Hello, and welcome to the Close The Loop podcast.
Kevin Dieny:I'm your host, Kevin Dieny and today we're going to talk about how to
Kevin Dieny:get the most value out of your CRM.
Kevin Dieny:To help us dive into this topic, this fairly technical, pretty complex topic.
Kevin Dieny:We have two special guests with us today, we have Islin
Kevin Dieny:Munisteri and Lucas Munisteri.
Kevin Dieny:They have co-founded Theia Marketing.
Kevin Dieny:They are a Hubspot platinum partner agency, and they work hard to integrate
Kevin Dieny:client business processes into the CRM.
Kevin Dieny:They've lived in several states across the US in Texas, Alaska, and now Colorado.
Kevin Dieny:They enjoy sharing their experiences with others, all about different CRMs.
Kevin Dieny:So welcome guys.
Kevin Dieny:I've also got my colleague here.
Kevin Dieny:His name is Tim Tran.
Kevin Dieny:He's I guess, Tim, do you want to do a little intro for yourself?
Tim Tran:Yeah, sure.
Tim Tran:I'm the internal consultant here at CallSource, I work directly with
Tim Tran:the teams and make sure that, I have streamlined all the operations,
Tim Tran:and give advice where we're needed.
Kevin Dieny:Cool, Tim is the ops guy here.
Kevin Dieny:I thought he'd be a great person to kick around some of the
Kevin Dieny:discussions around this topic.
Kevin Dieny:So that's why I've asked him if he'd join us.
Kevin Dieny:First of all, we're going to be talking about how businesses get
Kevin Dieny:value out of the CRM first off.
Kevin Dieny:Um, maybe Lucas, define for us, what the heck we're talking about
Kevin Dieny:when we say a CRM for those that are like, what is that again?
Lucas Ministeri:Yeah, so CRM, everybody uses a CRM without even realizing it.
Lucas Ministeri:And basically what a CRM is, is it's a contact or customer relationship, man.
Lucas Ministeri:If you use outlook for your email or Gmail for your email, that fundamentally
Lucas Ministeri:is a CRM at its simplest level.
Lucas Ministeri:You're keeping your contact information, their email address,
Lucas Ministeri:and how to get ahold of them.
Lucas Ministeri:But that level of CRM is very inactionable for a company it's good
Lucas Ministeri:for communication, but it doesn't let you grow that relationship or nurture
Lucas Ministeri:that relationship because you only know very little data about that.
Lucas Ministeri:If you've used something like outlook, you can see, you can go into the
Lucas Ministeri:more properties and you can see it lets you track a little bit more
Lucas Ministeri:detail, but it still has its end.
Lucas Ministeri:When you get into a true CRM, something to manage your customer life cycle
Lucas Ministeri:and know how to cut, how customers are interacting with your brand.
Lucas Ministeri:That's something like a HubSpot or a Salesforce or Microsoft dynamics.
Lucas Ministeri:And those allow you to understand every little detail about your customers
Lucas Ministeri:from which websites are viewing to which products are they buying,
Lucas Ministeri:are they interested in down to, are they paying their bills on time?
Lucas Ministeri:And depending upon the CRM that you pick, you get different levels of reporting
Lucas Ministeri:and insights into your customers.
Lucas Ministeri:Now, Well, you will find as you drive down this road and we'll just leave a
Lucas Ministeri:word here, have you scratch your heads?
Lucas Ministeri:When you get into a CRM that tracks every, everything you are using, what's
Lucas Ministeri:called an ERP and that's actually an enterprise reporting platform and that's
Lucas Ministeri:used to manage your entire business.
Lucas Ministeri:So there is a cutoff of, from one system to another and Salesforce and Microsoft
Lucas Ministeri:dynamics or net suite with, uh, Oracle.
Lucas Ministeri:We'll cross those lines tools like HubSpot or active campaign.
Lucas Ministeri:They don't really cross that boundary.
Lucas Ministeri:They still stay in that CRM component.
Lucas Ministeri:And it's more about managing that customer through that marketing
Lucas Ministeri:and sales portion of the lifecycle.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah, I think it's important that to me, at least the
Kevin Dieny:CRM sort of came out of a rolodex.
Kevin Dieny:I mean, it sort of evolved from there.
Kevin Dieny:So that brings me to the question for you Islin.
Kevin Dieny:So CRMs have probably evolved a lot over time.
Kevin Dieny:So how are they evolving and what are they doing?
Kevin Dieny:To help businesses today as they continue to become, maybe like Lucas
Kevin Dieny:mentioned an all-in-one or maybe are they getting a little more niche into
Kevin Dieny:specific functions that are providing.
Kevin Dieny:Can you shed some light on that?
Islin Munisteri:Sure, so there's, I would say there's like different
Islin Munisteri:CRMs, like there's I would say there's industry specific CRMs, right?
Islin Munisteri:Like certain healthcare, like doctor's offices, that type of industry.
Islin Munisteri:There's pipedrive if you're running it like a sales heavy organization.
Islin Munisteri:And you have under a certain number of reps that that can help too.
Islin Munisteri:But really, I would say like a CRM, a good CRM will help you track the customer
Islin Munisteri:journey from like marketing from when a lead fills out a form on your website.
Islin Munisteri:There's a process called lead scoring, which you can implement.
Islin Munisteri:And at some point when a lead has viewed enough content or they have seen
Islin Munisteri:enough websites or they've had enough calls into your system of then, or
Islin Munisteri:they've had enough email opens, then they become, a sales qualified lead.
Islin Munisteri:So they move from a lead, from a marketing qualified lead to after enough
Islin Munisteri:activity, interacting with your brand.
Islin Munisteri:They becomes a sales qualified lead.
