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Most companies pour money into marketing without connecting it to revenue. Jason Kramer, Founder & CEO of Cultivize, shows how to turn CRM, lead scoring, and simple attribution into hard ROI...and why many campaigns should be trimmed, not scaled.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- How a 25-year roofing company cut ~$50k in wasted ad spend by tracking every channel (QRs, call prompts, landing pages) and tying it back to sales activity.
- “Hand raisers,” lead scoring, and seeing buying signals in real time (opens, site visits, video views).
- Why most teams fail CRM roll-outs, and the fast path to a functional build in 4–6 weeks.
- How agencies white-label CRM services to protect LTV, conversion, and retention.
Connect with Jason
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonleighkramer/
- Cultivize: https://cultivize.com/
Subscribe and find more episodes: https://isanythingrealinpaidadvertising.adamwbarney.com/
Creators and Guests
What is Is Anything Real In Paid Advertising??
What’s actually working in marketing — and what’s just noise?
Hosted by Adam W. Barney, author of Make Your Own Glass Half Full and founder of Scale Smarter, this podcast brings honest, high-energy conversations with the operators, creators, and founders redefining how business growth really works.
From agency leaders and AI innovators to storytellers and strategists, Adam dives into what drives sustainable success — not vanity metrics. Together, they unpack the systems, creativity, and human energy behind $100M+ in advertising experience, real campaigns, and the lessons learned along the way.
🎧 No fluff. No funnels. Just what’s real — and how to scale smarter.
⚡ Ready to install your Energy-Driven Leadership OS?
Book your 20-minute exploration → https://calendly.com/adamwbarney/explorationplugin-20min
[00:05.5]
Welcome back to "Is Anything Real In Paid Advertising?", the show where we unpack what's real and what's just noise in today's marketing mayhem. I'm your host, Adam W. Barney, and today's guest is someone who's seen both sides of the marketing world: creative flair and data discipline.
[00:22.3]
Jason Kramer is the founder of Cultivize, a CRM-focused firm helping service businesses and agencies stop wasting money and start tracking what actually moves revenue. He's also the guy showing roofing companies they can save $50k in ad spend without cutting growth.
[00:39.3]
Jason, welcome to the show. Thanks, Adam. And happy Monday. Happy Monday. Heat Wave here in New York and Boston. And it's a hot one. Oh, yeah, we're recording today. It's a taste of what it like living in, Vegas, I guess, in Arizona.
[00:55.3]
It's like this world that we live in. There we go. All right, let's. Let's dig in though. So you were running a boutique agency in the early 2000s. What made you pivot fully into CRM and automation work? So, you know, it was the thing that you made a reference to in the intro.
[01:12.8]
You know, the idea that so many companies think that marketing is important, which it is. But, a lot of times marketing is often looked at as an expense item on the P&L. Right. It's like, we have to do it. We're going to spend 2%, 10%, whatever. We're going to spend, we're going to spend something. And I think a lot of times companies.
[01:29.5]
Well, I'm not. I think. I know, right. And I think, you know, too, a lot of times companies just spending that money out of circumstance, like, we just have to do it because it's kind of what you have to do. And very often they're not connecting the dots between them. Marketing effort, the lead gen, and then the sales activity.
[01:45.4]
And so therefore, I was like, this is a crazy, you know, thing that's going on. And when we started getting into CRM a lot in my old business, I said, this is, this is how we're going to fix it. Right. If a CRM is properly set up, we can easily connect the dots, trim the fat and find out what works.
[02:02.4]
Pour more gasoline on the fire and just hit the, you know, hit the pedal and start going. And so that's why I sold the agency to start this, because it hovers around everything else. Right. So we'll jump into it. But that's natively the reason of why I started. That's an incredible story about something that you noticed though through that work of clients who are spending big on marketing but had no system that allows for that tracking and that follow up in a way that actually makes sense.
[02:30.6]
Maybe as an example, I love that story about the roofing company that you shared with me where you saved them from burning through tens of thousands. What clicked for you in that example conversation? What clicked for you in that moment? So I think the common thing, Adam, so that was a.
[02:47.8]
Where I should say is right, still in business. A 25 plus year old family run roofing business, probably doing about $7, $8 million a year in revenue. Just in terms of your audience understanding the size. And the owner had the mindset which a lot of business do, where a marketing, you know, opportunity comes to you, hey, advertise on the local TV network.
