Small Business Big World
New episodes every Tuesday discussing the challenges, adventures and fun of being a small business owner. Each week we'll delve into various small business topics, from real-world DEI considerations to selling your business, using video to market your business, unique benefit offerings for your employees and so much more. Curated by the crew at Paper Trails.
Small Business Big World
Unlocking the Power of CRM Systems for Small Businesses
Unlock the secrets of effective customer relationship management with insights from Jason Atwood of Arkus. You'll discover how CRMs have transformed from simple databases into powerful tools essential for tracking interactions, managing leads, and boosting sales for both B2B and B2C businesses. In this episode of Small Business Big World, Jason breaks down the evolution of CRM systems and their crucial role in providing actionable insights, such as lead scoring and origin tracking, to enhance communication strategies and propel prospects through your sales pipeline.
This is Small Business Big World, our weekly podcast prepared by the team at Paper Trails. Owning and running a small business is hard. Each week, we'll dive into the challenges, headaches, trends, fun and excitement of running a small business. After all, small businesses are the heartbeat of America and our team is here to keep them beating. Welcome to Small Business Big World, our weekly podcast, where we talk about all things small business. Today, my guest, jason Atwood with Arcus. This is a Salesforce consulting firm and we're going to talk about CRMs, or Customer Relationship Management Systems in small business. So thanks for joining me, jason.
Speaker 2:My pleasure. It's been a while, I know so.
Speaker 1:Jason and I worked together in a previous life of mine and he reached out to me and said I want to be a guest. So here he is.
Speaker 2:You're in a new life. I'm in the same life.
Speaker 1:You're in the same.
Speaker 2:I haven't gone many years. You've gone somewhere else. So it's great to catch up with you, yeah.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so before we get going, obviously, don't forget like, follow, share rate review, subscribe on all of our platforms, all the podcast platforms. We're out there. We're on all the social media platforms at Small Business Big World. And if you ever have any questions for us or any of our guests, certainly email us at podcast at vapor trails dot com. I almost forgot that email, but that's the one. So, jason, talk to us about CRM's customer relationship management systems. What are they and who uses them, and why do we need to use them?
Speaker 2:Sure, I mean, I guess I would say everybody should use them, everybody has them. So CRM, as we say, customer relationship management or, if you're in the nonprofit space, constituent relationship management, we can change the C around a lot. It's just the concept of really starting to track all of the people you deal with, whether they're coming in as new to you, which which is what we call leads, or whether they're your clients or or whether they're your accounts sort of the businesses you do business with. So whether you're b2b or b2c, and then all the way through that, that life cycle, all the way up to things like, you know, tracking your, your sales, your invoices. It can go farther and farther and farther.
Speaker 2:But think of it as a great way to track all the things that are going on in your business. We start with the customer side of things. But if you think about where the customer is and this is where you know I'll start a little bit of Salesforce Kool-Aid you know the customer is in the center of everything. So everything kind of spokes off of that. So whether it's, you know, sales or marketing or invoicing or whatever, they all spark off the middle of this customer. So customer relationship management is the beginnings of all of that and really just core to pretty much everything you do.
Speaker 1:So the CRMs of today are kind of the new. You know ERPs of yesterday, right, they can be your core system in a lot of functions, right? I mean, you talked about service, you talked about sales. You know, if you go down that sales, you know funnel I guess not to use that word but what are folks kind of using that from a sales and marketing perspective? What are they using their CRMs for, kind of in that world as per sales and marketing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so in the sales and marketing world, you know it starts at what you were talking about, sort of the funnel, right? So really, the first part is on the marketing side is where are these customers coming in from, right? When are these leads coming in from? At that point, you're really tracking all the endpoints, right. Are they coming in through email? Are they coming in through social? Are they coming in through your website? Are they coming in through nowadays it could be even SMS or is it events? So it's really tracking all those kind of inputs into your system.
Speaker 2:At that point, you're tracking a lot of the value around them, right. So a lot of the systems now the marketings will do scoring and algorithms to say, well, this person has this title and they have this, this thing, and they fill out this form. Therefore, their their value, more. You're also, at that point, tracking their activity levels. Where did they go? What did they see? Did they click on this? Did they download this, right?
Speaker 2:So giving your, in theory, an actual practice, giving your sales staff or whoever's going to pick up after that, giving them more to go on, more to talk to this new prospect, this new lead, and you're really then bringing them in. You're sort of making contact with them and saying, okay, hey, thanks for attending this event or tweeting at me or filling out this form. You know how can we work together. And you're sort of going through that sales pipeline. So at the beginnings it's a lot about activity, it's a lot about sourcing and it's about and really scoring, because you want to know, like, if I'm dealt with a thousand leads, which ones are the ones that are valuable versus which ones they're asking because they want to sell me something. So that's where, that's where the marketing and the beginning of it happen.
