Spiraling Up — Marketing For Professional Services

5 Ways to Fix Your CRM, with Wayne Larson

• Hinge • Season 1 • Episode 16

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Participate in the 2026 High Growth Study today: https://hingemarketing.com/survey

In this episode of Spiraling Up, the Hinge team welcomes Wayne Larson, the CRM Plumber, for a lively discussion on how to un-clog your CRM pipes. From bad data to cumbersome reports, learn how to clean up your tech issues. Finally, the team dissects common branding missteps, taking lessons from Cracker Barrel and Patron Tequila. 

CHAPTERS:
00:00 Welcome
06:20 Becoming a CRM Plumber
07:04 The Current Conversation on CRM
10:40 Five Scenarios
11:54 Our Data is a Mess
18:31 Metrics
23:51 Users
29:46 Marketing Teams
35:01 Partners are Questioning CRM's Value
41:56 High Growth Study and AI
45:49 Pivotal Story
58:19 Conclusion

Connect with Wayne on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonwayne/
Visit A-Sesh Tech: https://www.aseshtech.com/

Austin McNair:

In today's episode of Spiraling Up, our team reflects on the Cracker Barrel rebrand Saga and what it tells us about marketing in today's environment. But first, everyone grab your drain snakes, grab your wrenches, and grab your plunger because we are talking to the CRM plumber himself. Wayne Larson about unclogging your most common CRM problems. Welcome everyone. This is spiraling up. Welcome everyone to spiraling Up the podcast for professional services marketers and business leaders. My name is Austin McNair, and as always, I am joined by my co-host and colleagues, Mary Blanche Kramer

Mary Blanche:

Hey Austin,

Austin McNair:

and Joe Pope. What's up,

Joe Pope:

Hey, hey.

Austin McNair:

as as we switching it up with you doing the, Hey. Hey. Today as we get started, I want to say thank you to all of our listeners who are watching. On YouTube, give us a, like, hit the subscribe button, help us grow our YouTube account. And for all of you audio listeners out there, old school, we love it. Thank you for listening and allowing us to be part of your day today. Guys. We have a great episode, don't we? I am, uh, in a great mood. Today because I just found out, I just logged into our ESPN, uh, account here for the Hinge Fantasy Football League. And Mary Blanche, wouldn't you know it, you and I played each other this weekend. I don't know if you were following it, but, uh,

Mary Blanche:

We sure did.

Austin McNair:

your boy showed up strong and uh, I'm off to a hot start here for this fantasy football season.

Mary Blanche:

I'm pretty, uh, I'm pretty bummed about that. I talked to, talked a pretty big game and not, not a strong, not a strong start for this lady over here, but, um, good game. Austin. And I did see that we actually get to end the league this year playing again. So be ready for a rematch.

Joe Pope:

The buildup of that I'm sure will enthrall the listeners at the Spiraling Podcast.

Austin McNair:

Well, we have been making mention time after time about how historically Mary Blanche has been quite Successful in the fantasy football department at Hinge. I don't know how many seasons we've played together, but you have, won more times than I have. Let's just put it like that. And Joe, I think, yeah, you're, you're like historically on a, skid in the Hinge Fantasy Football League, but you talk a big game in other, in your other leagues, what's going on?

Joe Pope:

Yeah, well when you're in, I believe, seven fantasy football leagues, the amount of focus that goes into the one that doesn't have money associated with it usually is less.

Austin McNair:

That

Joe Pope:

makes sense

Austin McNair:

today, Joe, we're talking, we're talking about your favorite subject, CRM, platforms and systems.

Joe Pope:

I mean, it's second to fantasy football this time of year. But yeah, CRM certainly is one that is a reoccurring theme in pretty much every call that I'll have with a prospective client of Hinge. And a lot of times it's directly tied to frankly, confusion. I mean, we've got all sorts of different ways of how CRMs could be misused, and I know that that was really what intrigued us about our friend, uh, Wayne Larson, who, fancies himself as a plumber of such issues.

Austin McNair:

Yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna turn now to, to introduce Wayne, but I, I'll say. Yeah. Uh, thi this topic while I was being a bit sarcastic, it's not the most exciting topic you know, it doesn't get everybody jumping outta their seats when it's like, Hey, let's fix our CRM. It's super technical. It's, you have to get your hands dirty, but that's exactly why we called our guest Wayne Larson. He is the CRM plumber, so let's introduce him now. Hey guys, before we get into our next segment, I wanna loop you into something that we have going on here on the Hinge side. As you know, we are always conducting research. We do it every year on what the fastest-growing professional services firms are doing as a part of their marketing. So right now we are conducting the 2026 high growth study. And that survey is open and we would love your participation. Mary-Blanche, what are we giving people that participate in this year's survey?

Mary Blanche:

anyone that participates, they get a free report.

Austin McNair:

A free report. Yeah. Worth$799. That's what we sell it for after the fact. And it's an industry report. It's, it's whatever industry you are in. Uh, you'll select your industry and we'll send that report to you when it comes out in January..

Joe Pope:

But wait, there's more. In fact, if you complete the survey, we'll also be entering yourself in a raffle for a gift. A gift from your friends at Hinge of up to$500 worth in value. Are you looking for some Bose headphones? A cool podcasting mic? You can't take my job. I'm sorry, but if you wanted it, you could try to do it on your own, and using this gift from Hinge from completing the survey is gonna be a great way to do it. Is there such thing as a But wait, there's more. More because there is! If you complete this survey by the end of October, 2025, we'll give you three entries into that raffle. Get yourself something nice for the holiday season. Austin, take us home. Where can they take this survey?

Austin McNair:

Yeah, to take the survey, you're gonna want to go to hingemarketing.com/survey. If you're on your computer, if you're watching on YouTube right now, hit the pause button. Come back and finish for the episode. Hit HIT survey. We really appreciate it in advance and let's get onto our episode. Well, we're honored to welcome to Spiraling Up Wayne Larson. Wayne is the owner at Ace Tech, a provider of CRM and marketing automation platform consulting services, similar to how a plumber works on your house. Wayne worked with his fair share of consultants while leading the connected application strategy for a 3 billion dollar. Publicly traded professional services firm and he has now opened his own plumbing shop where he shows up to his client's, proverbial houses, creates a solution, and then delivers on that idea all in one sitting. Wayne, welcome to Spiraling Up. How you doing?

