CRM Revenue Intelligence for CFOs: Stop Revenue Leakage and Scale Profitably w/ Jason Kramer

0:00 The leaky bucket is, is not knowing your process and having your process up here in your head. And for those listening, I'm pointing to my head. And when your process is in your head, you might think that you're running on all 8 cylinders, like everything is working perfectly. And why do you think that?

0:15 Because money's coming in, people are hiring you, but there's also a lot of things that are not happening and that are invisible to you. And that's where the leaks start happening is when you don't see those, you know, those holes in the bucket that are just pouring out potential revenue. Live, ladies and gentlemen, you will once again welcome to the King James podcast and Diary of the CFO.

0:58 And today I've got with me a very, very special guest fighting out of New York, United States of America. Mick, welcome. Jason Kramer. How are you, Jason? You are rocking, you know, the rocky move there, Yeah. Jason, the CRM Whisperer. Wow. But that is that is the rocky introduction, right? That's a Compass Plus introduction. So you didn't see it back.

1:29 And let me read the specially curated corporate introduction I created for you. So today's conversation sits at the intersection of visas, growth, CRM strategy, leadership and revenue transformation. Our guest is a Growth Strategist CRM expert under Occultivize helping businesses streamline sales systems, strengthen lead nurturing, and turn disconnected processes into measurable growth outcomes.

1:59 Jason has built a reputation for helping organizations uncover heat and revenue opportunities by fixing pipeline leakage, aligning markets marketing with sales, and creating systems that actually drive return on investment. His work challenges of the many businesses hold more leads are the answer. Instead, Jason argues that growth often comes from optimizing what already exists today. We will explore CRM strategy, customer journeys, leadership, sales, psychology, AI, visa systems, and what it truly takes to build scaling growth in a world overflowing with technology.

2:42 Jason Cramer, it is an honor to have you with us on the podcast. You once again welcome, brother. You want to get welcome. And of course, I know there there were no lies told. This was carefully, carefully handcrafted for you. So let's get back to the origin, right? How how it all started. You've actually helped businesses across multiple industries, you know, close millions of dollars in sales through CRM and automation systems. So what originally to you into the space? So for me, I came from the world of marketing. I was a graphic designer.

3:20 I worked in agencies in New York. And then I started my first agency back in 2002 and had that business for 16 years. And So what I learned during that business was that and even today the problem exists where companies spend money on marketing or there would be advertising on Google. They're going to trade shows, they do webinars, whatever they do, right, they're spending something in terms of revenue and effort failed to do a lot of times is connect the dots between those marketing activities and what the sales team is doing.

3:51 So they don't really know other than our trade show, we got 100 business cards or our webinar, we got 300 people to sign up or we got this many people from Facebook. But what they are failing at is knowing the quality of those leads. And when you don't know the quality, then when you don't know how much revenue you actually generated from those leads, it's really hard to understand if the marketing is really working and if it's just bringing in garbage and, and that's what's coming into the system or if it's bringing in, you know, actual really highly qualified potential customers. And so that for me was really exciting and it was easy for me to understand that the reason that happens is because the CRM system is typically not set up

4:30 correctly or there is no CRM system at all. And so because as much as I love marketing and I'm I'm a creative guy, as you can see the artwork behind me for those watching, I'm also a data guy and I love organization. And so that's why I opened up Cultivize 8 years ago and sold the agency to really help solve this problem.

4:50 A. While interested for for the listeners at home listening to us right now, I know we need to be very conscious about the acronyms that we use. A CRM is a customer relationship management tool. Is that correct? Yes, and I would define it just if I could add a definition of my own. To me, ACRM is not a project management tool.

5:12 It's not a spreadsheet. I mean, it's 3 components. It's a place to store your contacts, the individual people like us. It's a place to store information about the companies we work for. It's also a place to do all of your e-mail marketing from and it's also a place to do all your sales activity from.

5:31 When you have those three things combined into one platform, it makes it much easier to look in the data and to be able to understand what's working and what's not working. Interesting. So in terms of your background, you started with this with design and branded before transitioning into CRM strategy. So how did that evolution happen, and what did design teach you about revenue systems?

5:55 So for me, it's all about communications. So I studied what we call communication design. So I didn't really study advertising per SE or marketing studied. How do you communicate something? And I'll give you everybody a really quick visual to understand. And this acquired anybody. I know we're in the different sides of the pond, but anybody in the world could understand what I'm about to say. When you're driving and you see a sign on the side of the road that shows you that there might be a deer crossing or that there's a bridge or that there's a railroad tracks, there's a visual, right?

6:26 There's an icon to represent that. Most of those signs don't have any words on them. They're just an illustration to let you know what's ahead of. And for me, that is where I really gravitated towards is, you know, how do you communicate something with graphics and with words? And the way that translated into CRM is the same thing. It's all about communication.

6:48 We all are sales people, right? You know, I mean, well, not all of us, but some of us, there are millions of sales people out there. And it's our job, right, to be a good communicator, right? It's not about selling and, and talking about the features and benefits of what we do. It's about listening and it's about understanding their needs, their concerns, their problems, and being able to communicate back how your company can help fix those problems.

7:13 And that's really what gravitated me towards CRM is because I love the challenge of communication. It's not only communication between a prospect and a salesperson, It's internal communication. It's communication with your data. How is your your quoting system or your accounting system talking to the CRM or talking to another piece of software That's it's communication. So the thread to all of this is the communication challenge that I believe a lot of businesses have. A lot interesting you ended up launching Cult of Ice, right? So, So what actually inspired that? You know, the launching feel like a specific moment or maybe a client experience that made you say this is the company that I need to build first.

7:58 You know, as entrepreneurs, we understand that we have a passion for solving problems. So what? What really sparked that inspiration to launch? So there's a few things. Yeah, there's a few things. That's a great question. So I started my business in 2001, the end of 2001, 2002, work didn't exist, ever didn't exist. You know, being able to hire a freelancer across the world was nearly impossible.

8:24 It's very difficult. And so when I started my agency here to when I, when I sold my agency, it was a completely different landscape. And so me going out and, and building a website or designing a logo for somebody now wasn't just the local competition in the competition within the United States. It was competition across the entire globe. And so that really changed the landscape of things. And I swore that for me, it was going to get harder and harder to maintain that type of business because of all the new fresh talent that was emerging.

8:54 At the same time, we were also selling marketing automation software, which is part of ACRM. And it really clicked for me that this type of software could really be a next business model. And I really wanted to really change things. I've been designing websites and building brands for 25 years at that point, and I was just looking for a change.

9:14 And so I decided to sell the agency and to start this new business. Amazing, right? You know, heading into entrepreneurship, right? For a person like myself with a corporate background, right, being a being a finance experts now having a background with the B4 accounting firms, right, PWCKPMG, right, And get into entrepreneurship. You not realize that that there's a whole lot that you don't see as an employee, right?

9:41 And you get to learn very fast that everybody needs to master sales because if you don't sell, then we all do not eat. That's just the name of the game. But with big R organizations with a lot of structure, I think a lot of people do not realize how important sales really is. But when you get into sales, then you now start to understand the nature of leads, right? Cold leads, warm leads, right?

10:11 Understanding the pipeline, understanding the conversion, right? But a lot of business actually struggle with lead conversion despite heavy spending on marketing. So why is there that brick down between, you know, the marketing and the conversion gap? It's a few things. So number one, it's harder and harder to sell these days. So if you're selling to a business or to a consumer and you're selling something to someone's home, whatever you're selling, there's more and more competition and it's easier to find that competition, right?

10:44 I mean, you could say, hey, Alexa, find me a local plumber, right? And now someone's not even going to Google and doing a search or going to Facebook, they're asking, you know, they're their virtual assistant, right? Their house, their virtual housekeeper, if you will, in their home to make a recommendation.

11:02 And so now your business has to be indexed on those platforms. So the challenge I think to me that a lot of businesses overlook, and you brought up a very valid point, you know, is it a cold lead or is it a warm lead? And so a lot of times when you get a lead, that person might be very early in on their research. Let's say they're looking to read, you know, paint their house, or they're looking to buy a new car, or they're looking to buy a new telephone system for their business. Whatever they're doing, they're probably talking to you and at least five other companies also, right? That's what we would all do.

11:36 We would all, you know, shop around and see who's going to give us the best value for the best cost, who's available. And So what happens is that a lot of salespeople don't have a process. And so when that lead is really just looking for some preliminary information, sometimes the salesperson gets kind of annoyed and they're like, well, if you're not going to buy for me today, like that's OK. Like I have all the leads.

11:57 I'm, you know, don't worry about it. I'm just going to go focus on something else. Or they might be willing to say, OK, we'll give you the information and we'll follow up. But then they never follow up or they follow up once or twice and then they get busy. They're going to the next estimate, they're going to the next customer, they're getting on the next phone call and they're not logging notes, They're not creating a reminder for themselves to follow up. And So what happens is that to your point before, when somebody wants to get into entrepreneurship and they've been an employee all their life, all these other things are happening for them that they don't even realize, right? It's just behavior.

12:32 But when you're on your own and you're responsible for every aspect of your business, you're juggling a lot of things, right? You're wearing many hats. So you're taking care of the bills, right? You're taking care of sales, you're taking care of doing the work. Perhaps you're taking care of all these other things.

