re capped because you can’t really leverage the tool you thought you could use originally. And so you want to really look at this total cost of ownership.

09:21
But the way we solve for this, Anne, in April, is that we go through what we call the CRMFIT assessment. This information about that on our website. It’s a free assessment we offer where I physically do that with them, right, with companies we talk to. Just given my experience and not to say my team couldn’t do it, but something I enjoy doing. And the assessment goes through the top 20 questions that you should be asking yourself as a business in your different departments, your marketing department, sales department and your operations.

09:51
as well as all the other things we talked about, you know, evaluating existing technology. Most companies we talked to, we could look at their bank statement and start crossing off things that they’re paying for every month that they’re not even using. You know, and a lot of times I’ll say to them, oh, they’ll say to me rather, oh, we have a tool for that. We have a tool to do our quotes. We have a tool to track this, to do that. Well, that’s great. I’d love to see it. We get on a video call. And can you show me how you’re using that every day?

10:20
And then it’s like crickets or they get on the call. Then they realize, oh, wait, we’re really not using this tool as much as we thought we were using it. So the assessment is as much of a planning process as it is an evaluation of what they’re currently doing and the pitfalls they might be going through. And the outcome of that assessment is specific recommendations and identifying what those goals are and how we can help realize those goals for the client.

10:47
I find this so interesting because on one side you have like these small medium sized businesses who are kind of on this efficiency treadmill, right? It’s like here we used to say there’s an app for it, now there’s like there’s a process or a tool for it, right? So whatever challenge we have in our business, we just go and find a tool to be able to fix it to the point where we have so many tools, none of the tools are talking together.

11:10
Some people are using the tools, some people are not using the tools, so they’re not integrated across the whole entire business. So they’re not working as hard as they possibly can. So you have the efficiency struggle, if you will, with then its consequences. But then on the other side, you have people who are like, what do I need all this for? There’s only two of us, or there’s only five of us. We can track it by hand. We meet on a regular basis and go over our leads. Why do we even need to have a system or a process?

11:38
that help us really like focus in and work on business. We’re fine. We don’t have all, we don’t need all that. So there’s like, it feels like there’s two different sides to some extent. So maybe you could speak a little bit to how those two sides, how do you like strategize against those two sides? Like what kind of systems or how do you solve for the challenges that they’re facing? But then how do you also talk to these people who are like, why do I even need a CRM system to be good with? And really like,

12:07
show them the value of that. I mean, we know that there’s value. Me and April use one and there’s only two of us. So we know the value. But speak to the choir a little bit and share. I love this question. I’m smiling ear to ear because this is such a game changer of a topic when we talk to clients. And the clients we talk to have wide ranges in terms of size. So it could be company doing a million dollars in revenue up to hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. They all have similar problems, a different scale.

12:37
But let me tell you a little bit of a story. So over the summer, we brought in a company, it’s a roofing business, family run business for about 30 years. They do about $10 million, give or take a year in sales. A small team, they only have three salespeople and they were doing everything basically by hand. They had a Google sheet to keep track of things. They do well over a thousand quotes a year. And it was surprising how companies like this can survive as long as they have.

13:07
and be as making as much money as they could. But I also see it as what are they missing out on, right? And so one of the things we implemented with Tom the owner, we said to Tom, well, if you do in about a thousand quotes a year and you’re only a team of like three people, how do you follow up with all the people that ask for a quote, but never get back to you? And we’re like, well, we don’t do anything. We were too busy. We don’t have time to really do that. We just kind of wait for them to get back to us or they don’t. And I was like, okay.

13:35
I was like, well, what if we can create an automation where an email comes from the salesperson, it looks like it came from Outlook, doesn’t look like it’s spammy or salesy or anything like that, and it’s going to go out over the course of several weeks just to kind of nudge them and say, hey, just confirm you got the quote, you have any questions, and trying to bring them back into the conversation. And Tom was very adamant about we’re a family-run business, we don’t want things to kind of come across kind of too salesy.

14:05
We want everybody to be sort of touched, if you will, by one of our salespeople, by us, given it’s a family-run business. I said, I understand all that. I said, but let’s just run the test and let’s see what happens. So they did. We’ve worked on the emails. They had some feedback. We wrote the sequence. Now, mind you, this was a series of, I believe it was three or four emails going out over the course of, I think it was like three or four months after they lost touch, basically, with a prospect. I was happy to report to Tom that

14:35
when I checked at the end of December, we closed $850,000 in revenue from these follow-up emails. Wow. That would have otherwise been completely lost because no one was paying attention to them. And so that led to another conversation where I meet every month with their sales team, not because their sales team isn’t using the CRM, it’s not because they’re not doing a good job. I’m doing it as a coach, as a mentor, and an accountability partner to make sure they’re doing everything possible.