Islin Munisteri:And then so go from marketing and sales and then, depending on your
Islin Munisteri:products, right, you can also have a service in there as well.
Islin Munisteri:And so you're tracking, you know, support tickets and onboarding
Islin Munisteri:process with your CRM as well.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah, so, wow.
Kevin Dieny:So CRMs today are delivering a lot more value than like a typical rolodex.
Kevin Dieny:So, we have run into CRMs quite a bit, uh, and with our company and some of them are
Kevin Dieny:much more industry specific than others.
Kevin Dieny:Like you mentioned, the healthcare ones, we run into a lot of
Kevin Dieny:home service industry CRMs.
Kevin Dieny:And CRM is built for some, some of them are like, look, we do the basics.
Kevin Dieny:You can bolt on a lot of features, a lot of cool things.
Kevin Dieny:So, uh, Tim in your experience, in our ops side where it's either internal
Kevin Dieny:or working with clients, have you run into a lot of CRMs out there.
Kevin Dieny:And, and what does that sort of seem like?
Kevin Dieny:Is it this like an ocean of CRMs?
Kevin Dieny:What is it like out there?
Tim Tran:Yeah, everyone has like a, their go-to CRM.
Tim Tran:They have to have it integrate or it doesn't work, or we
Tim Tran:won't work with you guys.
Tim Tran:We used to work with a lot of auto dealerships.
Tim Tran:So a lot of it was like, hey, this CRM needs to work in our dealership.
Tim Tran:This is what we know.
Tim Tran:This is what it feeds into.
Tim Tran:So I understand there's, there's a lot of CRMs and a lot of people
Tim Tran:are glued or business are glued and tied into those, those CRMs.
Tim Tran:It's like they're a partner in their business.
Kevin Dieny:So that brings me great question out for you, Lucas.
Kevin Dieny:So there's requirements for a CRM, right?
Kevin Dieny:I guess a CRM might just be like, look, we'll sell it to anybody.
Kevin Dieny:But I think the way that we've adopted CRM is the way that I've
Kevin Dieny:seen other companies do it is like there's kind of requirements.
Kevin Dieny:You don't just want to list, like buy any little thing and it's out there.
Kevin Dieny:You want to make sure if you're going to buy something.
Kevin Dieny:You're going to be able to have either the people to manage it.
Kevin Dieny:You're going to take use of it.
Kevin Dieny:So there's, to me, there's some requirements out there.
Kevin Dieny:So what would you say, like some requirements might be for businesses
Kevin Dieny:who are considering a CRM?
Lucas Ministeri:Honestly, the requirement list is infinite.
Lucas Ministeri:It doesn't have a bottom.
Lucas Ministeri:And the reason why I say that is you have.
Lucas Ministeri:Your outlook inbox, which is the most simple CRM on the planet to the CRMs.
Lucas Ministeri:They get to the borderline of any ERP and tracking everything.
Lucas Ministeri:The biggest requirement for a CRM though across the board is will you use it?
Lucas Ministeri:It, I cannot tell you the number of clients who have purchased.
Lucas Ministeri:Zoho pipe drive sales, loft copper, and like four or five other CRM platforms.
Lucas Ministeri:And they're using each one for a tiny little bit of function.
Lucas Ministeri:And like you brought up a minute ago, you can bolt on a ton of
Lucas Ministeri:stuff, but does it really work?
Lucas Ministeri:Uh, HubSpot's got a great phrase called Frankenstein.
Lucas Ministeri:And it's this concept of, yes, we have the central data repository,
Lucas Ministeri:but we're going to add all these other resources around the edges of
Lucas Ministeri:it to make it actually function how we want, but you've only sat settled
Lucas Ministeri:for something that works well enough.
Lucas Ministeri:It doesn't actually work how you want.
Lucas Ministeri:And that's led rise to a whole new category of programs called
Lucas Ministeri:data aggregation platform.
Lucas Ministeri:And all they do is bring databases together and send data out.
Lucas Ministeri:But you're you get into this world of tech debt, and I know I'm running in
Lucas Ministeri:circles around your question, but the point being is, if you don't know what
Lucas Ministeri:you want to track, and you don't know what your business is, KPIs are, or what
Lucas Ministeri:matters to you to your growth, it doesn't matter what the CRM is or what it does.
Lucas Ministeri:If you can't track what matters and you don't, or even better
Lucas Ministeri:yet, in some cases you don't know what matters to your business.
Lucas Ministeri:It's not going to matter what you pick.
Kevin Dieny:Right, and, and I can see what you mean by that being an endless
Kevin Dieny:well there, because, what the business really needs is varies business to
Kevin Dieny:business sometimes, and they may need more resources or different processes to make
Kevin Dieny:use of a CRM than another business mind.
Kevin Dieny:Right?
Kevin Dieny:Like the, the purposes behind it.
Kevin Dieny:The core functionality of it is organizing for a business so that
Kevin Dieny:when things are more organized, you can better take action on them.
Kevin Dieny:And then when you do decide to take action, which is the thing
Kevin Dieny:you mentioned earlier Lucas.
Kevin Dieny:Was a really good CRM these days, ordering on an ERP is going to help you take action
Kevin Dieny:on the things that you've organized.
Kevin Dieny:So Islin, you mentioned some of the ways, like some of the things,
Kevin Dieny:the tools, the features that are in the CRM or in the ERP is today that
Kevin Dieny:are helping people, but what are.
Kevin Dieny:I guess general things, right?
Kevin Dieny:Cause there's so many CRMs.
Kevin Dieny:What are some general things that are helping businesses
Kevin Dieny:take action by using a CRM?
Kevin Dieny:Right?
Kevin Dieny:So like what tools or what features are companies using today that come
Kevin Dieny:from the CRM that helped them take action on the information they have?