12:46 Even on the personal side, maybe you're married, you're taking care of the family, you're paying your mortgage. So there's a lot on your plate that you're managing. And so where those things start falling apart is when you're not organized. And I think a lot of times people be get into entrepreneurship because they're really good at something and they have a talent, but they don't understand that there's all these other pieces that are going to be super important to make their business successful.

13:11 Exactly. Well said. But that leads me to something that I see you have coined, which is the leaky buckets problem, right? That is your metaphor, right? And it forms part of the core operational challenge that faces most scaling businesses today. So I'd like to hear from the horses mouth. What exactly is a leaky bucket problem?

13:38 The leaky bucket. And this is a great exercise anybody can do today. Even if you're starting out, even if you're an employee and you're in a sales role or in a customer service role, you take out a piece of paper and you start writing down the things you do everyday and what your process is. So for example, if somebody calls you and they need something, what do you do?

13:59 Do you e-mail them back? Do you call them? How long does that take for you to get back to them? Is that by the end of day? Is that the next day and start writing all these things down? And then when you finally do get back to them, what's the second thing you do? If they've asked for an estimate, what are the steps you need to build that estimate? How long does it take you to build the estimate? And once you send the estimate, how often are you following up? You just follow up once, twice.

14:20 What's the time distance between those follow-ups? Are you making phone calls? Are you sending emails, text messages? And then you keep going through that process. And really what happens at a mall when you put all this on paper? That's where you find the leaks. You're like, oh, I'm not following up enough or I'm taking too long to follow up.

14:39 And what happens is that if you take too long to follow up or if you forget to follow up, what did I say before? They're talking to you and four other people. If the two other people are following up and returning those phone calls and getting back to them with the information they need, they're more likely going to hire that other person.

14:55 And so that's the leaky bucket is, is not knowing your process and having your process up here in your head. And for those listening, I'm pointing to my head. And when your process is in your head, you might think that you're running on all 8 cylinders, like everything is working perfectly. And why do you think that?

15:11 Because money's coming in, people are hiring you. But there's also a lot of things that are not happening and that are invisible to you. And that's where the leaks start happening is when you don't see those, you know, those holes in the bucket that are just pouring out potential revenue. Interesting. So So what are the signs of revenue leakage? What are the biggest signs of company with leaking revenue without realizing it should look at? So what should the CFO look at?

15:38 What should found a lookout for? So the biggest thing is you could look at whether you have a CRM or not is if you look back in the last 90 days, maybe maybe it's, you know, maybe it's six months, depending on how often you do proposals. Look and see when were those proposals, when were the original conversation started? Look what the date is.

15:56 Look at the date of when a proposal was sent. If a proposal was sent, look at the date of the last communication, the last time you spoke to that person, last time an e-mail was sent. And then figure out why is there no big follow up? Because I guarantee you if you look at those things, you're going to find things that are sitting there and idle. I can't tell you how many times I look at somebody's pipeline, right, which is really just the stages of their sales process. But even if you didn't have those stages, and I talked to you today and you were a business owner and I said, how many proposals did you send out in the month of May? And you were to give me a number. And I'd say how many of those

16:31 people got back to you? How many of those people you have or do you have a reminder for to follow up with? When are you going to follow up with those people? That's where you start finding the leaks, when you realize you don't have a system to actually close those deals that you're spending so much time and money to generate.

16:47 Hi there, are you a professional or business owner teaching investors for sharing big ideas about your presentations just are not keeping up with your vision? That's exactly why I use Gamma app or Proud partners. Gamma is an AI powered platform that helps you build beautiful decks, documents and web pages in just minutes.

17:11 No complicated formats in no design headaches, just clean modern presentations that communicate your ideas clearly and professionally. If you want to present like a pro, Sign up today using the tool stack link in the description below and start creating smarter camera app. So I guess this is where automation comes in, right?

17:32 Especially with the CRMS. So I'd like for you to touch on the importance of automation and of course that marketing slash sales disconnect. So why do we have marketing and sales teams that are so disconnected and like what's the real cost of that misalignment to to the profits? Yeah. So let's talk about that first, then I'll talk about the marketing it, you know, the automation piece. So that the the concern about the disconnection is that a lot of businesses will hire a marketing agency and that marketing agency is really wearing a blindfold, OK. So think of them wearing a blindfold. They can't see what's going on.

18:11 And the reason they're blindfolded is because all they know is they're sending you people to they're sending people to your website, they're getting people to fill your form, they're getting people to call you. But that's all they know. They don't know if anybody actually returned your phone call.

18:24 They don't know if you had a conversation with anybody. They don't know if how many of those people turn into a customer. They don't know how much revenue you got generated. OK. And so you could imagine where that problem is because now the marketing agency is still just keeps driving you and sending you leads. But maybe Facebook isn't the right platform and maybe that trade show wasn't the right trade show. Just because leads got generated doesn't mean it worked. Does that make sense so far?

18:48 OK. And so the secondary part of that is the blame game. When you have an internal marketing team and it could be external as well and the sales performance is low, What is sales teams usually do? They say, well, we're not getting good leads or we're not getting enough leads. And so, and it keeps going back and forth because then marketing will say often, well, the sales team isn't doing their job, we're generating leads, how come you're not closing them? But if they're not qualified, there's not even an opportunity to close them, OK.

19:18 And, and so that's a huge, huge problem for a lot of businesses. And I've seen businesses spending, you know, 6 figures or more, 7 figures a year on marketing with this problem. And it's they might, as always tell them they might as well take their money in the backyard and throw it into a fire pit and just burn it because it's, it's not going to really do anything operating the way it operates, right?

19:40 It's not going to help their business grow if they don't have these insights. And so where does automation come into play? Automation comes into play is when every salesperson wants to follow up. It's not like a salesperson doesn't want to follow up and says, you know what? I'm not going to call Jason back. You know, if Jason wants to do business with us, you know, he could call us every like, no one thinks that way. At least most people don't think that way. But what happens?

20:04 You get stuck in meetings, you have other phone calls to make back. You have existing clients that need to talk to you. You have a day off, you have a you're sick, right? You have a holiday. All these interruptions happen and. So you say you're going to get back to it tomorrow. Tomorrow becomes next week, next week becomes next month, and then it just completely disappears.

20:23 And so when you have automation in place and you have a process to find, and we say after two days you have to make a phone call. After that phone call, a week later you send an e-mail and then you do XYZ. The automation can create reminders for the salesperson to do those things and it can alert the salesperson, say, hey, Jason, today you have to call these 20 people because you spoke to them three weeks ago and you haven't followed up with them yet. And then management can say is Jason doing those tasks? Is Jason making those phone calls? Is he logging those calls?

20:53 Is he talking to these people? And you will see the conversion rates exponentially increase. I was speaking to a company yesterday. They are in the roofing business, so they do commercial residential roofs, right, for homes and businesses. And they have about a 30% close rate, which really is pretty low in their industry.

21:12 It should be at least probably 50% if not higher. And the reason for that is that the follow up is not existing. They follow up for only about 5 or 6 weeks and then they just move on to the next set of leads. They get 110 leads a month. They're not using automation to do that follow up. You know, in their business, they should be following up for at least a year and a half because some people might need that amount of time to to have the money to buy that new roof or to do that roof repair.

21:39 And so that's where the automation can really help in a lot of ways. Happy to give more examples, but hoping that that gives a paints a good picture. OK. OK. So in terms of putting a number to rates, right, so like how much money would you say visas typically lose from these four CRM processes and of course the weak follow up C stems?

22:03 Yeah. So my calculations, if you're paying a salesperson, let's say you're paying them $150,000 a year just for, for a number and they're spending just two hours a week doing admin work that they shouldn't be doing because we could automate it. You're essentially paying them over $30,000 a year to do admin work and not to be selling for you. And so the cost is, is, is real.

22:27 It's also the return on investment is real because if you're spending $50,000 a year on marketing and you don't have all of the tracking that we're talking about, you're literally just spending $50,000. You're not getting any type of ROI on that, that you could actually quantify and track to know if $50,000 is actually bringing you revenue.

22:47 So the numbers are are shockingly high. Another quick story, I had another client who also is in the roofing industry and we work with lots of industries. They weren't doing follow up after about 5 weeks. Also they stopped. So in 2025 when they started working with us, we put in automation that would send the prospective homeowner an e-mail every five weeks and would ask them, you know, we came to your home.

23:15 We, we loved meeting with you. We just would like to know if you still are interested in the project or if you've hired anybody. And if you hired anybody, that's OK. Just, you know, if you don't mind letting us know the reason. And there was a link in there that lets them essentially take a one question survey.

23:30 Are your price was too high, You didn't get back to us fast enough. We found a friend or a family member to do it right. We hired A competitor. Standard reasons. And wouldn't you know, in 2025 when we split with that client in January of this year, we helped them generate $4 million in revenue from that automation.

23:48 You know, just the e-mail going, that's all it was. It cut, you know, several emails, you know, acknowledging that, hey, we sent you a proposal, do you have any questions and, and, and so on. And a lot of those transactions didn't happen for over a year later, 15 months to 18 months after the proposal was sent. And that would have been revenue that would have been completely this, that that revenue wouldn't even existed because the salespeople were not falling off for that long. Wow, I think this actually justifies my my love for automations and integrations.

