Deb Kaminetzky - Getting the MOST from your CRM!

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: Good morning everybody. It's Jeff Goldberg for the Sales Pro Network. It is Friday, May 29th. Man, oh man, the months are flying by. I'm going to tell you something as I do at every, the beginning of almost every one of these broadcasts, the year is flying by. And if you need help, if you're not almost halfway to your financial goal right now, you need to get help immediately. If you've got a manager, go to your manager. If you got a coach, go to your coach. If you need help, contact me. But you don't want to contact somebody like me in October or November and say, help me. I'm not going to make my quota. Because at that point it's way too late. There's still time. You still have almost a little bit more than half a year to hit your quota. But get help now if you need it. And with that, if you've joined us before, then, you know that my name is Jeff Goldberg. I'm a sales coach and trainer. I work with both individuals and organizations internationally to help them do one thing and one thing only, increase their sales. And if you have joined us before, you know that every Friday at 10am M. Eastern, I either do a live interview with somebody who can add value to the profession of sales or a live training. And today is no exception, my friends. Today's guest is the founder of Defacto pm. She's a technology consultant and she's a pmp, csm, lssgb, which of course I'm going to have to ask her because I have no idea what any of those initials mean. Please welcome today's guest, my friend, Deborah Kamenetsky. Good morning, Deb.

Speaker A: Hi. Good morning. Thanks for having me. If you really want to know, PMP is Project Management Professional. LSSGB is Lean Six Sigma Green Belt, usually a manufacturing designation, and CSM is Scrum Master, that is more for software development.

Speaker B: Well, you answered the question before I even had to ask it, so that's a beautiful thing, Deb, before I do have a bunch of questions for you, but before I get to those, can you maybe give us the two minute version of your background? You know, knowing you as I do, I know you have a fascinating background which did not really point, uh, towards, uh, being a technology consultant. So why don't you tell everybody in a minute or two and then we'll get to the questions I have.

Speaker A: Sure. So originally when I was in high school, college, I loved video games and I wanted to go into technology and my parents thought that technology was a fad, really and that I should be a good girl and major in English and go to law school. And I did that. And I made them happy for a while. And then after they passed away, I said, okay, I'm going to now pursue what I really want to do. And I segued into technology, going all the way across the country to Seattle to take a job with a Microsoft vendor, which was my first job outside of law. And ever since then, I've been in technology. I took the risk. Uh, project managers are known for avoiding risk. I feel project managers should take the right risks. So that's how I ended up finding my company, helping people who I've been voluntold to take on a project on how to actually manage that project. And I do solutioning and actual project management and training for those who need to be trained on their systems.

Speaker B: And since you've used a word that I love and I've, uh, heard you use before, why don't you explain to everybody what voluntold means?

Speaker A: Voluntold means that somebody is telling you to take on a project in addition to all of your other job duties. So you're not really volunteering because you don't really want to necessarily do it. You're being told to do it. And I call it voluntold because you're told to volunteer and you kind of don't have the choice of saying no.

Speaker B: Love it. And what were some of your favorite video games when you were a video great gamer?

Speaker A: Well, I was the Centipede champ. And that was back when they actually had, uh, the big consoles, not even the ones that we had in our homes. I wasn't allowed to have one in my home, by the way. Definitely made up for that. Now I have a Nintendo Switch and I play games on that still. Uh, not while I'm working. And I liked that. I liked Pac man, all the big console games. And in fact, I don't know if you realize it, but on Long island we have a retro gaming festival every year at the Cradle of Aviation Museum, which I've been a frequent attender of. And you get to play all the video games.

Speaker B: I did not know that. I remember Asteroids. I like that one. And Galaga, or Galaga, whatever it was called. And there was another one. I can't remember the name now. It was a night, and he had to go through a bunch of, uh, on a quest. Maybe it was Night quest or something like that. But great game. I put a lot of quarters into a machine trying to get to the end of that game too Much fun. Um, one of the things I mainly want to talk to you about today is CRM. I, uh, know what it is. I use it extensively. And, uh, most of my clients do too. But why don't we start out with this? Because you're a technology and implementation expert. What is CRM? I mean, you and I know what it stands for. Why don't we tell people what it stands for? And why do so many CRM implementations fail?

Speaker A: Okay, so the basic, the acronym stands for customer Relationship Management, which in and of itself doesn't really tell you a whole lot about what it is and why you would want one. So what I like about the CRM, and I started working with these a long time ago when I used to practice law. I don't know if I left that out of my, uh, out of my intro, but I had a law practice and I used a legal CRM. And it helps you keep track of all of your deals, all of your customers in the legal sense, it was clients. And not just keep track, because you can keep track in lots of ways, but it also will give you a lot of data that you can use to inform decisions. What types of clients am I having the best luck with? What types of outreach am I having the best luck with? Uh, if I'm prospecting, am I doing better with email? Am I doing better with calling? Am I doing better meeting people in person? It can give you all those data points that you're not necessarily going to get out of the spreadsheet unless you know how to use those very, very well. But what I also love about it is it will remind you to call so you can notate in a notebook or in a spreadsheet. Follow up in three months. But then you may forget. And then months later, six months later, I, oh yeah, I was supposed to follow up with that person in three months. You can set it in a CRM that it will remind you so you do not forget. So it's really, it takes a lot of that burden off of you of having to remember and manage. And it's great for that. For sales managers especially, it gives them a much better idea of what their salespeople are doing because they're going to be getting the same data points in the same form from each one of them. If you have, let's say, five salespeople and each one keeps track and keeps their records differently, and then you just have a meeting with all of them, you have to aggregate all that data yourself and try to make sense of it. If they're putting everything into a CRM software, it is doing that for you and you're going to be able to see Salesperson A is 20% away from their KPI and Salesperson B is nowhere near the KPI. Let's examine why. Let's go through all of these data points and see so we can support that person, mentor that person, make sure that they're using the CRM correctly and make sure they understand their job. What can we do to help them do better, all of those kinds of things. So, and I don't want to get into too many details and then you got more questions for me, but if you have good processes, the CRM um, will just basically make a lot of automation and make things even better so you can see the results. If you do not have good processes it can be a disaster. And that's one of the reasons that they do fail some of these implementations because a lot of people think oh we'll get a CRM and that'll solve all our problems. It won't solve the problem of your process. It won't solve the problem of people understanding what it is that they need to do. It will just make it very clear that that is not going well.