Islin Munisteri:So I would say at the beginning, you need to understand
Islin Munisteri:what your business KPIs are.
Islin Munisteri:So for example, you have revenue.
Islin Munisteri:Okay.
Islin Munisteri:What drives that revenue?
Islin Munisteri:Okay.
Islin Munisteri:So you say, you need to have 10 leads a month.
Islin Munisteri:And the top of the funnel to drive to, to close deals at the end of the month.
Islin Munisteri:So that you know about how long your sales cycle is.
Islin Munisteri:You know how what's your revenue machine look like?
Islin Munisteri:From a sales side, you'd want to have deal tracking, right?
Islin Munisteri:You'd want to be able to understand what your deal pipeline looks like.
Islin Munisteri:For, you know, a lot of bigger companies, you'd want to be able to forecast
Islin Munisteri:probability to close on your deals.
Islin Munisteri:Once something is closed won you also have a process to
Islin Munisteri:take that to customer success.
Islin Munisteri:So it's, it's not like your sales processes is done once
Islin Munisteri:you kick it over the fence.
Islin Munisteri:Like there's, there's an entire business process in the background
Islin Munisteri:that's working and then understanding that business process is key.
Islin Munisteri:So that's why I was saying you need to have, if you can get, say part of
Islin Munisteri:the inbound methodology, if you're not doing any outbound farm, like hunting
Islin Munisteri:at all saying you have 10 leads come in from your website every month.
Islin Munisteri:And so that's marketing, like a KPI, towards driving revenue.
Islin Munisteri:And so those marketing source leads need to come down to sales and sales work works
Islin Munisteri:their process, and then some marketing needs to work their process, whether
Islin Munisteri:that's like social media, content, email, whatever those webinars, podcasts, you
Islin Munisteri:know, whatever those channels, may be.
Islin Munisteri:To drive that traffic to create the leads.
Islin Munisteri:That's what I mean, that's part of what we do is like the
Islin Munisteri:customer journey mapping, right.
Islin Munisteri:How does someone on the street who doesn't know, you turn into a customer,
Islin Munisteri:turn into an evangelist for your brand.
Kevin Dieny:Oh, that's really cool.
Kevin Dieny:So there's a lot of features bringing value to a business, I guess if
Kevin Dieny:they, if it fits their business model and if they take use on it.
Kevin Dieny:So, that kind of leads me immediately to think like, okay, well, who should be
Kevin Dieny:responsible in the business for making sure that the CRM is going to get used?
Kevin Dieny:Have you experienced it?
Kevin Dieny:So, Lucas, I mean, who is usually are in charge of that?
Kevin Dieny:Is it the owner or the CEO, or is it like a dedicated person
Kevin Dieny:that works best for that?
Lucas Ministeri:It depends upon the size of the organization.
Lucas Ministeri:So larger organizations that can have a team that that's their,
Lucas Ministeri:their job is to pay attention to what's going on inside the CRM.
Lucas Ministeri:Those are the people that ideally are managing it.
Lucas Ministeri:If you have a data manager or.
Lucas Ministeri:Uh, CRM, admin or somebody, and typically people in like Salesforce environments,
Lucas Ministeri:they will have a Salesforce admin.
Lucas Ministeri:They're going to be responsible for the day-to-day functioning of the system,
Lucas Ministeri:making sure it's working and healthy, but then the individual managers
Lucas Ministeri:or team leaders for departments for marketing or sales are going to be
Lucas Ministeri:responsible for making sure people are actually utilizing that system.
Lucas Ministeri:Cause if you don't force people to do.
Lucas Ministeri:They're not going to do it.
Lucas Ministeri:I mean, it's, if you don't tell someone they have to do it or their job's
Lucas Ministeri:important based measured on that, they're going to take the path of least resistance
Lucas Ministeri:and it takes a little bit of time to get people onboard into that mindset
Lucas Ministeri:that this is the best way to do that.
Islin Munisteri:Well, I guess, I mean, at some larger companies, right there, there
Islin Munisteri:is a revenue operations function, right?
Islin Munisteri:And they kind of corral the troops across like sales, marketing operations.
Islin Munisteri:And there's like a new emerging field called customer success,
Islin Munisteri:operations and rev ops basically make sure that everything is being
Islin Munisteri:reported system is being used.
Islin Munisteri:Any big fires or small fires are being put out in the systems
Islin Munisteri:that are, that are being used.
Kevin Dieny:That's really cool.
Kevin Dieny:I, we have a CRM admin here.
Kevin Dieny:If he was here, he'd probably be representing here on the
Kevin Dieny:call, but I also look at a.
Kevin Dieny:Uh, CRM, not like as the, obviously, as we've been talking about,
Kevin Dieny:not as the final destination.
Kevin Dieny:To me, a lot of businesses are going to go, man.
Kevin Dieny:If we knew this, we could probably make more money.
Kevin Dieny:Oh man.
Kevin Dieny:We'd like to sell, but then after we sell, we'd like to help with
Kevin Dieny:customer support or something.
Kevin Dieny:They think of how they want their business to run and behave.
Kevin Dieny:And to me, my mind immediately goes, okay, well with a CRM, you can do that easier
Kevin Dieny:with the capabilities that are tools that mimic, or that are similar to a CRM.
Kevin Dieny:And usually there's like a point where a business is like, well, maybe I can get
Kevin Dieny:away with using, like, Lucas mentioned, like maybe I can get away with using
Kevin Dieny:Excel spreadsheets, written notepads.
Kevin Dieny:So I'll go back to you Lucas, at where is the point where a business
Kevin Dieny:has to go from, notepads, Excel sheets, outlooks, gmails too.