Wayne Larson:

Glad to be here. Yeah. I'm sitting in a, a recently purchased house. I've been actually doing some literal plumbing of myself too. Uh, and, uh, anyways, so glad to be talking about tech. It's something I know a little bit more when it comes to plumbing than, uh, actually working on this, uh, pipe valve to my house.

Mary Blanche:

Wayne tell us how does one become a CRM plumber?

Wayne Larson:

Well first and be you. Don't bite your nails and you always know what rolls downhill. Just kidding. Uh, that's a great plumber joke every time. And, all due respect to the real guys, the gals in days that, have to know about that. you know, at the end of the day, having spent so many years in professional services. I couldn't believe how many pipes were just clogged, whether it's data, reports, value and the like, and truly holding people back from getting everything out of their CRM. So after a decade plus of doing that, mb I, I decided to hang my own plumbing shop. And again, not be afraid to get your hands dirty, go in there, figure out issues, solve it, and then move on with your day.

Austin McNair:

Wayne in, in today's conversation, we're gonna go through a few, uh, scenarios here, sort of a choose your own adventure style, uh, exercise. But before we get in there, I think a lot of marketers have arrived within the last couple of years into this position where the CRM system has become sort of like a frenemy. It's like it's their friend. They know they're supposed to be using it. their companies are paying a lot of money to support that technology at their company. Yet at the same time. a lot of these companies set this technology up like 5, 6, 7 years ago. I'm just curious, in your position right now, are you seeing a lot of companies like kind of coming to the table and being like, Hey Wayne, uh, we set this up years ago and starting to not. Run as smoothly as maybe we thought it was supposed to or, yeah. I, I'm just curious before we dive into our scenarios, like what's the conversation right now that you're having with people?

Wayne Larson:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, think about CRMs like houses, right? And the plumbing on a house. At the end of the day, you might buy a house from someone who owned that house for 10 years. They did arrange of different things with their plumbing, maybe their electrical work too. No one wants to get shocked. Right. And when you're in that scenario, you buy that house and then you start kind of peeling back. Whoa. This person put together what? Uh, down here underneath my sink, right? Or, oh, I, you know, I thought every house comes with a garbage disposal. What's going on here? And so walking in, if you're a new marketer into a CRM that your company's had for years, is just that same exact scenario. Just played out in tech. And so you go through the natural process, right, of identifying, hey, okay, what do I need to fix or what's wrong or what can last for a little while if I just drop Bitcoin on this specific part of my house? Or maybe to buy it or you know, a new piece of tech. And so when we make that comparison, as silly as it is, it's very real when it comes to the question that you just asked. And that's why we talk about it all the time. cause if you jump into it with that type of vigor. You're gonna have success incremental as it might be. but nonetheless, you'll be able to start to get more value out of your CRM, which, if you're a marketer, is also gonna mean more value out of your marketing automation platform. Maybe your D-S-P-A-B-C-D-E-F-G, I can throw all of'em out there, but you get the picture right, you're gonna get more value when you have a rock solid CRM and your pipes cleaned there. Out of everything else you want to do in your marketing strategy.

Joe Pope:

Yeah. One thing that we've continued to see in hinges ongoing research initiative, our high growth study, is how many organizations aren't finding success in this space. It is just a continued issue. Now, higher growth firms though, have made some investments and they have put some effort towards these things. And as the purpose of that study is we're finding direct correlations to what organizations that are more successful. What are they doing different? And so it is a perfect call out to why this is a great place where those marketers can start to see a tool that actually works.

Austin McNair:

Yeah, Wayne, I'll put some numbers to that. In the, the research report that Joe just cited, we asked over 700 professional services firms to rate themselves on a scale of one to 10, how proficient. Are you in tracking and utilizing you know, marketing and business development data? Could you guess what percentage of people would you say rated themselves in that nine to 10 range?

Wayne Larson:

Oh, in that nine to 10 range, it, it has to be single digits,

Austin McNair:

You're right, you're right. It was, I mean, it, it, it seems, intuitive, but like for us it's like, wow. It, like, it put numbers to this feeling that I, I think you're touching on that a lot of marketers feel right now, which is like, even with all of this great technology, like we're not utilizing it well, we don't feel proficient using it. Um, so all that to say. We're really excited to be talking with you. So Wayne, we've got five scenarios for you here. I'm gonna read through'em. the, the house is a mess. We've got floods everywhere. We're calling the CRM plumber Wayne, and, and you're arriving and, and we've got five scenarios for you. and we wanna let you pick, you know, which scenario you'd like to handle first, which pipe to unclog. But here are the scenarios. Number one, our data is a mess. Number two, our reports suck. Number three, our people are not using it, right? Number four, our marketing team is feeling overwhelmed. And then finally, number five, our partners are questioning the CRMs value. Uh, so Wayne, you're the plumber. We've got these clogged pipes. We're gonna go through some scenarios with you. Where would you like to start? What pipe should we unclog first?

Wayne Larson:

I mean, I hate to be so easy, but we gotta go data. If, if you're questioning the data, then it all flows from there. So let, let's go to the main supply and, and then pick our own path from there.

Joe Pope:

Well, I'll kick it off then. I think I was tapped for this one. So data quality, and I agree with you, Wayne, this, if, if your data's bad, then nothing matters after that. Anyways, you log into the CRM and you see that one of your most promising prospects, we'll call'em Ghost Ranch Communications, has multiple records. One's got a full address, maybe it's right, one with just, uh, a city in it. And then, uh, then we've got one that doesn't even spell ghost correctly, GOST. You see all of these different challenges and you start to look deeper and you see it across the board as well in other groups. How do we unclog this pipe, Wayne?

Wayne Larson:

Oof man. you know, yeah, look, if we're jumping in and, uh, we see that type of an issue, which again, we know is happening everywhere. Uh, the first thing you gotta do is you have to understand where your main water supply is. I know, again, this is super nerdy. Maybe if you are, aren't a homeowner, you know, there's a way to shut off water to my house, right? And the equivalent to that in your database when it comes to duplicates is duplicate management. And, uh, matching rules. And these are things that oftentimes come set right in your system and they have defaults, right? But if we're seeing Ghost Ranch Communications come up and, and go against these defaults and not prevent. Users from creating this multiple times, then we know that we gotta go check on that main water supply and, and understand it a little bit more. So that's not the easiest thing to do. It's a little scary, right? I'm gonna shut off water to my whole house, right? here's a, an example in a database. Shutting off water to your whole house in a database scenario might be, we are never going to allow duplicate records with the same email address.