24:20 I personally think they are very very important in business. So please correct me if you think I am wrong. But you know, it's interesting. I. Totally agree. OK, I'm glad you agree with me. So it's interesting that you actually work with clients across, you know, multiple industries. And when you look at this podcast, we have a very highly educated audience that is comprised of our professionals and entrepreneurs. So most of the people that listen to this podcast are either professionals or their founders, right? So I like for you to speak to them directly on this one. Like what are the common mistakes you know that you have seen in terms of implementing CRM platforms across different industries?

25:02 Because I know there will be recurrent mistakes that you have been able to observe across the various industries. So there's a couple of them. So the number one is that a lot of businesses will buy ACRM without having a process defined first. So my whole approach is that we will like everything we've been talking about so far, everything is process driven. So if you're buying a piece of software and you haven't put on paper what your processes and what the tools are you need, then you're buying basically features and benefits you may not even need or may not even be a fit for your business. And so you really shouldn't buy any business software until you have those specific things identified. And so my approach is a few

25:47 things. One, when you're doing a demo of a piece of software like ACRM, have your process already written out and have specific and share it with the person giving the demo right with the company and say this is what this is how I want things to work. Can you show me how your tool will solve my specific problems?

26:05 Because a lot of these companies are giving like a cookie cutter demo that they've put in probably, you know, 50 to 100 hours to build and they don't tell you that. They make it seem like it's out-of-the-box going to work the way that they're showing you and it doesn't. It most never does that at all. And so you want to understand that you don't want to see every feature and you should tell them that I know the system has 100 features, that's great.

26:28 I only care about these five. And I need you to show me exactly this, this, this and that about these 5 features so I can make sure it's going to fit our specific needs. That's something that most people don't ask. The second thing, people don't ask who's going to help me set this up right? Because they, they're not going to do it on their own. The Harvard Business Review, which is an industry journal, did an article and what they found was that over 70% of businesses will fail at implementing their own CRM. So think of this, let's say Adam all, you bought a car today. Do you own a car?

26:59 Right. Do you own a car? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. OK, so you have a car, right? So let's say when you want to go buy that car, they gave you all the pieces, right? Nothing was built, the engine wasn't built, the car wasn't built. And they gave you a bunch of videos, bunch of videos and like a training guide and said this is how you put your car together.

27:19 Would you be able to build the car? Probably not. Maybe what I I suck at DIY, I suck at DIY. OK, All right. There you go. That's my point is that that the CRM is no different than a car that's in a million pieces. It's not, it's not fully constructed and usable until you configure it the way you need it.

27:42 And so you have to ask the company you're talking to you to say, well, who's going to customize the system and who's going to talk to my sales team and my marketing team and get the information that we have to share to fine tune the car, right, to build the car the way we need it. And if their response is, oh, we have training guides and videos, that's not the answer. You need somebody that's going to get on a video call with you, maybe meet you in person and and probably spend about 20 hours because that's how long it usually takes 20 to 30 hours to build out the CRM and that's done it before. So that's something that usually isn't asked. Another thing that's also not asked is who's going to help me when I need help?

28:22 You know, what we find is the lower, the cheaper the software, usually the worse the support is. OK. That's usually just kind of like a common thing we've seen. All right, I love you, agree with that. And so you have to ask them. And if they say, oh, we have support, you say, OK, well, can I, can I get on the phone and talk to somebody?

28:39 Whatever question, can I get on a video call and talk to somebody and show them my problem? Because they might say to you, well, you have to submit a ticket. OK, if I submit a ticket, how long does it take to get back to me? And then I might say a week, they might say 3 days. But what if I have an urgent problem and I need help right away? You're going to have to wait a week to get a response. And usually those companies that have that type of what we call SLA service level agreement are usually not going to get answer your question actually accurately anyway, right? Oh, or they're going to send you some help article or to some video.

29:11 The AI chat bots? How about the chat bots? Yeah, right. Yeah, Go as the AI. Well, the AI can't answer my specific question. I have something very specific. And so these are the things to think about when you're buying a new CRM. Don't buy a new CRM because you're your friend, right, who runs a different business, loves another system and says, hey, you should use a system. It's great.

29:33 It may not be great for you just because it's great for them. It may not be great for you. And the other piece like we talked before about is make sure it's ACRM. There's a lot of people buying tools out there and they're like, oh, we use this tool. I don't want to mention names. And I'm like, that's not ACRM, that's a project management system. And they're like, oh, but the salesperson told me it's ACRM. I'm like, well, it's not right.

29:55 By definition, it's not ACRM. And so they sell it as ACRM because they're just trying to sell you something to sell you something, close the deal and then move on to the next person. And so those are the things you really have to be paying attention to. The last thing that this is probably the most important, don't get suckered in to the free trials, OK? Because you go to a free trial and you use it for 30 days, for two weeks.

30:23 If you can't afford that product and pay for it, there's no reason you should be doing the free trial. So I'll give you an example. We love HubSpot, HubSpot or Certified Partner. It's a great platform to use all their features that most businesses would need. You're going to be close to $1000 or a few $1000 a month.

30:40 But if you're using the free version, you're not going to have access to all those tools. And so if your intention is to want to use all those tools, you can't, you don't have the budget to afford that, then don't use the free version because then you're just going to get stuck and you're never going to be able to grow with the platform the way you need to grow.

30:57 So I think that's a big mistake people make also is that they get the free version or they get a very like a low cost version knowing that they can't afford the more expensive version. But eventually you're more than likely gonna need that more expensive version. Okay, Speaking of hotspot, right, I have had a personal experience with hotspot and I'm gonna put you on the hotspot right now, right, regarding hotspots, So they usually have a lot of add-ons, right?

31:24 And for the average business owner, you might not know from the get go that OK, I would need this ad on, I'll need that ad on. And before you know it, the the subscription cost increases exponentially because you really don't know what features, what extra features you would need. So what what advice do you have for founders in terms of doing their due diligence, their research properly for us to know like the features that they would need right before committing and discovering that the version that they have signed up for is inadequate to address their business needs?

31:59 Yeah, great question. So the simple answer is call me. I'm happy to answer the question and help anybody listening. Well, we'll share how you can get in touch with me at the end of the episode. But if you're going on your own, so there's the marketing hub, which essentially is for e-mail marketing and E marketing functions, posting content on social, it's not something the sales team would use, right?

32:22 So if you have a sales team, then you need the sales hub, OK. But people don't realize is that when a contact is in the sales hub, they're not a contact in the marketing hub as well. You have to move them over there and today charge you based on the number of contacts you have in these different hubs.

32:40 So a lot of times people make the mistake and they put a lot of people into one of these different buckets and it exponentially raises the cost when they don't even really need to be there. Another that people don't think, don't realize too is they sign up for things like the content hub and they're like, oh, it's great.

32:54 I could like manage my blog and I could do all this SEO stuff. Well, the catch there is you have to rebuild your website on HubSpot platform and now HubSpot owns essentially your website. And so if you ever leave HubSpot, you have to rebuild your website somewhere else. And so that's something that people also don't always recognize.

33:12 But you're right, there are a lot of different hubs and there's more and more things they're adding, especially with AI. Now they're going into like a credit system. So they're giving you credits based on the things you do. So we talked about like a chat bot. So they have a new AI function there. So like for every engagement in your chat bot, it's one credit. And yeah, they'll give you a few 100 credits to start, but then they're going to charge you, right? So if you get a lot of volume to your website and people are interacting with that shop bot, it's going to exponentially also increase your cost because you're going to need more credits.

33:43 And so it's a lot of moving parts. The spot is great. We have clients that love it. We love it. It's not the perfect fit for every business. You know, it really depends upon what you're trying to do, the size of your business. Another thing people also don't think of is where am I going to be using my CRM? Am I going to be using it in the office sitting at a computer? Am I going to be in my car traveling from appointment to appointment?

34:05 I need to access an app on my phone. Some of these systems don't have mobile apps. So then what? You know, then you're forced to use your CRM at 10 O clock at night when you get back after dinner and working all day. And that's probably the last thing you're going to do is enter data and updates into your CRM. So the way to avoid it is really just to know what you need upfront and to make sure you're asking the questions that I had mentioned before as you're doing those demos. OK.

34:31 The one thing I'll also say lastly, yeah, I'll just say one more thing. So as a certified partner, we can help negotiate pricing for specifically tools like HubSpot. But what was it 2 weeks ago, we saved the client over $10,000 a year signing up for HubSpot. So we can waive a lot of fees that they charge for their onboarding and we can lower their price significantly compared to what you may pay if you went directly to them. Interesting.

34:56 We need access like itself, but that's another thing that I've noticed as well with especially with small businesses, right. So a lot of times you wanna implement a CRM, but you have teams, especially sales teams that are resistant to the adoption of a CRM internally. So is that a technology problem?