Kevin Dieny:Okay, I'm going to get on board and get a full fledged CRM.
Kevin Dieny:Is there like a, a point cause we've run into businesses, I've
Kevin Dieny:been shocked how big they were to find out that he'd never had a CRM.
Kevin Dieny:So I think that there might be some line they cross where they're
Kevin Dieny:like, okay, I think it's time.
Lucas Ministeri:It's when you want to start understanding what's driving growth.
Lucas Ministeri:I mean, that's the biggest metric right there.
Lucas Ministeri:We've worked with clients that have grown to a $15 million a year business in
Lucas Ministeri:Excel, workbooks, and, people's brains.
Lucas Ministeri:Like there is nothing documented, but someone goes on vacation
Lucas Ministeri:and everything breaks.
Lucas Ministeri:So there there's a scope of like yes and no.
Lucas Ministeri:I think it really comes down to picking a CRM from day one.
Lucas Ministeri:And you can pick HubSpot as a CRM because they offer a free version out of the box.
Lucas Ministeri:There's a lot of other like low cost, low effort CRMs to get you started.
Lucas Ministeri:Because as long as you're just focusing on the CRM component, not the marketing
Lucas Ministeri:automation, not the sales automation or the pipeline or deal management and
Lucas Ministeri:all of these other things that come as an anciliary function of having a CRM.
Lucas Ministeri:A lot of that core data structure, these companies provide for very low cost.
Lucas Ministeri:And I don't see a reason for people not to do.
Lucas Ministeri:However, there are still people who will fight you tooth and
Lucas Ministeri:nail because of some reason.
Tim Tran:And on that point at what, when you guys are working
Tim Tran:with clients, what's the best way to get their team adopted into a CRM?
Tim Tran:Well, like which ways have you guys seen the most effective.
Lucas Ministeri:So we do a lot of hands on training with our clients.
Lucas Ministeri:A lot of time and effort spent.
Lucas Ministeri:Teaching them how to use the tools and working through those friction
Lucas Ministeri:barriers of I can't, or I don't want to.
Lucas Ministeri:And when it comes to the individual contributor, the person doing
Lucas Ministeri:the work, if their boss says, you will do this, it's much easier.
Lucas Ministeri:If their boss says, Hey, the CEO paid for this, but we're
Lucas Ministeri:not really going to do that.
Lucas Ministeri:They'll never use it.
Lucas Ministeri:It just it'll never happen.
Lucas Ministeri:And so it comes down to that encouragement to do it.
Lucas Ministeri:You will find the occasional, like person who's like the individual contributor.
Lucas Ministeri:Who's like, I need this, I want this.
Lucas Ministeri:And typically it's because they've come from an organization,
Lucas Ministeri:that's used it in their past and they've seen the value it adds.
Kevin Dieny:Another aspect of a CRM to me is also the internal side.
Kevin Dieny:Like helping with collaboration, for instance.
Kevin Dieny:So it isn't do you think you could comment on how a CRM might help a company?
Kevin Dieny:Increased collaboration with in itself, like within internal departments,
Kevin Dieny:sales, with marketing support, with marketing support, with sales, just
Kevin Dieny:anyone be able to collaborate easier with each other because they have a CRM.
Islin Munisteri:The great thing is that.
Islin Munisteri:For example, HubSpot does email tracking and a bunch of other CRMs do that too.
Islin Munisteri:And that way that email is not living just an outlook.
Islin Munisteri:And if you go down for a week or something, then that email is like
Islin Munisteri:unresponded to, or like I would say SOL but then if that email is
Islin Munisteri:living in the CRM, then another team member can take action on it.
Islin Munisteri:It's like, oh, we, we need to respond or we need to do something.
Islin Munisteri:I would say the marketing, the sales handoff, if you have some sort of
Islin Munisteri:marketing automation going on behind the scenes, life becomes a lot smoother.
Lucas Ministeri:Yeah, I mean, I can add a little more color to that.
Lucas Ministeri:Within like a lot of the organizations we help configure, they'll track
Lucas Ministeri:a person through that marketing funnel from a lead all the way to
Lucas Ministeri:an SQL or a sales qualified lead.
Lucas Ministeri:And when they hit that phase, they're automatically created as an opportunity
Lucas Ministeri:for a sales person to reach out to.
Lucas Ministeri:So provided both teams have aligned on what's a qualified person.
Lucas Ministeri:It helps the sales team know who to reach out to.
Lucas Ministeri:And then when the deal closes, it automatically creates a ticket
Lucas Ministeri:to either do the fulfillment or the project onboarding or
Lucas Ministeri:fulfill whatever they purchased.
Lucas Ministeri:So that there's a seamless handoff from each phase, and
Lucas Ministeri:everybody knows what's going on.
Lucas Ministeri:And depending upon where you create those tickets or tasks, it helps
Lucas Ministeri:people have line of sight to what their potential pipeline of work will be.
Islin Munisteri:Yeah, all of that historical information
Islin Munisteri:is stored within the CRM.
Islin Munisteri:So you can see all the emails that marketing and sales has had
Islin Munisteri:once customer success takes over.
Islin Munisteri:So provided, someone actually reviews the data and then you'll feel more prepared
Islin Munisteri:going into that, that client engagement.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah, so I guess coming off of that, then my question for, I
Kevin Dieny:guess, back to you Islin here would be like, how long should a company or how
Kevin Dieny:long do come some companies take before they see some value out of the CRM?
Kevin Dieny:I think some of the requirements we mentioned we want to use the CRM.
Kevin Dieny:And when you start using it, is that, does that enable any value, like day
Kevin Dieny:one or is it more likely that they'll see value at some time down the road?
Islin Munisteri:So I think Hubspot and a few other customer success,
Islin Munisteri:like communities have said, there's something like a day zero.