Joe Pope:

Mm-hmm.

Wayne Larson:

Right? That, that sounds simple, but if a partner says, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is their email address, and another one says, yeah, I agree, but I want to have my own record for that as well. Right? Because you have some ownership issues in your, in your actual CRM. Boom. Here comes an issue right now, we run into this duplicate scenario. The same goes for how people might argue over how Miller Light is spelled right. Uh, when you said ghost without the h, I thought LITE, or are we talking about light? Right. So at the end of the day, we need to understand where that water supply is and we need to lean into putting some tough rules on there. So that we can help everything else that's gonna come into our house or our CRM from a data perspective. So that's one part that you, if you are close to a plumber or you fashion yourself a d Iyer, which many people do, you can start to play around with and enforce. The other one is like a Captain Planet thing, man, we gotta be like all rings in kind of situation. Our powers combined, because if we don't do that and we don't empower users to manage through duplicates that they identify, like in your example right there, Joe, then we're just gonna create this big clog, which I won't even go into what's clogging at in the house. And then we're gonna have to unclog that each year. So an approach that you could take there is how are we visualizing duplicates, right or near duplicates to our users? And then how are we enabling them to actually solve those items? A really, really great example of that, and then I'll, I'll get onto this, but data is just such, the hot topic would be in your ghost ranch or ghost ranch communication scenario. is the spelling really gonna hurt? Do we need to figure out who really does or doesn't win in that spelling? Or do we just need to get it unified? Right? In an account scenario or a company, we can probably acquiesce there. Now an area we couldn't is if a deal or an opportunity was duplicated, right? That's real dollars associated with that, and we need to have a real human conversation about how that is or isn't Deduped. On the account side, you empower the user to de-dupe that, and then you move on. So understanding what is critical water supply and what's not is another key in that. Joe.

Joe Pope:

And when you have these different types of, what you can call it, like sub scenarios that fall under data, are you leaning into permissions, for example, and how you can potentially allow these types of modifications? Is it more of a reporting type process and then a centralized review? How, how do you typically handle that?

Wayne Larson:

Permissions is how we would put that and pass that on to the users, right? That's how we would give people that type of access and look, does everyone need that permission? No. But I've been in organizations where we have 30 marketers and everyone's like, nose ghost. I'm not touching that. Duplicate. I don't wanna do it, right? I'm like, no, dude, we gotta empower you to manage that duplicate effort, right? So maybe it's not the partner that's managing that, but. Go to the people who are seeing that data each and every day. Then when it comes to the reports question that you asked, yeah, we can do that, but in my opinion, that's like, again, waiting for that big clog to happen in one of your pipes. If we say, oh yeah, we're gonna get to that report every month, or we're gonna get to that report every quarter, and you're like, oh no, I wanted to go do something fun on the weekend instead of unclog my pipe, so I didn't do it.

Joe Pope:

Yeah, makes sense. one last follow up to you, Wayne. assuming you get all the right permissions in place, you've got the right processes in place. We all know that Even if you do it all right, you're still gonna have some data issues. How often do you audit, for example, like what's, what's the sit down and like, let's just take a quick peek at this. Is that an annual thing? You're doing that more times than once a year? What? What's your typical recommendation?

Wayne Larson:

I'd say it absolutely depends on which piece of data we're talking about, right? If we're talking about, again, opportunities or deals, like real life money scenarios, we should have a higher, uh, frequency of audit. We're talking about, again, an account name, or perhaps it's even just prospects, not clients, then we can, again, go through a different level of, sophistication and frequency in that type of an audit. But, as always, those are nice plans to have. But if we don't empower it each and every day, well then that plan at the end is gonna be just uh, epic Hill to climb. And so I, I would say go for that little micro empowerment.

Joe Pope:

Well, I, I consider this pipe unclogged Wayne, I appreciate you running down data. What's, uh, what's

Wayne Larson:

It's easy. It's easy

Austin McNair:

That's it's Wayne's choice. He's the plumber. What's, uh, what's our, what's our, what's our next pipe to unclog here?

Wayne Larson:

Well, if we're talking about data, then let's just move to metrics. Metrics would be the end result, right? Of that data that we've just unclogged. By the way, it might have helped us find when we have an issue too. So let, let's talk a little bit about metrics.

Austin McNair:

All right. That's, uh, that's, that's my topic here. And so the, the, the way we've communicated this is our reports suck. Wayne. Our, our team was told to go into the CRM and run a report. On the pipeline, on their pipeline. but there are dozens of prebuilt reports, and I'm telling you, none of them seem to show exactly what I need. but I was told that I'm not allowed to build my own reports without a formal request from the IT department. So, Wayne, how, how do we unclog this pipe?

Wayne Larson:

I, I got a hot take on this one, guys. does the IT team or the head of sales or head of marketing restrict how many spreadsheets that you create on your desktop? No. Right. That, that's ridiculous. And so, we always preach to folks in my plumbing shop that a report is just like a spreadsheet, right? And so now you might not want to put the reports that you're creating ad nauseum like you would in a spreadsheet into the public folder so everyone can see it. We all have private folders that we can tuck away that little piece of data or that little report where we're trying something just like that spreadsheet we have on our desktop that no one sees until we accidentally share a whole entire screen one time and they're like, oh my gosh, I can't believe they saw cat names in that spreadsheet. Right. And at the end of the day, if we feel that empowered, and we're an organization that's empowering people to access their data. They're going to be able to self solve for those. My metrics suck situation, right? Or they'll be able to ask really good questions. And speaking of that, so off the hot take about being able to create your own reports, let's assume you can or you are able to send this awesome podcast to your IT team and then they do it right, but then from there you have to still like know what you're pulling in the report. Going back to the Excel spreadsheet situation, right? We know when we create an Excel spreadsheet what the headers, uh, or the rows and the columns are, but in A CRM, they're gonna be creating those for you right away, and then you have to configure it to go and make your spreadsheet. Well, if you don't know what a field that you're pulling into, one of your columns is, you gotta start to date your data model. I know that's nerdy, but nonetheless, being able to go into the back of your system, even if you only have read only access, which by the way most people do in their system. You go into the back of your system and you go look up opportunity or deal as an example. Again, revenue related. And if we're trying to figure out is it amount or one revenue or lead revenue, or. Umping ways that we talk about revenue in our company. You should be able to go in your data model and identify what that definition is of it, right? If that's too scary, bring in all the fields into your reports and then start to whittle down from there using your own business acumen. So you got two different ways to start to understand your metrics better, so you can hopefully stop that whole my metrics suck thing and actually turn it into some power.

