Dashboard: Don't Blame Your CRM

[Music] welcome to another 21 hats dashboard brought to you by our sponsor the great game of business I'm Lauren felin and I'm here with Jean Marks welcome Jean hello Lauren happy post uh Thanksgiving as we get into the holiday evening yes it's great to have you back sorry we missed a week uh but I hope you had a good break yes it was fun Jean we we usually talk here about the most important stories of the week for business owners but I don't know last week seemed like kind of a I mean there's a lone on the world but was kind of quiet in the small business world I felt so I thought maybe this week especially with the year winding down it would be a good time to do an update on kind of your specialty uh a topic that's very important but many business owners find painful and that's customer relations management software does that work for you customer relationship management software and yes so you are the expert aren't you yes it does work for me and that is uh it's a it's an excellent topic to talk about so yes let's talk all right list do it did anything change this year did we learn anything about CRM did anything change this year so it it's funny that you that um when it's a funny question and the reason why is that a lot of it is the same and yet a lot of it is about to change if that makes any sense at all and let me let let me explain what I mean there for starters um you know the big players are still the big players you know uh Salesforce and Dynamics HubSpot uh which continues to grow and HubSpot is has really you know become a good uh you real you know a real factor in the CRM world but Zoho uh you know the ones that we sell and and and they are um that doesn't change the um need for a CRM system and the the lack of Education about it doesn't change that people using it terribly um and needing to use it better uh that has not changed but what is changing uh it started this past year with salesforce's uh Einstein uh you know offering and it's going to it's going to blow up over the next year is just the impact that AI is going to have on on CRM um there are a lot of uh Salesforce introduced a lot of things that are going to um make a big difference in how CRM systems are going to be used in the future and I I see myself getting very much involved in helping our clients understand and lean into some of the AI stuff that um is happening now and coming up very soon that's where I see the big changes coming and you think it's going to make a real difference yeah let's let's talk about some of these things right people say like well what do you mean by you know AI well I I'll give you some examples I mean imagine you've got a CRM system and again whatever Salesforce is doing uh this is not a commercial for Salesforce but they lead the pack in CRM so whatever they're doing all of all of the other CRM companies are just going to plagiarize and imitate you know So eventually even your CRM system whatever you're using is going to do what Salesforce is doing so let me give you I give you I can give you some examples stop you for one second I really want to hear those uh examples but just because you highlighted Salesforce I think you've suggested in the past that you know Salesforce is probably too much CRM for a lot of small businesses um you still feel that way yeah uh yeah I really do and again I'm sure somebody from Salesforce would be you know vehemently opposed to that idea but it it it just is I mean Salesforce even Microsoft Dynamics Sap net Suite uh the you know the larger crms that you bump into they're really they fight amongst each other for more like Enterprise accounts meaning 50 60 100 150 users you know got it okay I just wanted to be clear about that yeah I mean there are so many great CRM some that we sell a lot that we don't um and just to give shouts out copper CRM is great if you're a Gmail or Google person Nimble CRM John you know Ferrara who who used to be the gold mine guy um that was his company now he's got Nimble which great for Microsoft Office for smaller work groups you know and sightly is a very nice CRM really good powerful CRM to use Sugar CRM these are all like major players that I I love I don't sell any of those uh I can't I just don't have enough bandwidth them but I love them they're really good I still want to hear those examples but since you just named a bunch of of different brands let me ask you this is there ever a reason to change from one to another is that worth doing that's a another great question no there's not and in fact if you're using insightly and you're not happy with insightly I guarantee that it's your fault and not insightly's fault I can promise you that and again I don't even sell initely but I know for a fact that you're just not using it the right way now uh you know maybe it just it probably wasn't set up the right way maybe you didn't get the training that you needed maybe you don't even know what you're using you know um it's like you're sitting in a you know in the cockpit of a 747 on the runway and you're like this damn thing's not flying I don't get it this thing sucks and you're like well it's nobody shows you how to make it Fly you know so should you try unplugging it and plugging it back in and plugging it back in it's like in 2024 now that we're getting into the these CRM systems the mainstream ones for small businesses are so um mature at this stage that they've got they integrate with a ton of different products they're super flexible and customizable they can be um you know uh you know uh developed you know unique Solutions with them they're they're good they're powerful and