[03:07.7]
Advertise here, advertise there. And you don't want to always turn it down, especially if you potentially have some revenue, even if you don't to put into that because you're like, what if my competitor is doing it? I need to be on Angie's List, I need to be here, I need to be there. Right. And so what clicked really was the fact that, A: I saw this particular client was spending almost $85,000 a year on marketing.
[03:31.0]
And from everything I knew they were doing, I knew everything clearly wasn't working. Without even looking at the data, I just had a feeling that it all wasn't working because he was so spread thin in his marketing strategies. He had so many kind of hands in the pot, different companies doing XYZ.
[03:47.5]
And so I said to him, I said, Tom, this is very easy. We're going to start tracking everything you're doing. You know, your door hangers, your direct mail, anything physical. We're going to put unique QR codes on everything. You know, will somebody still call you? Yes. But instead of putting the website, let's try to prompt them to scan that QR code, go to a specific landing page, we'll track what's coming in.
[04:07.4]
Right. Same thing for all of the digital you're doing. Let's get that all tracked in the CRM. Mind you, they did not have a CRM add-in before they started working with us. Everything was managed in a Google spreadsheet, all manual. And so because of that, when a new lead came in, what were they doing?
[04:25.1]
Whether you know, from a form or on a website or a call, they were writing things down on a, basically a lead sheet on a piece of paper. So there was no consistency. There was no cleanliness of data. And I said, Tom, one of the things we need to do beyond tracking all of these things, because we can only track when someone fills out a form.
[04:42.8]
I said, but what about the phone rings? What happens? And so they had two different girls in the front office answering the phone. And I said, one of the questions they need to ask right away before: Tell me about your roof. What's your address? Thank you so much for calling us. How did you hear about us?
[04:58.4]
And. And on a custom digital form I'm building for them. Right. Which is part of our training. There's going to be choices. I heard you about an Angie's List. I heard that's for a TV commercial. Right. And we're going to train them to ask how they heard about you. That's going to help inform us on which marketing is actually driving the traffic.
[05:16.1]
And so after. It's been about just a little under a year, about nine, ten months since they've been a client. About three, four months ago, I had enough data to say, Tom, these are all the things we're tracking and you're getting zilch. You're getting zip. Not only are you not getting any leads, there's actually zero sales activity.
[05:34.6]
We need to pull the plug. Right. And here's the evidence to show where. You know, in your case, as you mentioned earlier, yeah, it was about $50k that we were able to just have him turn off his. You know, he was getting more from SEO than he was from AdWords. So why are you spending more on AdWords if the SEO is driving all the traffic?
[05:51.1]
It just didn't make sense. I mean, it's incredible. The, the sort of common blind spots that you, you, you focus on here. Why do you think, you know, for, for clients who come in and are spending that $85,000, $100,000 on marketing and don't know what's working. Why is that still so common?
[06:07.5]
It's common for two main reasons. 1: as, you could have the best marketing agency in the entire world working for you, right? But if they don't have the ability to get data from you and they say to you, and they ask the question, Adam.
[06:22.5]
Hey, Adam, we drove 85 leads this week to your website. What happened with those 85 leads? What was the conversion? Were they good leads? Were they bad leads? If you don't have the systems in place as the client to give that information back to the agency, well, sort of shame on you, right?
[06:39.1]
Because now you're not able to protect your Investment and to really refine it and give the information to the agency, they need to really make what they're doing drive home, and make it really just be a rock star. Right. Of a campaign. And so that's the main reason is because they don't have the information to get back to the agency.
[06:57.3]
The second reason is, it's one of those Ad Age kind of thought process, I think, Adam, just regardless of industry, and it doesn't have the roofing to be anything. And the thought process is we're in business, we're making money, we're paying our salary, your salaries, we're payroll's being paid for.
[07:13.4]
Right. Money's in the account. So why change? Right? Why, why do anything different? It's working, you know, and you're caught in this like machine of old behavior and you don't realize it could be made more efficient. Sometimes it's ego, sometimes it's stubbornness, but if you could push that aside and sort of say, okay, well there is a better way to do this to make it more efficient, you are going to be able to have that information to make that change.