35:19 Is it a culture problem? Is it a leadership problem? So how do you help clients that face this kind of a problem? Yeah. So I mean, I would say, I wouldn't say per say it's a leadership problem, but where we get success there. And the approach I would take is if you have, let's say, a handful of sales people and you have some people that might be a little bit older or may just be against kind of technology and they're more old school, right, in the way they do things. What we always recommend is finding one or two sales people that are your champions that are willing to learn how to use the CRM and to apply it to their day-to-day activities and let them use it for three to six months and and start making modifications to the CRM based

35:58 on their feedback. And once they've seen success and they become the internal Rockies, right, the Champions that are like, yeah, this thing is awesome, it's great, it's changed my life. Then everybody else is going to start seeing the value of it. And for the people that didn't want to adopt early on, they will see the value.

36:15 I've also seen companies where if they don't start using the serum, the leads that come in are only given to the people that are actually using the CRM and the people that are not using the CRM don't get the leads. So that could be another way. It's a little bit more kind of cutthroat, but there are different ways.

36:31 But I typically would say we never on board an entire sales team at once. We always kind of on board a little bit in stages because we want to make sure actually built is actually, yeah, it is doing what it's supposed to do. And like the feedback of the sales team, is only going to be beneficial once they start using the system.

36:50 OK. So, so of course I know that there are certain sales people that just want to stick to their their model ways or the spreadsheets that have always used right. So in terms of change management tactics, right, understand that in organizations and you're managing change are three things, you know, the processes, the people and the systems, right?

37:17 So how do you manage the people in terms of this change management process? Yeah. So we do a lot of coaching. We work with the them to see the value. There's a lot of misconceptions that this is going to be extra work to use ACRM that we're going to have to do like double data entry. But if they're reluctant and they still want to use a spreadsheet, we can automate it where every time they put information into a spreadsheet, it goes into the CRM.

37:42 And so there's ways we can create workarounds to keep their way of doing business as consistent as possible with what they're comfortable with, but yet still get the value of the CRM. So I'll give you an example. A client of ours who does not use this particular team member does not really use the CRM and she manages the VIP clients that they have. They're in a construction related industry. And so basically what she does is she writes things down on paper.

38:10 You know, Jason Kramer signed up for this. Sometimes she might put things into a spreadsheet and they were doing an e-mail promotion and they want to make sure that all these VIP customers didn't get this e-mail. OK, I said, well, give me your. And so she sends me a scan that it's a picture of her Excel document.

38:26 It's not even the Excel document and it's a picture of handwritten names and e-mail addresses. Well, the power of AI, AI, right, That image into AI. And within within 30 seconds, it built me a spreadsheet that was able to understand all of our handwriting correctly. And I built a spreadsheet for her.

38:46 And you know, that would have taken me hours, right, to type all that out manually. So I then said, here's your Google spreadsheet, forward name is Kara. Going forward, Kara, please add anyone that you have that's a new VIP through this spreadsheet. And then we built an automation that says anytime a new row recognizes data, it'll automatically add it to the CRM as a VIP customer. So she was happy to do that.

39:11 She said no problem, I can do that. Like it wasn't asking her to go into the CRM, it was just asking her just to simply upload a Google spreadsheet instead of an Excel spreadsheet. So it was a slight move in procedure, but an easy one for her to make. Interesting stuff. Interesting stuff. Let us talk about your framework, the five whys, right?

39:31 So you mentioned that there are 5 whys for a leaking funnel. So are you able to walk us through the framework? Yeah. So the first one is with the process we talked about. We've been talking about process the whole episode. So if you don't have a process, the leaks are almost guaranteed to happen.

39:49 So the exercise we talked about before is the best place to start putting that process down together on paper, understanding what that process is. The second part is responsibility. Who's responsible for talking to Jason or talking to Adam all when when they reach out to us. And so if you don't have accountability within the organization of who's going to take ownership, then the leaks are going to happen. And regardless of how good that process is, number 3 is the follow up.

40:16 There has to be some type of nurturing, some type of, and it doesn't have to be fully automated, although automation definitely helps. But there has to be some type of system in place to be able to keep in front of that potential customer until they give you a yes or a no. And it's not just putting them on a newsletter list.

40:32 I'd be some type of outreach, you know, from that salesperson, that person that's accountable. And the fourth one is recognizing when that person's not ready either Sometimes people say, you know what, where we need to get more money or we need to wait for till next year for the budget, right? Or we need to wait for a decision or something's happening where we can't make this decision right now.

40:54 You have to pivot. You shouldn't keep following up the same way and ask them if they're ready to sign the proposal when they just told you they need to wait until next year. So you have to be able to recognize when you have to change your direction, but also have an another part of your system to follow up with that.

41:10 And so if they tell you to call back in a year to put it on your calendar, you should put it somewhere. You put a task to remind you to call back in a year and have notes with that task. I spoke to Jason and May he said call back, you know, at the beginning of next spring. This is what we spoke about over there.

41:28 When you call back in a year, you can relay what the last conversation was. And then the 5th part, go ahead. I was going to say, I think that is actually great. I think I totally agree with that because that is something that I do, you know, on my end. So I was just corroborating your point. OK, great.

41:47 And then the last part is actually going in and updating the data, right? So this whole cycle of tracking everything and following up doesn't work unless you remember to be like, yeah, we won that business, right, marking a close one or we didn't get the deal marking a close lost. So yeah, there has to be an endpoint.

42:04 And so sometimes when we look at this, you know, you know, and talk to other companies and we're like, well, how come you don't have more closed deals? And like, oh, we do. We have like dozens or hundreds. I'm like, well, but they're not in here. And they're like, oh, we just forgot to go back and do that, you know, And so then that's going to really start making all of your porting inaccurate.

42:24 So there has to be an endpoint to it. You have to remember to go back and to close that out, right? close that deal out with a status. Yes, we got the deal. No, we didn't get the deal. And if you're still in the middle where they're still deciding, there has to be that ongoing follow up. Yeah, I totally agree with you. So in terms of leadership accountability, So what role does leadership of our businesses like, what role do they play in creating accountability around the sales process, the sales systems and how do the best CEOs and founders model that behavior that they want to see? So the obvious thing, they have to be using the system themselves.

43:06 If they're not going in there and using the system and they're not leading by example, that is really difficult for anybody else under them in the organization to see the value of the platform. So that's number one. Number two is they also have to use that information from the CRM to help and encourage the salespeople.

43:25 So saying saying to somebody, hey John, you haven't met your quota, this is a problem is one way to do it. Another way to do it is, hey, John, we notice you haven't met the quota. We see that you haven't marked your follow-ups, you haven't been making these phone calls, you haven't been doing the things that are part of our process. Why is that?

43:45 How can we help you make sure that those things are done? Because if we know if we help him to do that, he's going to reach the quota. And so that's where I think leadership typically fails in those two capacities that are not using the system and they're not using the data from the system to help fix any problems that might be there.

44:02 And they're also, thirdly, not maybe rewarding people that are doing a great job. So if they're hitting their numbers and they're surpassing their numbers and they have those KPIs, those bent, there's data sets in the CRM. It'd be nice to say thanks, you did a great job. You know, here's a gift certificate here, something right to show appreciation. And I think, you know, we're all human. We like to be not patted on the bat, but we like to be complimented that what we're doing is actually making an impact.

44:28 There should at least be a reward C stem. But Speaking of rewards and me being a finance person, my next question is very dear to my heart, right. And it is about return on investment. So how should founders measure whether the CRM investment is actually producing a return on investment? And what's a realistic timeline for Visa to see meaningful?

44:53 Results. Yeah, so that that's a great question. So typically I say six months to a year. Definitely within a year you should start seeing results and the value. There was actually a calculator I'll mention how to get to it. If you stay and keep listening to the end of the episode. We created this on our website and what it is, it looks to show you how much revenue could actually generate and how much marketing you can save. So statistically, when your CRM is really working the way it's designed to work, the way that we're talking about today, you're going to see a 29% boost in your sales, 29%, that's a big number.

45:28 And you're also going to generate 50% more. That's massive. Right. I mean, that's almost one. 3rd That's a real number. That's almost one third it's. Almost 1/3 of your sales, 1/3 of your sales, right, If it's being done correctly, that's on average what the number is. That could be a little lower, a little higher, but you know, and you're also going to generate 50% more sales ready leads. And what does that mean?

45:50 That means that the people that are coming in as leads, if you educate them, if you nurture them, if you go through a process with them, you're going to close 50% more because they're going to be educated. They're going to be understanding that you could actually help them with whatever problem or need that they have. And then you're also at the same time, you're going to lower your marketing costs because now you know which marketing strategies are working and which ones aren't. We had a client who was doing some advertising when I said to them, you know, you're spending all this money and we're not seeing any traffic to the website, we're not seeing any conversion.

46:26 And it's costing you almost $20,000 a year to do this. And eventually they like, you know what, you're right, like we're spending this money and we're not seeing any results. So, so they stopped doing it. They invest that money elsewhere. The calculator is really simple tool that I think everybody should go to that's listening.

46:43 It's really easy to use. All you have to do is enter in just a few questions, which is 4 things. How much money do you spend on marketing each month? How many sales people do you have in the organization? What is the average thing that you sell cost? So if you're selling whatever product or service, what's the average, You know the average, How many leads do you get per month? It could be 5, it could be 100, doesn't really matter. You put those four things in and it's going to tell you how much more revenue and probably you can generate for your business. Before we dive back into today's conversation, I want to share something important.