they're they're good for small businesses and if you just are like you know not enjoying and you know what's funny Lauren is that a lot of times I talk to people um prospects they'll be like Oh I'm using this CRM and you know it's it's terrible it sucks you know what what have you got for us and I I usually tell them to go back to the vendor get a consultant for their existing CRM number one because I don't want them you know you they've already made the investment in their existing CRM so cough up a few grand more and actually get trained on how to really use it um and number two is I'm not sure I want to like work with somebody like that because that's a great point they're gonna like hate me too I mean clearly it's somebody that's like oh it's it's that it's the crm's fault it's not us you know when somebody's struggling like that is it usually one two or three issues yeah it's it's always a um it's always a lack of user issue that's always and and shitty data you know um you know and then when they say like oh but you know I I thought I read in the inflight magazine that I can punch like two buttons and my sales would increase 20% you know do they still have inflight magazines I don't even know but you know it's just they you know people um people you know have this overestimation of what crms do and they don't invest the time and the resources and the money uh to really you know make it work for them and because of that they're not happy with it so um no I the takeaway from all of this right so far Lauren is that if you have a CRM system and you're not happy with it take a look in the mirror uh call up your vendor and say we're not happy you need to make us happy um and and shell out a few bucks to get a consultant go on LinkedIn and find somebody that's specialized in your CRM system and let them show you all the things that you're not doing or that you're doing wrong in your system it'll still be way less than changing over to an entire new system and one other final thing when it comes to that I sometimes it's like a cultural thing like you know everybody in my Sales Group hates it so they want to change to something else like they're not going to be happy unless they change you know what I mean because it's just so which sucks because you're like you don't have to do that your sales guys are idiots you know they need to learn um but then you know sometimes people just cave in and that's what they do so you mentioned the problem of crummy data is AI going to solve that by hovering up all the data that's out there without much effort from the sales folks makes it worse when I like I'm I'm speaking um to a group soon in Arizona and I do a little you piece of my presentation will be on AI and there's there's three things that everybody has got to know about AI uh to really get prepared for number one is to beat up your vendor so we're still going to talk about what some of these CRM things how it's going to be leveraging AI so you got to be beating up your vendor to make sure that they're doing this and that you're leveraging it you need to have an AI policy in your business that's another topic for another time Lauren but it should be a written policy about who and how and you know what AI to make sure your data is good yeah but the number one thing is you should be using 2024 to clean up your databases because your data sucks my data sucks my database is is you know there's holes all over it and if you really want to use AI you're not going to you're not going to turn to Ai and and have it automate stuff and do things on shitty data I mean you're going to have a disaster you know so for 2024 my recommendation is is that you go through you you redesign your system such that you have required fields on every screen those critical field should be nobody can move on unless data is filled out they should have lookups relating to those required fields you should be getting alerts when certain key fields are not being updated you know timely or they're empty or they're uh they're out of date um you should also uh have a you know a database administrator could be just a regular admin person it doesn't have to be a tech person but somebody that owns your database and makes sure that you know the data in it is complete and accurate and you should be generating reports from your database all the time pipeline reports and issues reports and activity encounter reports because they not only help you manage your teams but they also will validate that your data in the system is is good so that you can manage your teams you want to get your data in shape this year so that as these AI things are rolling out you can leverage them properly otherwise it's going to be you know nuts it'll be terrible for you you mentioned the uh the policy thing I've talked to lots of business owners who've had policies and they've been ignored and it hasn't worked I talked to a sales consultant last week for a podcast Lance Tyson and I asked him about this problem and he just said flat out if they're not if the sales team is not filling out their crms properly and thoroughly that that's in subordination and what the policy has to be you got to tell them if they don't do that they may not get their commission and I'm just wondering have you seen people try that have you seen if that works yeah so um if it's the age-old issue with crms is how do you get your salespeople to use it you know the right way um in the end the CRM is your data it's the company's data and this is 2024 this is in 2014 so any CRM any salesperson worth their salt Not only would recognize that CRM systems are of value this is not like a new