Austin McNair:

I imagine like empowering people to go in and actually play around and build reports. Actually. Helps them become better at using the tool as well. I mean, have you had any experiences like that where this kind of philosophy change needed to happen and you've seen teams really elevate their performance in terms of using the tool?

Wayne Larson:

Could Yeah, absolutely is the answer. So I'll take a, another type of professional services, uh, example. a team that I was working with didn't realize that they had access to a treasure trove of data. On OSHA violations, right? Um, so for safety and the like, and this was a group that did insurance, right? Commercial insurance. And so having OSHA violations slips and falls, or someone falls off, et cetera, not to make light of those things are important, but being able to pull that live data in which was happening through some nascent integration. They're like, oh my gosh, you know how much cooler I can build my marketing automation dynamic list now and be able to email specific prospects or clients based on a recent violation that they did or didn't have. And so by just opening up one of those reports, just crack that puppy open, right? And dump a bunch of fields in there to start to see what you might be able to see. And I know that that can make everyone better raise everyone's game, to the point that you just made off.

Austin McNair:

Yeah. I feel like in that example, like, it, it even, like for me, like, and I don't consider myself a power user of, you know, we're using Salesforce at, at a hinge right now, but I think there's probably like an opportunity for a lot of marketers, especially to just like broaden their imagination for what kind of. Data can come into the, into the system with the right kind of reporting and metrics like the one you just explained. So that, that's a really cool example. all right. I think that, that, that, that pipe is, is pretty unclogged. Uh, what's, where are we going from here?

Wayne Larson:

we gotta talk about users, like, I feel kind of esoteric right now, right? I feel like a commercial plumber, and I want to talk about the people in their actual houses, like a personal house. Let, let's go to users and what's going on with them.

Mary Blanche:

All right. That sounds good. So this is a pipe that we're calling our people are not using it. Right? So in this scenario, partners and a business developers are resistant to using the CRM because they don't see how it benefits them personally. So they still rely on informal communication channel. Like a big teams thread, for example, to to share their information. So this pipe is clogged by a culture of resistance and a failure to connect the CRM to the user's most basic needs. So Wayne, how do we unclog this pipe?

Wayne Larson:

Oh man. And b that's a great one. And, and actually I've seen this, right? We think that there's a, a common space that many users go and they want to just like, put in notes, right? And, and they think that that's it, right? But then. At the end of whatever it is, let's call it an event that people were at, and they were jamming a bunch of notes into a oh, a shared teams thread. At the end of that event, someone comes into that teams thread and then puts a bunch of information into Salesforce or into HubSpot, or your CRM, and you're like. What'd we do this all for again? Right. Well, the real reason why we did it, it is because that that's the, that common place. Right. And so to your point about cultural stuff, mb I think the first thing to start off with, when, you feel like your people aren't using it right. Is to truly ride along. Right. Uh, what was that? That was like a Denzel Washington movie a long time ago or anything.

Austin McNair:

Training day.

Wayne Larson:

Training day. Boom. He's doing a ride along, right? Gonna training day man, right? That, that one's crazy. Um, maybe lay off the drugs, but you get the picture right, which is like you gotta jump in and you actually have to go over that person's shoulder or be at that event to understand why they're using. Tool this way. And so this can unclog incredible pipes even though it's a very simplistic practice. But it takes courage. It really, really does.'cause you either wanna get up in someone's business and see how they're using something that you've hypothetically developed with them. To bring it back around to that team's thread and at an event scenario that you were talking about envy. When we truly rode along, with one of my clients to see why that was happening, it was because they were using that thread, not just for lead communication and stuff like that, but they were like. Sending pictures of themselves, like, you know, hey, we're out here at, at this event and it's super cool and really like legit social things too, which is what that's for, which is great. And so if I knew that CRM isn't for that, right? but nonetheless, some CRM things are getting input into that thread. Then we need to challenge ourselves to think, okay, how can I make this as teams like for the items that are pertinent to our CRM? And so in this scenario, the solution was let's create an automation that right when you open your phone, just like you would open your phone to teams, let's open our phone to our app and we just have a blank text field. Just a blank thing and you can just jam whatever notes you want in there. Hit save. It's not relating it anywhere. It's not going, it's, it's not connected like a relational database should, but at least it's there. Right, which then helps us save that step from taking the big teams thread there and then putting each and every one into the CRM after the event has stopped. So that's, that's chipping away at it, right? that's like helping your pipes along, even though you might not have the best solution at the end of the day. And guess what? Like, we don't want the, like, selfies with, you know, people and so on and so forth. Then CRM anyway. We would've never known that if we didn't truly do a ride along, uh, do a training day like Austin mentioned, uh, MB in, in one of those situations.

Joe Pope:

Well, hopefully it doesn't end like the ending of training day for the ride

Wayne Larson:

Oh my gosh. I know right when I brought it, I bring up Denzel all the time, man. Uh, so, but that, that one, I didn't think about the end of the movie.

Joe Pope:

Wayne. One thought that kind of comes to my mind too is it's like at how much, like, so we've done the ride along, we've survived the ending of the movie, and now we're thinking like, what's the type of rules in a sense we wanna put into place? Like, how heavy handed should an organization be in accountability, if you will, to use the platform?