15:03
to get this system to churn as much revenue as possible. And so the other quick story for Tom is that I noticed the office manager was getting requests, we need a metal roof, we need a roof repair. And her reply was, sorry, we don’t do that. You know, if you want a full roof, let us know. And it was like a really short email. It wasn’t bad in the sense that it was saying anything wrong. It just wasn’t providing any value. And it wasn’t trying to flip them to consider maybe they do need a full roof. And maybe

15:33
architectural shingles are better than metal roof because they’re cheaper and more options. So I said, well, why don’t we create an email template that Maria and Caitlin can use that’s standardized, that’s showing the value of what you can bring to the table versus just turning those off, because I don’t know if you guys are homeowners, I’m a homeowner. There’s only so many roof repairs you can do, eventually you’re gonna need a new roof. And so we created a 12 month long campaign that is gonna now nurture and educate

16:02
these people that are only interested in a roof repair, because eventually they will need a roof. And if my client is now educating them and informing them, right, of the value of why a new roof, the resale value, and he always says, and he’s a great salesman, he’s like, listen, if I’m charging 15 grand for your roof, add on $30,000 to your home’s value when you go to sell it, because that’s what a new roof is worth, it’s worth double. So it’s really like you’re gonna get your money back when you sell the house. And so…

16:29
It’s things like that to educate. And we’re doing that for lots of different businesses right now. A pool construction company, the same thing. People that are looking to spend a lot of money aren’t gonna just hand that over right away. There’s a lot of decision making going on there. And that’s what the lead nurturing piece is all about. There’s so much to unpack there. April, you go first, but I have something to say about this one. Yeah, I’m like totally geeking out over here. But the first piece that I really love about that is the fact

16:57
that and everyone that listens to the show knows that I’m the brand tone police, right? And so totally appreciate the fact that company was trying to do the right thing, right? Like we’re people to people, the relationship piece, I don’t want it to be automated. But what they’re really saying is, I don’t want it to be cold or sterile or feel like it doesn’t have that human touch. And so the ability to then supplement with these tools but do it in a way that’s providing whatever it is, the value, the…

17:26
behind the email, whatever that looks like. I love the piece because I do think that’s a misconception that you can’t have that when you use these tools. And then I think the other piece is being really smart to look for opportunities that are blind spots for these clients because like you said, you’re right, that email that says we just don’t do that, that wasn’t meant to be anything other than we don’t do that.

17:51
But what that is and what you can see as an outside resource that knows how to use these tools really effectively is, oh, that could be a potential opportunity for the future. And we may be able to help them in the meantime while keeping ourselves top of mind until they actually need the full roof. But the other piece I like about that is it wasn’t encouragement to start doing work that really wasn’t in their wheelhouse. It was let’s value add in the meantime.

18:16
and help them remember that we’re here so that when they do need us, because I think that’s another problem is agreeing or saying that you can do all the things. That’s not the intention. It’s being really strategic and intentional about how we’re doing these tools. And I could keep going, but Anne, I’m sure you have others things that rose to the top for you. Yeah, I was just going to, I mean, definitely reinforce that several of those points. And when you come, when I go back to the question, which I think you answered brilliantly as to why would I even need a CRM system to begin with?

18:45
I want to just emphasize a couple of the points that you brought up. One is the focus. It makes you really have to hone it and focus in on what’s going to be your biggest opportunity in order to drive leads for your business. And at the end of the day, that’s what a CRM system is supposed to do. That’s what I said before. It’s a way to organize everything that you have coming in, all of the inputs in order to drive more focused effort or action against lead generation. So that example basically said, okay, we’re going to take

19:14
warm leads again, which is how this is different than just a lot of email drip campaigns and we you guys you know who I’m talking to your I’m talking to all those LinkedIn people who keep spamming everybody basically because you think you have a warm lead because you have somebody who said yes I will like connect with you all right that’s not a warm lead a warm lead is I’ve already given a quote to them so okay we’re going to target warm leads we have a now of a clear focus and we’re going to nurture them

19:41
we’re going to make sure that we’re continuing as, as April said, adding value along the process. Cause we know, as you said, Jason, people don’t hand over big bucks like overnight, unless it’s a really big emergency, right? So you have to nurture them. You have to make sure that people understand that your brand, the who am I, why am I different? Why do you want me? Continues to be.