thing but they would also realize that it will help them make sales so I have different clients that have tried different things um some of them have gone so far as the fire salespeople which I think is crazy um I think holding back commissions is a thought you know is potential but you know what I've learned over the year you know you know goren you and I have talked over the years we've been friendly and I think you know this about me I've become a a Kinder more more gentler person a more sensitive human being as I've gotten older you've often said this to me and so of the people around me and what I've realized oh you must have been amazing in your 20s yeah that was a real real jerk uh but uh if you what what I have though realized in all seriousness is that um if a if a salesperson is producing um if they're a competent salesperson you don't want to you don't want to get the CRM system in their way of them producing for you okay some sales people particularly younger ones pick it right up and like they they Zoom along with it others that are older sometimes you get sales people that are great at sales but they can't even plug in their television set you know and I think you have to adapt your training and your support and your oversight based on that demographic um you know you have 10 sales people and I know what you're going to have three of them are going to be rocking and rolling with it three of them are going to be okay with it with a little bit of handholding and three of them are just going to be complete you know dopes and you want to focus on the dopes you don't have to really you can ignore the others you know what I mean so that will help people use the system more and I'm giving them support I think you and I talked about this before I mean I've had clients that they set up a voicemail boxes for salespeople to call uh when they're out and about so they don't have to type stuff into their phones or their CRM systems um and then they have a you know a high school kid type you know put it into the database I've seen that work so there is a way to help the dopes yeah they're out there making calls and uh I thought I told you this maybe it was years ago but we had a client back in there it was deeton Watson did I tell you this and that they're you know in outside of Philly and for all of you guys whether you know they sell deli meats and they literally have salespeople driving around in chevrol rels with cigars and hats with like pastrami in their trunks visiting delies are the cigars required yeah well I don't know and then they were selling these deli meats and these are not exactly your typical CRM users but they needed to track who they were visiting and you know their prospective delies and current delies and all of that and they set up a system where they had their salespeople call in a voicemail number at the end of the day or during the day saying okay I visited J&G Deli and I visited this store and this store and dropped two pamies and you know four things of cheese and some high school kid would log that into the system at night at 10 bucks an hour you know I mean and ited and it worked and the sales guys focused on selling because they were great at it you know and then you had the kid keep the database up to speed so that you could uh you know you can get so you got to adapt you gota I think you just got to support your salespeople um more because not everybody is going to be a superstar technical person and the other thing I've also found was uh for clients that use it well what I said earlier get reports out of the system have a really good pipeline report you know that's what your your pending deals are quotes proposals bids whatever and you manage your team off of that report print it out literally every week I'm not kidding and manage your team because right there and then the you'll see the gaps and that way you could beat the out of the people that aren't doing their thing and then um and ultimately your gaps start to go away and and people are using the system that's my other advice so I've lost track did we get all of your examples of what AI will be able to do no I interrupted you too often go for it we haven't even started how how much time do we have yeah do we have another hour because go through so just a preview I mean some of the stuff is rolling out now but obviously we all know being in the tech world you never get version 1.0 of anything especially if it comes from Microsoft but even like Salesforce but here's what's rolling out and will get better and better okay um uh product proposals and recommendations so AI will run you will ask it to run on your system and recommend products to sell to sell to customers based on their prior purchase history um and so it will come back to salespeople automatically and say hey you should be emailing this guy to buy this accessory because they bought this product so send them an email or if you'd like we're happy I'll send them an email on your behalf AI will do that automatically um and it can do it in a bulk fashion or it can just do it on a oneoff fashion so that A salesperson or a marketing person's in the middle of it and says yeah yeah yeah send an email or yeah send the email let me make a couple of you know word tweaks Here and Now send it you know what I mean but it will it will literally be alerting you and and to the extent of automation that you want um because remember in E economics 101 your greatest source of new business is your existing customers you know so what more work can you be getting out of them that's one thing okay that's impressive second thing that AI will be doing will be