Your CRM Isn’t Broken, Your Process Is: The Hidden Revenue You’re Ignoring

Speaker A: One thing that a sales manager or even an owner can do, if they said to their team, hey, Corey, tomorrow we're going to delete the CRM. We're just going to get rid of it. What would be the first thing you would miss? And whatever they come back with you at is the only thing that matters to them. Right? So if their answer isn't something you would expect, then there's a problem with the CRM.

Speaker B: You're listening to the B2B revenue executive experience, a podcast dedicated to helping executives train their sales and marketing teams to optimize growth. Whether you're looking for techniques and strategies or tools and resources, you've come to the right place. Let's accelerate your growth in three, two. Uh, one.

Speaker C: Hello everyone and welcome to the B2B Revenue Executive Experience. I'm your host, Corey, and today I'm m excited to be talking to Jason Kramer. He's the founder of Cultivize, a consulting firm specializing in lead nurturing strategies and custom CRM implementation. With more than 20 years of experience in marketing and biz dev. Jason. Jason has worked with renowned brands like Virgin Atlantic Airways and Johnnie Walker. To his clients, he is best known as the Yoda of CRM strategy for his ability to harness the untapped power of these systems. Jason, welcome to the show.

Speaker A: Thanks Corey. Pleasure to be here.

Speaker C: Yeah. So before we get into it, I, uh, wanna know a little bit more about how you wound up in this space. Right. You began as a graphic designer and then transitioned into more revenue business development and then found a sweet spot in CRM strategy. Um, yeah. What led to that shift?

Speaker A: So it was really pretty simple. I mean, one, it was being in the creative side for over 20 years. You know, I was looking for a change, getting a little itchy. Right. Um, it was also the shift, right? Things like upwork and Fiverr and all these platforms didn't exist when I started my marketing agency in 2002. So the landscape certainly, uh, changed in terms of who we were competing against. And the one thing that I was trying to figure out was, well, what do people need? You know, I'm a problem solver at heart. You know, it's really what I love to do. And when I started talking to existing clients we were doing working with at the marketing agency and I kept on asking them, well, like, how do you track all the leads we're generating for you?

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: How do you, you know, know that they're a good lead or qualified versus Unqualified? How much revenue came from the different marketing channels? Et cetera. And it was just crickets, right? And I'm like, well, how do you not know that answer? You know, like, you're spending all this money and it wasn't just even with us, with other people that were spending money, right, to generate leads and they didn't know the answer. And I was like, well, that's absolutely crazy. And I always think of the analogy to a financial investor, right? I want to give my financial investor five grand a month and say, you know what, Mark? Do what you want with it. I don't care if I ever make any money. I don't care if I lose money every month. I'm going to give you five grand every month. No one does that. That's saying at least. But in the marketing world, you know, it's just, it's carved out in the P and L. It's like, okay, this is our marketing budget and you sure don't think twice about it. And so that's why I started Cultivize is to solve that problem. And so the CRM work was really a byproduct of, you know, understanding, well, what's needed, right, to connect the dots between marketing and sales. And it's the CRM.

Speaker C: Yeah, um, absolutely. And it's so funny. I mean, I come from an agency background and I have been in that awkward position before where, you know, you get on, you get on with a leader and they want to know exactly, you know, what ad has led to this lead, all this stuff. And then you've got to be the person that breaks the news. Well, your systems are kind of broken and that's a very awkward position to be in. And I think it's more common than, um, people realize, unfortunately.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker C: Uh, okay. So I got to ask about the nickname, the Yodo CRM strategy. Was there a story behind this or how did that one come about and how did it stick?

Speaker A: It's more of like a kind of a self promotion proclaimed one. I actually, the reason I did it, um, to start was specifically actually on the riverside platform, I think it was. You were limited on the number of characters. So I want the. Let's say when it pops up. Jason Kramer, I would do like founder Cultivize. And it never fit, you know, so I was like, okay, like, what could I put in there to kind of just be something that's going to just grab somebody's attention if they were watching a video when I'm doing the podcast? And so that's where it started from, is just trying to play around with the limited character count. And how can I come up with something that's going to be catchy for people to remember?

Speaker C: I like it. Uh, I like it. The marketing background, showing off there for sure. And then I want to back up a little bit or zoom out rather, because, so talking about Salesforce, talking about HubSpot, kind of looking out at the whole sales and martech landscape, I mean, it gets referenced all the time. We've all seen that silly graphic that has what now over 10,000 vendors on it. Uh, and it seems like increasingly one, there's been some pretty big consolidation, I think, within the last year of some key players coming together. But also it seems like more and more that everyone wants to be the 1 platform. So. So I'm curious because, you know, you're. You're so familiar with this space. How do you see that going over the next few years? Do you see, like, sales automation coming into CRM, um, coaching? How do you think that's all going to play out?

