[00:00:19] Hello everyone, this is Andy from the United Kingdom. I got a bit thrown off there because I forgot what day it was. It's Wednesday the 12th of February 2025 and the co-host here is... It's me, it's Scott. Hello Andy. It's Scott Snowden. It is also February the 12th here in Toronto so good to see you. Well that's very good. I don't need to be too confused about that then.
[00:00:49] This is the Tea and Timbits podcast, Global Perspectives on Business Development to Help You Prosper. Thanks for the thumbs up there. Yes, I know I'm lost. I know I'm a bit confused but we got there in the end. It's okay. I realize I forgot to mention our tagline on the opening of the last episode. I think we're a little bit more casual about this than we used to be. Yeah, that's it. We're far too experienced in this now. We know people will listen anyway and forgive us. Yeah.
[00:01:18] What are we talking about this week? We're talking about CRM aren't we? We're going to talk about CRM. We're going to continue our digital discussion. I'm sorry. I didn't update my notes. It's my own fault. I'm just running into a podcast episode on a Wednesday. It's midweek, midweek challenges. Anyway, if you're listening today on Wednesday the 12th of February, thank you for putting up with me. If you're listening any other time, you should probably give up now because it's really a bad sign for the rest of the episode.
[00:01:48] Anyway, it's going to be about CRM and the importance of having such an organization system so that you can stay on top of all your communications with your customers and all of the other great things that clearly I could learn from. Your podcast co-hosts. Scott, please tell us a story so I can catch up and get myself in order. Andy, all good. Thanks, buddy. Andy, yes, I was reflecting on a an upcoming event that I'm organizing.
[00:02:18] So we we've decided this year to do another one of our own events. Last year we participated in other events. It was a frustrating, unproductive journey. There were all kinds of reasons for that, not not inherent to the fact that it was somebody else's event, but thought we would again sort of try it ourselves.
[00:02:47] And and I've been rather anxious about, you know, the potential for success here and whether or not it's it's going to attract interest and be a productive event. And I had started to casually mention the idea to some of our partners and other people that could support it. And they all kind of went, yeah, yeah, that's a great idea.
[00:03:11] Like, go go for it. And and I think what I was hoping for was, you know, one of them would say, oh, yeah, that would be great. And here's how we've done it before. And just follow this template. And and we're up when and we're in, you know, and and so I wasn't getting that. And I had this moment at the beginning of the year where it's like I have either got to commit or just abandon this idea.
[00:03:38] So we had a little brainstorm internally and just a couple of us. And I was like, OK, we need a name for this thing. We need a tagline. We need a short description and we need a date. And we started humming and hawing like we were going back and forth and debating dates for like 20 minutes. And at, you know, at some point in that I just kind of went June the third. I I'm like nobody does anything on a Tuesday.
[00:04:06] It won't conflict with anything. We were we've we've we've missed. We're at the end of everybody's other spring events. Who cares? We'll pick a date. So we had a date, but a name with a title and that's it. Went back out with a little bit more and I put it in a document. I put a one pager together and I said, here's what it is. Here's what it's going to be. And here's how it's going to work. One page sent it back out. And people were like, let me see if I can get this approved internally.
[00:04:36] And then we got sponsorship commitments. We got people being like, yeah, I can do the date like it like poof. As soon as you came forward with just a little bit more structure that people could respond to. Mm hmm. The the likelihood of success and the just the fact that it's moving forward went. Right up.
[00:04:58] So for whatever that's worth, everybody listening, if you got some an initiative, you need to do more than just come up with the idea, but you don't have to do that much more. When it comes to I've got a quick question on that before we go on to the CRM side of things. The the sponsorship of the event is always something that the people want to have.
[00:05:20] And do you typically stick to relevant sponsors so that there are some value direct and obvious to them? Or do you go further afield and try and attract new corporate sponsors for these type of events? Um, I suppose, um, I could see it working either way.