Islin Munisteri:Where that's the first day you start seeing value from the product.
Islin Munisteri:And that could be three to six months, down the line.
Islin Munisteri:If you're onboarded within like a month or two, then you can start
Islin Munisteri:seeing a value right away from the tool during the onboarding meetings.
Islin Munisteri:But the, the real value comes from actually using the tool, right.
Islin Munisteri:And then taking actionable insights from the reports and dashboards.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah, that's that's why, so maybe instead of commenting
Kevin Dieny:on it, I may ask you about it.
Kevin Dieny:So Lucas, let's say a company is like, we're going to get a CRM.
Kevin Dieny:What things could they do beforehand or ahead of time,
Kevin Dieny:or let's say they have a CRM.
Kevin Dieny:What things can they do to make it so that when they get a CRM, that they are ready
Kevin Dieny:and prepared to get more value out of it?
Lucas Ministeri:How do I put this politely...
Lucas Ministeri:knowing you have a problem is half the battle.
Lucas Ministeri:The second half of this battle is understanding how do you want to solve it?
Lucas Ministeri:So the number of people that buy a CRM that aren't ready for a CRM, and
Lucas Ministeri:that kind of contradicts what I said a minute ago around like everybody
Lucas Ministeri:needs one, but if you don't have a process, if you don't have a way of.
Lucas Ministeri:If it lives in your brain, the hardest thing for you to do is get it out of your
Lucas Ministeri:brain and into a process or a system.
Lucas Ministeri:And so the first step is figuring out how are you going to put
Lucas Ministeri:this into a process or a system?
Lucas Ministeri:How are you going to make this something that you can action on?
Lucas Ministeri:Because otherwise you'll be paying for a CRM and you're not going to have.
Lucas Ministeri:Any idea how you want to structure it.
Lucas Ministeri:And if you, yeah, you've got to have that plan.
Lucas Ministeri:I mean, we spend a lot of time with clients who buy a CRM, we start their
Lucas Ministeri:onboarding and it's like, we want to build out your sales pipeline.
Lucas Ministeri:What does that look like?
Lucas Ministeri:How do you manage your sales process?
Lucas Ministeri:I call people and I sell to.
Lucas Ministeri:And you're like, okay, well, what if they say yes, what do you do next?
Lucas Ministeri:What if they say no?
Lucas Ministeri:Like they genuinely have no idea.
Lucas Ministeri:And so getting that on the right, that right level is hugely important.
Islin Munisteri:Your process there, there needs to be a process
Islin Munisteri:where it lives in your head or in lucid chart or Vizio or something.
Islin Munisteri:You need to have some sort of step-by-step one to free for.
Islin Munisteri:This is what I do in my sales process, or this is how I'm getting
Islin Munisteri:marketing leads, or this is what my own onboarding process looks like.
Islin Munisteri:This is what my support process looks like.
Islin Munisteri:We've helped companies build out these process diagrams.
Islin Munisteri:For their companies, right.
Islin Munisteri:But that way it's documented and all the troops know which
Islin Munisteri:direction to head in when it's no longer lonely in someone's bring.
Kevin Dieny:Okay, so it brings me two questions into my head,
Kevin Dieny:after what you've just said.
Kevin Dieny:So I'll throw it right back to Lucas.
Kevin Dieny:A small company, who may not have, let's say the most complex processes.
Kevin Dieny:But they do have maybe, you know, something.
Kevin Dieny:So is a CRM for them?
Lucas Ministeri:Yeah, I mean, put it this way.
Lucas Ministeri:When we started five years ago, the first piece of software
Lucas Ministeri:we bought was Active Campaign.
Lucas Ministeri:And that was our CRM that we were going to use to manage contacts.
Lucas Ministeri:We bought that before we bought Microsoft for documents or
Lucas Ministeri:Google for email or anything.
Lucas Ministeri:The very first thing was how are we going to track these
Lucas Ministeri:people that we want to work?
Lucas Ministeri:And so having that day one, we didn't know exactly what we were going to put in it
Lucas Ministeri:and how we were going to structure it, but we bought something and we got started.
Lucas Ministeri:And when we left active campaign and went to HubSpot, we knew the entire database,
Lucas Ministeri:it was in such a bad shape that it really wasn't a structure that was maintainable.
Lucas Ministeri:But because we had tried and been working in that, in that system, that invite.
Lucas Ministeri:The move to HubSpot was very easy.
Lucas Ministeri:We knew what we were doing wrong.
Lucas Ministeri:We knew what we wanted to do differently the next time, where,
Lucas Ministeri:when you're doing it from firing from the hip, the best way to put it.
Lucas Ministeri:And it's all in your head, it's very hard to get that out.
Lucas Ministeri:And so sometimes a blank piece of paper, pardon me?
Lucas Ministeri:A blank piece of paper is easier to start from than a book that you have to rewrite.
Lucas Ministeri:And so.
Lucas Ministeri:Their CRMs are great early on.
Lucas Ministeri:They help you structure and think.
Lucas Ministeri:And when you get to this like midpoint where you're stuck, it's very hard to
Lucas Ministeri:change how you think and transition.
Lucas Ministeri:You need to do it.
Lucas Ministeri:You just it's a lot of work.
Lucas Ministeri:And so knowing, having an understanding of how you want to
Lucas Ministeri:manage that, Is the hardest part.
Lucas Ministeri:And then you're, you're working, you're busy, you're doing things.
Lucas Ministeri:So asking a boss or that owner seller, like fulfiller role person
Lucas Ministeri:to take five minutes and step back and say, how do I sell more?
Lucas Ministeri:How do I bring on salespeople?