Speaker 2:And beyond that, you're getting into personal communication although we could talk about the, the rise of ai and where that's going to go. But you're getting into sort of the valuation of who they are, you're having conversations with them, you're, you know, maybe going back and forth, you're talking about sort of moving them along the chain of the pipeline and eventually you're thinking about converting them. Right, you're coming up with your system and you're converting those people over into what we would then think of as opportunity pipeline, right. So you're forecasting, you're giving them a value, you're giving them a date and you're tracking them on a bigger, more holistic way. And then that goes into your sales forecasting. And you're looking at your sales forecasting, you're going I've got this many deals these stages, these times, at these many deals these stages, these times, and really going to the process of getting them to that point before you then turn them into a client.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we talk in our business about pipeline, we talk about leads, we do all those things. But what about? Sometimes I challenge our clients to think about the sales and marketing pipeline, kind of like we do. But they might be in a retail world or a restaurant or those types of situations and I think you know the traditional CRMs that we use. Might not be you know exactly the same for them, but you know I encourage folks.
Speaker 1:Hey, are you using OpenTable, right? Opentable has a lot of these same features built in, right, and you can use those tools to nurture those. And you know, if you're using the big retail platform is escaping Shopify? There we go. You're using Shopify Same thing, right? I mean, those clients are coming in. If they're making a purchase, track those, use that data and keep track of those touch points, because all those types of systems do a lot of the same thing, but they're more industry specific and sometimes it takes until a sale happens. But then you can nurture that client forever, that customer forever, and that's the thing that you know you got to think about from a marketing perspective too.
Speaker 2:And that's really where it comes down to sort of what we started talking about a unified profile, right? So you're going to have lots of different systems. You might have retail systems, you might have the website, you might have your internal systems and you do start tracking them when you don't know who you are yet. Right, you're bouncing around my website. You maybe go here, you might do here, but it's been at that point that you give me your information first name, last name, email address that I'm, boom, I'm tying it now back to your activity. So I say, oh well, this person I didn't know who it was, but now I know that Chris Clough has been bouncing around my website forever. Now they just got it. Now I got a shopping cart, now I have a purchase, now I have a reservation, and then bringing them into in a real marketing sense, bringing them into a, you know, sort of a nurturing world, putting them through a journey.
Speaker 2:You'll see that a lot of time. You know you go to a place. A friend of mine loves to do this. He goes to a place, puts to a place. A friend of mine loves to do this. He goes to a place, puts a bunch of stuff in his shopping cart and then he leaves it intentionally because he knows that the backend systems will then send him a coupon or hey, were you abandoned. Or if you're signed up for some sort of restaurant or open table, you're going to get a notification from them hey, we saw you like blah, blah, blah, so maybe you want to come back. So all that revolves around the human being, right, it revolves around the person that you're talking to, and it's about whether you know who they are, to start in a traditional CRM sense, or do you? Or do you identify afterwards, after you've been tracking them?
Speaker 1:Absolutely. And I think you know one of the cool things my sales team gets all excited when we get that form submission and they go in and they say, gosh, this person attended our webinar two months ago and they downloaded this guide and they looked at that and you know if they've been to all these pages over the last three months. Well, that makes the sale process a heck of a lot easier because they already know so much about you and you know you're giving them the information, the value, before they've reached out and that the sale becomes super easy at that point. Uh, you know to go through that, so, and you kind of know a little bit about what they're looking for, if they've been, you know, newling around.
Speaker 2:So you have a better conversation, right, you can have a better conversation than just a very cold lead. You know we consider those warm leads, um, and where you're coming to the conversation with, with trying not to get spooky or creepy like you don't want to say, hey, I saw you the other day do this, this and this. You know we can see that you had interest in this product. We can see your interest in this service. How else can we help you?