[00:05:42] But in my case, I went straight to our established partners and said, you know, will you will you support us on this here? Here's what it's going to look like. This will clearly be a mutually beneficial. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And it and and I didn't have to convince them that we could deliver like they already trusted us about, you know, is the budget reasonable?
[00:06:12] Do they see the value in it? And and and is this type of activity going to fit, you know, reasonably within their their boundaries of of their strategy? And it was a quick yes. So fantastic. Fantastic. That's very good. Well, let's move on to today's topic, which is the CRM in terms of the digital customer experience.
[00:06:39] And what are your thoughts and expectations on what we're going to get out of this? It is not what we're going to get out of it, but hopefully we'll get something out of it, too. But what our listeners will get out of it? What an episode. I want to like diffuse the stigma around CRM. It's kind of a dirty word in in certain circles and other.
[00:07:04] Obviously, it's a massively successful technology, so it can't be that dirty and it provides a ton of value. But it's always sort of said under the breath, you know, in conjunction with some sort of curse word or something like that to the people who who have to use it. And so I want to I want to talk a little bit about how to how to how to get yourself away from associating it with under the breath disdain.
[00:07:34] Why do you think that is, though? Oh, I'm glad you asked, Andy. So for that very reason, because it gets positioned as something that somebody is expected to use, they have to use it. And and that is where I mean, I think we've talked about this before on the podcast, but. OK, so I'm going to. I'm going to turn this into a whole episode. How about that?
[00:08:05] CRM. That is the idea. Relationship management or some people call it change the standard constituent in the in the not for profit space. It means that it is your book of record. It is your single view into who your customer is. There's a whole other collection of technologies and platforms that help you track what they do.
[00:08:32] And that's and some people can augment their CRM with some of that data as well. But this is a way to track sort of a snapshot of who your customers are and sort of to extend that definition from what we talked about in our last episode. That does mean before they become a customer prospects to when they are a customer.
[00:09:00] And then and then not just that conversion point, but it can also be used to manage and maintain the quality of service delivery once they become a customer as well. So the the reason that it is seen without the potential for excitement that it absolutely can deliver is because it gets implemented top down.
[00:09:28] It gets built by managers systems folks who say, well, this is the report that we need at the high level to establish business metrics and understanding.
[00:09:42] It is not built from the perspective of the people who are executing the function of sales, customer service, account management to understand what it can do to improve their lives and even optimize their their day to day. No, absolutely. Absolutely. So CRM is I agree an issue.
[00:10:09] Most leaders, you know, whenever I go into a company, they go, yeah, we're really struggling with with getting our sales team to use a CRM. We, you know, we're thinking maybe we need to change the CRM system. We need to, you know, implement a new CRM system. We need to, you know, try and get the team on board with the CRM system. And and again, though, they go, yeah, OK, we're going to spend all this money on the CRM system. So we've got to make sure that it can do this report and this report and this report. And it gives us this information. And it's all about those outputs.
[00:10:39] But the problem is the outputs are only there if you've got the right inputs and you're not going to get the right inputs if you create a system that is built only on what the finance department want to see in the reports. So you're completely right. That means it's an unusable and unfriendly system for the people who are expected to put all the data in there. It becomes a chore for them to put data in there because they don't get any value out of it themselves.
[00:11:03] And the output from the system should be primarily focused on the value that it provides to the sales team and the marketing team and the customer service team in order to be able to deliver maximum value to the customers and prospects. And if from that they are then able to produce reports, that's great. But if not, then the report should be a separate thing.
[00:11:27] But trying to use it as a reporting tool for the finance and senior management is a bad approach. And that is where it all goes wrong from the very beginning. That's right. And I there's a there's a very simple trick here. It's not really a trick, but you you want some of those higher level business understanding. But then if that's all that you do.
[00:11:53] What ends up happening is an email goes out on the 29th of every month and says we're about to run a report. Everybody go update your CRM sort of a mad dash to like make sure all the modified dates show something that is less than 30 days old. And then it generates some report that really just doesn't have a lot of accuracy to it.