Speaker B: What's the difference between a CRM and just a glorified contact database? Is it all the things you just mentioned that it'll do all that stuff for us?

Speaker A: Some of those things. In addition a CRM can, doesn't have to be, but it can be integrated with other systems in your company. It can be integrated with email, it can be integrated with your other operations, uh, sales, marketing, customer service, all of those things. If you have a few different softwares that you're using, the CRM can either get data from those or feed data into those depending on what it is that you're trying to accomplish. It's just much more robust. A contact management system. People talk about the Rolodex I on the computer. For those of you who don't know, a Rolodex was actually this very old fashioned, had little cards and it was basically it looked like a carousel and you would roll.

Speaker B: I always keep one next to my desk because I'm old enough to remember what those are and you know, I love when people go what are you talking about Rolodex?

Speaker A: Well you know the supposedly Gen Z is getting much more into the old fashioned um, non techie thing. So those might m may have a comeback. Well, we'll have to see. But a CRM is not just a Rolodex it's not just a place to store people's information. It's much more alive than that. Uh, when you have a sales funnel, if you need, uh, whatever it is, you know, 10 to 18 touches, depending on your industry, you're going to be able to see how many outreaches you've had. You don't get them from a Rolodex unless you have much, much bigger one. You're not going to be able to fit all of that the 10 times you contacted them, how you contacted them. So it does way more than just store data of who the customer or potential customer is.

Speaker B: Yeah. And you don't work with just one CRM, right. You work with multiple CRMs, is that correct?

Speaker A: I do not have skin in the game in terms of which CRM. I'm not working for any of the companies. I don't get compensated by any of the companies. So I'm completely agnostic. However, I will help a company select a CRM if they need that because there's a lot of CRMs out there. Like, uh, I don't know if I'm allowed. Am I allowed to actually mention names of actual companies? There's one very large one.

Speaker B: Sure. You're an ex lawyer. If they sue us, I'm going to come to you.

Speaker A: So I just won't mention the names. But there's a very large.

Speaker B: It's fine.

Speaker A: Okay. So there's a very large one, Salesforce. And everyone has heard of Salesforce, and everyone knows Salesforce, and it is an excellent CRM for a very large enterprise customer. Agreed. Um, I don't know that a smaller company, like, if you have a smaller company with 20 people in it and you have a sales staff of three, that might be overkill for them. It's going to be harder to customize. It's going to be harder for them to learn how to use it. And then they may reject it and say, oh, this is too hard, it's too big. Then there are smaller ones that are easier to use. So I will essentially talk with the people who are charged with picking the CRM. And that could be the cfo, it could be the coo, it could be the sales managers. I like to get more than one person involved, and I also want to talk to the people who actually are the salespeople who are doing the sales, because we want everyone to talk about what they actually do. Sometimes the people who are managing don't know what their salespeople are actually doing, what they're capable of doing. Sometimes they do so from my perspective, I like to gather all that information and help them decide. And if they want to have, you know, three different demos, you know, do an RFI or rfp, I'll help with that too. But I'm not going to say I want you to use this one because this is the one that I sell. I don't sell any of them.

Speaker B: Yep, and you're a master of understatement. Or a master of understatement. When you say that, uh, Salesforce is overkill for a three person organization. Uh, I'm a little more blunt. Nobody with a three person organization needs Salesforce. I respect Salesforce like you do, but I think it's for enterprise organizations, uh, personally. And I may not be as technological as you, but I'm more technological than the average human. I've never been able to get a report out of Salesforce without calling in a consultant. Whereas something like I personally use, like pipedrive or HubSpot or uh, any of those, uh, less expensive and fully functional CRMs I can do pretty well with. What are some of the biggest mistakes that companies make before they invest in a CRM?

Speaker A: I think one of the biggest mistakes is not having their processes documented, having SOP standard operating procedures. Because when you are, even if you're not doing customizations, even if you're using the software, quote unquote out of the box, meaning the way that it comes, you still want to understand what your process is because it will be helping you document everything within your process.

Speaker B: So is that something you would be asking a prospect when you're talking or a customer before you actually implement? Tell me about your sales process so I can figure out what the right CRM might be and make some suggestions for you.

Speaker A: Yes, because I need to understand the sales process now. Also, within any of those, there are some kind of configurations you can do that are fairly simple. And those are things I help with as well. There's some very simple integrations. For example, HubSpot has an integration with Calendly. The two of them can talk to each other. So, um, that your salesperson only has to enter things afterward. If someone books with them on Calendly, it will immediately go into their HubSpot and then all they have to do is update it. And that already takes away one step of manually entering. What's great about that, aside from the fact that it's easier, is that you're less likely to have duplicate entries and um, everything will very likely be spelled correctly. Those are the human error things that can stymie your CRM, you have the same person in three times with three different spellings. That does not do good things for you. Those kinds of integrations can really be helpful.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's brilliant. One of my clients, ah, we use pipedrive there. I use it personally, we use it there. And uh, we also use zoom info to gather information. It integrates perfectly. So, yeah, I get what you're saying. How does a company know if it's, if it's actually ready for a CRM implementation? Does it have to be a certain size, a certain amount of sales volume? How do they know?