training which means that um you can set AI to listen to all phone calls that are being done because it can AI understands voice um and also look at all the emails being sent um it can compare it to other sales people in the company that are successful or outside salespeople or other Sales Systems like Miller Heyman or uh or S you know Sandler or whatever and literally come back to both the sales rep and the manager and saying based on what this sales rep has been doing over the past month um it would be more effective if they did this or if they send emails this more frequently or when they speak to a customer in this industry they should be mentioning this product is that crazy but that's it will do that automatically based on as it learns because your large language model will be your CRM system and then it will pull in other data from the outside and it will learn how your salese are operating based on that data and come back with those recommendations which I think is really amazing stuff is this available anywhere right now yeah appar you know again Salesforce says their Einstein product makes some of this available again it's it's it's early days for it so you can play around with it I mean you're not hurting anybody by doing that so it it will certainly do that um another thing that AI will do I'll give you two more um it'll do um send sentiment so you know you set it to you know for certain customers or all customers to start gauging sentiment so it's looking at email correspondence and phone conversations going back and forth as well as any manual notes that might be put in by sales reps and it's looking for certain keywords and certain uh you know Cadence and conversations and it will come back to the salespeople and their managers and say you know this customer is kind of pissed off you know or compared to other customers in your in your group this one seems a little negative or this one seems really happy like this would be a good candidate for you know a product testimonial you know what I mean um but it would it can warn you in advance and again if you want and it really depends on the trust you have in your data it can automatically be reaching out to customers that have a negative sentiment and saying hey you know we're sensing that you're not completely happy with what's going on would you like to set up a call with our sales manager proactively before you lose that customer right AI will do that and you're it's pretty cool um and finally finally um you know just recently um chat GPT their 3.5 version of GPT is now out and free and you can start using it with voice and their Enterprise version their 4.0 version already has voice enablement and that will only get better and better it's you know it's like a lexen Siri so you know rather than typing out and thinking you talk to your CRM system and you say to it I i' I'd like to send an email email campaign to everybody with blue eyes and green hair who's an Eagles fan that bought I'm I'm from Philly as you know that bought a uh you know bought this product um and and let them know that we're going to have a special sale in December on you know on on correlating products and what you tell it to do that it sets up it identifies the prospects for you and says here's a list and then it will compose the email for you to review and then you say to it I like it I made some tweaks please send send out and then you can also say to your AI campaign manager for anybody that responds in a positive sentiment meaning that we're interested uh forward those emails over to you know you know Dale over there who will follow up or send an automatically reply back to them pushing them to a landing page that's got you know a way that they can just buy that automatically so it's like this powerful sales assistant doing that work for you instead of figuring out how to do it all yourself and you can just tell it to do it is that crazy it's amazing are are salese afraid of this or excited about it well the dumb salespeople will be afraid of it okay the I mean the ones that are you know shitty they will be afraid and they think it's going to take their job if I was a salesperson and I'm like you know a younger guy I'd be like hell yeah let's use this because it will help me close more deals and also reach out to more people so I'll make more money so the smart sales people get it and they will will use it to their advantage and the ones that are afraid of it well uh I guess they'll uh hopefully uh you know guaranteed income will become available from the government at that point so because they'll be out of a job two quick questions one is this going to have a big impact on pricing um yeah you know that's a really good question it it really should and it's funny about that you bring up pricing because that doesn't get written about much um and I I think that is a huge opportunity in the world of AI because I every client I talk to is unsure of their prices I mean they know what their costs are and then they come up with margins well my cost is a dollar so I guess I'll sell it for $130 but it's just a guess I mean I we charge 185 bucks an hour and we were just having a discussion today like is that a good fee and I'm like you know what I don't even know I mean some guy charges 300 but then some guy charges a 100 you know what I mean I think AI will advise me more on on better pricing and the more data that in AI as they get more intelligent with my own data um they can also hopefully you know a good AI system can can access external data and be like uh Hey Jean you're charging 185 bucks an hour you know we're looking around in the industry and