47:17 This episode includes a paid partnership with Better Health, a platform designed to make starting therapy easier. I know from my own journey as a leader and entrepreneur that life can sometimes feel overwhelming. There are seasons where stress, uncertainty, and pressure build up, and you need a safe space to process it all.

47:37 That's where therapy comes in. Therapy isn't only for people facing clinical challenges. It's a space to refer, grow, and find better ways to manage stress, relationships and personal goals. It takes courage to seek help, but it's also one of the smartest investments you can make in your mental and emotional well-being.

48:00 That's why I'm proud to highlight Better Help with Better Help to simply fill out a short questionnaire and get matched with a credentialed therapist in just a couple of days. If the first match doesn't feel. Like the right fit? You can. You can easily switch therapies at no extra cost until you find someone who truly connects with you.

48:21 Inside the platform, you'll also find tools like journaling and group sessions on different topics that can support your growth. And with over 7000 reviews and a 4.5 trustpathy rating, Help is a platform you can rely on. So if you feel like you'd benefit from talking to a therapist, is it betterhub.com/kingdames?

48:45 That's betterhub.com/kingdames to get 10% off your first month of therapy. Once again, this is a paid partnership with Betterhelp and I encourage you to take that first step. If you've been thinking about it, Sometimes the best investment you can make these in yourself. Interesting. So talking about data versus intelligence, right.

49:11 So I am always very, very, what I say, conscious of people who fall into that trap of paralysis by analysis, right? So what? What's the difference between having the data but actually using that data intelligently? How do the best operators actually reach that gap? So you're absolutely right. I mean, there are, especially today, right in the last, you know, 1020 years, endless reports that you can probably look at for your business and everything from from accounting to finance, like QuickBooks to the business side to to operation to you, your warehouse, whatever it might be. I always say what are the most important data points that are going to make a difference for your business? What are the most important

49:57 things? So for example, if you know you need to have X number of leads per month because you have a 50% close rate and you want to close five leads a month or five new customers a month, you need 10 leads, right? Simple math, OK, if they're qualified, but every business has different things that are important to them.

50:15 And so rather than having a dashboard that's got 1000 different things you're looking at, I always ask what is going to help you make a smart decision? What is going to help you change the way that you're doing things for the improvement of your business? Every business owner we talk to is going to answer that question differently, right? Because they all have different needs. So it may not be how many Facebook likes you got, right? What does that matter?

50:37 I mean, there are some people that want to know that number, but does that really change the way you your business is going to grow? No. And so those are the things that you want to be thinking about is what number, right or a series of numbers is going to be important for me to know how can I improve my business.

50:56 So one thing that I, we talked before about having a skill, you know about, you know, maybe 1/2 hour ago we were talking about having a skill and becoming an entrepreneur and turning your skill into a business, right, a skill preneur. A lot of people that do that, they don't really understand always profit margin as a simple topic.

51:14 And so they don't understand that, OK, in order for my business to be successful, anything north of 50% profit margin is going to be is going to be good. If that number could be hundreds of percent profit, right, or thousands, that's even better, right. So there's a show here in the United States called Shark Tank.

51:29 I don't know sure if everybody, maybe some people have heard of it. And so they go on there and these people are. Yeah, right. And they're trying to get people, you know, these sharks to invest in their business. And So what happens when they say, well, how much do you sell it for and how much does it cost you to make it? And if you're selling it for $30 and it cost you $25 to make it, there's no way they're getting an investment, right? Because there's no profit, right? OK.

51:52 And so that's how a business grows. And so that might be something you want to look at too. So I'll give you a great example. And this is a personal story. As I mentioned earlier, I, I was a, I was a graphic designer, OK, designing computer, you know, logo websites, all these things. And so when I started building websites, I had other people helping me build those websites, right, programmers, etcetera. And I would put a quote together based on what I thought the, you know, price should be based on different variables. And I said it's great.

52:21 We just saw this $15,000 website. That's amazing, right? It was $30,000 website. What I didn't realize in the very beginning was how much time it goes into building the website. It was all based on my estimated theories of how long it would take. And there are always delays, right, in projects like that. So, so where I might have said in my head, OK, it's going to take us three months to build this and I'll, I'll have some money leftover from what I have to pay my vendors and my, my, my team.

52:48 But then what happens when it takes six months or nine months to build it? Then your profit decreases substantially. And so that's something that is a problem because it's not sustainable. You can grow your business if you don't have high profit margins or good profit margins. And so like I said, every business is going to have different needs.

53:06 I'll give her another quick story that that of entrepreneurship when I was in high school. So that's, you know, like secondary school, you know, as you may call it, you know, in the UK and elsewhere. I was about 17 years old and I used to like to clean people's cars, like detail them, wax them and, you know, Polish them and all that. And so I decided that I would get a van and just what I was doing before is I'd go to somebody's house and use like their hose and just bring a few supplies with me. But aside, I would get a van.

53:37 And I in the van, I put a really big water tank and I'd buy a generator and like a power washer and essentially be able to wash a car in the middle of a desert, right? And then I would have everything I needed self-contained so that I can do more like businesses and things like that. And what I didn't calculate was how much money I was spending on gas, how much money I was spending on renting all this equipment, buying all the chemicals.

54:00 And even though I might have been charging, you know, $100 to to detail and wax a car and I thought I was making money at the end of the summer, I basically lost money because of all the expenses I had, right? And I just didn't know any better, right? I was like, this is great. Like making money, you know, and you, you learn very quickly like, something's wrong here. Like I, you know, I never calculated my costs and factored that into what I was charging.

54:23 You know, I just kind of came up with a number with what other people would charge and thought like, OK, I'll just charge what other people charge. And so that was a really big life lesson to understand that there's a lot of moving parts to a business. And if you don't, and then I know everybody listening today knows those things.

54:39 So that's like me being a very naive 17 year old thinking like, OK, I'm going to start this little business for a few months before I go off to university and college, not recognizing all the kind of all those moving parts. So it's a long way of me saying that there are lots of different numbers out there that are going to help make a difference for your business. You really have to think about what's what's important according to me.

55:01 What do I need to know for my, for myself, for my company, and for my team that's going to help me make those smart decisions? I think that is amazing. And of course, you know, it's such a great way to segue into the next set of questions that I'm going to ask you because right now I'm putting on the Seattle lands, right and see Apple Heart.

55:21 So in finance, a lot of us finance people tend to see CRMS as the sales department's tool. But when you venture into entrepreneurship, right, as a finance expert, you learn really quick how important the output of the CRM is for the finance process, right? So the CFO definitely should own CRM visibility. So from a CFO's perspective, why should finance leaders care deeply about the CRM system?

55:56 So like what are the financial risks that are that are exposed if they do not in monitor the CRM systems? Sure. So two big things. One, the efficiency of their team. So they're paying people, could be paying them hourly, might be paying them salary, salary, OK, but how efficient are those people doing their job? And if the CRM is not helping them be efficient, they might be not producing a lot for the business, right? They might even be making enough phone calls and may not be able to talk to enough people.

56:26 They may not be able to follow up with as many people as they want because they're doing a lot of other things inefficiently. So I think for sure they're going to see more ROI out of their staff, out of their team. That's one big advantage. The second big advantage is the expenditure of marketing dollars. So the CFO approves a budget for $50,000 for marketing and they approve that budget every year.

56:53 But they don't, they don't know what's happening with that $50,000 Sometimes they just expect that it's actually doing something to help grow the business. But if we can show the CFO that that $50,000 returned a $300,000 return or a 4X or A10X, well, wouldn't they say, well, if you're able to do that, we'll increase the budget to $100,000 or to $75,000 because what you're doing is actually working to actually grow the business. And so it's not just about cost savings. I think for the CFO, it's about where is the money being spent and where is that showing a return on investment. And as a financial person at a MOLA, it's like investing in the in the stock market or buying any type of, you know, mutual funds or anything else.

57:39 You want to know that you're getting making money, right? You wouldn't keep buying stock and buying funds if you're losing money every month. Yet a lot of businesses are doing that. And certainly a CFO would want to make sure that that's not happening for their business. Well, it just, you know, talking about operational blind spots, right? I like the, I like the story that you shared about, you know, the visas you operated as a teenager, right? From my accounting perspective and like it's clearly operational blind spots, right?

58:10 In accounting, you have two types of expenses. You have your cost of sales, you have your operating expenses and those are the two sets of expenses that affect the bottom line. So basically, how do you derive the bottom line? You have your top line revenue, then you have your cost of sales. Your cost of sales are the costs that are directly attributable to generating your revenue. And of course, you have things like your overheads selling at being expenses.

58:41 All of those other expenses are called your operating expenses right before you arrive at your bottom line. But there's usually a disconnect between in, in organizations, right, between in finance marketing and sales. And I know you would have noticed that in the course of your work, right? So that disconnect between finance marketing and sales, right, usually creates gaps that affects profitability, right? So what's your advice to founders out there in terms of identifying the operational blind spots and you know closing those spots in other to enhance efficiency and of course enhancing profitability?