Speaker A: I don't think it has to be a certain size or a certain amount of sales volume that really is more determinative of which CRM they would use. However, like I said, they do need to have their processes straight. They need to see how things are being tracked, how things are being measured. If you're not tracking and measuring, you're not going to meet your goal. Right? You have to set a goal and then work toward that goal. So I think every company that has any kind of sales should have some sort of, um, CRM as opposed to a spreadsheet. And it's really just a matter of making sure that it's the right CRM for them. And it may not be the right CRM for them forever. If they're growing and they really take on more people, et cetera, et cetera, you can always migrate. I do a lot of migration work also where you're taking your data off of one CRM and moving it to a more robust CRM. You can stay in the same one and just get a different level of that CRM, usually for a fee. So for instance, HubSpot has a free version. They have several different tiers of paid version. So you may be able to stay with the same one, but you may decide to move. And if you move, we do a migration where we basically get all of your data. I'm not going to give the details on this. And we move it into the new version of the CRM.

Speaker B: When you meet with a company at first. Hold on, let me get this question straight in my mind. Do you sometimes have situations where you meet with a company that says, yes, we'd like you to implement the CRM. Um, you go in and start talking to them and they actually can't define their sales process? Because I speak to a lot of salespeople and when I interview them for jobs, which I do for some of my clients, and I say, how do you define your sales Process. They never know what I'm talking about. They seriously, uh, what did the guy tell me yesterday? Oh, uh, he tells, well, my sales process, you know, I like to take good care of people and I like to, you know, really, uh, you know, make them feel like I've got my arms around them. I said, yes. That's your sales philosophy. What's your process from start to finish? So when you go in, do you often find companies do not have a sales process that they can articulate, or do they typically have one?

Speaker A: Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. And for me, it's not just articulating it. I would be looking for documentation. Right. Do they have their sales process, uh, in some sort of documented form? And part of the reason that's necessary also is people come and go, right? People leave the organization, People come to the organization. If you're going to set up a CRM and you're going to then onboard new salesperson, whether they're replacing somebody else, in which case you don't want that person's knowledge to leave your company, you want to retain it, or if they're just adding salespeople, you want a way to onboard them. And the way to onboard them, especially if they are using a CRM, is this is how we do it here. It needs to be documented so that they can then learn how to use the CRM that you have set up and do all the different things that you want them to do. If it's just as you said, that philosophy, they'll be like, oh, okay, and I'll, uh, left my own devices, I'm going to take care of them, put my arms around them, however it is that I want to do it. And then later you've got again, the five different salespeople doing things five different ways. And then the manager is, what are they going to do with that? Right. It's just a matter of their gut reaction. Oh, I think this person is doing the best. That's not really how you want to run things.

Speaker B: So, uh, one of the things that I find, uh, one of the types of training I do for companies, I train sales managers how to be sales managers. And, uh, you know, that's usually at a large organization with multiple sales managers. And one of the things I always do at the beginning of any training is I let people go around the room and introduce themselves to me and I always ask them, what's your biggest challenge? So for salespeople, what's your biggest challenge in sales or prospecting for managers, what's Your biggest challenge in managing. And I'm constantly stunned by the answer that I get, and I'd love your take on it. Uh, the answer I often get is compliance. And when I say, what do you mean by compliance? I can't get them to use my CRM. Now my response is always, who's managing them? Who's the manager? What's your take on that? I mean, do you find that a lot of companies are not. They'll get a CRM, whether it's an expensive one or an inexpensive one, and they can't get compliance. And if they can't, do you have any recommendations for how they can?

Speaker A: Okay, so when setting up a CRM for a company, part of the reason I talk not just with the sales manager, but also with at least one or two salespeople is because, and this is from my mediation days when I was practicing law, generally speaking, when people are able to tell you what their pain points are, what it is that they like about their job, the things they absolutely hate about their job, they're more likely to then use the solution that they helped come up with. And I'm just going to put this out there and if I get some hate back from it, that's okay. Everybody in tech is just a tiny bit lazy. And that's why we're in tech, because we like making things easier, because we ourselves have things we don't want to do. So we think, oh, how can we make it so we don't have to do that task? It's the same thing with salespeople. Nobody wants to have to manually enter a whole bunch of things into a CRM. It's very, very tedious. So that's where I was going before with some of these automations is you don't necessarily have to put it all in yourself. I think that if people are really shown and trained, training has to be part of any implementation. You cannot implement something and then just tell people, okay, here's your tool, go use it, right? If we let people drive cars without having even a learner's permit and some lessons, it would be a real problem. You've got to do some training. Getting their buy in is important as well. And then they'll be able to see that this is going to make their job easier. Because salespeople want to sell, they want to make money, they want their commission. And if you can make their lives easier with the tool as opposed to them seeing this as, oh, uh, this isn't really helping me with what I do. This is just so they can decide whether I'm getting my bonus. Very different viewpoint. Right. So they have to understand that this is going to help them do their job better, which will help them get their bonus, not as a way to keep them from their bonus.

Speaker B: Yep. And that's right in line with my philosophy that whenever you want somebody to do something for you, show them why it's good for them. So when you show the salespeople how they're going to be more productive, more effective, save time, make more money, that should be enough. And the other part, which is, I'm your manager, you have to do this. It's just part of the job. I always, uh, advise managers. It should be right in the job interview when you're telling people about what they're going to have to do, including, you're going to have to enter information into our CRM because we need that to help you make more money. Um, why do so many CRM implementations fail, even when they buy good software?

