Welcome to Corralling the Chaos, the podcast where we round up the world of event management.
Each episode, we'll unravel the complexities of managing events, from staffing and scheduling to embracing technology and adapting to industry trends. Explore success stories, learn from challenges, and discover the strategies that keep live events running like well-oiled machines.
So, saddle up as we wrangle the chaos and find the order within.
This podcast is hosted by Angela Alea, President and Chief Revenue Officer at LASSO.
Welcome back to another episode of Corralling the Chaos. Today, we are gonna talk about CRMs. And the reason we are gonna do that is we continue to talk to all different types of event companies, whether they're small or large, new, or been around forever, and every company in every industry, I feel like, just struggles with their CRM. And, obviously, with so many different moving parts when doing events, there's a lot of things that can get lost. And so we've heard everything from, we keep it in an Excel document, we keep it in Outlook, we keep it in Google Sheets, we keep it in a CRM that's really cool, but we don't know how to use it, And so today, we're gonna kinda dive into how to really leverage your CRM.
Angela Alea:And to help us do that, we've asked Kristen Traynor, who is Lasso's revenue operations manager to join us, and I may have stalked her to get her to join Lasso a number of years ago because she is an absolute guru. She certainly helped me, really kinda break down how we should put our CRM together because I do think in many things, there is a right way, and a wrong way, and this is just one of those things. So welcome, Kristen. Thanks for joining us. Thank you so much, and
Kristen Traynor:thank you for that lovely introduction. It is an absolute pleasure to be here. So So I have to ask, how long have you been working in CRMs? In CRMs. Oh, gosh.
Kristen Traynor:You're gonna date me now. It's been at
Angela Alea:least 10 years. It's probably closer to 12 or 13 years. So you've seen the evolution of with digital marketing and sales and how things have changed and making sure you have a CRM to really capture. I mean, don't get me wrong. An Excel spreadsheet might work, you know, depending on your contacts and things like that, but you're really missing the magic of what a true CRM can do if you don't really understand how to leverage that.
Angela Alea:And so thank you for joining. I I know we're gonna talk about kind of 10 different things when it comes to your CRM, but first, I wanna talk about, like, why do you think companies need a CRM? If from those of them out there, event companies that have not quite invested in their CRM,
Kristen Traynor:What what's the case? What's the argument for investing in 1? Hands down, I think the biggest reason that event companies or any company really for that matter needs a CRM is operational risk. So when you are operating when your event, your Rolodex of crew is in your head and you're operating out of the spreadsheet or whiteboards and something happens to you, you get sick or you leave the company, all of that data, all of that institutional knowledge goes with you. So if nothing else, you need a CRM so that, god forbid, the worst happens.
Kristen Traynor:Business can, you know, keep going and and see, like, okay. What's happened with this customer? What communication has taken place? Where are we? What's the next step?
Kristen Traynor:Without skipping a beat. And that to me is the most important reason why companies need CRMs.
Angela Alea:So just business continuity, making sure they have everything. 100%. What else? What are other reasons?
Kristen Traynor:Other things other reasons that you need it. So effective pipeline management. And what do I mean by that? So being able to track your sales opportunities from start to finish and then being able to break down, okay, what happened? You know, what went well?
Kristen Traynor:Where do we succeed? Where are the failures? Where can we get better? Where are we already doing really well, but where are there places where we can make improvements? And a CRM is a great place, to look for anomalies in the data and kinda really dig deep into, like, hey, what's working and what's not working?
Kristen Traynor:So pipeline management, I think, is huge. It gives you visibility. You know, it gives you that kind of, like, you call it the 10,000 foot view. So you can see, like, what is going on in my business, give you a snapshot of all the opportunities, and then being able to prioritize. Okay.
Kristen Traynor:These are the ones that are good for me, good for my business. These ones maybe suck up a lot of my time, and I don't wanna be spending my energy there. So we're gonna say no to those. Now
Angela Alea:I also think about, you know, how important, especially in a seasonal business or a seasonal industry like events, it's understanding, well, god, how busy is my June shaping up to be? How busy is my October shaping up to be? And you don't know that until unless you have a sales forecast. Right? You don't wanna know once it's signed.
Angela Alea:You wanna know what's coming, what's kind of in the hopper, what's possible, what's potential to kinda understand what you need, whether it's in terms of people, equipment, whatever it might be, just having that visibility into what is the rest of the year looking like based on what's in our forecast right now.
Kristen Traynor:That's right. Yeah. And and knowing, like, okay. I don't need to panic because this historically has been a low point, you know, a a a lull in the season for us. Or we know this is gonna be our busiest time, so let's make other arrangements to kinda take care of some of those common activities.