20:02
explored and explained in a way with your client that they are able to internalize it, they’re able to relate to it. And guess what? When she started doing that, after the nurturing becomes a recommendation, right? So it continues to pay itself forward where it’s like, okay, you have a good experience with this client, this roofing company. I’m now going to go recommend this roofing company to somebody else. And we know there’s a gazillion roofing companies out there to choose from, right? So it helps somebody else’s decision fast track into a warm lead

20:32
that then this roofing company can go and nurture, right? So it has such a like fortuitous, cyclical, really wonderful way of being able to give back if you’re using it for the right reasons. If you’re gonna use it just to spam meal people out, taking your email list and just sending stuff out that you’re not clear who the target is, you’re not clear why you’re even reaching out to them, you’re not clear what you want them to go do, you’re not clear how you’re gonna be able to help them.

21:00
There’s just no reason for that. That’s just gonna dilute your efforts. It’s going to spend a lot of money for no reason at all. And you’re gonna be very, very disappointed with the results. That’s my, well, I’m asked by Tidebox. Even if you look at the results. And that’s, you know, I think that’s, you know. Even if you’re looking at the results, you just cross your fingers and pray. Yeah. And then talking about before, we’re talking about, you know, the other guide we have for the CRM research, there’s another guide that we have, which is also free on

21:27
the blueprint for actually how to develop a lead nurturing strategy for any platform that you have that has the capability of doing it. And so the whole idea of having the strategy is one piece, right, good strategy is only as good as knowing if it’s working or if it’s not working. And you said something I think it’s really important to kind of reemphasize, even companies are sending out that monthly newsletter, if you’re not looking and if it’s not connected to your website to know who’s coming back to your website, who’s taking action, if you don’t have lead scoring set up.

21:57
and a way to track the hand, what I’ll call the hand raisers, right? The people that are showing interest and why are you sending out the newsletter just to see and pat yourself on the back because you have a 60% open rate. It means absolutely nothing. And so it’s really valuable when you have a CRM that’s connected to all these different tools, the newsletter, you know, the things you’re doing in social, the things you’re doing everywhere and to get heads and tails to figure out, is this actually moving the needle? Is it making an impact on my business at all? Because if it’s not.

22:26
and you’re waiting a year to look at the data or even six months, you’ve just spent six months or a year or waste of time and money doing something that provided little to no results. I think that’s a really good point. And me and April have taken that one to heart. I mean, we’ve kind of cleaned up a lot of that over the last year or so. I mean, we were sending out a newsletter every week and we’re like, who’s even looking at this and what are we even doing with this? And it came to the point of like,

22:51
If we’re not going to do anything with it, why do we even have it out there? We’re putting a lot of effort into something that we’re not reaping any benefit from. So we had to experience that for ourselves. So we could totally respect what you’re saying. We also tried a lead gen system that we thought looked very attractive and didn’t work for our business whatsoever, but resulted in a lot of work and a lot of money spent. We call that testing and learning. It was a…

23:18
pretty expensive test and learn, but you know, it was testing and learning. Now we can speak on behalf of that with our clients who are trying to do similar things. So I say all that because I’m going back to what you were saying about what’s the success criteria, what’s important for the business, what are the business goals, how is this serving? So I’d love if you could talk a little bit about how do you really establish that and how do you help businesses really figure out then.

23:43
What are the right things that I should go do in order to really fuel my business? So this is sort of like a fundamental exercise. And I always imagine myself talking to like a group of like, you know, first graders when I do this, because I try to sort of simplify and dumb down every aspect of what I’m about to say. And so for me, the first thing I do is to try to understand as best as I can.

24:11
Beyond what they’re selling, right, and sometimes it’s complicated. So that’s takes a little bit of bearing to understand what they sell, right. If it’s not as simple to understand and there are complex sales out there, right. But beyond that is what happens today in your sales process. So somebody fills out a website form, somebody calls you, you meet somebody at an event, they go to your webinar, they register. What is the first thing that happens after that? But sometimes there’s not even a simple answer there, right? It’s like so convoluted.

24:39
But we figure out, okay, like what, if we, if it’s convoluted, what should be the first step and then what’s the second step, the third step, et cetera. And we go through and we start creating a playbook for their sales process. And what that often will reveal is a few things. One, that there’s a lack of a process, right? First more, secondly, that there’s inefficiencies in a lot of manual things that could be automated, right? So they’re having to go and do double data entry there.