Speaker A: Well, I think it's going to play out well two ways. So I think that the shiny object syndrome, as I call it, right? I mean, I think we all know that saying, but I think that's going to be more evident because now you have, like, I could go into Claude today and build an app, right? It may not be something ready for public sale, but I could go build an app to do something for myself. So I think apps and software is going to skyrocket with the evolution of AI. We're just going to see a lot more of that. It doesn't mean it's going to be a good piece of software. We're just going to see more options. And so the problem that I foresee, which has been going on for over 20 years, is the freemium model. Just try it for free for 30 days or try it for free for a week and you get sucked into the features and the benefits. But you don't realize that you're not solving any problem, right? You're not looking at the software because you're like, oh, man, I got this issue. What piece of software is going to help me solve the issue? And so it's the sort of like cat and mouse thing where people for all the time. And you mentioned HubSpot, Salesforce. They buy a piece of software because their best buddy has it and they heard it's amazing, and they buy it based on emotion and they don't base it on practicality. And so features and benefits almost don't matter in a CRM. If you don't have a defined problem you're trying to solve because maybe those features and benefits won't solve your problem. Maybe it's. You're paying for way more than you need, you know, um, so. So it's definitely going to be, I think, more of a challenge because they'll certainly be more options and it'll be more attainable.

Speaker C: Yep, exactly. I think that's well said. It dovetails nicely with the next thing I was going to ask you, which is, Jason, you've often advocated as sort of a process approach first and a tech second approach. So can you kind of elaborate on, on what you mean by that?

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so let's talk about salespeople, right? So if the average salesperson, let's just say, you know, throwing out a number is making 150k, and let's say they're spending like two hours a week, um, doing administrative cleanup, right? They're doing things that aren't actually selling because they don't have the processes, they don't have things in order. You're paying that person was 40 grand a year to do data cleanup work and data entry work instead of selling. That's a big number. And so when we don't have that process in place, then everybody's doing something a little bit differently. The data is not really going to be concise, right? We're going to be able to pull reports. John's going to do one thing his way, Mary's going to do one thing her way, and then when you hire somebody new, they're going to do something their way because you can't teach them the right process to follow. And so it becomes really a recipe for, um, I don't want to say disaster, because I've seen work with companies that are making over $10 million a year with no process. How, I have no idea. They're just doing it, right? By sheer will and luck, they're just doing it. Um, but imagine if they had process. Um, we had a client last year, um, they started about a year and a half ago with us and did about a thousand quotes a year. They were in the roofing business, small sales team, three people, and we found over $4 million in revenue for them that they weren't going to be able to close simply because we had automation in a process to say, okay, you spent time and money to get the lead, go to the house, do the estimate, do all these things. But after five weeks you got busy and you couldn't follow up with them anymore because you had all the new leads coming in. And so in the past, they just be like, all right, if we haven't heard from them by, you know, six weeks, two months, we're assuming they hired somebody else or didn't want to go forward. And when we looked at the data at the end of last year, we realized it's taking sometimes 15 months, 18 months to close a roofing project. Uh, and if with all that automation built in place to keep in front of them, to keep educating them, to follow up and check in, you now have a virtual salesperson doing all that work, that's essentially closing business for you while you're sleeping.

Speaker C: Right, right. And so just to clarify, you're talking about AI and automation, it's not actually detracting from real selling time. Those three reps can go out and pursue other opportunities.

Speaker A: Yeah, right. Because, I mean, no reps has infinite time. Right. There's only a limited time in the day. And so if your CRM isn't helping you and letting you focus on what's ready to close or what you should be focusing on, then you're really walking in on a Wednesday morning be like, all right, I have to make 50 calls today. Who am I going to call now? I'm just going to randomly call people without any rhyme or reason. But if the CRM, if you have a process, is telling you, you should call Corey, because Corey's been on the website five times in the last two weeks and he's done X, Y and Z, he is more likely to have one of a conversation with you and for that conversation to go in a positive direction. Um, and AI is definitely pushing a lot of that with, like, sentiment and being able to look at past notes and activity. And I think we're seeing a huge shift with, you know, not every platform, but certain platforms where AI is going to be able to be more insightful on how to process the data that's in the CRM.