Kristen Traynor:So, absolutely, sales forecasting, pipeline management is definitely a big reason for having CRM. Talk to me about marketing. How does marketing play a part? Marketing, this is where CRM came from. Right?
Kristen Traynor:So this is the backbone of a marketing team. So it enables them to segment their customer prospects and customer database so that they can create, better targeted messages. You know? And they can hit the right people at the right time with the right message. That is what it all boils down to.
Kristen Traynor:And so, you can track things in your CRM, you know, what actions people are taking on your website, what interactions you're having with all of your teams, your sales, your marketing, your customer success teams. And again, figure out, okay, which channels are working well for me? Which channels do we probably not need to invest in? Because that's not where our customer base is, and and we don't need to spend time there. CRMs can also help on on the customer retention side of things too.
Kristen Traynor:So identifying opportunities for expansion or upsells, and just helping to kinda make that, handoff between marketing and customer success as seamless as possible. So the customer doesn't feel like, okay. I was sold on this, and then I got moved over here, and now I don't know what I'm doing. And it just makes, you know, the whole customer experience a more enjoyable one.
Angela Alea:You know, it's interesting about that from a marketing perspective. I feel like every event company, every time I've asked, well, how do you find your business? Oh, word-of-mouth. Word-of-mouth. And that's just they're always their go to answer, which is great because it's a testament to great.
Angela Alea:They know how to produce great events, and they do a good job with that. Mhmm. But there's so much more to get out there if you just have a little bit of a plan, have a solid CRM to use, and and really leverage marketing. So it's not just word-of-mouth. Imagine if, you know, somebody came to you because they found you online.
Angela Alea:It wasn't, you know, a referral, and there's just so much more that you can do and convert versus everything just being word-of-mouth. So I think CRM is a big part of that when it comes to marketing.
Kristen Traynor:Absolutely. And that's how you can track, you know, where you're being successful. You know, did they hear you on the podcast or did they read a blog post that your marketing team wrote? And knowing which one of those work, again, where your customers like to hang out online, what forums are they on, you know, what ads they're clicking on, what works for them. Knowing that is is just invaluable to your business.
Angela Alea:Well, how when you think about I also hear a company say, well, great. We bought the CRM, and we've been spending money on it. Our salespeople don't wanna adopt it because they're not getting in, you know, they don't wanna log in and, like, log all their calls, and, you know, salespeople might think it's a management tool. So they're like, well, why? I've spent all this money, and I don't really know how to really set up a true CRM other than turn it on and have my salespeople log their activity.
Angela Alea:And that is not the intent of a CRM, is to just keep track of what your salespeople are doing. Matter of fact, if you bought a CRM just for that, you should not pay that because there's so much more it can do versus that. So for the companies out there that are listening that are either considering investing in a CRM or have, but they just don't know how to get started, what what are some areas where they should kind of think?
Kristen Traynor:Yeah. So the first thing I think if you're even beginning to think about, you know, looking into CRMs, the first thing you need to identify is what are you trying to achieve? There are so many different options out there. They do so many different things. But before you even start to look at the vendors or prime computer features, you really need to be able to articulate, what do I want it to do?
Kristen Traynor:What do I need it to do for me? So you need to have your goals in mind. Some of those common goals could be, you know, I just wanna operate more efficiently. I wanna manage my sales pipeline so I know what's coming in and where the status is at any given point in time, or I wanna provide an exceptional customer experience. All of those things can be accomplished using a CRM, but you need to know which one is most important to help you make the right tool selection.
Angela Alea:And I even think prioritizing in order because, again, there are hundreds of things your CRM has the potential to do, all of which sound great and can be really advantageous to your business. But even coming up with the top 5. Right? Like, this is the first thing we wanna implement because it's gonna have the biggest ROI or be the most meaningful or it's the biggest gap we have right now. So I think just with anything else, it's just being focused and kinda at least I know we did that at Lassa.
Angela Alea:Right? Because there I mean, I still come to you, I'm like, god. There's so many different things that this can do for us, but it's, you know, pick the things that are gonna be the most meaningful, don't get distracted by the shiny other objects, and focus on that, get some wins, and then the momentum behind it just kinda continues to build. So could not agree more, speaking firsthand from that as well. And then I know a lot of tools out there kind of vary in cost.
Angela Alea:So just kinda curious, how how does cost play a part in that, and, like, what are what are some of the ranges of of systems that you've seen? Like, if somebody doesn't have a CRM today, but they're considering 1, what what is that range usually?
Kristen Traynor:I mean, again, there's there's many, options out there on the market. Many of the CRMs these days operate on a, a per user per month basis. So you're paying per seat per month. A lot of them offer freemium, subscriptions. So you start free and you have product trial before you commit, to go with that product.