Wayne Larson:

Yeah. I mean, this is when you have to, bank on leadership, right? So if I'm a plumber, right, I'm gonna walk into your house, I'm gonna tell you what is and isn't right about your plumbing. The, owner of the house, right? Whomever that is, is gonna be the key decision maker in that. And so in this scenario, Joe, if, I'm a CRM plumber working with the events team that's going to all these events, and they say I'd rather go into teams and we say, Hey, you know, we should head into Salesforce or HubSpot, eventually we have to have a leader, a part of that. To bring that accountability into it. And guess what? The leader is the person who invested in that because they wanna grow their business to the point of the metrics that you had mentioned earlier, Joe and Austin, right? And so that's where you can bring in a little bit of that accountability. Now, I don't always want to just say like, bring in the leader. It's like saying it depends as a consultant, right? Um, but nonetheless, uh, at the end of the day, these are critical situations where you have to have some heavy, some buy-in, but you better, you better make sure. That experience that you've developed is as easy as possible.'cause if you say, Hey leader, would you get behind me? And by the way, it's gonna take these guys 5, 7, 8 clicks, and then they do this and they do that. Like, no leader will stand behind that, right? So make sure it passes that leadership test, if you will. Right? So, so simple, a leader could use it, that's terrible. But that's for Geico. and uh, nonetheless, that's a really, really great way to approach it.

Austin McNair:

All right. Should we head into our next pipe here? We've got two left. So what direction are you taking us next?

Wayne Larson:

I feel like we've put some things on marketing teams because I, and I'll, I'll, I'll go off on that tangent at another time in life, but I think marketing teams are such critical pieces in everything CRM, even though they might not think and wake up every day and thinking they are. So let's talk about marketing teams and, and their feeling of kind of overwhelmness for a moment.

Joe Pope:

Yeah. Yeah. That's a good, scenario. It's uh, it's one I hear Austin complain all the time about. No, I'm just kidding.

Austin McNair:

It's a scenario.

Joe Pope:

You're never overwhelmed. Big guy.

Austin McNair:

I'm overwhelmed.

Joe Pope:

But let's just, uh, hypothetically say that Austin was overwhelmed. Uh, and he's come to me and he is talked about how we have this CRM platform. We have this marketing automation platform. We've made these investments. We've even had some training maybe with the plumber, uh, and we're expected to use this. Pretty much right away from day one. The whole system feels over complicated though, and people are starting to use it the wrong way. And, we're not necessarily having that adoption thing come across the board. The timing isn't really making sense. we're starting to fall into old habits, Wayne, when we come to our marketing efforts, how do we unclog this pipe?

Wayne Larson:

Yeah, so too often, and let's, in your scenario here, Joe, assume that the marketing team has ownership of the map, the marketing automation platform, right? That's connected into the CRM. and so how can we make sure that we're enforcing usage, ensuring that there's usage? But also helping them show people like, we're using this, we're using this. And then also protect them. Because in this scenario, we know, we see a lot of marketing teams go all in on their map, right? And then CRMs kind of chilling right here, which is fine if a really good integrated system is that way. You can do a lot in your map, right? So end of the day is one. We need to make sure that when email sends are happening, when form clicks, when downloads, et cetera, that data. Needs to be front and center in CRM. Right. One thing that I recently developed for A-A-C-M-O at a company was on his homepage, he was seeing the most recent email that went out. Right, and it could be to two people because it's the small, super hyper-targeted A BM thing or their entire list of 10,000. Now that might seem so darn small for A CMO to see, right? But at the end of the day, that's fresh data saying, look. My marketers are crushing it, right? And they're using the tool right in here. And so putting in some of those small metrics right in front of leaders can be one way that helps. the people who are overwhelming, those marketers know, dang, you know, they're really cranking, right? Um, it's not just a bunch of email magic, uh, going on behind the scenes. The one other would be, and I see this all the time for marketers that. Fought really hard to get ZoomInfo integrated or seamless or all these other things, right? And I mean, like they put their budget on the line'cause they're like, man, if we can get our leads appended with data, then all we have to do is ask for an email address and then all the other data will happen. Right. bing, bang, boom. Our conversion rates go up. All this wonderful stuff happens. Sales starts picking up on it. Life's good, but that's a whole lot of eggs We're putting in the basket for this third party tool to append the conversion that happens on your website or so on and so forth, right? And should come through, right? So I've been in this situation, so anytime you're connecting new things into your CRM and you're especially in a marketing capacity. Make sure you're creating what I like to call, oh crap dashboards or Oh crap reports, right? Which is like, let's build this and assume that it's gonna work. It's gonna be the best dang thing I ever seen, but the day it breaks, right? I don't want a salesperson coming to me and saying The water is rushing out right from the second floor.'cause the toilets broke up there, right? no, no, no, no. We want a little ping. We wanna know, we wanna have visibility into that or maybe even see trends, right? And where a break might happen and some critical infrastructure. And that's all stuff that marketers can build for themselves to sort of. Cover their buns, right? Um, at the end of the day and make sure that those things that they invested in are still working, are still cranking, and are still developing great, great things, uh, for the company and, and for the firm. So, oh, crap reports, man. If you've never created one. Go in like right now and create one, right? Because you can do it around anything. Just ask yourself what my life could break. And you can usually list like three or four things and quickly create one or two of those puppies. And by the way, subscribe to that report and it'll just hit your inbox when the oh crap metric or, or threshold is hit and you'll know before anybody else.

Joe Pope:

Yeah. So they're functioning in a sense as, uh, your, oh, crap. Report is the canary in the coal mine, if you will.

Wayne Larson:

Ah, that's it. That's it. If more people knew that, right?

Joe Pope:

Yeah.

Austin McNair:

All right, so that leaves us with one last pipe to unclog Wayne, uh, Mary Blanche. I think the remaining one is, uh, with you. What's, what's the scenario for Wayne?

Mary Blanche:

Yep. All right. So for this last pipe that we have to unclog, this one is gonna be all around. You know, our partners are really, questioning the CRMs value, so a. New CRM was implemented with a goal of being a treasure trove of insight. But our firm's partners, they're, they're pretty skeptical, you know, they're just, they're, from their perspective, they're just not seeing the value. So they're asking for static one-off reports, and they're still pretty resistant to logging into our CRM to track their pipeline or engagement with prospects. And they want to know why should they keep paying for a system when they just really feel like They're just filling a leaky bucket day in and day out. Uh, Wayne, how would you unplug this pipe for us?