59:25 Yeah, I mean, it's simple. Start asking questions, right? Start talking to the different department heads, to your employees. And if they don't have the answers you're looking for, don't be complacent, You know, mandate that a change we made a lot of businesses we talked to might have a sales team of, you know, a few people, a dozen people, and each salesperson has their own different spreadsheet.

59:45 None of them have the same format. It's impossible for anybody in the management to really be able to pull out data together. Or maybe you could use AI of of course, but not easily to be able to understand what's happening in the landscape of the sales team when everybody's doing something different. So the only way things are going to change is if change comes from the top.

1:00:05 I truly believe that. And it's also has to be the willingness and the acceptance of the CFO, the CEO, whoever it might be to recognize and to be willing to raise their hand and say there's a problem here. And we were identifying that there's a problem. We need to fix the problem. We need to find somebody. You know, Mike, Jason or whoever to come in and and help us fix that problem and come up with a solution that we could make this business more sustainable.

1:00:32 Because if the problem exists today, it's only going to get worse as time goes on. We all know that. Interesting stuff. You know what one of the core responsibilities of you know the finance team is To make forecasts, you know, and of course, you know cash flow predictions. Revenue is vanity, profits is sanity. And of course, cash is reality, right? So in terms of the efficiency and of course, the accuracy of forecasting, right?

1:01:01 So what's bro the CRM visibility play, right? And of course, what's metrics should CFO's obsessed over? Yeah. So if the CRM is properly set up, you're going to easily, within seconds, be able to see how much projected revenue is coming in. Because the one thing you have to recognize is that with the CRM, it's not going to tell you that you have 4 proposals that are $25,000 each that are worth $100,000.

1:01:26 It's not going to say your projected revenue is 100,000 because if you only close 50% of your deals, it's going to say your projected revenue is $50,000. And so a lot of times sales people be like, I'm going to hit my quota because I have all these proposals out. They don't recognize. They're not factoring in the percentage of how many of those are actually going to close versus not close. So that's a big piece of it.

1:01:48 The other big piece that you would get from ACRM if it's set up correctly, how long does it take to close a deal? That's something that management would want to know. Does it take us a few days, a few weeks, a few months, a few years? How long does it take and how long does it take to go from one step to the other?

1:02:04 I've seen situations where a discovery call, which you think might, right, animal discovery call should happen within a few days. Like pretty quickly someone's interested, you get on the phone with them, set an appointment, have a conversation. I've seen pipelines where someone sitting in the discovery call stage for months.

1:02:21 Wow. Why are they sitting there for months? Is it, is it because then the meeting never happened? Is it because it happened and it never got moved into the next stage? Is it because the salesperson forgot about it and never actually had the discovery call? And so those things are more problematic than you would expect.

1:02:37 And it happens not just in the startups. We've worked with companies generating millions and millions of dollars and we see these problems exist. So it's not just for those listening thinking we're making money, we're doing all the right things. I could almost guarantee that there's a large percentage of everybody listening today who thinks everything is on the up and up and everything is organized and everything is being done correctly and there's problems, but below the surface it's just nobody's paying attention to them.

1:03:04 Interested, so looking at that example that you just provided off, you know a custom or a potential lead rather seating in the discovery call stage, I refer to that as a broken customer journey, right? And that's directly absolutely impacts the revenue, it impacts profitability, right. But I'd like for you to shed some light on how do these broken customer journeys impact profitability beyond just the lost deals. Now think about lifetime value, referrals, brand reputation. Like what?

1:03:40 From a holistic perspective, right? How do these broken customers journeys affect the profitability of an organization? Yeah. I mean, listen, you hit on something that's really important. And if you have somebody that I'll give you, I'll give you another example. So I own a home, OK. I've had to call contractors to come in.

1:03:59 I am pretty handy. So I'm the DIY skills you don't have, I have, OK. We should be business partners. But I'll teach you. I'll teach you so, but but you know, I've had to call some people to do things, some things that are just, you know, I don't have time for just bigger projects. And the person that doesn't call me back or says they're going to come and they never come.

1:04:22 I'm never going to refer to that person. I'm never going to call that person again. And so it's the same thing in B2B sales. If somebody reaches out to your company and they have a bad experience, they're not going to think of, they're not going to think highly of you. They didn't even work with you.

1:04:35 But their immediate reaction is, you know, like, I'm not interested, you know, because they got a bad taste in their mouth. Even though you might be the best company for them, they're not willing to look any further. So it's going to affect getting exposure, right? The brand awareness, like the way people think about you, especially if you're in a consumer or retail business and someone has a bad experience, what do they do?

1:04:59 They leave a bad Google review, or they go on TripAdvisor and they leave a bad review about the hotel, about the restaurant. OK, this is all part of the process. It's not only sales, it's customer service, it's the customer experience is not just designed to help the sales team, it's designed to give an experience of your brand, of your business, the best possible version of itself to the person that might want to work with you.

1:05:24 So there's a lot of stake that when these things aren't set up correctly, that can go wrong very quickly and just build and snowball on top of them, you know? So, so yeah, so it's the answer to the question. It's has a lot of points that can derive other issues down the road. It's not just that the deal was sitting in a stage for too long. It's what happened to the person that never got a call back. You know, Amelia wanted to host a webinar, but the tool couldn't deliver.

1:05:53 Zooming out, she turned to Webinarchy, an expert solution for webinars. With seamless setup and intuitive design. She delivered the perfect webinar. Webinar key host webinars like a boss. Interesting. You know, as finance people, you know, we are usually very obsessed with the numbers, with metrics, right?

1:06:15 Of course, you know, it's easy to tell narratives, to tell the stories with the numbers, right? So I like to put forward to you a couple of operational questions that I think every founder, every CFO should be asking. And you know these are levers that separate efficient scaling from expensive cares. So from a weekly perspective, in terms of weekly metrics that matter, So what, what what metrics should CF OS and founders the monitoring on a weekly basis to stay ahead of the revenue problems before to become a crisis? Yeah.

1:06:56 So one thing you want to know is how many brand new people are you talking to as a prospective customer and what is that number? And then where are they? So like, have you spoken to them? Do you have a meeting scheduled with them? What is the next step with that person? Another thing you really also want to be looking at is what are they doing for all the leads they've had in the past?

1:07:17 What are they doing in that particular week to follow up with everything from the weeks and months prior? You know, where are they organized? Another thing you want to look at too is, which I think a lot of people don't do, look at some of their emails that they're sending to prospective customers.

1:07:31 Sit with them, sit at their computer or have them open up the emails, read the emails. Do they represent the business? Are they coming across as really salesy and pushy? Are they coming across in the way that you want them to talk to prospective customers to represent the business? Because a lot of times salespeople are really good at selling and talking. They're not so good at writing emails, unfortunately. And so, so not to say, oh, darn right, a lot of them are. But there are a lot that I've seen that are just very abrupt and very short and they're not where they use bad grammar. You know, any, any number of things could be a problem. So that you've seen that, right?

1:08:05 I've seen that a lot. That is why that is that is why I'm laughing because it's it's like you are you're activating my trauma. But one thing I'll tell you about sales guys is and and I think it's a running issue that I have with a lot of them. A lot of them believe in creating what I think is a false sense of urgency, right?

1:08:29 So, and I feel like he sort of gives off a vibe of desperation to the customer, right? I hate sounding salesy, right? But they tell you no, they are not. They are not sounding salesy. They're not, you know, being desperate. They are only acting on urgency. So why? That's culture of urgency, right? From salespeople.

1:08:56 Yeah, one of the best emails. I'll finish to say that. The other thing that they should be looking for, the last thing is how are they using the system, right. A lot of these systems, you could have a log of when your team is logged in, what they're doing in the system. So if they tell you that things are good or things aren't good, look into the system. You'll be able to see their activity. And so if they're not doing the things they're supposed to be doing, then that's probably part of the reason it's not working. One of the emails that I love best that work exceptionally well, I call it the good news, bad news e-mail, and there's lots of versions of it out there. But when I've had a conversation

1:09:33 with somebody, usually it's more than one and things are going well or maybe they're just kind of intermittent, but then they sort of disappear here. They stop returning my phone calls, they stop returning the emails. Happens to all of us, right? Even me, my e-mail is subject messages, good news or bad news question mark.

1:09:49 And it goes to something like this. Adam Allah, it's, you know, we've had a great conversation about XYZI give specific details about what we spoke about. I say to them, I understand, you know, things change and, and you're busy and, and, and if this needs to take a back seat, it's not a problem at all. If you've hired somebody, not a problem. I understand if you don't mind just replying and let me and let me know if you have of good news or bad news. Any news would be appreciated.

1:10:13 And that always gets a response, usually the same day. You know, because I'm giving them, I'm giving them an out right. I'm giving them a reason to say we don't need you anymore, or I'm giving them a reason to say, sorry, I've totally flaked and I should have let you know that there's been a six month delay or we're not going to do this until next year. My apologies for not getting back to you sooner. You know, let's talk next year, let's talk next month. It always gets some type of reaction. And so that's not me being salesy or pushy or making a sense of timing is just saying, Hey, I'm going to keep following up.