25:08
putting something into a quote, but then they have to go into some other tool to set up the invoice or, you know, there’s a lot of extra work that’s being done. That can be completely eliminated, right? Because the world we live in today in a very like, you know, gratifying way, we could connect all these technologies together if you know how to do it. And even if you know why it should be connected and what the, the result will be, you know, for connecting and then so going through the sales process and it helps find where the gaps are in the business.

25:37
because everything, every business revolves around sales, right, you’re not in business if you’re not selling something. And so rather than me spend time talking about their marketing efforts, their marketing strategy and what their growth plans are, I start super simple, you know, and I think that’s an exercise anybody listening today can really do, especially if you’re the owner of the business, if you’re in a sales position, even if you’re the sales person listening and start writing down on paper, what is my process?

26:03
And if it’s not something you repeat and do the exact same way every single time, then there is no process. And that would be where I would start, you know, is building that foundation. Because like, as we said before, if there is no process, you can’t stack technology onto something that has no foundation. Otherwise it’s just going to crumble and it’s going to fall apart and it’s not going to work. Well, and I love starting with that granularity of an exercise for people because I think you’re right. It helps them.

26:32
be able to relate better to what you’re asking, right? And even if you’re, you know, showing them that they don’t have a process or a way of doing things, you’re doing it in a way that I would say is quote unquote kind, but also a little bit of low-hanging fruit so that they can understand what you’re talking about. Because I think that is a lot of what happens on the other side is when you say CRM to people, they have different definitions, which we sort of talked around.

27:00
or they’re not using it for the right things, or they have these systems that aren’t connected, all the things that we’ve talked about here. But I like the idea of starting with an exercise that’s very tangible so that they can get their head around and then in real time, see what you’re proving out to them, right? That this is where your gaps are very real, this is what we can fix, and doing it in a way that I would guess, and it’s what we always try to do with our business, makes a pretty big impact pretty quickly.

27:30
versus saying something like, we need to figure out your strategic goals way up here, and it’s gonna be this X amount of days, time, weeks, process, and then we’ll get back to you with what we need to do versus we’re gonna get to work on behalf of your business today. So all of that to say, I would love to hear what sort of reactions do you get in these situations? Like…

27:51
Do people have aha moments? Are they relieved? Are they appreciative? Does it help them sign on the dotted line faster? You know, what’s kind of the other side of the folks sitting there that you’re working through this with? So the answer is like yes to all the above, because as we talk, like one thing that I have as a sort of approach, you know, and I obviously sales approach, but I’ll never do a demo of what we can provide until I gather all this information and understand all these pain points and how they actually operate as a company.

28:21
because then when I do the demo, like that roofing client, they signed up within like two days, I think, or three days, you know, because they’re like, oh my God, this is amazing. Like all the problems you said that you helped me figure out, like you just showed me how you can solve all those, you know, let’s go, where do I sign? I was talking to another client this morning, well, Prospect, I should say, and they’re on HubSpot, but they’re, want to set something up off of HubSpot, so another team uses it, it’s getting very expensive. And they’re like, oh, we have Salesforce, we have Shopify, we need integration.

28:50
Some people will be like, oh yeah, we can do that. But my answer was, well, what kind of integration? What are you hoping to get out of it? Like, why are you looking to integrate? And I can tell that I got very sort of like artificial, superficial answers, whatever you wanna call it, that weren’t really like, okay, they thought this out, right? They’re just like, oh, we want it because it sounds good. And I’m like, well, that’s not an answer, right? Like we need to, if we’re gonna do an integration, does Shopify connect to Salesforce first? Does it connect to the CRM first? What are we not reporting you’re looking for?

29:19
Like there’s all these things that come out of that type of integration that you would need to know before you could be like, oh yeah, we can do it. Right. Because almost anything’s possible, but is it going to give them the result? So the other piece of it, which, you know, I think you’d appreciate April is that when they say to me, the one I love the best is, oh, we got that covered. Like we have, we have a process that we have assistance for that. And then I call their bluff every single time. I’m like, oh, that’s awesome. I’d love to see what you have, you know, like, can we look at it together?

29:47
And either like, oh, no, like we can’t do that or we can’t show it to you. Or they all agree to that. And then I’ll let them drive and I’ll say to them, like intentionally, bring the person onto the call from your team that uses this tool every single day. Right. And then they then go out to find somebody that they know uses it. If anybody else really using it. And then I’ll start asking questions, be like, oh, what happens when you click here? What happens you click there?