Speaker 2:And it definitely depends if you're, you know, b2b or B2C. But, yeah, having that informed information gives the salesperson the ability to sell better. Right, they have just more information going in. And it's really about choices as well. If you're a salesperson, you're looking at your day of a lot of choices and prioritization of what you're going to deal with. And if you're going to look at a bunch of leads, I have these five that are cold and I have these three that I see that they've attended events. I'm going to go after those first and give them my attention before we move on to the other ones.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so once you close that sale right, you close the deal, you sell them a product or a service or whatever it's going to be, you know. Then you, they become that client, right? What is the? What does the CRM help you do for servicing the client once they become that client, and managing that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that's sort of the great part, right. So it is that you do want to bring them in, but once they are, then they are the client, they are the customer, they are the constituent and then you can sort of start to put all the other data around them. Then you have purchase history, then you have longevity, then you have who are the other people in the organizations as you grow, then you have other activities you have with them. Then you can then service them. So when you know most places there's some sort of level of service, whether it's returning something or, you know, in our business it's like it's a much bigger relationship. But you can start to track that bigger and bigger relationship and by having that relationship, by tracking it, you can service your client better and make them happier.
Speaker 2:Nothing the worst thing in the world is when someone calls up and you know this happens a lot in the bigger and bigger companies that have disparate systems is they call up or they need help, or they send an email, or they go on Zen or they, you know, put in a case and the person's like well, I didn't see that you did that thing. We all assume as consumers, although wrongly, that behind the scenes. Everything's connected and everybody can see everything. And it's this one glorious system, because you know it's what we're used to. But that's not the case.
Speaker 2:Like, there's usually five different systems and the order tracking system and the reservation system and this system, and so that's where all that like they can't service you well and that's where a good crm will say look, we have them all connected and when you go in and you look at your customer, you can see all the different pieces around them and not just you know these different silos breaking on those silos. So in our world I you know for your record, in our contact, in our crm, I saw every project you were attached to, every opportunity you were attached to you. You know your title, where you went before and then after, when you. You know when we moved you off to, when we knew that you left the firm. So I have a whole history of all the communications I had with you, things I sent to you, and I can go back and look at. You know a lot of data around around where you were and what you did.
Speaker 1:I would say that's one of our challenges right now. Is is kind of working in those disparate systems. Right, our quote unquote core system, our payroll system, doesn't talk to our CRM right now and we're actually working with a vendor to try to resolve that. They're building an API for us and well, not just for us but for all the users of this and, in fairness, we're a HubSpot user these days. So you know, not to make you cry, I know you're the Salesforce guy, but Right, that's all right, but that's been a really good tool for us. So let's talk about some of those tools. So we use HubSpot. That's a, you know, certainly one of the systems out there. You're the Salesforce guy.
Speaker 2:Talk to me about. You know Salesforce and what that looks like and how it works and all that stuff. Sure, I think Salesforce one of many CRMs. You can't throw a stake without hitting a CRM. Salesforce is, at this point, probably one of the best-known, most-adapted and highest Gardner-ranked CRMs on the planet. I think it probably gets you know it's not as well-known for its very specific points. It's known kind of as enterprise, but they actually have some really nice small business offerings, even some that you, you know, have happened since you've, you know, gone off into the small business world.
Speaker 2:Really, I think the big play for Salesforce is that it is a platform. Above all, it's a platform and so you can build out your processes inside of it. You can customize it very well. I mean, when we did your implementation back at the company that you were at I don't know if you say these things or not like we customize the interface for you we built it out to track your data specific to your company, and I think that's where some of the power comes in for us. Personally, my Salesforce org started with three little licenses, you know, and as we grew we then put on more licenses and built up more. I now it's funny. I look at my Salesforce instance and it is a beast. It's got, I mean, seven or eight or 10 applications from resource tracking to sales, to marketing, to service, to goal tracking. We've employee goal tracking built inside of our Salesforce. So you're like well, what does that have to do with CRM? Well, not much, but it's a platform. So we built out goal tracking and our whole time management system, our invoicing system, all based in Salesforce.
Speaker 2:So you know, for those who are starting off going, well, why would I pick this one or not One of the things you can start to look at for your pricing? And I know it's in your small business, I know I was there. You look at these big numbers, you're like oh, I don't want to pay XX and X per month for that. Part of the reason that I like Salesforce and still work with them is that you can get your ROI out of it by using it for more and more. The more you use it for, the better. So I don't have to have all these disparate systems that I'm paying $9.99 for, $13.99, $8.99, right, if you have one system that can do everything from project management to goal tracking, to sales and service, to forecasting. It's like, oh, this is a big system and all interconnected, which is really nice.
Speaker 1:So that's a real great point. So I mean, we're still a relatively small business and I'm very fortunate to have a resource internally. That's kind of my HubSpot guy, right, john, my marketing guy. He kind of owns HubSpot for us. He's done really good things for us. He's reached out to vendors or you know the guy on Fiverr, if we need to.