1:10:45 I'm going to keep calling you, I'm going to keep emailing you. And you know, if you don't want me to keep doing that, just let me know and I'll stop. But I just need to know like where, where things are at, you know, so there's all different tactics. I mean, I've seen, you know, the the funniest one I think I ever saw, which was really, really bad. It was somebody sent me like a GIF and there was somebody like sitting like on a on a bench, like in a park. And there was like nobody around. And it just said like, I'm here waiting for you. And that's like all it's said.

1:11:11 Yeah, you know, I was just saying, OK, whatever. I know you're trying to be cute, but like, that's just, you know, I'm not going to reply to this e-mail, you know, So you know, of I think that's one thing that gets overlooked is that leadership is assuming that the company is being represented. Think about this. When you're doing marketing, who has to approve the marketing, right?

1:11:35 It's usually the marketing team. And then like the, you know, the owner of the company or somebody high up has to the CMO what it's going to look like, what it's going to say, right? What what it's going to what's, what's the call to action? They have to prove everything. But when you have a sales manager, sorry, when you have a sales manager and they're doing their thing, no one's looking to be like, well, how's the sales sales salesperson talking to prospects?

1:11:57 You know, how are they communicating? But they're not, you know, not doing that a lot of times. And so I think there's a huge missed opportunity there. It's just and stuff, you know, definitely between yourself and myself, we've seen a lot of interesting, you know, sales communications, right, that can form another podcast episode on its own, right? But Speaking of automation without getting burnt out. So what role does automation play in scaling efficiently without burning out, you know, teams? And where do companies typically over automate or under automate? Yeah.

1:12:36 I mean, so automation is helpful. It's important, but there has to be a human component to it. You have to pick up the phone, you have to call somebody, send them a message on LinkedIn, send them a text message. If you just relying on automation to communicate with people, people are pretty savvy, right?

1:12:54 So they're going to know it's not really you and that your system is just generating all this noise to them that does doesn't work for most businesses. You know, sorry. They, they, they, they want to talk to somebody. They want to know that you're a real person. They want to have an exchange, a conversation like we're having here.

1:13:12 So there has to be a delicate balance between automation and then the human piece of that interweaving into the automation. Hey, so that human touch, like you said, is actually very important. And of course, that's something that I place a lot of emphasis on, right? I don't like the idea of getting communication that is very, very easy to detect.

1:13:35 Okay, this is actually AI generated. I think it becomes really annoying these days because of the volume of, you know, communications that you get, you know, that are AI generated. So I think founders should should take note of that. So for me personally, I prefer getting a short message that I know is handcrafted all right, instead of, you know, speaking with with an AI tool.

1:14:00 But moving on to the sales cycles, how can businesses shorten sales cycles without sacrificing relationship quality? You know, and the tension every sales leader gets to feel. Well, it comes down to the process, right? So the sales cycle is going to come from what is our process. You know, if a demo isn't necessary, don't do a demo, right?

1:14:23 If if a going to the home isn't necessary to give an estimate, you could give an estimate without going to the home. Don't take the time to schedule the appointment, right? Maybe it's not necessary. So that's where you have to really look at what that process looks like on paper to figure out where to short the sales cycle.

1:14:40 The other part is in a lot of CRM systems, you have something called a conversion analysis report. The conversion analysis is going to tell you, on average how long does it take to go from one stage of your sales process to the next stage and to the next stage and how many people drop off right and don't actually move forward.

1:14:59 So think of it like as on your website, someone goes to your homepage. A lot of businesses have high bounce rates. You know, they might have like an 80% bounce rate. What does that mean? 80% of the people that go to your homepage leave right away. They don't go anywhere else. They're not even looking through another page. So you have to understand how people are going through that sales process in order to figure out where you could actually shorten it up.

1:15:22 And it might be like the things we're talking might, it might be about the automation, It might be someone picking up the phone. So for example, sending out a proposal. A lot of people just send out a proposal, just wait and wait for the phone to ring. They wait for the e-mail to say, this sounds good, let's go forward and maybe there's a follow up here or there. But a lot of times there's not consistent follow up that could shorten the cycle dramatically.

1:15:43 A text message goes out. We just sent you the proposal. Let us know if you have any questions. A few days later, someone calls. We know you might need some more time. We just want to give you a call and see if you want to talk to us about any questions you might have. Maybe a week or two goes by, another e-mail goes out. We're just following up.

1:15:58 Jason, no pressure. We just want to make sure that you have everything you need. We haven't heard from you. So every piece of that communication is just trying to help them to get to a decision. I'm not trying to pressure them to get there. It's making sure that they're equipped with all the information they need.

1:16:13 Those are the ways that we're going to help reduce the process, the sales cycle and and short it up. But without those moving pieces or without the system, it's going to be very difficult to shorten the sales cycle because you don't again go back to my bucket. You don't know where the leaks are.

1:16:27 And so if you're blindfolded, there's no way you can take a piece of tape to cover the holes in the bucket and fix it, because you won't be able to see them. Interesting. So I'm glad that you have experience across various industries. So from your experience across these industries, what industries would you say are still notably under utilizing CRM technology and what exactly is holding them back?

1:16:53 Yeah. Home service businesses are, are a big one. I think they're starting to recognize the need for it, but they're that's, you know, I'm talking about contractors and scapers, you know, electricians, plumbers, referring companies, anybody doing work on your on your house. I think that's a really big one.

1:17:10 Another really big one is manufacturers factors are tend to do a lot of quotes and they have it like an ERP system or system that manages the quotes. A lot of times they're not really using automation or CRM to nurture those relationships. They're also what we didn't talk about today, which is a huge gold mine. The bigger the company, it's expected you're going to have customers that you haven't spoken to in years, right? They used to work with you, they hired you, they were happy with you, and for whatever reason, they stopped working with you. Most companies never go back to find out why and to try to rekindle that relationship.

1:17:42 CRM is a great tool for that. It's a great tool to go back and to, you know, try to generate revenue without spending any money to generate that revenue. And these are people that hopefully we're happy with you. Another industry besides those two are any volume. And this is really not an industry, but more of like a painting a picture of a business, Excuse me, It'd be a business that has at least 50 leads per month coming in and at least has one salesperson full time that's responsible for managing those leads.

1:18:16 They could have more and they're generally probably going to be spending a couple of $1000, You know, whatever currency you have, you know, wherever you're listening on marketing. And if you do, if you have those three things running, you have leads coming in, you have one person's job, it is to try to close those leads and convert them.

1:18:34 And you're spending your money on marketing and you don't have a CRM. That's a huge problem because I guarantee you things are full of cracks. Interesting. So how is AI changing CRM technology and lead nurturing right now? No, not just about the Fiori, but the actual tools and workflows that you've seen clients are using.

1:18:54 So the biggest ones are capturing all, everything that was said. So today we're talking, there's going to be a transcript of our conversation and you and I may have a decent memory. We're not going to remember word for word everything that was said. It's it's virtually impossible because we're going to leave this conversation and go get into our next meeting and do other things. So AI has the power to not only grab that transcription, but it could analyze it and it could find all the important things that were said or all the things that a prospect said that signaled what their pain points were or what would solve their solution.

1:19:29 And then if you couple that with building AI tools, which we do a lot for clients to say, OK, now that you have the transcript, how would you respond? What would, what should the e-mail follow up be to that person? It's analyzing the data in a way that us humans, it would take us hours and hours and sometimes it would even be impossible to analyze the way that the AI can analyze the data.

1:19:50 That's going to be the biggest impact. It's already being a big impact. We're also seeing it with chat bots. So think of ChatGPT for for example, but a ChatGPT that's built specifically for your business. So ChatGPT is looking all over the the world, right, for information and resources. A custom chat bot is trained on your business specific and knows everything about your business and knows all your products, your services and knows everything you do and knows you know the biggest challenges customers have, how you solve those challenges and knows everybody's on your team, their role. It's literally an encyclopedia about your business that runs on your website.

1:20:26 So when people go and ask. Questions it's now talking to the smartest person you have at your company, right, that knows everything and more about your business and can answer those things with the way you would answer them in the tone you would answer them in the in the speaking pattern that you would answer them. Those are going to be the two biggest things. And I think the third one is going to be reporting just on data AI is going to be asked before about KPIAPAI is definitely going to make that a lot easier. So you could go in and ask questions and get those results very quickly and a lot of tools.

1:20:57 So you already have it in place like QuickBooks, which is a widely popular, we use QuickBooks for our business here. I could go into QuickBooks today rather than trying to find a report, I can say what's my EBITDA? You're a fan of finance guy, right? So. And it's before age, trans tax, depreciation and amortization.

1:21:16 Right. But why is the EBITDA important? It tells you how healthy the business is, right? Correct. Yeah, exactly. Is that is that right? Exactly. If you're that's your earnings basically, right, earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization. So there you go. That's your operating profit basically. So if you're if your EBITDA is like 2%, there's a problem, right?

1:21:44 So you know, you want to, so you want to go and make sure that you know, so today, like if I wanted to do that before AI, I'd have to kind of go and calculate all that myself. Now I could go into QuickBooks, It's got an AI tool built in. I could say, hey, what's my EBITDA for 2026 compared to so far, compared to 2025? Where am I trending?