Wayne Larson:

Wow. Uh, well at the end of the day, uh, that, that's a tough one and it's one everyone faces no matter if you have or haven't. Unclogged those four other pipes that we were talking about, mb you're still gonna have to answer this question on, uh, insert timeframe to basis, right. let's call it every two or three years, if you're lucky, based on the renewal of your, of your technology, right? when these questions come up, all you can do is have really small micro habits leading up to that to try to dispel, right? Or try try to get to that place where people are more excited about this as opposed to questioning. So let's like walk through one or two ways, maybe even three, about how we'd get there. How do we get them seeing ROI. first and foremost, you have to meet them where they're at. I know we talked about that a bit with users, but let's talk about that with each and every person that touches the system. If we think it's field of dreams, you build it, they will come. That ain't happening. Right. And so meet them where they're at, which is their inbox. Everyone knows, right? Everyone's in their inbox. And so let's even call it, for each and every, person that has a revenue goal that's entering in deals, let's make sure every 10 days they receive a report in their inbox subscribe that says, these are the deals that you input in the past 10 days. Or these are the deals that are gonna be closing in the next 10 days. That starts to immediately get it more top of mind for them. Almost think about it like a little drip marketing coming from the CRM itself in the most like admin, techy way. And there are 1,000,001 other ways to go about that. We talked earlier, about, you know, showing the CMO what emails have been going out. Heck, you could do that to the whole dang firm because everyone on this call knows that we have clients that say. Oh man, when we send an email out, every time a partner comes back to me and says, did my client get that? Did that happen? Right? And that's, that's a hard, hard thing that we need to be able to answer. And so why not get proactive about that? Meet them in their inbox. So if you're not looking into subscriptions for your data, for your reports, then do that right When you stop listening to this podcast, today, that's gonna be critical. So that's a little micro thing to get there and be, another one. At the end of the day would be being transparent. Now, I'm really sitting as a marketer on this one, right? And at the end of the day, we know that people who are in revenue generating roles, they got all their business right here, We sit here as marketer like, wow, that person's not hitting their number this year. Right? What's going on there? Right? Woo, man, somebody crushed it and I know that they get comped. 33% annual revenue. Da, da, da, man. I better holler at them. Right. Let's do this. But why don't marketers have that, right? We can. Why don't we have a big flashing light that says like, yeah, I sent out this email to 10,000 people and we bumped up over the 1% unsubscribe rate on that. Right, if we start putting a little skin in the game that way too, that starts to create this culture of accountability, of transparency that oftentimes can help people see more value in multiple areas of the CRM, of the map of all the other things that are interconnected. Another one on that type of transparency, it doesn't have to be just like. How many campaign or how much did we influence in revenue? Right? Another one could be even like how much you're using a tool that you asked leadership to buy into. So again, like let's go to ZoomInfo or Seamless. Hey, this many people were appended with data. And this many people appended with data turned into revenue. Now, I'm not saying that this amazing appending made it turn into a deal, but at least that was one little piece of value that we added along the way to factor in as maybe micro ROI of sorts, right?

Austin McNair:

I think that's really important though. I mean, because I, I, I mean one of the aspects to, to Mary Blanc's scenario there is like this, continuing conversation about cost, right? And I, we got, Lord knows I. Salesforce and HubSpot want to get their, uh, their money right now, and they're, they're, they're starting to crank up those prices and then you, you start doing those add-ons like a ZoomInfo and stuff like that, and the prices are going up. So I think there is something behind what you're saying there of us being able to pull those little threads of ROI, of like, Hey, we're paying for this specific add-on this technology. Here's what we're getting out of it. Here's the insights we're seeing. Here's, you know, the value we're getting from this and without it. We wouldn't have it. I love, I love that point.

Wayne Larson:

That, that brings me back to like that little marketer's reality that I was talking about a minute ago. Austin, I almost went on a tangent about it. I'm gonna come back to it'cause Envy inspired me on it, which is, and everything that we talked about in this episode, we're talking about things that oftentimes at professional services firms, especially small middle market. Marketers are gonna have to be either the champion or likely even the person with their hands on the keyboard doing. Right. Uh, earlier I was mentioning a Wall Street Journal article to somebody about how DIYing is like up like crazy right now. It's something like 82% of people are consider themselves DIYers right now. Thanks YouTube. Right. Um, but nonetheless, that's great. And take that energy that you probably are DIYing up in your house right now. Apply it to, again, building reports or connecting deeper technology upskilling on these areas. Um, you might not have, again, woken up and thought, dang, CR m's gonna be really important to me today. Dang, I need to make sure that these pipes are unclogged or these Ds aren't happening. But if you can see the big picture on how much value that's truly gonna bring, especially when those costs are always increasing, like you said, Austin, then you're gonna be a marketer that is in the driver's seat. Of revenue, of strategy, and all the other places that we know marketers should continue to be as customers, clients, and and the like, continue to be more and more important, especially in a digital way.

Joe Pope:

So Hinges high growth study had another major finding, uh, that popped out at us this year, and that was tied to ai and it's the number one business concern of high growth organizations. How do you see AI other than, you know, HubSpot and Salesforce claiming that their AI is the greatest AI that ever graded, uh, how do you see AI completing the picture of, uh, creating this value connection in your CRM to leadership?

Wayne Larson:

Oh man. Without unclogging all the pipes that we had just talked about the before. Prior, it's gonna be really, really hard to make that case for it.

Joe Pope:

Yeah,

Wayne Larson:

Like, let's go back to that whole, is it easy enough for leadership concept? Right? So easy a leader could do it. That's that's great. By the way, sorry, I'm just like loving myself on a Friday.

Joe Pope:

he's here. Bring him on board.

Wayne Larson:

So in that situation though, right, if we are gonna be making that play for AI in any way, shape or form, Joe as a marketer or so on and so forth, let's make sure that those other pipes are unclogged. That we don't layer on a bunch of AI to think like this will absolve all of our sins. And I will never have had to call a plumber for 10 years at my house and think, oh yeah, my pipes are like squeaky clean, right? No, no, no, no, no. Let's, let's, let's debunk those myths. Let's make that right. Then start to layer those things on, especially when it comes to your data, your CRM, and the like.

Austin McNair:

yeah, the garbage in, garbage out problem when it comes to AI, I think is, uh. scales a level that is faster than I think we can imagine. I mean, as humans, we can run pretty far with bad information and bad data, but AI agent, a robot, will run a lot faster and create a lot more problems faster if it has the wrong data or bad, bad information.