[07:40.9]
Humans love to be comfortable, as much as we hate to admit it. Right. That comfort is something, that routine, that history is something that we fall into. And I think that that's probably one of the pieces that comes into it. But, you know, how does that tie in then to what you see as the biggest conversion opportunities that most companies are over overlooking and then tied to that, why do you think so many agencies still avoid talking about CRM in their pitch?
[08:09.8]
Sure. So I'll answer the questions in the order you ask them. So I think the opportunity beyond fine tuning, which marketing is actually working for your business when it's properly connected. And really it has to be a CRM to do this. And it can't be like a Monday.com that's not like a tool that's going to be needed.
[08:27.1]
Right. You need like a, like a HubSpot type of a platform. Something that's going to be sophisticated enough to connect all these pieces together. Now I should say this is not complex for us because we've been doing this for almost 20 years. Right. So even though Cultivize has only been around for about seven years, I was doing this before.
[08:47.7]
Right. And so Cultivize, I mean, while we focus, we're not a marketing agency. I should say that, yeah, we don't do Legion. Our world is in the CRM, helping build them, helping, customize them, train the team, etc. Right. And so the second sort of part of that is, you know, going back to the agency, right.
[09:07.4]
And the reason the agency doesn't want to do it, it's the same reason why they don't step into video. Right. Or they don't step into, you know, doing things that, outside of their wheelhouse. And so CRM is very specific. Every platform is very unique.
[09:23.4]
So even here at Cultivize, we don't build every platform out there because, you know, we, we'd be mediocre at doing every single one. We want to be great at working on, you know, a few different ones. And so think about the cost and time to hire a few people at an agency to get them to be at expert level on not just one, but a few maybe CRMs.
[09:47.2]
That's going to be a couple hundred thousand dollars in revenue that they, or I'm sorry, in salary that they're going to have to pay. And it's probably not a burden and something they want to do and they don't see it as profitable. And so that's the number one reason, I think. Right. It's like they're in their lane. They're really great at what they do and they don't want to, you know, teeter off of that to negatively impact what they're good at, to bring on something else that they're maybe not as well versed as.
[10:14.4]
I appreciate that and I mean that focus on nurture and conversion is so critical here. But say if one of your clients had $250k that just magically fell into their hands to spend this year, why would you coach them to invest that in back-end systems before front-end ads?
[10:36.3]
So the reason is that you can't go retroactively back and track the data. Right. So we need to have the systems in place before your AdWords starts running, before your TV or radio commercials start running. All these systems need to be there ahead of time, right, in order to track that performance.
[10:55.9]
You know, it's virtually impossible to go back retroactively and make heads and tails of any data, any information. So that's the reason. Right. And now at a $250k, you might, depending on of course, the system and what you need. You might only spend, you know, $15 to $30k of that on a CRM system that's sophisticated enough to track all this.
[11:17.1]
So still plenty of budget. You know, we're not talking about a Salesforce implementation that's going to cost you $150k, $200k. tThat's overboard certainly for the companies we work with, you know, we don't need that. You know, not to say that our systems aren't as sophisticated, but that's an enterprise-level solution.
[11:33.9]
Our clients are, you know, the roofing company and maybe a little bit under, you know, a couple million dollars in revenue, up to maybe a couple hundred million in revenue. You know, we're not at that huge size and we don't want to be. Right, because the red tape's there and all these other things are there. So we're able to move a lot quicker in typically, you know, small organizations, privately held, that are, you know, under like 200 people.
[11:57.2]
Interesting. Well, you know, hearing all of this, what CRM feature do most people either underutilize or misunderstand, most commonly in the clients that you work with there at Cultivize? So I like to use this analogy a lot, Adam. Think, of the visual of a car dealership, okay?
[12:15.4]
And someone walks into the car dealership, into the showroom, and they're looking around, you know, they're there for 10, 15 minutes looking at different cars. They sit in one of the cars, you know, they're grinning, they got the hands on the steering wheel and they're there for like a half hour and nobody comes over to talk to them.
[12:32.6]
That's what's happening with majority of companies, in respect to their CRM. And what I mean by that is if your CRM, if you don't have one, or if it's not set up properly, you're not seeing, what I call, the hand raisers. You're not seeing the buying signals when somebody's coming back to your website, looking at your content, downloading and watching videos, downloading ebooks, opening and engaging in your newsletters.