Speaker A: Again, the software is only as good as the people using it and, um, the processes those people are using. So you could have the best software in the world, but if your processes or you don't have any processes and everyone's using it differently, it's just not going to work for you. That's why the processes and the people are the most important thing. The technology exists for the people. It exists for us, to help us. It's not on its own going to solve the problem, even with AI, which I know you're going to want to touch on later, but you still, you have to use it. And like I said, training goes a long way because if people don't know how to do it or how much easier, they're not going to. So you've got to make that a, uh, lighter lift for them by really showing them how to do and continuing training. You can't do a training one time. One of the best ways to learn software is to do it iteratively, which is an agile term, uh, in technology where you're teaching a little bit, letting the person practice, get better at that, then teaching a little bit more. And if you're doing that all along, they will actually retain and use it and it's going to build and they'll be able to do it. Now, I will say with SAS platform, SaaS is software as a service. The plus of that is that if there are any new things happening, releases happening, you get them right away. The negative of that is you get them right away. So you also may need some Retraining at some point, if there's been a very large release that completely changes, uh, what you're seeing on your screen, how you're doing things. So training is not a once and done situation. There needs to be some sort of continuing training.

Speaker B: And when you do an implementation, are you just setting things up properly, doing all the pre work and then making sure it's working or do you also do that training for the team? Do they bring you in to actually train the team to, here's how you use it, here's the best practices and all that.

Speaker A: That is entirely up to them. I can do the training on things I've actually implemented. I did have an inquiry the other day on something that they had already implemented and they wanted me to come in and train and I said, I don't know your system, I don't know your company, somebody who was along for that ride is probably best suited to do that training. Um, so yeah, I can do the training if they don't want me to and they want to do it themselves. I will make sure that there is somebody who is owning that training during the implementation. Someone's going to have to be documenting, someone's going to have to be doing that for them internally because someone has to do it. It cannot not happen. If it doesn't happen, the implementation fails.

Speaker B: That makes sense. I have to emphasize what you just said because I love it so much. Uh, you'll actually tell a customer or a prospect, I'm not the right person for this. And I love that desperately. Because sometimes the right thing to do is to say, I, I'm not right for you, you're not right for me, I'm not right for you. Let me introduce you to somebody else. You know the thought, you know, take every deal and figure out a way to make it work. Um, it's a way to make money. But I don't think it's a way to be, to have integrity. And I also don't think it's a way to keep long term clients happy. I would much rather say to somebody, you know what, let me introduce you to my counterpart at Sandler Sales training. They do more of what you're looking for. I'm a different type of person. So bravo to you. Deb, I have to ask you about something else about project management. Uh, what is human centered project leadership? I saw that on one of your posts on LinkedIn and I was like, that sounds cool. What is that?

Speaker A: Okay, so human centered means it's about the people. A lot of people Think of project management as somebody who is largely administrative, literally ticking the boxes and making sure all the tasks get done. But that's not really what project managers do. We lead projects, we end up making decisions. We have to get a room to agree on something, make sure people are aligned. And it really is all about the people. As I said before, without the people, the technology does not need to exist. Right. All of these technologies that we have, every single one of them, is to make human, I'm not going to say human life better, but it's to make the human element of work better. And so that's really what it comes down to. The people in a company are the ones that have to be using it, have to be having their jobs made better, uh, making the more money for the company, all of those things. And they're using the technology as a tool toward that end. It is not of itself the goal.

Speaker B: Gotcha. And does your experience as a lawyer and, um, especially a mediator, does that help you in your job to get people to agree on things?

Speaker A: Immensely. For one thing, project managers also have to sort of manage some people without authority. They don't directly report to them. But in my law firm, I had people directly reporting to me. In one of my project management roles, I had people directly reporting to me. And the mediation skills are phenomenal because you have different things you can do in order to get people to agree. One of the ones is, for instance, if someone tells you something, you want to repeat back to them what you think you heard to make sure that you're actually agreeing to the same thing. And I'm going to use a legal term here, this thing called meeting of the minds for a contract. And if you don't have a meeting of the minds, there was never a contract. And I can tell you that in so many implementations, especially when I worked for other people, it was very clear that what the client thought they were getting was not what the salesperson thought they were selling. And so they never truly agreed. And so that was a problem. And I, as, uh, the project manager would realize this and have to do what we call a change order, where I sort of was selling and saying, this is what we need to include in this project in order to get you where you wanted to be to begin with. And for the most part, people were fine doing that because they ultimately wanted what they wanted.

Speaker B: Sure.

Speaker A: Right. So as long as they got that, in the end, they were happy. And I want to make the client as happy as possible, because that's the whole point. And If I can't make them happy, I'll let them know.

Speaker B: Absolutely. And I love what you said about you, uh, know, confirming what you think you heard to make sure that's what they really meant and said and what you really were supposed to hear. As you know, because we've worked together, I teach that as part of the sales process to make sure before you give a presentation that you're actually on the same page as your prospect. Because otherwise you might be giving them a proposal or a plan or a presentation based on bad information, which is going to get you nowhere. What should companies think about before they talk about customizing a CRM?

Speaker A: Okay, so first of all, before they talk about customizing, there's two things with that. Sometimes they want to customize because they want their process to be followed, and they want that customization. They should definitely understand what they are getting without the customization. First, sometimes these are designed and the people who are designing the product, the actual software, have people who know about sales and they understand sales because they've done their research. Sometimes you may find that their process is better than yours, in which case, why customize it to one that's not as good? Maybe theirs is more efficient and they're just doing it in a way that you hadn't thought of before. And that's okay. It's okay to change a few processes while you're doing an implementation if you think they'll work better. Also, with customization, A, it, uh, costs more money, and B, if you are using a SaaS company, that customization is not necessarily going to be supported. It might, but it might not. And you may have to not only pay to set it up to begin with, but you may have to continually pay each time there's a change. A change could break it. I'm not trying to scare you. It's not definitely going to break it, but it could break it. And that's just a risk that I would call out because you need to understand, if this is something you want very badly, it may cost you today and continue to cost you.