30:15
Oh, I don’t know. Like, or, oh, we don’t do that. Or I’ll like, I was recently on a call where they had things like industry or like services, right. And things you would expect to be like a drop down menu. And they’re all text boxes. Michael, how do you have any consistency if you’re typing everything into your system? Like it had that’s impossible, right. And they’re like, oh, that’s a good point. You know, and so those are the types of responses we usually get. And I mean, and like I said, it really

30:44
depends upon the mindset of who we’re talking to. If the person recognizes that there is an issue and they’re willing to admit that to themselves, there’s great outcomes of that conversation. If it’s the reverse and they’re like, no matter what I would say to them, or you or the two of you would say to them, they’re just stuck in their own head. And I see that in a loving, caring way. It’s just how people are sometimes, right? Then there’s nothing I’m gonna be able to say to kind of change their mind to make them understand that what they’re doing is

31:13
completely inadequate and we can do something that’s gonna force be superior. But I’d say that 95% of people who talk to you are really well thought out people that can see the value of a change as a positive. I find it so interesting because again, it just feels like just a constant state of dichotomies as we’re thinking about serum systems because there’s the quick fix mentality but then a lack of adoption.

31:40
It’s like, okay, we have the process, we asked for the process and system, but now we don’t want to use it, we don’t know how to use it effectively or efficiently, or we don’t even use it day to day, we haven’t integrated into the business. Some of the problems that we were talking about in the very beginning, we know when we’ve seen some of this happen, it’s usually because one person sees it as an opportunity and the rest of the business does not. Or

32:04
There’s people who are like too busy to use the system, but they wanted efficiencies to begin with, again, does not make any sense. Or they’re very protective of whatever IP they’re putting in there. And that’s probably the biggest one we see, which is like, these are my relationships. I’m not gonna share my IP, which is my relationships, because that’s how I get rewarded, especially if you’re in sales or if you’re a seller-doer model. It’s part of your differentiator, if you will. So.

32:33
What’s your recommendation for how to start breaking down some of these dichotomies? Because like I said, they seem to be so ever prevalent where it’s like, oh, we want to drive efficiency, but we’re not going to use the systems and all of those things I just mentioned. So the first thing is, and this is something I’ll do even in our sales process, is find out who that cheerleader is within the organization. If there’s not somebody there that’s going to take accountability and

33:02
They’re not going to use the system every day to make sure that everybody under them uses it, then why are we even having a conversation? Right? So that’s like the first thing is finding somebody to take that ownership. Well, we found and to be the most pivotal thing to overcome the lack of adoption and to get consistency in the platform is two things. One, we do hands-on training with every client we bring on. So there’s no prerecorded videos. There’s no, Hey, go look at these links.

33:29
Myself, Heather, Reid, we’re all going in, having these video calls with our clients and they could be five, six hours worth of training we might do over the course of a few weeks. And we’re showing them how we’ve customized the platform for their specific business, their process. And we’re giving them step-by-step instruction on how to do everything. On top of that, we host monthly coaching and strategy sessions with the sales team. So we’ll go on sometimes to see if a 15 minute call, maybe it’s an hour.

33:59
but even that roofing client, right? They’re soaring, they’re doing amazing. I still have monthly calls with them. And I will for the next however many years they’re a client of ours, because it helps me keep them accountable. It also helps realize things they might be doing wrong. Like for example, like Maria, who was replying to people requesting a metal roof for roof repair. Like if I didn’t have those monthly calls, I would have never known that was going on, right?

34:23
It just like happened to be I’m like, oh, how come like this one wasn’t assigned to Joe or Mike? And she’s like, oh, they wanted a roof repair. So I just told them we don’t do that. I’m like, well, that’s an issue, right? Like that’s an or it’s an opportunity, I should say, right, that we can fix that mentality. Those calls are extremely, extremely vital. And it also allows it. I’m like the outside person, right? That’s telling them, hey, you really should be doing this or you’re doing it the wrong way. Here’s a better way to do it. Or at a point, Debbie, like, hey, Mike, I know she haven’t logged in in a few weeks.

34:53
Why is that? Is there a question you have? Is there a roadblock? What can we do to help you? So we’re not trying to make anybody feel bad. We’re just trying to understand what the problem is and how we could rectify it. And then the last piece is there are gonna be times, April, where, and then there are, let’s say a team of 10 salespeople, 20 salespeople, and you have some people that are legacy in there. Maybe they’re a bit older, they’re set in their ways. They don’t wanna adopt. And we’re like, okay, that’s okay, no problem.