Speaker 1:If you can't figure out how to, you know, do things, you know what do you? You know I know you guys work with a little bit larger clients generally, but if you're a small business getting started, how do you recommend people really get in there and configure it for their business? Because that's where you really start to. I think a lot of small businesses in particular get in there and they say I don't know how to use this tool, it's got so much stuff and it doesn't work for me. Well, you have to work it. You know, just like anything in your business, you have to work it to make it work for you. And I mean that's my big thing. What do you guys tell people when you're going into engagements?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, I guess what I would told them 10 years ago versus what I tell people now, um, I I am, I've always been a Salesforce person, so, like for me, I did the work, I could go and configure it myself. But, that being said, like I'm not some massive computer programmer, you know, always self-taught you are going to need some help. Right Again, a lot of these things now are better because they have starter packs and they have these things that install that kind of get you set up. They'll even ask you like wizards. They'll even ask you like wizards. They'll say well, what kind of business are you? Let's set you up. I don't know if you use QuickBooks Like they do the same thing we used to go into QuickBooks now, which is they didn't do back when I started. They would say what are you? And they kind of like ask you a bunch of questions, so then they can set you up to be. You know, at least get you started with what you should be doing.
Speaker 2:People is um, don't always try to customize too much away from away from the, the basics, because I think people get well, I track this and this like every, every, uh customer, or sorry, every company wants to be this little snowflake. It's like actually, no, you, you're a restaurant. You do the same stuff that the restaurant down the street does. You know I actually make the joke about banks. When you're starting a bank, nobody goes out and says you know what? I'm going to write my own banking software? I'm going to start from scratch. I think I'm going to do. You know, transactions are going to happen and no, you go, you pick one of the big three and you move in and you just start to run your bank and you worry about the other things. So, and you move in and you just start to run your bank and you worry about the other things.
Speaker 2:So I think the advice I'd give you is like start with the software. It is, and if a little bit you have to change some of your processes to fit within the software, that's okay, because actually you're starting Like now's the time to not reinvent the wheel. If you get too customized, if you try to build these processes around what you're doing as a small business and they're so unique they're not going to fit in any system right, every system's kind of built for the masses. So I would say like that's not what you're going to give you, as a small business, the the leg up down the street, like maybe marketing will, whatever, but how you run your crm generally is not going to give you the you know the advantage. No one says, oh I, I signed with Arcus cause I've heard their, their CRM was really really top notch and I don't really care.
Speaker 1:Um so I tell our clients keep it simple. That's what I tell our clients is. You know, we, we look at the same thing, you know, in terms of vacation tracking, and everyone wants to have this weird policy that's super specific cause they're trying to manage through their policy. It's the same thing with, you know, crms. It's guess what? The more complicated you make it, the more headaches you have. And you know that's in most parts of business, including CRM and everything else. So I think that's good advice to kind of use what they've got.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:So what are the big values that people see from using? You know CRMs, like reporting. You know intelligence. I mean, where's everyone getting their ROI on their really expensive licensing for these CRM?
Speaker 2:right, yeah, it's true. Um, well, I think I think at the beginning it is how you can? You know you can scale as a company, right? I? One things that I look back I've gone from three people to 75 people, so I'm still a small business is that. One of the things that has scaled brilliantly is our CRM. It's never been an issue of data, never been an issue of licenses, never had a scalability issue with it.
Speaker 2:So I think one of the things you're thinking about as a small business is you don't always want to be a small business, right? So sometimes you know, if you have the plans to be a bigger business, sometimes you should use the bigger business tools because you're going to need to move them anyway. And, by the way, it's expensive to move, it's cheap to stay. So, like, even if you're like I'm going to have my three licenses in there X a month, that feels like a lot, yeah, but in a year or two years or three years, when you're double or triple the size and that little tool that you pick, that little, you know it doesn't scale with you anymore. You know, now you have to move, you have to pick another one and that disrupts your business. Right. Again, what I would say to small business owners now or I guess I am is is your business is not your CRM Like. Your CRM supports your business, but don't think that that is your business. You need to be doing the other things, and so don't let it be distracting For other things that I think are great.
Speaker 2:Now I thought what too? You brought up reporting and analytics. I mean, I'm a data-driven guy. I run my company on data and I have access to all of it. Right, I can go in, I run dashboards, I have Tableau Pulse. I get a once a week AI driven. You know, here's what's happening at your company thing that points out trends and stuff like that. I look at dashboards and reports all the time to see what's going on, but it's, but because I use a CRM, that's, that's all. The data is there and I have to think about that. Oh well, some data is over here, some data is over that. So when you're making those decisions, too, about you know how many systems you have when you, when you want to do reporting. The more systems you have, the less ability you will have to report on that data.