Speaker B: I get it. There was something else I saw in your LinkedIn feed, which I immediately knew I had to ask you about. How did a tire factory teach you, uh, about what most projects do wrong or what goes wrong with most projects? Something about tires.

Speaker A: Okay, so I worked at a tire tread factory on, uh, a semester abroad. Uh, and before that, in this place, they had put me in the kitchen thinking, oh, she's a girl, we'll put her in the kitchen. And I Literally had never cooked. I had never washed dishes. I had never done any of those things. And I was not in the kitchen alone. There were other people, and they had their process down, and I was literally interrupting their process because I did not understand the process, what it was they were doing, why it was they were doing it that way, and it just didn't work well, and I didn't enjoy it. So the manager decided he wanted me to be someplace where I might be of better use, and they thought, oh, how about the tire tread factory? Which you would think, oh, you know, this is, uh, uh, an American teenager. Why would a factory be the right place? But in the factory, I completely got everything. I just. It just. It clicked. And they told me what I had to do. I also spoke the language of the country. So if they needed to shut things down, I was able to respond easily and quickly. And it, uh, just worked out much better. And the processes made sense to me over there. Much more so I understood how they were building everything where I fit in that process. So the assumption is big. In projects, there are assumptions that the client is making, assumptions that you might be making. And just like you want to clarify what they meant, you also want to clarify what those assumptions are. Because if there are unsurfaced assumptions that you're basing a project on, that could be a huge problem. Right. If they're assuming that their salespeople are doing things one way, but actually they're not, because that doesn't make sense to them. And their manager once said, I don't care. Just get it done. Um, which managers sometimes say, and they're getting it done, then that assumption is wrong, and that's not what we should be doing. So that's. That's how that taught me that back when I was 18 years old.

Speaker B: Interesting. So just like they assume that girl equals kitchen, they were wrong about that. And you did better with the tires.

Speaker A: Yes. Just ask my husband. He joyously complains about how he does not get dinner cooked for him.

Speaker B: So I actually had a similar situation in high school. Geometry made no sense to me. I'm a member of ment. Well, I was a member of Mentum. I have a high iq. But geometry just made no sense. But my guidance counselor said, why don't you try accounting? Made perfect sense. Debit this, credit that one plus one equals two made. Sometimes your brain works in a certain way, and you're going to fit in better with certain things. So I love that. I, uh, do cook. But, uh, you and your husband are welcome to come over anytime for a home cooked meal.

Speaker A: Thank you.

Speaker B: There'll be nothing fancy though, I promise. Um, what role does training play in CRM success? You mentioned that you do some training. How important is training? Uh, in a CRM implementation?

Speaker A: Training is not optional. It's very, very, very important. If you hand somebody the CRM and just tell them to run with that, they're not going to necessarily know not just how to use it, but how to best to use it. Because there's, if you've ever worked with software, you know that you can maybe get to a certain field in several different ways, but there might be the fastest way, the best way, being able to go back in and find what you put in three days ago, right? Being able to understand how to tidy your, your, your fields, right? Like if you've already spoken somebody, you need to be able to know how to check that off in a way that is not checking off the entire client and saying, okay, I'm going to ignore this now, but just, I've checked it off for the one task that I had to do and it's going to remind me again in two weeks to follow up like I said I would. Right? And just, just typing in follow up is not going to get you there. Right? Because it's not. I mean, look, with AI, maybe they're going to have ones that will intuitively be able to do that, but in general you have to set some sort of action. And I don't want to get too technical, but we have something called conditional logic where if you select a certain button, it will then give you a couple of other selections and you can fill that in. And you need to understand how to do that, why to do that. The training is huge. You can't just expect people to get into a, uh, CRM and learn how to use it well and all of that. And even for the sales managers, they need a different kind of training themselves. They may understand how the salespeople use it. They need training on, let's say getting those reports and dashboards so they can help make their decisions. Who is going to win that trip to Aruba, right? You know, all these things that you, you, you dangle in front of the salespeople so that they'll be motivated. You've got to be able to really see and be fair about it and be able to base your decisions on actual data that is across all of the, of the salespeople.

Speaker B: So, so how does a good CRM, um, improve decision making and even forecasting?

Speaker A: Excuse me, sorry. Well, if. Picture yourself as the sales manager and you have to decide, right, you know, between, let's say, let's say you've got five, five salespeople, ten salespeople, you're, um. And let's say that you're in the, in the position where you need to add another one or you need to decide, like I said, who's going on the trip. Uh, you can see all of them in your report. Who is doing the most outreach, who is getting the most sales, who is getting the highest ticket sales. Because sometimes you may have someone who is doing a lot of reach out and getting a lot of very small deals. And then you have somebody who's really not doing much reach out and they're going out and they're playing golf and they're doing all of those things, but they got a very, very high ticket customer. You're comparing those two salespeople. Clearly they each have their own set of skills, right? So depending on what the company wants, they're going to compare and say, okay, who is the one that we think is the better salesperson? Do we want the consistent person who consistently does all the activities and consistently brings in clients who then stay with us long term, or do we want the person who is going to not do those things and then just get this one that's still worth money to us, but we don't know if they're going to stay long term? If that person leaves, right. And goes somewhere else, will we lose that person? All of those kinds of decisions, those data points are going to be there in front of you and you'll be able to see not just that they sold, but what activities they did to sell, whether they were consistent, inconsistent. Did they, as you said, compliance? Did they actually follow what you asked them to do? Did they get contracts signed? Did they do all the things exactly the way that you asked them to do? So that's really helpful.

Speaker B: Gotcha. Okay. Um, and this is another thing I saw on LinkedIn that I had to ask about. What does project management have to do with colon cancer screening?

