James: Welcome back to Behind the Madness where we talk about business
growth, ways to work smarter and the fundamentals of business, all geared to
unlocking your brands peak performance.
I'm your host James Roberts owner and founder of Method.
I'm all alone in the studio and I thought to myself look there's no better time to
jump on the mic and record a new podcast and today one of my favorite topics,
which actually isn't automation, but CRMs.
However, before I jump in, I wanted to let you know a few ways
that you can contact the show.
We have some great content and helpful tips going out on Instagram, where
you can find us at hello_method and we have a dedicated email address for
the podcast, which is as you would guess, podcast@hellomethod.co.uk,
where you can give us any feedback or ask any questions, and we will try to
get them answered on future episodes.
So before anyone comes in or the phone decides to rang, let's
jump on with today's episode.
CRMs are they really for us?
So we've recently done a blog post and we've kind of turned it on its head
around CRMs and given you five reasons, you don't need a CRM in 2023 I love this
post, Tilly has written it and really kind of captured a great idea of giving you
all the reasons why you don't need a CRM.
So before you think, oh, amazing, I knew I didn't need one, let me
just read a few of those out to you.
Firstly, you're an Excel warrior, CRMs collate all of your customer data in one
central location, but for some of you hardcore Excellers, this is just too easy.
Basically what we're trying to say is if you're happy with Excel, stick
with Excel, but of course, Excel doesn't have all of the connections.
It's not going to keep all your data up to date constantly.
This is a very much a manual process, and this is where CRMs can really help out.
So, imagine you are trying to kind of keep up with a busy schedule.
You're not going to keep your Excel up to date.
We've all used Excel.
It was something the, which our business started off with, we had all of our
customers in there, we had all of their contact details, we had their
email addresses, we had telephone numbers, we had their street address,
but, it was about where it stopped, we didn't keep that data up to date.
So pretty much from the moment we put it in, it was starting to be out of date and
we weren't keeping up with it in any way.
So any changes that were happening with the client, we certainly weren't tracking
them or knowing that that was happening.
Whereas the CRM is really clever in that regard to CRM is keeping all of
your customer's information in one place, but also keeping it up to date.
It may be plugging into a number of different other software or services
that you use, which is also keeping that information updated constantly.
For example, if somebody is booking a meeting with you and you've set
up that this meeting's coming along, then that is automatically going to be
captured within the CRM so you know, you've got a meeting with Bob coming
up next week and it's in your calendar, but it's actually also in the CRM.
So you can track these touch points of how many interactions
you've had with a customer.
So obviously we are very biased with HubSpot, we use HubSpot, but for
me personally, I think it is one of the best CRMs that is out there
purely from a usability factor.
It's really simple to use and makes my life really easy
when I'm running a business.
To give you a really good example of how HubSpot works, I can email
somebody and I'll do that through Gmail, through outlook, you know,
through a standard email client.
Now, if the person I'm emailing isn't already on our CRM, it
will actually create that person.
So let's say it is Sheila at abc tech.com, it's going to create Sheila on our CRM
and also log that I've sent her an email.
That's clever in itself, it's already created this contact
which has saved me a job.
But what it will also do is pick up that abc tech.com isn't a Gmail,
it's not a Hotmail so it's realized that this is actually a company.
So it's going to also create what's called a company record and
associate Sheila with that company.
If there is also any information around abc tech.com on the tinter web in any
way, then it will also go and grab all of this information and populate the
company record with that information.
So through me, just sending an email HubSpot's gone around and it's created a
contact and it's populated that contact with some information, but it's also
created a company and try to grab all of the information that it possibly can
that is in the public domain about that company and also populated that as well.
So in terms of manually having to do things, if I was using Excel, I would
have had to remember to go and add Sheila to our Excel and create it and
that's a big time-saving trick already taken out because it's done for me.
Now if Sheila is already on our CRM, then all it does is it just
adds that email to the timeline, so it's updating that details for me.
It knows that I've sent an email to Sheila and when I've done it.
So, these little things that CRMs can do keeps everything speedier
in terms of what I need to know.
Now let's take that action of imagining that that Sheila sent
us an email, okay and she's had an issue and it was something that she
needs done by the end of the week.
So this needs to be done by Friday, she's emailed the studio
at studio@hellomethod.co.uk.
She's emailed our main inbox and without a CRM somebody might
pick it up today and do the job.
Okay, then they might email Sheila back personally and say Sheila,
this has all been done, all sorted.