Speaker C: Yep, absolutely. And we were, we were chatting a little bit beforehand about, you know, what are the warning signs? Right. Like where, where can you actually pressure test CRM? Um, strategy. And I think that that's, that's a good point.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: I mean, just start with the example of lead scoring.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: You know, normally it's something, it's typically something that marketing owns and, you know, whether there's an alignment problem or not, I think a lot of times, you know, sales will look at a high lead score and won't have the confidence of it.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: It's not gonna be prioritized because maybe in the past it's been a bogus lead or it hasn't been true, or maybe the data's not right and that person's already a customer, blah, blah, blah. So m. Maybe just talk us through a simple example of like how transforming lead scoring can help with business.

Speaker A: So lead scoring is only as good as if you understand what's building the total point value. And so a lot of systems have a default lead scoring out of the box, which is giving points for having a first name, having an email address, having a phone number. Well, hopefully everybody has one of those. Right. So we shouldn't be giving points for the obvious. And so what we want to give points for is the actions are they going. If they go into a pricing page, that's a lot more of an indicator that they're ready maybe to buy or wanting more information versus they're reading an old blog you had from a year ago. Right. And so we need to rank all of the content on the website, the website experience. We need to rank your emails that are going out, the brochures that are going out, pricing guides, all the different materials you have. And we have a spreadsheet actually on, um, I'll give out at the end of the show the link where everybody can download it, but we actually have a lead scoring guide with an actual template, um, that's connected in that guide. You could download to Google Sheet. Everybody has access to that. And you could punch in all these things and it'll build for you what your ideal lead score should be. And not only a lead score for a hot lead, but also tell you what the lead score should be for a warm lead. Right. Or a cold lead. Because then you could then use the automation, say, okay, well, when somebody is at that threshold where they become a warm lead, now let's push them up to a hot lead and let's build some automation to do different things to get them more engaged so they can bump up their score.

Speaker C: Yep, absolutely. That's awesome. And yeah, I want to, I want to put that in the show notes, see where people can access that sheet.

Speaker A: Of course, absolutely.

Speaker C: And so what are some other, other common areas where things typically break down or some other ways that leaders can kind of pressure test their systems?

Speaker A: Well, I think one thing that a sales manager or even an owner can do, if they said to their team, hey, Corey, tomorrow we, we're going to delete the CRM, right? We're just going to get rid of it. What would be the first thing you would miss? And Whatever they come back with you at is the only thing that matters to them. Right. So if their answer isn't something you would expect, then there's a problem with the CRM. Right. Um, so that's one thing for sure you can do. Um, another thing also is really looking at the stages. Oftentimes stages are set up where it's, you know, have discussion, right. Send proposal. Um, it's all actions that the salesperson is doing. Oftentimes, I find, is better when the stages are actually the actions of the prospective customer. So customers reviewing proposal instead of proposal sent. Right. And then, you know, where the sale is in the process. And stages are only as good as giving a visual indicator and maybe some other backend data. But the goal, Right, is to move it from one stage to another. And so what we often see is that you go into a pipeline, even if they have one, and things have been sitting there. I was, uh, talking to a prospect the other day. He's got stuff in the new lead bucket that's been there for a year and a half. And I'm like, well, I'm like, what's going on? Like, why haven't they been moved out? You know? And it's either they forgot to. Right. Or they just slipped through the cracks and nobody followed up with the person. And so you. That's another thing to look for. Most CRMs, you talk about HubSpot, Salesforce, they'll tell you there's reports you can run. Then I'll say, how long is somebody staying in each one of these stages, on average? And if, you know, it only takes three days to write a proposal and send it out, and the create proposal stage has 30 people in it that have been in there for three months, something's wrong.

Speaker C: Yep.

Speaker A: Um, and that's where you have to start looking at is again, going back to process. Right. If you don't have that defined, that's okay because the data will tell you where the process is broken.

Speaker C: Yeah, it's a great point. And I want to circle back to something you said earlier, Jason, which was, you know, it's a subtle rhetoric shift, but I think it's an important one. We call it the sales process.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: We call it the sales stages. And when you kind of flip that script and you start thinking about, no, it's the buying process. It's not about, you know, what your account executives have to do to check that box and move to the next stage, but it's really just helping the buyer actually navigate that process. And when you actually Align that way of thinking in your CRM. I think it does help facilitate a mindset shift, um, shifting gears just a little bit. Let's talk more about the funnel, because I feel like that's something we've been. Sales funnel. Should say buying funnel. We've been kind of dancing around here for a little bit. Uh, so you've talked before about kind of the quote, unquote, silent killers inside the sales funnel. Um, in your experience, what are the most dangerous ones and also what are the ones that we tend to underestimate?