Speaker A: Okay, so it doesn't. It doesn't. I use that because I also, I had colon cancer 16 years ago as a young colon cancer survivor. And I put out a PSA every year in March, which is Colon Cancer Awareness Month. And I talk about risk and projects a lot. For me, the risk of not getting screened is a huge one. And a lot of people sort of don't want to get screened because it's icky and they just don't want to do it. And. And that is a risk, in my opinion. I don't think it's that bad either. But it's a risk that people don't necessarily want to take, but they should because the payoff is so high. Right. Because I found out very early at 45 that I had cancer. And if I had waited, I would not have known and I might not be here. And so that's really important. And a lot of project management and the fact that I used to be a practicing attorney, I'm very good at evaluating risks. And, uh, a lot of project managers are risk averse. And people are always like, oh, the project manager doesn't want us to take any risks. You absolutely need to take risks if you're going to get anywhere. Right. The flip side of risk is opportunity. So if you don't take any risks, you're going to stay exactly where you are, and you need to take risks. So my point with that particular piece was that you have to know which risks are worth taking. And there are definitely risks worth taking. And the risk of not getting that colonoscopy is huge. And I wanted people to understand that.

Speaker B: Yep, that's great. And I know it's not March, but I'll just put in one more plug. I read about it all the time, and people are dying from how terrible it is. It's just not. I mean, it's not fun. And it's really not the colonoscopy itself. You're asleep. Uh, you know, it's the prep the night before. But even that I don't find to be that bad. You drink some stuff. Boom. You go to the bathroom a few times. I don't know about you, but I get them every four or five years, uh, because my doctor wants me to. I always feel great afterwards. I mean, feel outstanding because you haven't eaten in a day and you're all light, and, uh, I actually don't mind. Plus, they give you great drugs when they put you out.

Speaker A: Yeah. And the oxygen is very nice. It's very fresh air. Right. You have a nap in that fresh air. Yeah.

Speaker B: It's beautiful.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Of course, me being a comedian, you know, I always like to joke around beforehand. The last time the doctor said, do you really want me laughing right now? I said, okay, I'm going to stop right now. You do what you got to do. Take that tube and do what you got to do with it. Um, um, what's the relationship between a CRM system and customer experience?

Speaker A: Okay, so for that, you can give Your customer a better experience if there is that institutional knowledge. So I'll give you an example. For instance, you have somebody who calls customer service and they have an issue. Theoretically, if all of their information is already in your CRM, the customer service person is going to be able to see that. They're already going to know the whole story. People do not want to have to repeat their story over and over. I know we all think that there are people who like to complain and want nothing more, but then to repeat their story over and over. But the vast majority of people don't want to have to tell each person they always feel, I already talked to your company. Why does your company not know the story? I've told five different people the same story.

Speaker B: I'm that guy who's going to say that. Why do I have to repeat. Why do I have to punch in, uh, uh, my code for my account and then you ask me what my account number is?

Speaker A: Yeah, Right. So there's that aspect of it, and then there's just the feel good aspect of it. For instance, when I was working in Seattle for a Microsoft vendor, we were using a CRM M and somebody called me that I was not calling. I had spoken to him a few months before, and when the phone was on the line, I didn't remember exactly who they were, but I pulled them up quickly on my CRM and I'm like, oh, right, this is the guy who lives in this town. And he has a cat. Okay. Hi, how are you? How's your cat? Oh, good. You know, and it just, it makes them feel better. And I likened it. I did a blog post a while back, um, with the Devil Wears Prada. When Miranda's walking around and the assistant has to whisper in her ear who the person is she's about to say hello to. People feel well cared for when you remember their name or a little bit about them. And we all are human. We cannot possibly remember every single person, every single scenario. The CRM can do that for you if you take good notes while you're putting stuff in. And then you can recall it very quickly. And even if they think, think, oh, they probably have that, it's still a nicer feeling than, I'm sorry, can you remind me who you are and why we're talking? Right. Nobody likes that. You always like to feel that, you know, you're. You're being taken care of. And that goes a long way toward making a sale.

Speaker B: Yeah. And everybody wants to feel special. And what you said was brilliant. Those little things like, like, like a little note, somebody you're talking to, somebody is sticking in your CRM. And the next time you bring it up, like if I was talking to you and I said, how was your weekend? And you said, oh, it was my kid's fifth birthday this weekend. Oh, what's her name? Susan. Great. I'm going to put a note in my CRM. Susan is the kid. It was her fifth birthday this weekend. And I'm going to set a reminder for myself for one year minus one week from now. And I'm going to. It's going to say, call Deb and find out, isn't it Susan's sixth birthday next week? Because, uh, my memory's shot. But I'm constantly told by people, you have the best memory in the world. No, I don't. I take good notes and I listen to what people say because the little things like that absolutely, positively make a difference. I'm so glad you said that, Deb. Really.

Speaker A: And what you just said, the listening. The listening is extremely important because there are salespeople who do not listen. Oh, you think there are salespeople who just want to get through their speech, their pitch, their whatever you need to listen. I listen to my clients. When I ask them questions, I listen for the answers. Because sometimes I then have follow up questions. They may tell me something that is actually. Wait, you know, that's the tail wagging the dog, what you just said over there. This is, uh, you didn't mention that before. Let's explore that. Right?

Speaker B: Yeah. Plus, you know, before any call that I'm going to make to a prospect or call them meeting that I'm going to have, I'm going to go into my CRM and see what did he or she say last? What did I say last? Uh, you know, one of my favorite things to do is if somebody calls, uh, and I don't recognize the name, I'll go, can I put you on hold for just 20 seconds? I'm across the office from my desk. Let me run back to my desk and I'll pick up over there. Now, that's the back of my office, like five feet away. So I'm never across the office from my desk. But that gives me the 20 or 30 seconds I need to pull them up in my CRM and go, oh, Deb Kaminowski, right? I said this, she said that. Now I know how to have an intelligent conversation and to make you feel like I actually did listen to you and remember you, even though I might have listened, but I didn't remember. My CRM does the remembering for me and I love it.