Lucas Ministeri:That's one thing having a CRM helps tremendously is you can
Lucas Ministeri:bring on an account manager and she can, or he can go look at.
Lucas Ministeri:That contact record and see the emails, see the deals, see where they're having
Lucas Ministeri:problems with tickets and get up to speed in a matter of days, minutes
Lucas Ministeri:versus weeks of who do I manage?
Lucas Ministeri:How do I manage?
Lucas Ministeri:What, what next?
Lucas Ministeri:And so it's this chicken and egg thing.
Lucas Ministeri:It really is a challenge.
Kevin Dieny:That's a great answer there, detailing all that out.
Kevin Dieny:The hard thing about it is like, it's, we're talking about a tool, right.
Kevin Dieny:And with a tool, like a hammer, it, it has, maybe it has the standard
Kevin Dieny:purpose of driving nails, but it, it can be used in a lot of different
Kevin Dieny:ways for a lot of different things.
Kevin Dieny:So when we're talking, like how does it, how does a hammer do what it's supposed
Kevin Dieny:to do for people it's like, well, it does.
Kevin Dieny:It's basic functional capability.
Kevin Dieny:But it's also like about the person who's swinging it.
Kevin Dieny:It's also about like what they're going to do, what they need it to do,
Kevin Dieny:or, you know, maybe there's different hammers for different types of purposes,
Kevin Dieny:different things that they they have.
Kevin Dieny:So the answer is tough to be more specific on, right.
Kevin Dieny:But it's also like we could, but we'd be here for a very long time.
Lucas Ministeri:Yeah, I mean, I guess the best way to put it with
Lucas Ministeri:a CRM is using your hammer analogy.
Lucas Ministeri:Every tool is a hammer, but not every hammer is.
Lucas Ministeri:I mean, if you get into that, like that's really, when you see people using Excel
Lucas Ministeri:as a CRM, I mean, that is definitely a very non-traditional way of using it
Lucas Ministeri:and actually pop on my soap box here for 30 seconds.
Lucas Ministeri:You now have this like onslaught of project management tools, click up
Lucas Ministeri:Monday, a sauna selling themselves a CRM.
Lucas Ministeri:And that creates a whole new world of challenges.
Lucas Ministeri:When people go to try to leave a project management tool that they've been using
Lucas Ministeri:as a CRM, it, they want to do things that you, that a CRM is not designed,
Lucas Ministeri:not, not meant to do inside their CRM.
Lucas Ministeri:But then they're stuck in this mindset of a project.
Lucas Ministeri:Everything's a project management process.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah, yeah.
Kevin Dieny:Okay, so this brings up another question for me, so Islin, see dirty CRMs.
Kevin Dieny:CRM's filled with, uh, for the lack of a better word, crap data, right?
Kevin Dieny:That's a big problem.
Kevin Dieny:So that might keep a company from even using the CRM they have today.
Kevin Dieny:You mentioned Lucas that you guys went to HubSpot and then, okay.
Kevin Dieny:We know what we want to do.
Kevin Dieny:We're going to clean this up as we transition.
Kevin Dieny:So how big of a problem is bad data, incomplete inputted information.
Kevin Dieny:How much of a problem is that for a CRM?
Islin Munisteri:I would say I would let Lucas handle that question
Islin Munisteri:because he has a lot of direct client experience with dirty, dirty data.
Islin Munisteri:He cleans it, but I would let him, I'll let him dive the dirty data.
Lucas Ministeri:Yeah...
Lucas Ministeri:hahahaha.
Lucas Ministeri:Garbage data's garbage.
Lucas Ministeri:Always will be.
Lucas Ministeri:It's more of a behavior.
Lucas Ministeri:You don't know what to track until you start trying to track things
Lucas Ministeri:and you start trying to analyze what works and what doesn't.
Lucas Ministeri:And so just jumping in and starting something is better than doing nothing.
Lucas Ministeri:If everybody listening right now, would you rather your employee sit
Lucas Ministeri:there and twiddle their thumbs and say, I don't know where to start.
Lucas Ministeri:Or them to start and make a whole bunch of mistakes, but at
Lucas Ministeri:the end of it, know what to do?
Kevin Dieny:That's a good question.
Kevin Dieny:So, okay.
Kevin Dieny:So Tim, in the world of trying to figure out, let's say a CRM.
Kevin Dieny:So, if you were to try to go figure a CRM out right now, go pick one and
Kevin Dieny:go, I don't know, go navigate them.
Kevin Dieny:What are some of your biggest fears about picking one?
Tim Tran:That's a good question.
Tim Tran:I, my biggest fear picking the wrong one would be I, I, back to everyone's point,
Tim Tran:like I need to know what I'm tracking.
Tim Tran:I need to know what my people are doing.
Tim Tran:I guess I would want a CRM, that's versatile that doesn't just track sales,
Tim Tran:but tracks sales and operations because it's the world that we live in right now.
Tim Tran:Right, so, I would like to know what my salespeople do.
Tim Tran:I guess, marketing too Kevin, make sure that marketing is doing their
Tim Tran:job to get people in the door.
Tim Tran:Salespeople are closing deals, and if they're not closing deals, what
Tim Tran:are they, why are they failing?
Tim Tran:And when it goes to operations, how the handholding, the clients,
Tim Tran:where are they walking them through?
Tim Tran:And then even at the end of the life cycle of a customer,
Tim Tran:like, why are they canceling?
Tim Tran:Why did they leave us?
Tim Tran:Um, I think all that data is important, impactful for business, right?
Tim Tran:So like how do we keep them longer?
Tim Tran:Where are pitfalls, and then break it down by each department
Tim Tran:to streamline the operation.
Tim Tran:I, And Lucas brought it up and I am very curious what the difference
Tim Tran:between ERP and a CRM is, right.