Speaker A: Well, I think nurturing, right? So a lot of teams are not nurturing leads. Studies show that 63% of the people that are in your pipeline that aren't ready to buy today will eventually buy. The question is if they're going to buy from you or from your competitor. But they will buy, which is a large number. And so if you're not nurturing your leads, and when I say nurture, that's not just putting them onto an email newsletter once a month, Right. Or sending them an email every three weeks. Hey, are you ready to sign? Are you ready to sign? Nobody. They're going to get turned off, right? Nurturing has to be a combination of email content. Maybe it's reaching out on LinkedIn, maybe it's making a phone call, sending a text message. But it has to be helpful, right? It has to be, in my opinion, from an educational point of view. So, for example, if somebody's coming to us and they're exploring, they either don't have a CRM or they're looking for one, or they have one. They don't know if it's good. Our content is going to say, here's resources to help you make a better decision. Here's articles, maybe articles we've written, maybe articles that Forbes have written about the fact that over 70% of people fail at implementing a CRM on their own because they just don't know how to do it. And so by the end of our sequence, which might go on for about nine months, they're going to be fully educated to say, okay, well, even if we didn't hire Jason's company, we know we're a lot more informed and what we find, and I've had many clients say this to me before that went through that cycle, is the only reason we came to you is because you provided so much information to us. You weren't just trying to push a, uh, contract down our throat and have assigned something. You know, every time there's a question, you answered it. You continue to give us information. In fact, I have a new client. We just signed up a couple months ago. He's like, can you send me your whole sequence? He's like, because that's what actually got me to sign. And I want to copy your template and just swap out our information, you know, um, and so that's a piece that I think a lot of people fall off on. Now. Why do they fall off? They fall off because they don't have a process, they don't have a CRM, and quite frankly, they get too busy. Right? So they have good intentions. It's not like a salesperson says, I don't want to ever follow up. They want to. It's just like, I'll get to it later. I'll get to it tomorrow. Tomorrow becomes next week, next week becomes next month. Next thing you know, that person just bought something, the same thing you were selling from someone else, because you just dropped the ball.

Speaker C: You know, I mean, I think we're really aligned on this point. I think it's so important to not only stay in touch and, you know, nurturing doesn't mean once a month email. It's personalized. It's based on actions. It's based on, most importantly, what they need, you know, to, uh, to add value and to educate, like you said. Like, you know, hey, if it's not us, that's fine, but at least we're going to help you make that decision and, you know, have all the materials that you need to do so. And then nine times out of 10, like you said, when you're the one providing it, it's going to be you. Right? Because you have added that value and you've built credibility and trust throughout the process. Um, one thing that I wanted to ask you about. I saw you posted this on LinkedIn the other day, and I think it. It kind of fits in nicely. Is you mentioned why everyone should have a why Now? Field on CRM. Um, uh, and I think this ties into the whole value conversation. Do you want to expand on that a little bit for us?

Speaker A: It's so interesting, Corey, you brought that up because I was just talking to a client this morning, um, who does pool construction and his. His winter season, which is usually decent. It's been terrible. Right? Um, it's starting to pick up a little bit. And, and I said to him, I. Exactly what I did, what you just said. I said, your salespeople need to ask the people that are coming in that are buying the new pools and are dropping, you know, 103050 grand, 100 grand on a pool. Why now? Like, you've had a house for 10 years, why you're first buying an inground pool. Now you know, what, what's the change? And he's like, oh, that's a really good idea. He's like, I never thought of that. I'm like, well, if we don't know why they're buying, then. And I don't do any marketing for them. They have a marketing agency. But even that stuff, he just spent a ton of money on stuff for President's Day weekend, you know, tv, radio stuff.

Speaker C: And.

Speaker A: And it was crickets. Like, you know, they hardly sold anything. Um, and he's trying to figure out why. Well, you got to ask them. You got to ask these people why. And so, um, that's my first question, you know, when I talk to people is why now? Right? Like, why you could have done this a year ago? Like, what's changed? But also, like, what is the problem? Right? I don't talk about the features and benefits. Or someone says, hey, what CRM should I use? I'm like, well, how. How would I know? I don't know. I don't even know what you have, what you're faced against. I don't know what you're dealing with. I don't know if you have people on the road, people in the office. I don't know what your needs are. We got to figure all that out. And then I can make recommendations. So the why question, I think so many people just overlook, right? And it's that old saying saying, like, don't sell features and benefits. Right? And salespeople always want to talk. Not always, but sometimes want to talk about them. Right? And all the things that they've done, their accomplishments, the accomplishments of the company. Right. All the great things that they sell and can provide. But really the conversation should be asking questions like, to learn more about that prospect. And I think that's what that article was really trying to focus on, was, you got to ask the why now, right? That's like, where to start?