Kristen Traynor:And then, for example, a tool like HubSpot can cost as low as $45 a month on their marketing plan. And the great thing about that is that tool can scale with you. So you don't need every single thing that HubSpot can do when you're first starting out. It's way too much, and they're constantly adding new products and new features. But that can grow with you.
Kristen Traynor:You know, you can spend 1,000 of dollars a month if you move into their enterprise tiers. So one of the first questions you ask yourself is, okay. How many people on my team need a seat, and what kind of access do they need to this tool? Because a lot of them too said that per user, per month, but there's also different degrees of, permissions that they can have within the tool. Is a c considered, you know, as
Angela Alea:I think about our customers, is it anybody who engages with a customer? Is it anybody who needs to communicate, or is it, like, just sales and marketing, or what do you usually see?
Kristen Traynor:It depends on the tool. So, again, you can have, like, view only access where most of those are their unlimited. You can see what's happening, what's being logged in the CRM. But if you want to be able to create the automations, create the workflows, then you need a a paid seat for that.
Angela Alea:For those that that don't know, may not know what that is.
Kristen Traynor:A workflow is just an automation. So it can be as something as simple as, you know, when a when someone signs up for a blog subscription, we're going to email them every time we write a new blog. Or, you know, if they give us permission to contact them, we're gonna add them to our newsletter. Something as simple as that or it could be just super complex, workflows that help you manage the way you run your whole entire sales pipeline. Got it.
Kristen Traynor:Well, what else are things that
Angela Alea:they need to consider as they get started?
Kristen Traynor:Quickly, just going back to budget. So there's more than just the the cost of the product itself too. You also need to consider soft costs. So, like, how long it's gonna take your team to get up and running on the tool, you know, the implementation costs. Sometimes there can be a hard cost associated with that that you would pay to the vendor, but also the time, that it's gonna take to set up the integration.
Kristen Traynor:So you need to consider other pieces of, tooling that you have in your tech stack and how the data is gonna flow in between those products and make sure that, sometimes you're gonna need custom development to get that to work. Not always, but you need to consider that before you make the purchase. Okay. What else? And then you just need to kinda weigh up, like, what are the nice to haves versus the have to haves.
Kristen Traynor:You know? Again, some of them some of the CRMs have all these bells and whistles. And, yes, some of them may sound great, but really do I need that? Maybe you don't need them right now, but maybe that's a feature that you could add in the future. So that's why I think it's important to select a tool
Angela Alea:that can grow with you, as your company scales. Does company need someone to kinda own the CRM?
Kristen Traynor:Yes. I think absolutely. You absolutely need a champion. You need someone who is responsible for keeping a laser focus on the data, who is looking for anomalies, looking for, you know, things that are broken to go fix. And it doesn't have to be someone's full time role.
Kristen Traynor:I think somebody can take that on, in addition to their day to day responsibilities, especially when you're first starting out. But, ultimately, I think you do need a point person who's there to answer questions from anyone in the company who may not know what they're doing.
Angela Alea:Is it hard to find someone to own? Like, is it because I know each, you know, each of the CRMs that exist out there, you know, it it sounds so overwhelming to say, I'm Salesforce certified. I'm you know, it's like all these you know, is it really rocket science? Does it have to be? Like, I'm thinking about, you know, our companies that we talk to that they just wanna get started like bare bones.
Angela Alea:So in in your purview, with all the CRMs you've seen, you know, ease of use and being intuitive. Like, I know when I know we've we've used several here. And to me, I I'm not a CRM expert or guru, but running revenue at last, so I live in our platform, in our CRM, that we've purchased. And to me, it just has to be super intuitive, very easy for me to click around, so I don't know. I mean, how important is that?
Angela Alea:Because it can seem daunting when you see all these people with all
Kristen Traynor:these, you know, certifications that you have to have just to run a CRM. It depends again on on the tool that you select. Right? And ease of use is certainly a big consideration when it comes to making a CRM selection. Some tools require more development skills and some don't.
Kristen Traynor:And I think, that's why I've always been a huge fan of HubSpot because it is such an easy tool to use. I think literally anyone can go on to the HubSpot Academy, watch a few videos, and at least get the basics and learn how to use it. For the more sophisticated, workflows and things, I think maybe you probably do need someone with a background at least to understand kind of CRM architecture and how, data can be impacted, you know, downstream. One little change here can, you know, make a big oops later on. So you want somebody who's aware of things like that and understands the implications that certain changes can have.