She's happy she's emailed back, then in a couple of days time, somebody
might have been out the office.
So tomorrow somebody might've come in, they'll see this email and this
happens a lot with group emails.
They will see the emails come in from Sheila and they will
jump on it and think shoot this should have been done yesterday.
I'm just going to drop Sheila an email and say Sheila I'm so sorry I'll work on
it today and I will make sure that comes back to you before the end of the week,
Sheila's then going to respond actually, you know, this is already been taken
care of one of your colleagues has done it for us, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
All of a sudden it's a bit awkward.
Now with a CRM it's automatically going to come in, it's automatically going to
be added to Sheila's record and anybody who picks it up is also going to have
updated that record just through emailing them back through taking the job.
Now, obviously you're going to have task management systems, which are going to
take the actual job away from a CRM.
But in this instance, whoever came in the next day, would've automatically seen
that that email has been responded to and taken care of and it's off their list
that they can automatically go on to the next task that they might have in place.
So Excel really isn't going to win in anything like that, it's very static.
It's going to have no updates and it's really not keeping you up to date now
there's a lot of other CRMs that don't do some of these things that HubSpot do.
One of the things that everybody says to us initially, as you know, well HubSpot
is expensive, but it's saving you so much time with everything that it's doing
and all the tools that it possesses.
That actually time is, is sometimes more important than that money
and we've always said that, you know, treat HubSpot as a member of
staff almost, that's their wages.
And then what it does is it always delivers.
Now HubSpot's pricing is also sometimes quite confusing.
But you can start with the free CRM.
My mum uses the CRM and doesn't pay for any of the tools and she's quite
happy with that and that works for her.
So, also bear that in mind that it can grow with you and
it can grow with your company.
Also, obviously going back to this article is there's some other great
points where you would a point four, for example, and I will drop the
link to this blog in the show notes so you can obviously go and read it.
You'd rather manually track leads CRMs have built in automation technology
that allows you to prioritize leads, which means these systems will allow
you to figure out which leads to work on first, meaning you can organize
your schedule logically, plus you'll be able to spend time generating some
engaging content for particular leads reflected by the data you've collected.
Does the lead automation system sound too robotic to you?
If you'd rather just pick and choose randomized leads to engage with,
depending on how you're feeling that day, then do what works for you.
Again, this is all about the automation that goes into this.
So you can have, what's called a HubSpot score or a lead scoring system.
For example, if they are downloading content from your website, or if
they've engaged with social media, you can give them points for
different actions that they've done.
This will then allow you to completely understand how this
lead is weighted over another lead.
So if you've got 10 leads that you need to follow up with, you can automatically
order that list by, by a weighted score.
So people have been interacting with the company more, or been
doing more, more of these points and gaining more of these points.
You're going to obviously want to phone those people first they're,
they're much more engaged than somebody who doesn't have so many points.
We also within a CRM can actually categorize who people are and where
they are in, what's called a life cycle.
So in HubSpot's terms and following that terminology, you start off as a
subscriber, which is probably somebody who is just subscribed to your blog.
They're not really actively interested in buying from you, but they are
maybe just subscribe to the blog.
Next up from a subscriber, you have a lead now, lead is traditionally somebody who
you've emailed or somebody who's maybe filled in a contact form that is a lead.
We then go through to a marketing qualified lead or an MQL, an
MQL is probably somebody who has been to an event maybe, or
downloaded a PDF from your website.
That's a typical marketing qualified lead.
A sales qualified lead or SQL, is somebody who marketing have flagged
as a really good contact for sales to, to talk to and to pick up with.
Now this might be that.
They've engaged a huge amount with marketing, marketing may have touched
base with them in some way, but they've done a lot of interaction
with the company backwards and forwards and now's the time for sales
to step in and talk to this person.
From an SQL, would it be an opportunity?
So an opportunity is somebody who sales have spoken to and who has had
a maybe an invoice raised sorry, maybe a quote raised, you've spoken to them
and they're interested and you've sent a proposal or a quote back to them.
That's a typical opportunity.
Next up is a customer, and I'm doing this all from the top of
my head so hopefully hitting them all, but next up is a customer.
Nice and easy, somebody who's bought from you, somebody who
has paid for your services.
From my customer is what's HubSpot call and evangelists, not my
favorite word in the world, but an evangelist is somebody who is kind
of the gold standard of customer.
So somebody who has bought from you, but who was also singing
your praises to other people.