Speaker C: Yeah. Uh, I mean, it's a great point. I mean, how we talk about it a lot is, you know, are you actually solving a problem that's worth solving? You know, is there urgency behind it? Because, I mean, you can walk into and talking about a business to business sale, you can walk into any business on the planet and, you know, talk to the leadership, talk, uh, to the reps, and you'll find 10, 15 problems that could be solved if there's budget to solve them. But is it worth it? You know, it comes back to the why now? Why is this urgent? Why are people. Why are people willing to change, you know, at this moment in time?

Speaker A: Exactly. I was talking to a prospect just the other, uh, actually on Monday, and she was looking for CRM, but she's a solopreneur. And. And I'm like, but you're not doing she. So I learned from the asking the why questions, she's not doing any marketing. She doesn't have many leads coming in. I'm like, you don't need a CRM. You need marketing or something to generate business. Like, once you have the problem of, oh, uh, too many leads to manage, then we could talk about CRM. I said, but for now, you could probably use the spreadsheet, right? Or you could use, like, pipe drive or something really simple. Like, you don't need to be spending a ton of money on a CRM because your money should be going towards business development. She's like, oh, that makes sense. I'm like, well, yeah, of course it makes sense. Right? And so to your point, like, yeah, there's lots of problems, but, like, what's the order of the priority of those problems?

Speaker C: Exactly. And you know what? Um, it's something we don't talk about much at Value Selling, but we recently kicked, um, off a sub brand. It's called Growist, and it's specifically aimed at solopreneurs, entrepreneurs, um, you know, helping them get up and running. Because what we found is that a lot of, um, entrepreneurs are fantastic at what they do. They might be a fantastic architect, they might be a fantastic cpa. Um, however, they're not a fantastic salesperson.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: And that's okay. It's not a, it's not a boring thing, but it's something that.

Speaker A: I was one, I was a solo. I was a solopreneur. You know, that's what I. That's what my business coach called me. And, you know, um, but yeah, you're good at something, but you don't know anything about selling.

Speaker C: Yep.

Speaker A: Yeah. Right.

Speaker C: And the good news is you can learn it.

Speaker B: But.

Speaker C: But I'm curious. You. You brought that example of. In, in that case, I'm. I'm 100% that person needs leads coming in before they need to worry about what to do with them. Um, yeah, but from your experience working with solopreneurs and entrepreneurs, when is the right time to implement a CRM?

Speaker A: Um, so a couple key factors. One, if you're planning any type of big marketing, spend you know, you're going to spending a few thousand dollars a month on marketing. Even that might not seem big to some people, but for some it is. There should be some type of system to track the, you know, the ROI of that. Not just how many people filled out a form but you know, did they actually buy something? Right. Were they good leads, were they bad leads? Um, I built a tool called Profit Path which is a, um, it's also on give me the link that we give at the show, notes and I'll give at the end. Um, it's a one time access, you know, under a hundred bucks. Um, but what it is is it's interconnected Google spreadsheets that take all my knowledge of what a CRM should be able to track, but put it into a very simple format with all the fancy, you know, bells and whistles of like a HubSpot or a salesforce. And so that's one indicator, right. If you, to spend money, right, you need to make sure you're actually tracking everything. The second thing is, you know, if you have a couple of people working for you, right, doing business development, there should be some type of system to help them. You know, if I'm going to go hire a contractor, we talked before the show started about we both being kind of handy in doing things around the house. But if I'm going to go hire somebody to do a project in my house, I expect them to show up with all the tools they need. If they just show up with one hammer and a nail and they're like redoing the whole roof, there's a problem. Right. I know they're not going to be able to do the job correctly. And so many times companies are hiring salespeople without giving them the tools to succeed. And then what do they do? Right, Corey? They blame the salesperson. Oh, you're just not a good fit or you're not a cultural fit or you don't know the industry well enough or our product well enough. And I'm not saying any of those things couldn't be true. But you got to give them the tools to succeed from day one. And that's another big indicator that we see where they're just, they're not being given those tools.