you could probably get away with 195 or 200 bucks an hour so yeah the answer is I think it will have an impact on pricing in the future what about the pricing of the CRM itself oh is that maybe that's what you meant originally um I so that's maybe or maybe not perhaps um that's going to be up to the CRM vendors Microsoft I wrote about this in Forbes a couple months ago Microsoft and Google are both coming out with their products their AI products for both office and for workplace Google's is called Duet we talked about that you were a little annoyed at the prices they were charging exactly they're going to charge 30 bucks a month a user and jury's out whether people are going to pay for it so I don't think it will impact pricing I think what it will do it will help CRM vendors keep their customers happy so that they continue to pay their monthly you know fees that's what I think will happen last quick question does every business that needs a CRM have one by now I hope not I mean um you know I think every business should have a CRM I rather it's a mom and pop restaurant all the way up there there's different ways that serum can be applied depending on what industry you're in um not everyone has them and even the ones that have them aren't using them very well so that which is a lot of opportunity for companies like mine but are there are there a lot of Lish businesses I mean obviously if you're just getting started it's one thing uh 21 hats does not have a CRM just yet but if you're an established business are there established businesses out there that do not yet have a CRM first of all 21 hats should have a CR CRM even though you're a single user it's fine you know what I mean but there are established businesses that have them not very they have old systems they have custom databases their own inhouse things that they wrote that they've used for a number of years sometimes they they think that they're using constant contact their MailChimp and that's their CRM which is not they're just email services so um yeah there there are a lot of established businesses that either don't have a CRM or just have a very very rudimentary one that they're scratching the surfice I just I we used to sell Goldmine software we still service it but I have probably a hundred clients that use gold mine we have about 600 overall in my practice wow that are still using gold mine and I'm like guys what the hell are you doing you need to move you're like in the 1980 you know what I mean and you know they're reluctant to move because they have other things to spend their money on which I respect but my job is to persuade them that investing in a cloud-based CRM will make them a lot more money this was great Jean you obviously know your stuff anything you're working on that we should look for this week so what am I going to write about next week Lauren let me look at my book as I'm this this coming week as I'm writing um you know the yeah um my big piece though to write which I'll be writing for the guardian this week is about um the biggest issue facing small businesses in 2024 and let me ask you I I said in 2020 last year I said the biggest issue facing small businesses were going to be interest rates and I was right okay I mean p on the back it is what would you say is the biggest issue that small businesses will face in 2024 because I I and I'll tell you what I'm what I've decided on well I think I sort of decided a couple of months ago that the biggest issue um the biggest story right now is yeah the biggest what we've been talking about AI um and you know whether businesses you know dive in or layback could have a profound impact so I would go with that so that's a great answer and I was really juggling that because um you're right about it you really are my feeling is is that AI will absolutely be um the big story for small businesses but I think it's going to be a 2025 2026 story I think 2024 is going to be a year where a lot of Enterprise mid-level companies are they're the ones that are going to be getting their arms around it and then it's going to become ready for prime time for small businesses so my angle and there's no right answer to this my angle in 2024 is it's going to be all about the consumer the consumer because I I truly believe that our we had a good year economy-wise you know I don't care what anybody of any political persuasion says 2024 is a good year for the economy it's 5% growth did see that they revised it up third quarter to 5.2% yeah and if you if you dig into the numbers it's mostly consumer spending and inventory builds for consumers you know so it's the consumer that's driving this and God bless the consumer but there's some storm clouds ahead uh which I'll right about and I'm I'm concerned if the consumers start pulling back in 2024 that will have a significant impact on my clients and small businesses around the country and I think um all for me all eyes should be on the consumer that's my that's my take so we'll see interesting Jean Marks is a CPA who writes weekly on small business for the guardian the hill the Philadelphia inquire the Washington Times the Chicago Daily Herald Forbes an entrepreneur you can also hear on ABC radio's eye on the world with John Bachelor Jean hosts two small business podcasts with paychecks Corporation and the arford this episode was brought to you by the great game of business which helps businesses use an open book management system to help build healthier companies you can learn more at Great game.com Jean this was great thank you thank you Lauren it was great speaking with you we'll talk next week have a great weekend everybody [Music]