[12:57.1]
If you're not tracking all that which ties into your features, into a feature which is very commonly called lead scoring. And if the lead scoring isn't set up properly, you're never going to know who are the cold leads, warm leads, and hot leads that are in your system.
[13:14.2]
We've been both in business a long time, Adam, right? You and I, right? I think it's fair to say, not everybody is going to fill out a form. Not everybody's going to call you and be like, hey, Adam, I saw this 5 minute video I want to buy today. Here's my checkbook. Where do I sign? Right. They need to be educated, they need information.
[13:31.4]
And so if you're a not dispersing that information to them, sort of that's a problem. But if you are dispersing info, which is time and money. And content and all these things, you're not tracking who's absorbing it, then sort of shame on you because now you potentially have missed an opportunity to close a deal and that person might be now going to a competitor.
[13:53.4]
Yeah, that's fat. That's wild. Thinking a little bit, you know, getting, just taking a little bit at different, different angle with the business. How do you white label this with partners? Yeah, so great question. I love it. So every relationship we have with an agency is unique.
[14:11.0]
And when I say that is because each agency has unique relationships with their own clients. Right. So we have some agencies where they say, hey, Jason, we would love to do more than just generate leads for our clients. We know that a lot is on our clients shoulders to close those deals and to nurture the relationships.
[14:30.0]
And if they're not doing that, then ultimately they may fire us because they're going to say, hey, like we haven't seen any spike in revenue. We just dropped, you know, 10 grand with you this year, whatever the number is, and nothing's changed. Clearly the marketing's not working when it usually is an issue with the client.
[14:46.0]
Right. That can be fixed. So a lot of times the agencies will say, can you be part of our team? We're a team of six. We're not a big here team here at Cultivize, but we could morph our team into. And we've done this for dozens of agencies where now, Jason, Heather, Reed, whoever it is on our team is now part of that agency.
[15:05.1]
We're attending meetings as part of the agency team. We're talking to clients as part of the agency team. Cultivize doesn't even come up in the conversation. Agencies are paying us, they're billing their client. And the nice thing is we also do a rev share with the agencies.
[15:21.1]
So in addition, where there is no out of pocket expense in a way. Now there's an opportunity where the agency could actually earn revenue. They don't have to pay us a salary to be part of the team. It's just built into the services in the same way we talked before that you would outsource video or you would outsource, you know, other things you might need and you might have a little bit of a markup.
[15:42.6]
It's the same thing with the agencies. Right. And the CRM Services. An agency once told me, and this is a great, you know, again, I love analogies, but it's one from them. They said, you know, we tell our clients all the time, we are going to pitch you the ball.
[15:57.9]
Think of baseball. We're going to throw as many balls to you as possible, but it's your job to hit that ball. Right. We can't swing the. We can't swing at the ball for you. Right. And so the metaphor there is, we can generate lots of leads for you. Like, that's not an issue.
[16:13.2]
But if you're not responding and, you know, if someone calls you or fills out a form and you're waiting two days to get back to them, that's a problem. Like, that's not something we can fix. That's when you just wave goodbye to that lead. Exactly. And so that's where I think a lot of agencies get frustrated because they don't have the bandwidth or the skill set or the ability to talk to the sales team to help the sales team create better processes.
[16:37.2]
That's. Those are the things where Cultivize can step in and help the agency problem solve on those issues. I love it. Jason, what CRM myth drives you the most nuts? Oh, that's a good one. Myth.
[16:54.3]
Well, I would say that, and I'm not sure if it's really a myth. I think it's more for perception that CRM implementation is difficult. And it's difficult if you don't know the right way to do it. Just like riding a bicycle for the first time is difficult if you don't have any guidance.
[17:12.6]
But, you know, think of us Cultivize like we're whole. We're not putting on the training wheels. We're holding that back seat, Adam, We're going to help you right. Until you get stable. And even then we'll continually coach. So I think the idea that this is a terrifying, complicated, highly expensive thing to do, to kind of get a CRM up and running or it's going to be disruptive.
[17:37.1]
I think that's another thing we talked before about the behavior. You know, a lot of companies that are used to spreadsheets or pen and paper or doing something some archaic way are like, well, if we do this, we're going to be out of business for a week, for two weeks, for a month, until we change everything over.