Speaker C: Yeah. Uh, and let's be real, the other side, the other flip side of that coin is the salesperson will go out and get whatever tools they need to do if they can to do their job. And then you've got customer data out there God knows where. Definitely not secure, definitely not locked down in your system. So that's also another route there I could go.

Speaker A: Absolutely. But yeah, those are the two indicators for sure. I mean, the other third one is, I would say we work with a lot of manufacturing companies that will have like an ERP or some type of software that's essentially the backbone of their business, but they don't have a CRM. And so when we see that, it's the same thing, like you have a piece of software that's doing 80% of what you need to do, but the other 20% is just falling through the cracks. And so when we see that, that's another place where it's like, okay, we need to fill that void. And like, to your point we spoke about earlier, maybe it's not just one piece of software that comes to fill the void. Maybe it's two or three. Right. That we have to blend together and connect together to be able to solve that problem. Um, because they don't. They're just like, oh, we have a quoting tool. We're okay. I'm like, okay, well, what happens before you write a quote? Where is all that data? To your point, it might be in a spreadsheet, right? And they're not getting entered into the tool until the person's ready for a quote. But if you've been talking to them for three months, where's all the communication and all that living? Probably nowhere, you know, like, meaningful.

Speaker C: That's a great point. And I'm curious because it strikes me as two very different cells, right? It's easy to, you know, go into a startup and say, hey, look, uh, you're scaling. Your marketing spend has tipped $5,000 a month. You're running a lot of marketing that can be easily tracked, right? It's primarily ad based. It's primarily these kind of spends. You need that data. Also, you've got two salespeople. Come on, let's connect everything together. Let's get you up and running. That seems a lot easier than going into a legacy company or a manufacturing company that maybe they've been around 50, 75 years. They have a way of doing things. It's gotten them this far. And now, even though there might be, you know, uh, enough urgency, right. There's something driving this decision still that strikes me as a huge change management initiative.

Speaker A: Yeah. Well, there has to be a champion, right? There has to be somebody within the organization that supports the change, that understands the value of the change. The one thing that I will tell you, if you're doing this, as long as I have and this, you know, anybody in business will say this. If you see those red flags, you just know right away, okay, nice to meet you. Like, you know, best of luck. Right? Because as much as you want to help them, if they don't, um, want to help themselves, you know, you can't, you know, you don't bring a horse to water, you can feed that horse to water if it doesn't want to drink. And so that's. You're absolutely right. I mean it is more of a challenge, but it's also more of an opportunity because there's more potential to see radical change in a very short time versus a startup that has no track record to anything and is just getting momentum. And they need the foundation to build. But it might take them six months, a year or two years to start really seeing true ROI depending upon their business. Whereas if you come into a company is doing $15 million a year in business and like the roofing company for example, they do about $8 million a year in business. So when I was able to show them an extra $4 million that I was able to bring in and as a huge jump, I mean, you know, to the business. So it definitely can have a big impact, you know, for them. Again, it's just you need to be willing and open minded that there is a need for that change, like I said. And that's where it has to start with the conversation.

Speaker C: Um, exactly, completely agree with you there. Uh, so I want to ask a little bit more about, you know, team building and because we surrounding we've been talking about startups, we've been talking about solopreneurs, building a team, growing a team, scaling a team. Um, and it's something that you did yourself at Cultivize and you all have had some pretty impressive growth rates over the years. Uh, so walk us through. If there's a solopreneur entrepreneur out there that maybe they've made their first or second hire, where should they go next? When do they know that it's time to scale?