1:22:05 Where am I trending in the last five years? And it within like minutes, it'll give me that answer, you know, calculate everything for me. So that's where, you know, we're going to see a big impact, I believe, you know. Interesting, you know, talking about that AI and automation versus human connection debate, right? So do you believe that automation will replace human relationship building or will it enhance it? So we have that line between efficiency and losing the Human Torch.

1:22:37 I think that business will try to replace it, but I think you're going to you're going to feel it. You're going to know that it's AI, It's not genuine. So there has to be, in my belief, there has to be a blend of technology and of real people. It's getting harder and harder to, I think for people to stay loyal to that because AI is so easily accessible and it's so effortless in some ways that people are relying on that.

1:23:02 Well, I think a little too heavily, but ultimately people like, you know, in, in sales, people are buying you. They're not buying cold device. They're not, they're not buying. They're not hiring me because I have a nice website. They're hiring us because of the conversations I've had with them and the value they understand I can bring to their business.

1:23:20 Maybe I've cracked a joke. Maybe they like me, they think I'm funny and I don't know whatever it is, right? But they're buying. They're buying us because they're they're buying into me. And AI is never going to be able to replace that. I agree with you. And of course, I'll tell you this. People buy from people. They know the like and the trust. That's something I realized, right, that they need to know you.

1:23:41 They need to. Yeah, But the question, we are emotional beings, right? People would typically buy from a person they they feel like they know the like and the trust, right. And of course, you know, Speaking of these tools, I have noticed that a lot of entities are obsessed, you know, with AI tools.

1:24:04 It's like we are in the AI gold rush. Basically. It's a a bubble, but what's your advice of businesses that have become overwhelmed by too many tools and disconnected systems? So how do you simplify without losing capability? This is the easiest way to test that. So First off, make a list of all the tools you use for your business, all the software.

1:24:25 Write down how much it cost you, right? Because that's important to know. Find out who in your company uses that, who's the main person or the couple people that use it most, And then sit with them for one hour and have them show you how they use that tool every single day. What are you going to uncover?

1:24:40 You're going to uncover very quickly how important that tool is to the business and how important it is to that person. And then really what will unfold is to recognize the software that you don't need, the software that's integral to your business, and the software that has the potential to be more impactful, but it needs some, you know, some help to get there. A lot of companies are spending a lot of money on software they don't need.

1:25:05 So that's the reality. Exactly, right, too many tools, but too little clarity, right? They tend to lack clarity. And of course, you know, one of the things that you touched on earlier is that one-size-fits-all CRM implementation, which is usually bound to fail. So So what? What does a proper customer my implementation look like in practice?

1:25:27 Sure. So it has to start with the strategy, It has to start with meeting with the executive team, with the sales team, with the marketing team and putting on paper how does the organization work today? How do you get your leads? How do you work those leads to turn them into a customer? What happens when they become a customer? Understanding if there's different products you sell or to different markets, different industries, your sales process might be different.

1:25:51 We need to understand the whole landscape of everything before we even touch the software. Figure that out and we map everything visually out of how are things going to work. Then you would hire somebody like cultivars like Jason to build what we just planned, right? So, so think of like you hire an architect to design your home, but then you, the architect doesn't build it.

1:26:09 You need to go hire the builder that's going to build a home and then you have to hire the interior decorator that's going to design the inside of the home. OK, we do it. All right. You don't have to hire all these different people. So we we design the Sierra and we build it. We train the team on how to use it.

1:26:28 All of our training happens over video calls. So if you're want to look for a new CRM, find out what the training process looks like, find out how long that process is, what's included. You really want somebody to be holding your hand. I've given a lot of examples and, and analogies on the conversation today and I'm all so this is the last analogy to be it'll be maybe won't be the last, but it'll be the last one. Maybe is do you know how to ride a bike, a bicycle? So, OK, so when when you learn to run a bicycle, right, you have training wheels, OK, and you're, and you're on the training wheels and, and you don't need anybody's help. You can just, you can just do it on your own. But when you take those training

1:27:08 wheels off, you can try to go on your own, but usually your parent or somebody's holding the back seat, right and keeping you stable and running with you while you're learning to balance. That's what we do here at Called Device. We hold on to the seat for the sales team, for the marketing, for the whole organization once the CRM is set up, after training has been done.

1:27:26 And we'll hold on to that seat for weeks, months, even years. And we don't let go until we see that everybody's fully stable and comfortable within the platform. And that's the biggest differentiator there for our business and other people like us is that we, a lot of companies will just do the training and then they'll be done and be like, OK, you're all set.

1:27:44 The reality is that training is never ending. You're always going to need training. You're always also going to need adjustments. So I would say that all the bigger, biggest failure in CRM implementation beyond all those things is believing that once you set up your CRM, it's done. It's not done.

1:28:01 You're always going to be making changes to your CRM for years because your business is going to change, your products will change, your way of selling might change, your marketing strategies will change, your messaging will change. There's always going to be something that's going to need to change you. You built a new website that needs to be integrated or whatever it might be.

1:28:17 So to believe that ACRM is going to be set up once and never modified or never updated is something where I think a lot of people have a disillusion to as well. Yeah. I mean, just with the way that AI is just exploded in the last number of years, I think we're going to see that the CRM is going to be able to analyze data outside of its own platform. It's going to be able to look at e-mail communication. It's going to be able to look at phone call transcripts. It's going to look at meetings and it's going to predict what needs to be done next and when that next action needs to be done.

1:28:50 So there'll still be automation, but I think that it's going to be driven by more intelligence than the predictive model that we're doing today. We're predicting what should happen next and we're and we're telling the system what to do. Whereas I think AI is going to be more reactive where it's going to analyze things in real time and it's going to prompt us to do different things or suggest different things to do when those opportunities arise. It comes down to process.

1:29:15 No matter where you are, whatever country you're in, whatever time zone you're in, whatever language you might speak, wherever your customer might be, regardless of the size of your team, process is process. And if you don't have a process to today and the process is in somebody's head and the process has never been written down for what happens when you get a lead and how does that lead turn into a customer? And what are all the little steps that happened in between there, then that's something that you need to pay attention to today.

1:29:42 So if you've listened to this whole episode, and I know we've been talking a long time, that'll be the last thing I did. Last piece of advice is get out a piece of paper and write down your process. And if you don't have one, write down what you believe it is, what you think it is, and then figuring out how to improve it from there.

1:29:57 That's right. Yeah. I mean, for me, it's all about education. It's about making people. We're not making people, but empowering people to learn something that they didn't know before they came across me or came across cultivars and that they were inspired enough to be willing to look at things from a different perspective and to apply something that we've taught them whether they hire us or not.

1:30:20 That would be the legacy is to know that we've made a difference in helping people improve their sales process and to growing their businesses at scale. Person that I'd love to see on your podcast, I think that's somebody you would find interesting to talk to is person named Donald C Kelly and he goes by the sales evangelist.

1:30:40 He's got his own podcast as well. Some a show that I've been on myself and I'm not doing it to promote him. I just think he's a good guy and he's really dialed in on the conversation around how to increase and make your sales process more productive. Let's go it let's all right, I'm ready. There is no answer to that question.

1:31:00 It really did. That's that's the honest answer. That's the honest answer. My answer to that is talk to a ACRM consultant that's agnostic, that will find the right CRM for your specific needs. But if I had a name one I would name, I would say Pipedrive is a really good simple tool for somebody who needs a very 26 cream functionality.

1:31:23 It's called IE drive. I would have to say in general, I think impressions is, is overrated urely because it doesn't matter how many people saw your billboard when they're driving 85 miles an hour on the highway. It's about did they actually buy something from you? Did they reach out to you? So I think impressions is, you know, to me, a little bit useless.

1:31:44 Did you say a trench? Was that a threat, a threat? No, no, it's for sure an opportunity. Yes, 100% an opportunity. The one that I, I've read a lot, but the one that changed my business is a book called Profit First. And so the whole concept of that book is that you want to make sure that you are putting away the profit you're earning before it's spent on other things.

1:32:09 And So what it did, the framework is that you have 4 separate business checking accounts. You have one for your income, you have another one for your operating expenses, you have another one for your taxes, and you have another one for your profit. And the idea is that when money comes into the income account on a percentage scale, money is automatically transferred into the other accounts. And so it helps you grow not only cash flow, but also helps you grow wealth for the business as well. That's right.

1:32:37 Your EBITDA. I got the answer. I have it. You ready today? The answer is we got to do a drum mole. The answer is blocking time. Blocking time on your calendar to actually do sales activities. Yeah, absolutely. So the best place to find me is to go to afterthelead.com. afterthelead.com. As I mentioned, the lead nurturing we talked about there's a free download for all the audience listeners today. There's also a link to schedule call for me if you have any questions.

1:33:06 We connect. Doesn't matter where you are in the world. I work with clients all literally in multiple countries, so at time zone we can figure that out. So that'd be the best place. You can look up cultivis as well. Little tricky to spell CULTIVIZ e.com. And I would imagine that I'm all, all those links and information will be in the show notes as well.

1:33:26 No, I just want to say that it was a pleasure to be here. I really enjoyed the conversation. And if you'd learned anything today, it's just retraining your brain to think about the way you're going about running your business when it comes to your processes. And I hope you learned something positive.