[17:52.6]
And that's not true. Right. I mean, it's a transition process of course, yes. But we do this. You know, we work with clients. So if there's a down season, right. When they're not as busy, then we'll do some heavy lifting there if we can. Right. If they never have a down season while you're in a great business, but, you know, we'll work with that.
[18:10.7]
Right. And so I think that's one of the common things we hear. There's a study the Harvard Business Review did about this sort of idea, about the complexity of it, and they said that nearly 68% of businesses will fail, 68%, at trying to implement their own CRM for those reasons.
[18:27.5]
Right. They've never done it before. They don't know how to do it. They don't have the support, the guidance. But it doesn't have to be that arduous challenge. It can be easy. And the reality is, for a lot of our clients, we're up and running typically in four to six weeks. The CRM is fully built out, team is trained, and we're going, so we go pretty quick.
[18:49.3]
That Harvard Business Study is probably a stat that you keep in your back pocket, that you share almost with every client that you work with. Right. That's incredible, the power that comes into play there. Absolutely. I mean, without a doubt. It's like anything. Right? It's like if I tried to say, oh, I want to add in a second level to my home or a third level to my home.
[19:09.2]
Yeah, maybe I can watch some videos and try to figure that out. I'm not certified. Right. I'm not qualified, you know, and then I probably will, like, you know, destroy some things across the way, and it'll take, you know, eons longer than it should, versus hiring a professional to do it. So it's like anything in life.
[19:24.9]
Right. It's recognizing you need to bring in somebody that's done it, you know, a thousand times before, can do it efficiently, can do it the right way, rather than trying to save a few dollars and causing yourself a world of frustration and problems.
[19:40.1]
I love it, Jason. This was a masterclass. And this probably will hurt a little bit to call this the unsexy work that creates real results, because I think it is something that you find exciting. But, you know, I love the influence here of how you make data feel downright powerful.
[19:58.6]
Where can folks learn more about Cultivize and connect with you directly? Yeah. Thanks, Adam. The best place is going to afterthelead.com that's after the lead, on there. There's lots of great resources. All my socials are there, connect with me also.
[20:14.4]
Happy to talk to anybody that's tuning in today. I don't know if we had anybody jumping in live, but you know, I'm always available to answer any questions and you know, have a chat. And we'll, of course, have links to all of that below. Finally, Jason, for the agency founder out there who's scaling fast but flying blind on the back end operations side, what's your one real talk piece of advice you'd leave them with?
[20:39.4]
I think the one piece of advice and coming from, you know, being a former agency owner, I think it's all about, especially today, it's a lot more competitive than it was, you know, 20 years ago. And it was certainly competitive them. But, but I, this is the advice is find something to differentiate yourself. You know, you know, everybody's out there offering web development, SEO, ppc, all these different things.
[20:59.6]
It's not just about people that's going to differentiate you. It's got to be something unique and different. And I think certainly, CRM is one of those things that certainly could work. You know, AI is booming. So I mean if you have a lot of deep knowledge and experience with AI, that can be something unique.
[21:17.6]
But it's an ever changing sort of target with marketing and advertising. And so that would just be my advice and the last piece of advice I would give. If somebody's sort of starting out in the first year or a few years, find an amazing CPA. That's one thing that you don't think about.
[21:34.1]
But trust me, trying to do that on your own, or as you're growing, having somebody that knows your industry and that just really knows with all the complexities of everything going on, depending on what state you're in. I'm in New York, so like it's, it's kind of crazy here. But that would be, I think another piece of advice is like finding a really, really good CPA that was referred to you.
[21:55.8]
Not just like some rando you found, but someone that, you know that's worked with that person or that team, that's going to make a huge difference, you know, to your bottom line. It gets into, Jason, how as business owners we need the right people who cross over from a Venn diagram perspective in those key areas that help us grow.
[22:14.6]
That's incredible advice. Thank you for joining today. So thanks, everyone, for tuning into "Is Anything Real In Paid Advertising?", the show where we find the signal behind the noise. I'm Adam W. Barney. Subscribe, leave a review, and check the show notes for everything Jason talked about today and more.
[22:31.7]
But, Jason, thank you very much.