Speaker A: Well, I think the one thing that um, people do all the time and you always see this on like, you know, the, the investor shows the shark tanks and all those of the world right, where people want to scale too quickly, right? And so they get excited by some big deal that they closed or whatever the catalyst is and they go hire more people, they go get a second office, they go do whatever they do and now they're overexposing themselves, you know, financially. And so for me, because I'm a process Oriented person. I've always run my business like we have a team of 50, even though we're a team of four, um, just the tools that we have for the team, the efficiency that we have, just makes things more effective. So I always say, before you start going to hire somebody else, it's okay, well, is that person already doing all that they could potentially do for your company? Is there incentives? Maybe they're working for you part time. Maybe there's an opportunity to bring them on full time. Um, maybe the things that they're doing are things that you don't fully need them to do, meaning maybe there's administrative tasks. And now you could go hire somebody else to do that at a lower cost of labor rate. And now you've freed up 50% of this person's time to do more of the work they're really good at. So I think it really comes down to the business, to the nuances of it. But at the end of the day, um, the one thing I think a lot of businesses also, as they're starting out, um, there's two factors. One is, I don't know that every business understands really what profit margin is. Even though it sounds simple and easy, but they're really not tracking that. So you're like, yeah, we just sold a $50,000 website. That's awesome. But then you realize you're working on it for eight months and it actually costs you $65,000 to actually build the website. Right now you're upside down, right? So that's something that I think early entrepreneurs, as you meant that this, you know, the skillpreneurs, right, that are just starting out, that haven't had the sales experience. I remember, um, when I first started my first agency, I had a roommate who was a videographer. Um, his name was Mike. And Mike got, you know, he was doing this as a side hustle. He got busy, and he had to hire somebody else to do some video editing. He couldn't do it all himself. And he was, you know, let's say he was charging his clients $75 an hour. He's paying the video editor $75 an hour. I'm like, mike, what are you doing? Like, there's no profit there. He's like, well, what do you mean? And he, like, psych, psychologically felt bad charging more money to the client than he was paying the vendor. I'm like, but this, there's costs involved. There's operating costs. You have to manage this person. You have to oversee their work. You have to do all These other things. And if that's not all factored in, you're. You're never going to be profitable and you're probably going to lose money. Right. And so, um, that's something that they don't really, you know, you don't learn with your skill. Right. If you're like, you mentioned an architect or whatever you are, you don't think about those things. And so that's where I would put. My advice is to try to document, like, how long does it actually take you to do things? You know, and even using AI now, you could say, okay, like, well, maybe this is how much money I want to make each year. What does that turn into? An hourly rate, Right. And then using that, say, okay, well, how long does the project take? This is how much the project should cost. And so a lot of it sometimes Corey, is, you know, things are just pulled out of thin air and, uh, there's no rhyme or reason. So, um, I think if you give some rhyme or reason things, you'll, you'll see that the options you have are going to be dramatically different.

Speaker C: Excellent advice. Especially when you're talking about, um, anything like creative work, agency brands and scope creep is real and it always frustrates the client. And if you don't bid it right to start with, you're going to end up, uh, underwater for sure.

Speaker A: Well, anyway, even construction, you hire somebody to paint your house and you're like, oh, like, while you're here, do you mind just painting that door, doing this? And it'd be like, yeah, sure, no problem. And now you're at the house for an extra half a day. You're not charging them, you know, because you're a nice person. Not saying it's not maybe good business in some ways if, you know, you might get another job from the person. But you gotta be mindful of those decisions.

Speaker C: Yep, for sure. Every one of those counts. All right, Jason, as we, uh, move toward the end of the podcast, there are two questions that we ask every guest. And, and the first is we're recording this in. I was going to say early 2026, but it's already March. March of 2026. Um, so let's fast forward. Let's look five years into the future. Uh, let's say it's 2031. So what is going to be our reality in terms of CRM strategy? Even expanding the sales martech landscape? Um, you know, what's coming for the space that not a lot of leaders are talking about right now?

Speaker A: Well, uh, I wouldn't Say maybe per se, what a lot of leaders aren't talking about, but they're not realizing the opportunity. I think one thing is going to be um, the ability to add more data and to synthesize data in a lot of an easier fashion. Right. It's going to take a lot less work. So um, being able to take all meeting notes and somebody you've been trying to close for three months and you can't figure out why you can't close them, I mean you could do it today, right? It's not difficult to do, but maybe then you just click a button. It's like, well, here's all the objections they've had over the last six months. Here's a concise email, here's your talking points, here's your meeting points, and if you use this, you'll have like a 90% chance to close the deal. Right. Um, I think that's going to vastly improve. I think the other thing that's going to vastly improve is trying to take some of this, um, what I called before, like the admin work out of the sales team, for sure. You know, we're going to see a take over a lot of that's already there, right. Fathom and all these note taking things and um, you know, even this call is being transcribed. Right. So, um, that's going to be a huge lift for the sales teams and the companies that are taking advantage of it. And then I think we're also going to see, you know, an exploration which is going to be to me the more challenging and maybe difficult one to navigate as far as like content creation. Right. There's been a huge debate over that for the number of years now as AI has been growing and getting more sophisticated. Um, but without again without good intention, without um, a problem you're trying to solve, without clear direction, you're just going to get a lot of garbage kind of coming out of that output. So to me I think AI is going to be able to better understand who you are, who Jason is, who the company is, the services, the differentiators, all these different things. So that as you are creating content, it's factoring all those things into play. Um, I think that's going to be a big shift and I think the third thing Corey is going to be just reporting, I think we're going to see a lot more um, powerful ability right now. You know, people have dashboards at the wazoo, right. And you know, it may not even be meaningful, it may not even be helpful because they're just seeing Things in colorful charts. AI is going to be able to synthesize that. It's going to be like, okay, like here's a problem we see, here's how to fix it. Or like have you, have you thought about this scenario based on the data? So things that you and I are not able to visually see in black and white. AI is going to be able to make very quick assessments of that data, which I think is going to be really exciting because um, I think that's going to be the most pivotal one. Talk about advertising, you could ask the AI in a few years, maybe even today, which you could certainly do with more work. We've been spending 10 grand a month on Facebook, on AdWords and all these things. Why are the ads not converting now? It's going to look at the landing page, it's going to look at your content, it's going to look at the offer, it's going to look at everything and it's going to come back with informed recommendations and why it may not be working. You know, it's going to look at oh like you have people from Europe coming to your ad from here, from there. Maybe it's, you know, there's a language issue. Right. It's going to be able to give you more insight than Google Ads can today. Right. Google Ads is going to say this is your click through rate and your conversion rate. It's not telling you why you have a bad rate, it's just telling you what the rate is. So that's to me that's the exciting part.

