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How do businesses get value out of a CRM?
Episode 2916th May 2022 • Close The Loop • CallSource
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Kevin Dieny:

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.

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