Wayne Larson:

I just have to riff on that, Austin, right? So. If I'm a marketer, I'm sitting here like, oh my gosh, freaking every one of my states in my CRM doesn't talk to the state field in my marketing automation platform. Right. Because I got a bunch of these freaking partners that are writing it as Pennsylvania and not putting pa Right. And, and now I'm like, well, basically I can never send a state-based email ever again. Right. Okay. Perfect opportunity to use ai. And take, just take not sensitive information, but just take the ID of the specific account as an example or company or contact the id. A record ID and then put it next to the state. Put it in a big old spreadsheet, put it into your favorite little chat, GPT, ai, ml, et cetera, et cetera, right? Get it back out, upload it, and voila, and then solve it by connecting those fields in their data type into the future. But that's a way that you could use bespoke AI to solve a little problem of yours, right, that you thought was previously insurmountable without, I don't know, getting an intern or something of that nature.

Austin McNair:

We got five unclogged pipes, and a bonus ai, uh, AI example there. Crushing it. Cool. Well, Wayne, this has been great. I mean, super insightful discussion. I mean, this podcast is all about helping professional services marketers and leaders and yeah, like we said, this is a major elephant in the room for many companies right now and trying to figure out their CRM platform. So thanks for your time and, uh, where can people learn more about you and where can they learn more about your company and get in touch with you?

Wayne Larson:

Just find me on LinkedIn, Wayne Larson. I could tell you a million in one other ways, but if you like what you heard and you like what's going on at Hinge, then hey, happy to always keep a thread going. Again, I'm a plumber, single shingle. Always happy to chat. Check out your pipes and go from there. So Wayne Larson, ACEs Tech.

Austin McNair:

Cool. Well, thanks Wayne. Thank you so much. And, uh, next we'll dive into our next segment. Stay tuned.

Mary Blanche:

​In today's Pivotal story, how do we know when a rebrand has failed?

Joe Pope:

when that company scraps it in less than a week.

Mary Blanche:

Well, recently, that's exactly what happened to Cracker Barrel for decades. Its logo has featured the Uncle Herschel leaning against a barrel. But in a bid to broaden appeal, the chain unveiled a simplified text only design. The backlash was pretty immediate, and critics called it a textbook case of a company losing touch with its core identity, and within days, cracker Barrel restored its original logo. So now that the saga has come to a close, what lessons do we think that professional services firms can take away from this very public branding misstep?

Austin McNair:

I wrote about this on LinkedIn and you know, I think that you can't call yourself a marketer, uh, today if you are not posting on LinkedIn about the Cracker Barrel Re brand, uh, event. It's just too big. It's too mainstream. Uh, so I had to share my thoughts and I, and I think that there, there's a lot of people that have a lot of perspective on this, a lot of political perspectives on this. I tried to look at this as like taking a, the furthest possible step back that I could, in terms of like, what, what is this reaction really about? Because this is not the first time this year that we've seen a major brand undergo some sort of. Rebranding process and like people, and just like cultural sensitivity level is like to the max and people are freaking out. I think with Cracker Barrel it hit like a really acute point. And my, the word that I summed everything up with is nostalgia. And what I mean by that, and this is, there's been a lot of people writing about nostalgia as just a general marketing trend. is that. We are undergoing a time of accelerated change right now, just broadly. A lot of us kind of put the mark around the pandemic where everybody's life just kind of got thrown up in the air and since then, it's just like change, change, change. Like the rate of change and acceleration has, has really been unprecedented and people are tired of it. And so like little things like a rebrand of a restaurant that you haven't been to you were a kid. you take it personally, like it's like why does everything need to change all of the time? I think there's just people that are kind of sick of the change and what I wrote about was essentially like if you think about a brand that sort of already naturally was into that, hey. Come on over. Come sit in a rocking chair, relax, have a cup of coffee, Cracker Barrel kind of comes to mind, and maybe there was an opportunity for them to play into that a little bit more. But no, what they did is they scrapped it for another, hyper minimalist logo. Like everything looking like Panera Bread or everything looking like really boring. You know, let's make all the buildings box shape and turn'em all gray and, and brown. I think people are just kind of sick of it and they feel like there's this broader cul cultural erosion of things that they grew up with and things that they liked. I don't think that's political. I just think it's kind of human nature. So, tho that was sort of my takeaway and, and maybe before I throw it to you guys, just like, what a, what would a professional marketer take a take away from this? just, I would go into and say trust, right. professional services brands are there to build trust with people. And so if you are going through a rebrand or maybe like a generational change, think of like, a, a law firm or an accounting firm that, you know, for years it's had this one person's name on it and that person's now retiring and it's time to rebrand. You have to continue to instill trust with those people and the people that that person had a relationship with, that you guys are a great service provider and that you're gonna carry the banner forward. and I just think that these kind of cultural things that are happening out in like a Cracker Barrel, while it doesn't seem. Evident like, oh, that that has anything to do with professional services marketing. I think it is evidence that people are highly sensitive right now, so we have to be very diligent and very cautious. As we enter into big changes about our brand or our messaging, we have to do our due diligence. What do you guys think about this event and what were your takeaways?

Mary Blanche:

Yeah. Well, it's funny that you mentioned the, uh, you know, the browns and the, and the grays and the, the, you know, box design. It reminded me of our, uh, conversation, uh, the pivotal story we did with Christian, uh, just a, just a few weeks ago about, you know, the world is losing its color and you know, when we talked about that, we talked about how everything, you know, the. The Nikes, the, you know, apple, McDonald's of the world, and how, you know, when you look at where they were just a decade ago to, you know, what their brands look like now. that oversimplified approach. And this is just another good example of kind of seeing that, take, hold again. So, it made me think of that a little bit. I think too, you know, on the topic of. Design. It's, it's a common misconception with Rebrands that, you know, a rebrand is really just a design exercise, right? And it's, and it's not, it's about insight and strategy and, it's really rooted in consumer understanding. so I think they definitely miss the mark by not really trying to understand their audience better.