35:22
find the three to five salespeople that are really have a strong appetite to leverage the new CRM, train them, focus on them for a few months. And then all the other people that didn’t want to adopt be like, hey, why is Joe and Dan getting so many more leads than us? Why are they getting all these things? Well, because they’re using the CRM. And if you want to get those results, you got to use it. And so then it becomes a little bit more of a competitive aspect to it. But those are the, I’d say the core, you know, fundamentals.

35:52
of how we get teams to adopt. And sometimes it takes a little bit of time, it’s not an overnight process. It could take us a couple of months to get everybody acclimated. Because if you remember, I always use the example of working out. I don’t know if you guys work out, I go to the gym, I do what I do. I don’t know if I’m doing everything right, but I do what I do. And so it’s like, if you’ve been going to the gym for 10 years and you’re doing all your exercises, then you start working out the trainer and they’re like, oh, you’re doing…

36:21
the chest press wrong, you’re doing this wrong, you’re doing that wrong, you know, this is the right form to use. It’s hard to change, right? Because you’re so used to that behavior of doing something the way you’ve been doing it. But with constant coaching and reinforcement, you could make a change. You just have to be willing and wanting to make that change. Well, once again, you said so many things there. Um, but I think the, the most impactful part that I take away is that it is very much the people first approach.

36:51
And going back to what you said before about, you know, somebody calls and they want an integration of Shopify to Salesforce or they’re using HubSpot and you know, they’re asking for this random thing. I mean, philosophically, this is very much what Ann and I do within our business too, is take a look at who we have and consider that as part of the work, because we could put the best whatever CRM system in this case.

37:18
in place, but if nobody’s going to use it or use it the way that it’s meant to be used, then what’s the point of that? And I also really like the fact that you stay involved, not only from an accountability standpoint, right? Because I think that could be a pretty slippery slope if your job becomes pointing fingers and holding people accountable in the way of like, those calls or you’re not using the system, instead of finding creative ways to

37:46
get people engaged and then show that it’s working while also continuing to do that value add that we are asking those clients to do where you look for those opportunities of, why wasn’t this assigned? Or asking the question even in the way of, it’s been a few weeks since you’ve been in here, what is it that’s holding you back? Instead of coming in to lay down the hammer that it’s not being used or exiting. Must log in now. Yeah, maybe yes. Yes, but I love the idea that it’s

38:17
the people first and then the system and recognizing that. Because I think that that consultative approach alleviates a lot of the stress that I think we see with our clients too, of like, you know, another system or I’m not tech savvy or I am part of the older generation and I don’t know how to do this. So I’m gonna resist all of those different things versus saying, hey, we have these calls and let’s have the conversation and figure out how to optimize every time and make this work harder for us.

38:44
So more comments than questions in that case, but that’s what came up for me. Yeah, I just built on that. You’re speaking, Jason. I went to the dentist yesterday and you know, like for six months, you think you’re doing it right, you’re brushing your teeth, you’re flossing, and then you get to the dentist, they’re like, you have a whole lot more plaque around here than I would like, and you’re like.

39:07
I’m not even brushing my teeth right. So I digress a little bit, but when you were giving your story about you think you’re doing everything right when you go to the gym until you get the personal trainer, I’m feeling you on that one. But I was just going to build with the comment and maybe put a bow on it, both of your guys’s comments and really kind of ladder back up to culture a bit because the people first mentality, the prioritizing relationship and relationship building.

39:35
the lead generation to focus on sales, the driving features, all those things are at the heart of CRM systems. And so with that in mind, I think it’s really important that it’s established, like you said, by a champion, but it also needs to be scorecarded against for that accountability. It needs to be integrated into your other systems and make sure that people use them. I just think that that is extremely critical. And I, especially if…

40:02
Again, if you have a seller-doer model where you’re expecting people to do and sell, the first thing that falls off when people get busy is the selling part. So unless you’re scorecarding it, unless you’re tracking it, again, it goes back to those analytics and what you’re actually measuring. I think it has a hard time to get that adoption, get that traction. But as we’re thinking about this, and we’ve kind of talked about different…

40:26
things that CRMs could look like. I want people to hear, CRM is not just one thing. It’s a network of things that work together. So Jason, this might seem like, take us back again to that kindergarten stage or the first grade stage, and just explain the different parts of what CRM or what could be in a CRM system. Because I think people are probably like, oh, it’s a technology, or no, it’s an app, or no, it’s a process, or no, it’s a system, and it’s…

40:56
can be all those things, but what fundamentally is at the heart of a CRM system? Maybe we should have started with that question, but here we are. Well, a good CRM could produce beautiful rainbows. No, I’m just kidding. Yeah. Maybe, maybe it’s very magical. A few fundamental things, and this isn’t just my opinion. I think if you looked at any, we’re talking about CRM, the core pieces are the ability, obviously, to keep track of contacts, right? So not only contacts, but the

41:25
definitively your segmented contacts, your vendors, your customers, your prospects, your leads, your marketing, qualify leads versus your sales qualify leads, having all that P those people in a very searchable and segmented way in one central database is a huge component. The second piece is the ability to do email marketing. I’m a huge component of, for example, Salesforce, we talked about a little bit. Salesforce doesn’t really have email marketing capabilities, right? You have to.