Tim Tran:So this is a question for Lucas.
Tim Tran:Can a CRM turn into an ERP or do you have to look for an ERP?
Tim Tran:And when, when is that jumping point?
Lucas Ministeri:If that is not the world's most loaded question.
Tim Tran:Well, don't fail.
Tim Tran:It's not hard!
Tim Tran:Hah hah.
Lucas Ministeri:Um...
Lucas Ministeri:hah hah hah.
Lucas Ministeri:So you have tools out there like Net Suite, Microsoft Dynamics that
Lucas Ministeri:are just natively ERP or Sage.
Lucas Ministeri:Then you have tools like Salesforce that is a CRM and through a bunch of
Lucas Ministeri:bolt on modules can become an ERP where tools like Active Campaign or Hubspot.
Lucas Ministeri:I think this is my reading tea leaves.
Lucas Ministeri:I believe HubSpot's trying to move to the ERP space where Active Campaign
Lucas Ministeri:is firmly staying out of that.
Lucas Ministeri:Like I just don't see them making that jump.
Lucas Ministeri:And the difference between the systems, the environments is an ERP
Lucas Ministeri:helps you manage overhead costs, business structure, hiring, and firing
Lucas Ministeri:employees, time off, payroll, invoicing.
Lucas Ministeri:So APAR, all of those things.
Lucas Ministeri:And a lot of companies can manage that with QuickBooks or
Lucas Ministeri:Xero and it works just fine.
Lucas Ministeri:In our case, we were on an ERP to manage our billing because
Lucas Ministeri:we have lots of contracts.
Lucas Ministeri:Federal entities or state entities.
Lucas Ministeri:And there are each, one of them has their own negotiated rates.
Lucas Ministeri:And so with that ERP, I'm able to build a rate table for each client.
Lucas Ministeri:And so anybody that needs to build a quote has that client's negotiated
Lucas Ministeri:rates in the inside the database where something like HubSpot it's a fixed cost.
Lucas Ministeri:I would have to build thousands of line items to manage.
Lucas Ministeri:People building that CPQ quote, inside HubSpot, it's just, it's not, it doesn't
Lucas Ministeri:have a client level way of managing that.
Lucas Ministeri:Neither does Salesforce in a very solid way.
Lucas Ministeri:It does do it, but it's, it gets convoluted as well.
Lucas Ministeri:And really that threshold.
Lucas Ministeri:Deciding do I need a CRM or an ERP comes down to how complicated is your
Lucas Ministeri:accounting and your billing and how much are your prices dictated by overhead?
Lucas Ministeri:I mean, if I were to ask anybody on this podcast, how
Lucas Ministeri:do you calculate your overhead?
Lucas Ministeri:Are you taking an employee salary and multiplying it by like industry
Lucas Ministeri:rule of thumb of three to four times to figure out your billable?
Lucas Ministeri:Or are you actually saying, Hey, this employee needs X software licenses.
Lucas Ministeri:I have this number off the top of my head because we just redid it for our
Lucas Ministeri:22 forecasting, a individual contributor inside our company has over $40,000 a
Lucas Ministeri:year in licensing costs between computers, power, internet, insurance, all those
Lucas Ministeri:things that it takes to support them.
Lucas Ministeri:So even if I hire John.
Lucas Ministeri:$20 an hour.
Lucas Ministeri:So he's a $40,000 an hour employee.
Lucas Ministeri:He actually costs my business another 40,000.
Lucas Ministeri:So if I had triple his rate, the third goes to him, a third goes to overhead,
Lucas Ministeri:and that leaves a third for margin.
Lucas Ministeri:And the unexpecteds, that's pretty lean to run your business.
Lucas Ministeri:But if you hire Mike or Suzie at $200,000 a year, Now you've got a lot
Lucas Ministeri:of padding, so it's how do you manage.
Tim Tran:Got it.
Kevin Dieny:As far as you've been, you guys have both have a lot of experience
Kevin Dieny:with CRM applications with businesses.
Kevin Dieny:So do you have any stories, anything you'd want to share?
Kevin Dieny:We start with you Islin, how a client got value out of some way they used the CRM?
Islin Munisteri:Sure, we have case studies, we onboarded like a
Islin Munisteri:sales training franchise, which you probably have heard of, onto HubSpot.
Islin Munisteri:And they saw like a 60% to 70% increase in their business over a year, right.
Islin Munisteri:Or they saw a 44% increase in the number of activities they were doing, because
Islin Munisteri:they're finally tracking the number of calls, the number of emails, the number
Islin Munisteri:of paths they were doing within the CRM.
Islin Munisteri:You can see those productivity increases really, really quickly.
Islin Munisteri:On the marketing side, right.
Islin Munisteri:Just applying a little bit to the flywheel, right?
Islin Munisteri:Just sending out a couple email campaigns and running ads.
Islin Munisteri:We helped a engineering school, completely fill their enrollment,
Islin Munisteri:just by, doing some marketing motion.
Islin Munisteri:Running an email campaign and I think a Facebook and Instagram campaign there.
Islin Munisteri:We've also helped organizations with, I would say really onerous sales processes.
Islin Munisteri:We basically mapped out their entire sales process and put it into the CRM
Islin Munisteri:and had automation in the background that was updating contact properties
Islin Munisteri:and other and deal properties to move them along a deal pipeline.
Kevin Dieny:Very cool, uh, it's awesome.
Kevin Dieny:We work with clients of ourselves that when we put their calls into the CRM or
Kevin Dieny:we give, we show them the information behind their calls, it's like, oh wow.
Kevin Dieny:Like we had ideas in our head about this, but now that we see this.