Joe Pope:

Understanding and trust. I think both of those things. Yeah. I mean we, we talk about the importance of trust in professional services and how, monumental that is to make sure that you're maintaining that even in your marketing stage. But I mean, I think it does translate over as well into the consumer stage as well. It's like, you trust this product is what you believe it to be or what it has been or what it could be moving forward. And, I think you talk about this. Misstep if you will, and this challenge that Cracker Barrel went through, anybody in their right mind could have looked at that type of circumstance and said, that's not what Cracker Barrel is, right? You, you walk into a Cracker Barrel. Allison, I loved your joke. It's like you haven't been there since, uh, you were a kid and Yeah. I mean, it's probably been a, been a beat and we can talk a little bit about why it's been a beat. Right. But, you walk into a Cracker Barrel and I, I mean, I'm immediately picturing just the station of tchotchkes that were just everywhere and all the little dew hickeys and the fact that you had something to mill around and dew Wow. You waited for your table to be ready. Like, I mean, I can describe the experience of going to Cracker Barrel right now pretty vividly. Versus another restaurant or some other generic box. I think you shots fired at Panera with that. it's not as memorable. Like that experience is completely different. It's, it's just generic. So when a organization that has built, its kind of. Reputation, it's brand. All of these different pieces just nukes it for whatever this new luxury feeling, minimalistic, it's great for, accessibility on your cell phone. Nothing that has anything to do with Cracker Barrel goes and tries to ram that through. Of course, anybody who had that kind of experience like I just talked about is gonna be like, no, that's, that's crap. that's the disassociation we saw. I know, Austin, you said it's like the political side of this. I mean, I think we can't get away from the fact that there is some political overtones anytime you do get into this, um, minimalistic ization or things along those lines. But even this one across the board I was seeing. Post from like the Democrats Twitter account, the Republicans Twitter account, they're all basically saying this is ridiculous. Like we, nobody wants this. Get rid of this. that just points to the research side of this. Had they done any amount of customer research on this, they would've known that this was gonna fall flat. Anybody of any aged group that is a buyer of cracker barrels. We'll call it, uh, amazing, we'll call it breakfast or lunch offerings, if you will. they would've, given them that insight. So I think this is just another example of, Hey, let's try to paint by numbers, that you'll sometimes see in the hyper expensive marketing and branding world. and it just completely blown up in their face.

Austin McNair:

So some trends we've talked about here, we've talked about nostalgia, uh, we've talked about cultural sensitivity. and b you've talked about how kind of, going back to the episode with Christian, the minimalist style kind of taking over everything and maybe potentially people are, are getting tired of it. And Joe, you're talking about that. broader point about research and due diligence, really needing to be kind of the foundational part of a rebrand. I'd say those are four pretty good takeaways for professional services marketers, about an industry that has nothing to do with what we talk about. Normally, we are not food and restaurant experts, and honestly, like I. This is probably a very unenviable situation for them.'cause they're rebranding for a reason, right? this off because they probably need to do something to attract a new generation or bring in, new customers. but. in this moment, in this climate. The way they did it, it blew up in their face, uh, these, these viral, internet moments. And yeah, they have gone back to the, original logo. It'll be interesting though, to see if they slow roll it out in a different way, right? So maybe the logo doesn't leave, but maybe all the other stuff that they worked on just slowly creeps in there because again. Less people are going in and outta those restaurants and seeing every day and really paying attention to, how fast these things change. Or if a company changes their menu and stuff like that. only the diehards would notice that, but I don't know. It'll be interesting to follow up on.

Joe Pope:

You referenced the, the need, everything in preparation for this pivotal story. We were looking up things like earnings reports and so forth, like why did they do this? And, you know, 24 for them was flat. It was basically even, and that was with an extra week. an extra calendar week, if you will, last year in 2024. So, I mean, they were. feeling a lot of that pain that you're seeing across the board with franchise based type restaurants and things along those lines and thinking, okay, well it's time to shake it up. Well, they sure shook it up.

Austin McNair:

Mary Blanche,, when we were preparing for this segment, you had brought up that there was another pretty, well known, Brand from the food and beverage industry, patron tequila, that also just went through a little bit of a rebrand themselves, not really in the headlines like this Cracker Barrel story. Like what have you seen coming outta that story?

Mary Blanche:

so it was, it was also their first rebrand, in decades actually. And I think it's a good example. Of, an organization that does do their market research. So they were able to, really evaluate their consumer base and, came forward with a, with a rebrand where they, you know, they didn't lose their heritage, they elevated the look, but they, you know, they still honored, what they had traditionally been as a, as an organization. So, um, I, I liked it. Um, you guys know I love a good margarita, so I mean, I thought they did a good job.

Joe Pope:

It translates really well to, I think what we know and people are making selections in the food and beverage industry, right, where it's a lot of it is that initial impression and the bottle design, which is clearly what the big focus of this branding was for them. You know, the across the board in the tequila industry, the bottle design, same thing in bourbon and other places is a big way or somebody will make a decision to purchase that product and patrons it. Wellknown name, but it's going up against some of these newer brands that are coming out with these really interesting labels and bottle designs, and they needed to make a change, but also not completely disassociate themselves from their target audience. The margarita drinkers like yourself, Mary Blanc. and I think you're right. They just, it's clear. I means somebody who's not even a tequila drinker. I look at that. I was like that, that comes across as something that I would pick up and buy for somebody. I, it looks, it good.

Austin McNair:

And I, I think this is a great contrast from like the Cracker Barrel one, right? Which completely disassociated itself from its previous kind of brand and brand design and imagery. For this, they took the elements that were popular about the current brand and what people like about it and associated it with, and they went deeper. So they, they highlighted a few things. Here they talk about a bold new bottle inspired by the agave pina. Which is excellent. That's, baked right into the actual product, an enhanced front label and affixed neck collar. they said, thoughtful references to the agave plant, uh, reflect the craftmanship behind the brand. The heightened focus on the Kinic patron bee matches the spirit behind the unique blend of all natural ingredients, blah, blah, blah, blah. They took what was good about the brand and they went deeper. Whereas this Cracker Barrel one, it's like they took kind of the signature, you know, part of it, which people think about, like they, they associate it with the, the, the barrel, the, the rocking chair, and. They stripped that completely and entirely out of it, and I think that's what people were, noticed right away. It's big difference.

Joe Pope:

Yeah, absolutely.

Austin McNair:

All right, everyone. Well, this has been another episode of Spiraling Up. Thank you so much for listening. Again, if you're still watching on YouTube quick before you close the tab. Hit that like button, hit the subscribe button. We're gonna keep rolling out the episodes every other week for you of spiraling up into all of our listeners. Thank you so much. Leave us a review on whatever platform you're listening to. And on behalf of Mary Blanche, Joe, myself, and everyone on the Hing team, thank you so much. We'll see you on the next one.