Speaker C: Yeah, no, I agree. I think it's a great answer. And um, as a marketer I'm selfishly excited for that future, particularly when it runs in the background. You know, when it's, when you can, I mean you can already do it a little bit, right. But when it's agentic in real time and it's making those, you know, with a little bit of approval workflows, check ins here and there, it's actually making those decisions on the fly, optimizing spend, um, because one, it's going to be a great business uplift, but two, and perhaps more importantly it's going to cut down the noise to your point. Like it's going to start creating content or creating experiences that people actually want because right now we're in floodgate stage and it ain't great.

Speaker A: So it's really, I'll say. Last night I had to go to my uh, my son who uh, is um, in high school, is going on a trip with the School. And so they're going to, you know, out of the country. And so it was like a pretty intensive, like, last meeting before the trip. It was like an. I was there for, like an hour and a half, you know, at least. And so I had, um, the Granola AI app just on my phone, just sitting there recording the whole thing. Um, so I was like, you know, take notes, whatever. I'm like, yeah, I could have taken notes. And the amazing thing is that all it did was listen to this woman talk, you know, that's the head of the trip. And it consolidated. They not only did it consolidate, but it organized it. Like, here's things about when we leave, about when we arrive, like, you know, what to pack. And it just organize all those notes with really quick, um, summaries to be able to, you know, share my wife, share my son, which I would have never been able to do that myself, you know. Um, and so. And even if I recorded it on audio, like, I'm not going to listen to an hour and a half of audio and then have to retranscribe. And so, yeah, it's. It's already here. Right. It's just. It's just going to elevate so much faster, you know, over the next few years.

Speaker C: Exactly. Um, okay, final question. Um, Jason, looking back over your own career and journey, um, if you could go back five, ten, uh, even 15 years, what's one piece of advice that you would give to your younger self?

Speaker A: The one piece of advice I would say is hire a really good accountant. Um, I think that's the number one thing that a lot of businesses don't think about. Um, not to say I had bad ones and had any issues, but, you know, the one I've had now is just an amazing tax planner and has really helped the business. Just. We talk about the health of the business financially and just health in general. Having a good CPA that, you know, and a bookkeeper, I'd, uh, say is also equally important. And sometimes when you're. You're a new business, you don't think about those things, and you're like, oh, I can just do it myself. But having somebody there that, you know, has a lot of experience could really shift, um, the business in a lot of positive ways.

Speaker C: I love it. That's really practical and actionable. That's great advice.

Speaker A: Thank you.

Speaker C: All right, Jason. Well, this was an absolute pleasure having you on the show. This is a fun conversation. I know we talked about putting the links to the spreadsheets in the show, notes but if people want to learn more about you, more about cultivize, where should they go?

Speaker A: Yeah, the easiest place to find me is afterthelead.com. you can connect with me on social through there. Um, the downloads I mentioned, the calculators, the guides that we have. And then as everybody probably heard today, Corey, I'm just here to educate, to have conversations. So there's a link on there for your audience where they can book a call with me. No obligation, no fee. Um, happy to have a chat with you with any issues you might be having, uh, that I can help with.

Speaker C: All right, sounds good. Well, thanks again for joining us.

Speaker A: Thank you.

Speaker B: You've been listening to the B2B revenue executive experience. To ensure that you never miss an episode, subscribe to the show on itunes or your favorite podcast player. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time.