41:54
by Pardot or now it’s called, you know, what is it’s like on a cloud, right? Or anyway, so there are tools out there that seemingly net suite, right? It’s not a, it’s not really a CRM. It’s like, it’s an ERP system, right? You know, so, so email marketing, storing of your contacts, meal segment, sales functionality. So sales reporting pipeline, right? We talked before, and you said about things get busy. You don’t have a way to manage it. There’s nothing in the pipeline. So having a way to forecast revenue.

42:23
to track what is each stage of the pipeline. And maybe you have different areas of the business, right, for that. Those are the core fundamentals. Everything else on top of that is sort of like, you know, the sprinkles and whipped cream, you know, on the cupcake. So, I mean, if you had landing pageing, to build landing pages, to do chat bots, to do other things, social media posting, most CRMs have those tools, but I wouldn’t look at them as core functional parts of a CRM. You know, the other piece of it that you talked before about

42:53
quoting and all these other things, a lot of businesses already have tools that are running their business. And so that could be part of your CRM too, right? So if you’re using QuickBooks to manage all of your financing, if you have a quoting system, like we deal with a lot of manufacturers who have either proprietary things they’ve built or off the shelf tools that are for their specific industry that run their business. If that tool went away tomorrow, their business would fall apart like super rapidly.

43:22
So we can’t be like, oh, we’re just going to ditch what you have because we have to recognize that there might be tools that they have today that are instrumental to their operations. There’s those are the major components, I would say for sure. You know, and it’s every lot of things I’ll lastly also add is that they’re dubbed as a CRM, but they’re really not a CRM. So that Shopify prospect I was talking about this morning and she’s like, you know, just, you know, to be courteous and letting you know, I’m looking at active campaign, I’m looking at a MailChimp.

43:50
I’m like, well, that’s interesting. Neither one of those are a CRM and we’re having a conversation about CRMs. So like, why are you even looking at those? You know, like that’s just one sliver of what you need. And she’s like, oh, well, I don’t really want all this tech stack, you know, it’d be too big. I’m like, well, then don’t look at those tools because they’re not going to give you what you need. You know, so there’s a lot of misconception out there which is why, you know, having this CRM fit assessment is so critical so that whether you’re talking to Cultivize or someone else

44:18
At least we can give you a foundation and a structure to say, okay, here’s all the things I know I need to ask all these other software companies to figure out if they can do what I want them to do. Well, I think that’s a great way to kind of wrap this up. Like I said, maybe we should have led with that, but I feel like we had to uncover why you need it first before we kind of got to the nitty gritty of the things. But that was a really great way to bring it home. But

44:43
We’re going to give you an opportunity to kind of put a bow on this and tell people where to find you. But before that, we’re going to go some rapid fire questions. Are you are you up for that? Let’s go. I’m ready. All right. Well, you talked about cupcakes and sprinkles and whipped cream, but ironically, one of the question I have written down here was your favorite dessert. Whoa, I would say anything with chocolate and lemon and potentially if there’s a combination of pistachio mixed in, that’s like icing on the cake. All three of those together.

45:10
There’s a, I’m going for Valentine’s. There’s a great place called Lemon Shell, it’s near where I live. And there’s one dessert, it’s kind of, I don’t like custard, but it’s kind of like a custard consistency, but mixed in with pistachios and lemon. And it’s like, it’s, and it comes in like almost like a champagne glass. So it’s like, it’s a light, it’s not a very like big, dense dessert. But yeah, that combination and peanut butter. Peanut butter doesn’t go with lemon, but like if there’s something with peanut butter and chocolate, like even if I’m like, all right, I’m not having dessert, I’m gonna have a bite.

45:40
Your favorite Halloween costume. So I’ll have to send you guys, and maybe there’s a way to put in the show notes, me and my wife, my kids, as they get older, they’re teenagers, not as much, but we’re like Halloween fanatics. Like our house is like in the neighborhood of like thousands of people, like the house everybody goes to, because I go absolutely crazy for Halloween. I love scary clowns. Like that’s been my trend the last few years. Oh! And I just like creep up on, not only the kids going through the house, but like I’ve scared some adults, like, you know, just.