Speaker A: Exactly.

Speaker B: I have a personal situation that maybe you have some advice for. I have salespeople, uh, at a company that I manage and one of the things they do is they go out into the field and prospect by knocking on doors. One of the things I expect them to do is to notate in our CRM every door knock, what response was and all that stuff. But when they're on their phone or even on an iPad, you know, it's much smaller, it's much easier to do with a desktop. Any advice for how people who are in the field can notate that stuff? I mean, should they just make me making paper notes and transfer it to the CRM? Should they be working on their phone? What's your best practice?

Speaker A: Okay, so in general, I don't like paper. Not just because I'm an environmentalist, but because paper gets lost sometimes you can't read your own handwriting days later. Things like that. If they have a phone or they have an iPad, I can't think of a single CRM that does not have an app. Okay. And the apps are specifically designed and optimized for things like iPad and phone. You should be able to put the basics. So let's say you're on 25 White Drive. Okay? You're going to put in 25 White Drive. And you may or may not know the name of the person because if you're just going door to door, you may not know who lives there, but you're going to notate the door that you knocked on whether there was any response. If there's a dog barking, you might want to notate that too, too. Right? Um, those kinds of things. And just quickly, before you go to the next house, put that in there. Because by the time you get back, if you're out for eight hours pounding the pavement like that, you are not going to remember and you're not going to know what you already covered. And the last thing you want to do is knock again on a door that you already knocked on where the person actually did open the door and you did have a conversation. Right. As if you had never met them before. Because that's very off putting. So you certainly want to put as the bare, the bare bones basics in into that app. And then when you get back to your desk. So maybe you shouldn't be out for eight hours, maybe you should be out for seven when you get back to your desk, go through and your memory is freshest when you first do Things go through what you've already put in and update things with little things that you remember. There was a wreath on the door, or there were a bunch of boxes piled up, or there were newspapers home,

Speaker B: but the wife wasn't. Blah, blah, blah. Yep.

Speaker A: Right. All of those kinds of things. And like I said, the dog. Definitely the dog. Very important. Um, because it just. You want to know before you go to a house again with the dog, because if you keep knocking, it's. It's aggravating to the dog. Right. And if somebody else comes and knocks, they should be prepared. The dog may bark.

Speaker B: Gotcha. Um, you, you mentioned the, the two initials that are on everybody's mind every day these days. AI. So what about AI? Where is AI actually helping? CRM Systems or is.

Speaker A: Can be used. It does not have to be used. Uh, it's the kind of thing where I think you really, in order to use it well, you have to understand what you. What it can and cannot do, what you want and do not want it to do. It's very good at doing things like research, it's very good for summarizing. But you shouldn't just automatically accept whatever AI comes across. Right. Because it may actually not get it right. Uh, it looks at it as a helper, not as the decision maker. Right. Um, same thing with reporting and dashboarding. It may say to you, these trends indicate, okay, well, maybe they do, maybe they don't. Maybe your industry is completely different and it has not been trained in your industry and has absolutely no idea and it's completely wrong. Right. So you just want to be able to do that, what it can do, which is nice. And I want to explain a little bit about the difference between, let's say, automation, AI and AI automation. Because I did have a potential client who came to me with, we want AI automations. And we had the conversation where they first of all had absolutely no automation at all. And I said, we've had automation for years before we even had AI. Automation basically is if this thing happens and the next thing happens, that's like a workflow, right? So you want to make sure that you're understanding the difference and where you might want to use each. So I think AI could be helpful in the sense that it, you know, in terms of reminding and saying, okay, help me plan my day. Like, should I go pound on the pavement for eight hours or should I go for four and then spend the rest of the afternoon, you know, updating everything and maybe following up with some of those people who said that they weren't dressed and they couldn't talk to me. Right now. If I have a list of their addresses and phone numbers, for instance, hey, I was there earlier today and you said you'd prefer a phone call, so I decided to give you a call. Those kinds of things, it can very quickly, uh, calculate all of that for you, right? So there's ways that it can be used. But a lot of companies now are having some fear that they're behind, right? That they need to get AI immediately. And once again, the processes need to come first. Because if you have automation and AI without having good processes, what you are doing is you are making chaos happen faster. You are not going to have a good situation. Uh, so you need to make sure those things are all going in order and AI continues to evolve. So if someone's watching this a year from now, it may be a completely different situation. But right now I would say that you need to really get your processes straight first, then work on plain old regular automation, dashboarding, reporting, then add AI.

Speaker B: Gotcha. With AI, uh, it doesn't have to be a year. Tomorrow, it could be a completely different situation. It changes so quickly. Um, one of the challenges seems to be, um, how do we make our CRM, um, robust enough that leadership has great information, but it's also simple enough for the salespeople to do? How do you balance that? How do we give leadership enough information while still making the thing easy enough to use that salespeople aren't going to rebel.