Speaker 2:And then, lastly, I you know picking the right platform. I think you should be future-proofing yourself, right. We are in the day of AI. We're in the day of AI. We're in the day of assistance and agents and all the things tools built within. So now you know AI tool should be built.
Speaker 2:Ai should be built into everything you're doing. It should be built into your CRM, built in your service, built in your marketing. It's built into our reporting and it's great. So allows us to do stuff like like analyze leads and give and predict things, predict things. It predicts opportunity closing rates or lead or lead ratings and I can analyze reports. I'm looking at with AI, as well as all the generative stuff like communication things with your people, being able to generate stuff to talk to them in a more natural way. Having all that data available to you, too, makes the natural way better. So, like the it's not just the. I hope this email finds you well right. It's the. Hey, I'm communicating with you and I have the whole sum of your relationship in my hand. As, as the artificial intelligence, it makes me sound better. So those are the things I would consider and think about to get.
Speaker 2:The last thing about ROI, again, as you're picking a platform, is make sure that you can use it for the multiple things it can do. One-off, one-point solutions get very expensive. If you get something that can do three or four things, then obviously those different silos become better and better. So I'm not having to spend a whole bunch of other money for this other service with other service. So like picking a, a crm that could handle some of your growth again. I think the service and marketing are two examples. I might get a crm for now, but I know that it has a marketing arm I can tie in. I know it has a service arm. I can pull in and start using um because those things be. That becomes where you really get your ROI.
Speaker 1:Perfect, perfect, perfect, perfect. So one last thing if you had to think about the one feature in a CRM that you think any small business owner would need, what do you think it is?
Speaker 2:It's probably the communication tools, that ability to take in and communicate with people as they come to your doorstep and they knock on your door, and to be able to track that communication, because the hardest thing to do look, I always say if you have two customers, you don't need a CRM, you don't need a CRM, memorize them. I could memorize two customers If it was just you. I would memorize your name, I'd memorize your favorite color and where you live and be no problem. But as you scale right, one of the problems of scale is having that you can get to all that data. You're not going to be able to memorize 100, 200, 300 customers, 400 contacts, 3000 leads, 1700 opportunities right, you're not right, you're not.
Speaker 2:So the ability to be able to, to get that data and be able to sort it and get to the most important parts of the data and be able to follow up with the right people at the right time, that's crucial for any customer, right, any size, because you're going to scale the small business. You're not just going to have two, three, four or five clients, two, three, you want to have a massive, massive book eventually. Um, and I I think my advice would be you're never too small in that CRM. You know, I went back I whooped, we started ours I mean, I was joking before we got it on but like I think we had our CRM set up like it was like LLC you know, or sorry, or you know registration, idea, name, crm and we were up and running because we just knew it was so core and never having to go back, never having to rethink it, we never had to play with spreadsheets and any of that. We were just always in the CRM from get-go. So you're never too small.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. So folks want to get in touch with you, Talk to us about Arcus. How do they get in touch with you? Socials, all that stuff.
Speaker 2:Sure, so get in touch with me. I'm Jason Atwood. You can email me, jasonatwood, at arcasynccom. You can hit our website at arcasynccom. We have a blog going back 15 years. There's over 700 articles on it about CRM, Salesforce and doing business. There's all sorts of great stuff on there, All sorts of fun topics. And if you want to hit me up on LinkedIn, it's you know, LinkedIn slash Jason M Atwood. I'm also on X same thing, Jason M Atwood. That's where I hang out.
Speaker 1:No other places? Awesome. Well, thank you so much, jason. Really appreciate you joining us today. And don't forget to our listeners like Jason really appreciate you joining us today. And don't forget to our listeners like follow, share rate, review, subscribe. We are everywhere. You get your podcasts Certainly. If you have any questions for me and you didn't get Jason's contact information, it's just podcast at papertrailscom and we will get you in touch. Thanks so much, no-transcript. If you found this podcast helpful, don't forget to follow us at at Paper Trails Payroll across all social media platforms and check us out at papertrailscom for more information. As a reminder, the views, opinions and thoughts expressed are the hosts and guests alone. The is for general information purposes only and should not be considered legal or financial advice. By inviting this guest to our podcast, paper Girls does not imply endorsement of or opposition to any specific individual organization, product or service.