[00:12:16] So you have to look at your existing routines and processes and workflow and say, how can the CRM streamline optimize that particular activity? So, you know, a lot of established sales processes exist in most businesses, even if they're kind of informal, you're still having a meeting on the right on a regular basis. Where are we at?
[00:12:45] Who are we talking to? You know, are we any closer to that deal than this deal and that kind of stuff. And sometimes, you know, in the absence of a CRM, you've got this in your inbox or spreadsheet or whatnot. But if you can if you can pull up a dashboard of all of your current conversations, let's call them opportunities and show them in their various stages and and show the last time an update was made to that opportunity.
[00:13:13] Then all of a sudden, everybody together sees, you know, that there's a there's a gap there or they forgot about something. And so it and they'll it will it's a little bit of sort of discipline that you're that you're enforcing there. It's a little bit of a stick and less of a carrot.
[00:13:34] But on the on the flip side, if you can show it this way and use it to guide your leadership or even your individual performance and say, wow, I I've been focused so much on trying to get these last couple of deals to, you know, close. I didn't realize until I looked at this, that the top of the funnel is empty. And and and and and so it can be used to reinforce this good behavior and understanding.
[00:14:03] That's like like one simple example. So in in in good leveraging, good, good use of CRM, you look at your existing processes and you think, how can the CRM be put into use to benefit those those moments that pipeline meeting examples? Yeah. Yeah. I.
[00:14:30] I often hear, as I said, from business leaders, we've probably got the wrong CRM system. We set it up wrong. We tailored it wrong. Things like that. I don't believe that that's the case. I don't think it really matters whether you have Salesforce or Dynamics or HubSpot or whatever. It is about how you use it and the way that you set it up. And if you have set it up a particular way, it doesn't mean you're locked into that. You can change it is my belief.
[00:14:58] But Scott, this is your area of expertise. Am I am I wrong? Am I completely off the ball or what is the case? I could not agree more. And I and I think generally that is the answer. And a lot of people will blame the system for what is actually a poor performing business process function. What is actually lack of discipline?
[00:15:23] What is actually unhygienic data? You know, you've you've put garbage in there and you and you're pointing at the system to sort it out. There are there are scenarios and I could go into detail about, you know, why, you know, you're you're best to use HubSpot or Salesforce or Dynamics.
[00:15:48] But those are like in the margins that comes down to we've got a really specific situation that now we're trying to optimize for. Or we might look at the platform itself as whether or not you can most effectively what you're doing with all those platforms. You can do it in any one of those platforms.
[00:16:12] It's like, oh, you know what, actually, it just gets a little bit easier over here or two systems just happen to talk to each other a little bit more nicely. And and then you look at the cost of switching versus the cost of compromising, you know, or making the non the less efficient system work efficiently. But I yes, I completely agree.
[00:16:37] And sometimes people are very stuck in the in the counter belief that they have the wrong system and they and they throw the baby out with bathwater. So what I often find as well is is when I ask, OK, so when you set up, you say you set it up wrong. Did you implement each step in the in the process from your sales process into the system so that it reflects your sales process?
[00:17:02] Oh, well, we don't really have a sales process because it's all different for different customers and different markets. Well, OK, well, there's your problem. Yeah. You don't have a sales process. And if you don't have a sales process, how are you going to get your system to reflect your process and know where people are just randomly going? Oh, there's a 60 percent chance of talking, you know, of closing that one because I talked to him over a beer and he really liked me. It's like ridiculous. There's no real metrics.
[00:17:31] There's no, you know, actual documented process. And therefore, the reflection of that in the CRM system is, of course, going to be the problem. So if you're not running your business effectively and your sales team and your sales processes effectively, how do you expect to have a system that's going to help you manage that and report on it if you don't have it? Again, absolutely complete alignment and agreement with that. We will hear often that, well, you know, we don't have a process.