So it's that perfect customer really who you have, you've sold to, they're
loving what you're doing, and they're mentioning your services to other
people and bringing you more business.
And then you have other which kind of categorizes staff members,
freelancers, anybody kind of who falls outside that lifecycle stage.
So why is that important?
Well, Lifecycle stages can easily categorize your contacts.
So for example, I might for one day one to bring up all of the opportunities in,
let's say a list who, so opportunities are people who've sent quotes to, so I want
to see all of those opportunities who we haven't spoken to in six months, you know,
why haven't we spoken to the opportunities that we have gone through all of this
marketing, all of this sales, but we haven't turned them into a customer.
You know, who are they and why aren't they a customer?
And we can bring up a list or a report and really dig down into that data.
The same way we might be launching a new product.
We don't really want to send it to everybody, so who are
we going to send that to?
Well, evangelists they're perfect they love us already, so we can really use
those as a test ground to send this, this product information to maybe we
want to send them a feedback form.
Maybe we want to kind of get their feedback on something
that we're going to launch.
They're going to be the perfect people to, to send that information to.
We could then send it to customers, customers if we're looking to sell
other services or we've added a new service to our business then that's
ideal to send that to customers.
You know, did you know that we are now introducing this or we've
added a new product,, did you know we've got this new product?
Do you want to learn more about this product?
Book in with us it's a really easy way to understand where everybody is in
that lifecycle stage and to understand how to target people and within HubSpot
and obviously other CRMs we can create lists or we can segment, and you'll
hear segmentation a lot around CRMs.
We can segment our data to understand who these people are and how we can actually
get to them or send them that information.
So, why else do you need a CRM?
Well, you know, there are loads of CRMs out there.
As I said, we are super biased with HubSpot and that
all comes down to usability.
I deal with a lot of CRMs or some of our clients use other CRMs, but apart
from HubSpot, I obviously don't like those clients as much, that's a lie.
But obviously HubSpot is just easier to use from our point of view.
I've always found it really easy and it seems to fit with a good
90% of the businesses that we deal with, it's software it's
tools work for that organization.
So that allows us to really build some nice automation in terms of marketing
or in terms of the sales around what we want to achieve for that business and
that's why we're quite wedded to it.
Because it allows us to look good for our clients you know we're suddenly
organizing their whole business from marketing leads coming in, right into
servicing current customers who might have support tickets, you know, all
of that can be done within HubSpot and it's also one central central place.
Now HubSpot, when it was originally built, didn't like the idea of having these third
parties plugging into it thought that it could do everything and it can't.
So, there were lots of integrations as well that you can integrate in,
into, into HubSpot or into the CRM.
Allowing you to grab more information.
So that's essentially what we want, we want one central place to understand
everything around our customer everything that's going, right.
Everything that's going wrong and everything that's happening to
them we want to know so we can make sure that we are on the ball.
There were loads of nice things around HubSpot that are built in, but a lot
of it isn't out of the box necessarily.
So it's the one kind of negative in terms of a CRM, you know, it takes
time to get going so I talk a lot about automation, automation is one of my loves.
Because it is saving me time and it saves our clients a huge amount
of time and it keeps data clean.
Now that doesn't happen overnight, you can't just say right, we're
going to go with HubSpot off we go.
Why aren't we seeing all of this clean data?
Why have we still got old contacts in here?
Why have we got old data in here?
Well, that's not going to happen overnight.
We work with you to understand what is happening within your organization and
understand where the automation comes in.
Everybody is slightly different, everybody has different processes within their
business, the sooner we can understand those, the quicker we can build it in.
But again, it's not something that is going to happen as
soon as you adopt a newer CRM.
The CRM, isn't going to fix everything overnight but it's certainly going
to give you a lot of wins overnight, having all of that data in a transparent
place that you can deal with it.
One probably maybe final thing unless I carry on reading through some of
these blogs that I've got in front of me, but at the moment, one thing that
I think stands out is GDPR obviously.
We are holding people's data and if we are using Excel and contacts and you know,
all of these other places, which are more of a manual place, G drive or whatever it
might be and we're holding these documents on our contacts, then when somebody
comes to us and says, actually I want to unsubscribe, then we're probably gonna
have to go to, I don't know, MailChimp and remove them from the subscription list.
We're then going to have to make sure that we go to Excel and remove
them from there, we're going to have to go to a number, different places
and it's actually a lot of work.