Kevin Dieny:Totally different way of thinking now that we have data and we have information, it
Kevin Dieny:just creates questions for them that they didn't have before they never had before.
Kevin Dieny:So that's really cool.
Kevin Dieny:As an Lucas, did you have anything?
Lucas Ministeri:No.
Lucas Ministeri:I mean, Islin kind of summed it up.
Lucas Ministeri:I mean, there's, I can't think of a single client that we've worked with.
Lucas Ministeri:That's actually utilize the CRM, that it hasn't benefited them.
Lucas Ministeri:And thinking back to that statement a little bit ago of
Lucas Ministeri:how quickly do people see value?
Lucas Ministeri:It's there's day one value.
Lucas Ministeri:And then there's also like day 90 and day 180 and date at the end of the year.
Lucas Ministeri:You're there constantly gaining more from it.
Lucas Ministeri:As long as they're using it.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah, some of the things that we've mentioned that, that have
Kevin Dieny:been really important are set out to utilize this CRM, like pretty much,
Kevin Dieny:very bold point would make on that one.
Kevin Dieny:And how you'd use it needs to come from how your business does, what it does.
Kevin Dieny:What processes do you have?
Kevin Dieny:Do you have that theory'd, processed out, drawn out?
Kevin Dieny:We love this tool called Lucid Chart, but you know, we plot same way.
Kevin Dieny:You mentioned Islin, we build out the process, so you can see it.
Kevin Dieny:And then everyone's like, okay, yeah, everyone's agreement.
Kevin Dieny:This is what it looks like, yeah.
Kevin Dieny:This is how it's functioning.
Kevin Dieny:And then it becomes much easier to find places where
Kevin Dieny:you can get value out of a CRM.
Kevin Dieny:I think, another one we've mentioned is, what CRM is the purpose of
Kevin Dieny:it is for businesses that we mentioned the hammer example.
Kevin Dieny:It's a tool, right?
Kevin Dieny:And it's as good of a tool as you can use it for, but there's
Kevin Dieny:a lot of use cases for it.
Kevin Dieny:A lot of different ways to find value, a lot of cool ways that a business can
Kevin Dieny:utilize information they're receiving that they can take action on it.
Kevin Dieny:Either with marketing campaigns, like, as I mentioned, or just improving
Kevin Dieny:collaboration, improving the way, the business accounts for what
Kevin Dieny:it's trying to do, like different modules or things like Lucas.
Kevin Dieny:The last thing is I like to look at it, a CRM is an investment.
Kevin Dieny:I don't think it's just a cost like an operational cost.
Kevin Dieny:I think it's definitely something that generates revenue and generates value.
Kevin Dieny:You can generate profit.
Kevin Dieny:And if you have fears, like Tim mention, I'm afraid if I pick the wrong one,
Kevin Dieny:you know, I think there's a, there's probably a plethora of information
Kevin Dieny:out there, but it does get difficult because like Lucas, you mentioned....
Kevin Dieny:Every tool is making it look like they're a CRM these days.
Kevin Dieny:So there's help out there.
Kevin Dieny:There's support.
Kevin Dieny:There's lots of resources, maybe look at other companies like yours
Kevin Dieny:to see what they're doing, how they're applying and using CRMs.
Kevin Dieny:Talk to agencies, talk to consultants.
Kevin Dieny:There's a lot of help out there if you want to take some time to figure it out.
Kevin Dieny:So with that, Lucas, Islin, is there any way, anyone can find you.
Kevin Dieny:Learn more about what you guys do, connect with you.
Kevin Dieny:If they want to ask questions, if you guys, so Lucas, start with you first.
Lucas Ministeri:Yeah.
Lucas Ministeri:I mean, so you can always go to our website at www.theiamarketing.com
Lucas Ministeri:and that's spelled T H E I A.
Lucas Ministeri:We're also on social media and if you go to our website, it's all down there.
Lucas Ministeri:And just fill out the form.
Lucas Ministeri:If you guys need help, if you want some advice or guidance, we do help people
Lucas Ministeri:figure out what is the right CRM.
Lucas Ministeri:How do we pick the right thing to get going?
Lucas Ministeri:Because this is a space where you're going to fail without help.
Lucas Ministeri:And not that I would need to sell my services or anybody else's.
Lucas Ministeri:And if you have that tolerance for failure and learning a few times get started.
Lucas Ministeri:But if you don't have that tolerance, if you need to get
Lucas Ministeri:going, reach out to somebody to get you in the right direction.
Islin Munisteri:Yep, and I would say you can connect with me on LinkedIn, or
Islin Munisteri:you can give us a call to our business.
Islin Munisteri:It's 7 2 0 6 4 2 7 3 7 0.
Islin Munisteri:We do pick up calls and if you leave a message, we will call you back.
Islin Munisteri:So we're, we're kind of old fashioned, too.
Kevin Dieny:That's great, yeah.
Kevin Dieny:And, uh, Tim, any way anyone can reach out to you and talk
Kevin Dieny:to you or ask you anything.
Tim Tran:Yeah, sure.
Tim Tran:They can reach me directly at 8 1 8 5 9 6 6 9 5 2.
Tim Tran:You leave a message.
Tim Tran:I'll call you back.
Tim Tran:You can also text that number, this text enabled.
Tim Tran:So the, you guys texted me out.
Tim Tran:I'll text back.
Kevin Dieny:Awesome.
Kevin Dieny:Well, thank you, Lucas and Islin.
Kevin Dieny:Thank you guys so much for coming on, being our special guest today for
Kevin Dieny:the episode and, and how businesses can get more value out of a CRM.
Kevin Dieny:I really appreciate you coming on.
Lucas Ministeri:Yeah, thanks for having us.
Islin Munisteri:Thanks Kevin.