Speaker A: Okay, so this is something that I'm sure you know, but some people may not know. When you have users in any software, they have different types of licenses, different types of permissions, right? Yes. So you definitely want to have your salespeople be able to see their own stuff, right? What they're putting in, all of that. The sales manager should have permission to see everything and to do all of the reporting and all of that. You may not want your salespeople to have that access. You would only want your salespeople to be able to, for instance, update and change their own input, not other salespeople's input. Not that anyone in sales is competitive, but there's different, you know, guardrails you can put on that so that each person only has what they need, and then the manager is able to see everything. So definitely you want to have that set up. And that's something that the sales manager may not know how to do. Again, the training is not just for the salespeople. The sales manager also needs to be trained in how to manipulate the data, how to view the data, how to report on the data in the ways that they need to, how to give permission. That could be the sales manager, that could be the, uh, IT at the company giving those kinds of permissions, what different types of other softwares are allowed. You would want, for instance, the salespeople to integrate their email. Right. So that it can track their email without that having to put it all in. But you wouldn't necessarily want them to be able to do that for everybody's calendar. Right. So those are the kinds of things that need to be mapped. Uh, we do something called mapping exercises where we're making sure that each thing is exactly how you want it. Uh, if we're moving from one to another or even if we're setting up a fresh one. Exactly what permissions do people have for various things? And all of that fun stuff. It's really a very intricate process.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's also important from a security standpoint. I know at the company I was talking about before, where we use pipedrive, uh, my people have permission to import information into the CRM, but they cannot export it out because if somebody leaves, they could take our entire database with them. And I'm not very.

Speaker A: Exactly. Exactly. I didn't know how far down the road of competitiveness you wanted me to get.

Speaker B: No, no, that was plenty. But, uh, yeah, I mean, I think it's important, uh, uh, that leadership understands that if you give people permission to, you know, do whatever they want, they can walk away with your entire database. And now you've lost a lot. Bunch of valuable information you talked before about, you know, somebody leaves, somebody else comes in, they should be able to see everything that was there because that gets them up to speed faster. I'm just watching the time. We've got a few minutes left. Um, when should a company actually decide to bring in an outside advisor or an implementation expert like yourself? At what point is that the right thing to do?

Speaker A: Okay, there is no one right point. There are several junctures that are good. I have, for instance, been. I've worked on a project where I was brought in after they have already selected their software and they need somebody to lead the project and implement it. That's not my favorite part, but that's where I can get in the best time really, is before they've made a decision, when they realize they're thinking of making one, because that's where I can advise them, right, on what type of CRM, whether they need to update their processes, document their processes so that's the absolute best time. So if somebody's thinking of doing it and they either don't have one, or the one they have is no longer good or outgrown, there have been times when people say, oh, this is not good. We need something else. And sometimes they have 10 other softwares and one of those has CRM, um, capabilities that they don't even realize. And we may not have to purchase a new software. We may be able to just use what they've already got in a different way and bring the data in from something else so that they can actually do that. And then they don't have to spend any more monthly on those, uh, recurring fees. Right. So I'm going to look at that too. I'm not always going to say you must buy software, uh, if you have one that has a capability that you're not using. And a lot of people don't use, you know, their, their full capability and they have several different softwares. There's creative ways to do that where you can, um, if you absolutely, you know. Aha. Uh-huh. We mean it. We want this particular one. Sure. I can, I can manage that project. And then training, obviously training always needs to happen. So asking me at the very end to train is probably not the best idea. And I probably will say no because the. I won't have any of the knowledge, and it's going to be very cost prohibitive to have me basically scale up on everything that happened in order to be able to train.

Speaker B: Got it. Okay. We're running out of time, and I do want to do a couple more things before we go on. I want to make sure that we, uh, give out your contact information. But, uh, if you could just give one piece of advice quickly to sales leaders considering a CRM implementation, what would that piece of advice be?

Speaker A: The advice really would be, once you've documented your processes, definitely to get some sort of CRM, because it's going to be night and day in terms of your being able to see where you're succeeding and where you need help.

Speaker B: Perfect. And because I never want to, uh, miss an opportunity to take, uh, advantage because, uh, you are somebody who's taken my class. The sales, uh, Competence Lab. Would you like to maybe do 30 seconds on your experience there?

Speaker A: Sure. Well, the reason I took Jeff's class, other than the fact that he invited me, was because when I used to have my law firm, it was a very, very different type of selling. Somebody had usually already been served, and it was a matter of differentiating My firm from every other firm. And with what I'm doing now, people's biggest, you know, problem, my biggest competition really is people being willing to sit in their discomfort and not do anything. So it's just a whole different way of selling. And I definitely enjoyed the class. I thought it was very useful.

Speaker B: Great, thanks. Before we go, I'm going to share my screen. Uh, this is, uh, going out live, and it's video, but it's going to get converted to a podcast. So for people who will not be looking at this, can you tell them how can they reach you? Where can they find you? If somebody's interested in questions or working with you or doing an implementation, how do we get in touch with Deborah Kamenitsky?

Speaker A: You can find me on LinkedIn. I'm the only Deborah Kamenetsky on LinkedIn, apparently, in the world. I've also got my website, defacto projectmanagement.com just like it is spelled. I had someone tell me I should shorten it because it's too long. I said, no, this is actually easier because it's exactly what it's called. And, uh, there's my email. My Phone number is 516-374-0074. I almost never answered the phone. As, uh, Jeff was saying before, I basically will look to see who it is, and then I will make a call back.

Speaker B: Got it. And maybe you want to spell your last name, because it could be spelled two different ways. And again, some people can see this, but most people will be listening to it.

Speaker A: Sure. It's K A M M I N E T Z, K Y, no S, no I.

Speaker B: And you also said that you might want to spell out, uh, the name of the company.

Speaker A: Oh, sure. D E, F A C T O P R O J E, C T M M A N A G E M M E N t. De facto, projectmanagement.com.

Speaker B: there you go. Outstanding, Deb, thanks. So thanks so much for sharing your brilliance about CRM so generously with us. And I will end this as I always do. Gang, please remember, sales is a game of making things happen. Get out there and make sales happen. Have a great weekend, everybody. Have a great weekend. Deb, uh, thanks again.

Speaker A: Thanks so much for having me. Bye.