Whereas with HubSpot, they can not only control their own data so they can
say, actually I want it to be removed or what do you have on me and we can
quite quickly give them that because it's all in one place and it's all in
one central place, central location.
But they can have control over that as well, so let's take subscriptions.
We all get marketing through our inbox all day long and what you can do is
basically manage those subscriptions.
So traditionally you have a one-to-one subscription, which is me emailing
Sheila, for example, as earlier, you know, for me to email Sheila,
I have to have her permission to be able to email her that's one-to-one.
We then might have a marketing, a general marketing subscription.
So that is marketing information that's going out from Method to our
client base or to our contact base.
You then might have a newsletter so this is very much blog a newsletter
that is going out at a certain frequency to that person as well.
So you tend to have those, but you might have service ones as well
around actually helping that client.
Do what they need to do, you know, to perform what you need to do.
They have to have a service subscription as well.
So there's four examples, but imagine giving the contact
their own make-up of that.
So they could all of a sudden, well, I just don't want the newsletter,
but I'm happy with marketing and obviously I want the one-to-one or
the service, but they can customize what they receive and when they
receive it at what it actually is for.
So all of a sudden you're giving power to them, which again means you don't
have to constantly make sure that your email lists are up to date or making
sure that when people email, they're not emailing with that stupid thing,
which drives me mad, which is you have to email us back with unsubscribed and
the subject line and things like that.
That that's so old fashioned and why should I emailed you when
I don't want you to email me?
One thing on the back of that is they usually email you back saying, you sure.
And that drives me insane give them the power to be able to do what
they want to do with that data.
I'm not a flip side of that, I dunno going slightly off CRMs here, but
the whole thing is behind the scenes.
If they're not interested, don't try and keep them there because that
is certainly gonna make them more, more likely to be less interested.
So, so let them control that data and remove what they want and I think, you
know, things around GDPR are handled really, really well within HubSpot.
It won't actually let you email somebody unless you've given them a subscription.
It won't let you send the marketing email out even if they're in the list that
we'll just stop it and say, no, hang on a minute they don't have a subscription.
You haven't added it or they haven't, or they've removed it or it hasn't
been added in the first place.
So yeah, but again, CRMs are going to free up your time.
That's that's really what's key.
Everybody within the business is going to have transparency that
everybody's going to be able to see and dive in around people.
You can log calls, you can log emails, you can log meetings.
All of these things are taken care of within your CRM so you
can truly understand what is going on with your contact.
So I think there's so much we can talk about, about CRMs but hopefully that
kind of gives you a general overview.
We obviously have a, a HubSpot demo that you can do, which is with me and I can run
through that with you and kind of just if you're really undecided and say, I'm not
sure if it's for us or maybe you've been looking at it for a while and just want
to kind of run through it with somebody who knows what they're talking about.
Then we have a resource which is a HubSpot demo.
You book a demo with me, it's actually through HubSpot that you book the time
with me on my calendar and that will that will send you a meeting link and
then I can go through some questions with you, see what you're trying to look for?
And just really just show you the ropes to see if it's something for you.
As I said, it's not for everybody hubSpot doesn't suit everybody.
I think everybody should have a CRM, every company needs a CRM, get it off Excel,
get it into a CRM, but at least this will show you some of the benefits of why
and then obviously we can talk through some of your issues or some of the
things that you want to gain out of it.
So that's, that's one thing.
So there you have it.
Look, I'll drop all of the links that we've discussed today, the
blog into why you don't need a CRM.
I will drop through the link to a, to book a HubSpot demo with me all at the bottom.
And that I think will help, help you kind of make your own decisions and
there's a lot of information in there.
I think because we've, there's so much within CRMs, we're probably going
to carry this theme on for a bit, maybe interject it with some of the
interviews that we've got coming up.
And maybe give you some, some quick wins around HubSpot, but, if you're
using HubSpot, let us know what you think, let us know any of the
problems that you're having with it.
Or if you're using another CRM, you know, come back to us saying, well, I
actually love this because and let us know what features you love about it.
And you know we love tech.
We love people finding solutions for their company and that's what it's about here.
You know, we're all about helping you guys grow through our experience, but that
can only be improved with you guys asking us questions and telling us what you
think about, about your CRMs or HubSpot.
If you've enjoyed this podcast, if it's helped, then obviously
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Also remember to drop us any comments, if you want any questions answered
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then please drop it to us on our email podcast@hellomethod.co.uk.
That's it for this episode thanks for listening,, and we'll catch you next time.