46:09
got up behind him and scared the bejesus out of him. So, and I don’t do it in a creepy way. I just, you know, the mask alone and like, you know, just like the way you’re standing. Like I’ve had, yeah, it’s pretty funny. But for some reason, I think I’ve missed my calling as like an entertainer. Like, I just love that. I don’t even say anything. I just sort of like just walk around in a very creepy way with that mask. Like, I find so much enjoyment out of it. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but it’s like, you know, I…

46:40
exciting. And that ladies and gentlemen is why I do not like Halloween. Okay, same. So if you could be somebody else for a day, like you can like live their life or be who they are, who would that be? I feel like I missed not a calling, but like I love to cook. And I’ve taken like some classes at the Culinary Institute near me of America, which happens to be not far from where I live. So I think being like a chef, like a really

47:08
like really well known chef, not even well known, but like just like with high skills and being like in a kitchen, like cooking, like just really like elevated like meals all day, I think would be a blast to kind of experience that at that like level. And a scary clown costume. Yeah, like a little hot in the kitchen with that costume. Like a blended two together? Scary clown celebrity chef. Yeah, that could be kind of interesting. I don’t know. There’s actually there’s a restaurant called Beetle House in, we were just in LA.

47:38
over the holidays, even though I’m in New York and we were out there and it’s a place called Beetle House. I don’t know if everybody’s listening in LA if you’ve never been there. And it’s kind of like a Timber and Esk themed restaurant. And you have like Chucky walking around dancing and stuff. You have like all these different characters from all different films. And like your food comes out with like a knife stabbed in the steak and is like emulating blood like off the plate. It’s a really…

48:02
cool, like interesting restaurants. So there is a, there’s something out there for everybody. And you know, I guess if you look hard enough, we all have backup plans, Jason. That’s a good one. Yeah. Oh, those are awesome. Those are some of the best answers we’ve had in the very large time when we’ve done fire questions. This has been a really fabulous conversation. I think we’ve covered CRMs from like nuts to bolts, but anything we missed, anything you want to offer in order to wrap up this episode and then tell people where to find you.

48:30
Yeah, absolutely. So the only thing that we didn’t really per se miss, a lot of these topics we’re talking about, I would say for our businesses that are a little bit more established, right? They have the resources, they have the team, the infrastructure. So one thing that we just launched actually at the beginning of this year is a tool called Profit Path. And Profit Path is essentially is Google Sheets, right? That are connected together, which is if you don’t know, Google Sheets are very much like Excel, right? Spreadsheets. So people that are comfortable, familiar with those.

48:59
And what we’ve done is we’ve taken all of the best things that CRMs can provide, tracking sales, tracking contacts, tracking the marketing ROI. And we’ve put this all into a series of interconnected sheets into one document that your audience can download. You could actually, they can use the code, which we’ll have in the show notes, strategic counsel and save 50 bucks off of it. It’s only 1.99 for lifetime access. So there’s no monthly fee, no annual fee.

49:26
That tool is really designed to help these smaller businesses, I would say, like under a million dollars in revenue, to start the foundations like we’re talking about on how to track data, how to put information in consistently. And it’s built in such a way that you could export all that data into a CRM once you’re ready to get to that point. So that’s something that we’re really excited about and passionate about. And then to find me, you could find me on social media, I’m pretty much everywhere. But the easiest thing to do, as I said earlier, go to afterthelied.com.

49:56
And that’s all my social media. That’s the free downloads we talked about and even an access to the tool, Profit Path that I just shared. And I’ll say me and April have been trying that out and we have well, well tested the fact that it is a very useful tool. It’s flexible enough to accommodate all businesses. And so, yeah, so definitely go check that out. It’s definitely a really great place to start. Starts to really organize all your thinking and into that.

50:26
one place that we talked about in order to start to drive that focus and drive the connection to the relationship building and start to nurture. So I will definitely attest to that. So thank you so much, Jason, for being on. This has been a great conversation. And for all of our listeners, we encourage you to take at least one powerful insight you’ve heard. There was a gazillion today, especially about going and checking out that tool and put it into practice. Remember, strategic counsel is only effective if you put it into action.

50:56
Did we spark something with this episode that you wanna talk about further? Reach out to us through our website, ForthRight-People.com We can help you customize what you have heard to move your business. And make sure to Follow or Subscribe to Strategic Counsel on your favorite podcast platform!