Angela Alea:You don't wanna accidentally send out an email to everyone in your database. Exactly. Be added. Well, let's shift gears a little bit because I know this is critical, and I wanna talk about data. Mhmm.
Angela Alea:Best practices because, I mean, you can spend a lot of time there, but but talk to us about some of the best practices you think about. Right? A company buys a CRM. It's kinda like, hey. Now what?
Angela Alea:And now you've gotta put the data in there and make it to where it's usable, not a lot of noise. But talk to us about any kind of good things that you've seen or things to avoid when it comes to data management.
Kristen Traynor:I think this is a topic that I could talk all day about. That's something I'm certainly passionate about here. But, I mean, absolutely, clean data is crucial to effective decision making. And I think the biggest thing that, someone in my position can do is help everyone in the organization understand their part in keeping the data clean and and understand the implications that bad data can have. Ultimately, bad data is giving leadership the incorrect information.
Kristen Traynor:It's it's making, it's giving them inaccurate or incomplete picture of the business and it you know, leadership makes decisions based on what they see in the CRM. So it's really everyone's responsibility to keep that data clean and as accurate as possible. And, also, it's embarrassing. You don't wanna send out an email to, you know, hey, Bob when his name is Dan. You know?
Kristen Traynor:So something you know, you just want the the data to be as accurate as possible. And I think some of the things that you can do, to help ensure that you've got clean data in your CRM is to prevent as much manual entry as possible. So really just, making sure that data carries over from forms so that people aren't constantly having to fill in their name or their email address over and over again. And also restricting user access. So locking down permissions so that only certain people who need to be able to edit data can edit it.
Kristen Traynor:And everyone else can view it. That's fine. But you just wanna reduce human error because, you know, people are moving fast and they're wanting to do their best, but, you know, they're making little mistakes, little typos, and it it can impact a lot
Angela Alea:of things. You know, I think about a lot of our customers and, you know, you've got some companies that focus on event staffing, and then you've got others that focus on the actual production. You've got some that focus on corporate events versus concerts. You've got some that specialize in user group meetings versus sales kickoff. So even just going in and creating a template of this is who I serve and understand I know we've talked before on this podcast before between your ideal customer profile and the perfect customer profile and kind of setting up those nuances.
Angela Alea:Right? Do we specialize in SKUs for the health care industry or the tech industry? Is it multiple industries? And then being able to segment each prospect as is this a health care company? Is it a tech company?
Angela Alea:Because I don't wanna send an SKO to of a medical company to a tech company. Right? If you because you really wanna, you want your message to resonate and really be relevant with them. So I think even just kind of understanding how you wanna configure your data, how you wanna organize it versus just having a bunch of names in there, which that data needs to be claimed, but how are you segmenting your prospect data as well so your messaging can be correct and it's on point with with who you're talking to? And there are ways to do that in bulk, versus kind of to your point, right, not just 1 by 1.
Angela Alea:So I think those are just some of the things to think about for those of you that are considering pulling the plug. There's a little bit of work to do before you have that blank template, but it's not it's not a massive it's things you already know in your head and then getting it set up sooner than later versus we've got 20,000 contacts in there. Now what? Right? And they all look the same.
Angela Alea:There's nothing that really differentiates them, so I think those are some important things as well. Well, if you had when you think about I'm putting you on the spot here. But for the company out there that, again, because we're doing this episode because we've heard so many people say, I'm thinking about buying a CRM, or I'm thinking about moving up from a basic contact application to a full blown CRM, what's the best piece of advice you would give to a company who's considering investing in a CRM?
Kristen Traynor:I think the best piece of advice that I could give them is look for an all in one platform. So I cannot state enough how important it is to have a central place, a you know, your source of truth, and and let all of the other, products and data and solutions that you have flow in through that one central source of truth. It just makes everyone's lives so much easier. That way you don't have to say, okay. What was the last time we communicated with that guy?
Kristen Traynor:And what did we say? You know, it's all in the one place for everyone to be able to go and reference, and you know exactly where you are at any point in time. And I think I just can't say enough, like, how crucial it is to be able to have your data flow in like that seamlessly, you know, whether it's marketing automation or whether it's, you know, coming out from your finance platform. Having an all in one platform is just
Angela Alea:can't be replaced. Well said. Well, thank you for joining us, Kristen. I think this is a great topic. I know you're gonna be a guest, on the loop in one of our Loop Ask Me Anything, so I know our customers are excited to kinda pick your brain on their specific use cases, but we appreciate you joining.
Angela Alea:For all of those of you out there, if you like what you hear and listen to, please be sure to hit subscribe, and if you have any questions, comments, or feedback, please feel free to reach out to us at podcast@lasso.io. Thanks. Thank you.