[00:18:00] And so we want a CRM so that we end up with a better process. No, really? Really? That's the worst way of doing it, just adopting the CRM systems standard process as your sales process. Right. But it can be very difficult to get somebody out of that headspace because they had it at their last company. They read a book. They were at a conference. They talked to somebody.
[00:18:23] And they know that when you get a CRM and you turn on the opportunity module, it comes with an out-of-the-box collection of five stages going from, you know, cold to closed.
[00:18:39] And we sort of have to decide that, like as the implementation partner, do I think this person can be persuaded to go through the pen and paper exercise first to talk about a pipeline and what steps and stages make sense for their business before we implement the CRM? Or are they dead set that the tool is going to give them the process they need?
[00:19:06] And in which case, in the interest of advancing the project, the implementation, even their business value, we may very well go, okay, fine. Listen, the out-of-the-box stages and steps we'll start with, but can we relabel them? Can we challenge them as we're doing that to say, how would you manage this?
[00:19:30] So we do kind of use that established structure to force a business conversation and then modify the CRM as much as possible. And then sort of bringing forward a little bit more awareness once you see it for real that it doesn't have to be this way. You can modify it and you should, but sure, let's roll with this because you've never done it before.
[00:19:58] See if the suit fits when you wear it out of the store kind of thing. And inevitably, before long, we're making some modifications to the stages, the names, the weightings, and all that stuff. I did a really interesting thing with our own CRM about a year ago. I never actually figured out the likelihood of closing a deal based on our historical data.
[00:20:27] All the weightings and percentages that were in each stage had just been sort of what my gut felt like I should do them. And I was really undervaluing the likelihood of a deal closing when it started. It's in the pipeline. I was like, well, if you're started, I'm going to give it like a 5% chance of ever closing. But I discovered upon doing some analysis that, you know what?
[00:20:53] If it actually makes it in as an open opportunity, if it gets through our filter and qualifies for becoming an opportunity that we're going to pay attention to. It's actually done quite a lot already. Just that gives it like a 40% chance of making it all the way through. Even though you're starting it in the most loose unknown step, it has a 40% likelihood. I don't know what the number actually was. But then I did a little bit of a recursive math and I was like, oh, yeah. And then it kind of stays at a lower number.
[00:21:21] It doesn't go much higher than that until it gets into like... You get much further down the line and then it sort of jumps quite quickly. Yeah. Yeah. It's really interesting. And I've seen that as well in CRM systems. You know, the standard weighting of an opportunity at different stages is quite random and, you know, based on some 1990s metrics and, you know, not on reality nowadays. And not on individual business scenarios. So do the exercises, I think, is very important.
[00:21:50] Just before we close out this episode, what CRM system do you use? We use Salesforce. Okay. Yeah. We are also a Salesforce partner. So we're also a Microsoft partner. We do have some clients in Dynamics. Yeah, of course. Yeah. But it's a bigger ocean in the Salesforce. Fair enough. Very good. Very good. Well, thank you very much.
[00:22:19] I think we've covered everything in that topic that we needed to cover related to the digital experience. You said to me at the beginning before we started that you could have talked to me for a week about this topic. And you weren't kidding. Maybe we'll come back and do a CRM episode a little bit later on. One thing we didn't talk about is what do you do as an individual if you're in an area where you've been told to use a CRM that is poorly. Exactly where I was just about to go.
[00:22:47] And I think we should come back and do another episode on that. All right. Let's do it. If you have any questions about CRM and you can't wait for that episode or if you enjoyed this episode so much you want to talk about it or comment on it, get in touch with us at TNTinbits.com where you'll find many ways to get in touch and to reconnect with some of the older episodes where I'm a little bit more organized and Scott isn't very excited about talking about CRM systems. Thanks very much, Scott. My pleasure, Andy.
[00:23:17] Bye, everybody.