Mastering CRM's to Optimize Your Sales in 2023 with Kasey Luft of Clientric CRM Consulting

Mission Control Podcast

On today’s episode, Mike has on Kasey Luft of Clientric CRM Consulting. As a business owner, you need to know your business inside & out. Kasey saw businesses making the same mistakes over and over again. He realized businesses can thrive with the proper processes, and the best way to do this is by streamlining and automating the sales process. Today Mike & Kasey talk about optimizing CRM’s, leveraging your CRM to reflect into your business, what do you want to know about your business, mastering your CRM, and getting your team on board with your CRM! Kasey also shares with us the top 3 things to look for when choosing a CRM platform!

Mike & Kasey talk on optimizing your business on 2023 and how a CRM might be the move for your business to level up!

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Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah, so we've been here, what, 20 minutes late on the start time. Shout out

Kasey Luft: Dude, right,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: to

Kasey Luft: you're on that.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Riverside.fm, my camera, it's a cable, it's all these different things. But all that to say, here we are, episode 44 with Casey. What's up, Casey?

Kasey Luft: Hey Mike, how's it going?

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: It's going well. Hey, question, did you know that pupils, they're the last part to stop working when you die as far as your body's concerned? You know that?

Kasey Luft: I did not know that.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: They die late.

Kasey Luft: What is concerning is that you know that.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: They die late. pupils dilate. Yeah.

Kasey Luft: Hahaha

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Okay. Well, they don't all land folks, but you keep on moving. Shout out

Kasey Luft: Hey!

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: to Roofherb for bringing this podcast to life in conjunction with Ascend Digital Agency. If you need clean and pristine proposals, instant roof measurements, hit up the team at Roofherb. They're great. Tell them we sent you. There's a link in the comments. Click it. So, Casey. You've done some things in CRM once or twice, yeah?

Kasey Luft: I have done some things in CRM just a couple times, yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: That sounds fucking awful.

Kasey Luft: It's hit and miss. You have good days, you have bad days. You know,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Sure.

Kasey Luft: just like we had technology issues today. Ha ha.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Well, hopefully the issues persist so that you can keep getting new projects and solving the world's issues, one CRM workflow at a time.

Kasey Luft: Exactly.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: I've got a lot of questions.

Kasey Luft: I have answers.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Why do people need a CRM? Let's say roofers or contractors.

Kasey Luft: Yeah, people need a CRM because they need to increase their efficiency, increase the amount of deals or jobs they can handle at any given time. People without a clear idea of their systems, the pipeline are struggling, their systems are chaotic. And we've talked to a lot of people, a lot of people come up to us and say, Like my business is chaos. I feel like I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off and I have no idea what's going on. I don't know how to direct the ship and I'm just struggling to keep my head above water. A properly set up CRM technology system does that for you. You don't have to think about it. It provides you a list of jobs that need to be dealt with today, a list of tasks that need to be dealt with today. It can essentially create your task list for you throughout that day. And so it's so important to get your head on right and to get your business running smoothly. And that's why I see your Amazon.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: If you had to say three things as far as trying to figure out what CRM is the right fit for you, what are the three things to consider?

Kasey Luft: One is budget. That's gonna be probably the biggest one that most people come to us with. What's it gonna cost? The second is the fact that you need to have internal resources. How much do you wanna know? How much do you want to have a hand in creating it? How much do you need to know as a leader or as a management? you know, higher up on the leadership team, how much do you actually need to understand of the system in order for it to function properly? And I would say the last thing is how complicated is your business? Do you have a good idea of what your business actually does? Have you mapped it out? So those are three components that you ultimately need to be able to answer, at least at a high level, in order to be able to choose a CRM. And in order for it to be not only a CRM that meets your needs now, but meets your needs five years from now. And that's what a lot of people forget.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah, and I've been through this. You know, we were working in a system that didn't meet our needs down the road from when we started. And, you know, it's I tell everybody to get started sooner than later. You know, I've talked to guys that they're doing. see it in the pants and like it's great until it's fucking not and what it's gonna take to get four people on CRM and system and processes associated with that is a lot more challenging than doing it now when it's just you. So become the master of it, understand it, and then... for those people because it won't be the...

Kasey Luft: Yeah. Exactly.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Can a CRM increase your closing percentage on sales?

Kasey Luft: If used right, if it's used as a tool, absolutely it can. So it can actually help you follow up, help you create tasks related to ensuring your team is doing the things they need to do. So it creates reminders, it can automate follow-up processes. So it can actually increase this because these jobs, these deals are not falling through the cracks. And that's the biggest thing. So that's what I tell people. is it's not so much going to do it for you, but it helps you do your job better. And if you're doing your job better, you're gonna be able to close more leads, you're gonna be able to sell more projects, and you're gonna drive revenue and profits because of that.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: What are some of the biggest challenges that you see people running into when they retain your services to work on their CRM?

Kasey Luft: Yeah, the biggest challenge is the fact that they don't know what they want their business to do. They don't have a clear vision of what they want their... they might know what they want to do now, but they don't have a clear roadmap or a clear vision of what they want their business to do one, three, five years from now. And without that vision, it's really, really difficult for us to help plan for their future. So just saying this is what we do right now, that's great. But if you don't know, you know, if your goals as a business owner are to scale and grow to 5 million, 10 million, well, that is actually really important as to how we can go about setting things up. If you don't know how you want your production to be scheduled, if you don't know how you want your materials to be ordered, if you're not sure what tools you wanna use, obviously there's a ton of tools out there for, you know, ordering materials or getting the measurement information for takeoffs, things like that. it's really imperative that you know that ahead of time to build those integrations, to build that streamline process. So if you don't have that kind of thought out ahead of time, if you're like, oh, we're gonna use this tool, this tool, you have five tools you're utilizing, it's gonna be very difficult for someone to plan how to use these tools more effectively in the overall architecture of the system.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: That makes a lot of sense, and it's tough sometimes to say, you know, in five years I want to be doing this because things change. But, to have a tentative understanding of where you want to go and putting some thought and energy behind that is important. You know, and as you tell me that, I kind of think of, like, the first thing that came to mind, this is not financial advice, so don't take it as such. But, like, I think of, like, an investment strategy, right? Like, day trading and the way that you're gonna go execute and the methodology that you're gonna deploy when you're day trading is gonna be substantially different than your 401K and your long- right? And

Kasey Luft: Absolutely.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: depending on how old you are, it's also going to dictate how you invest your money, right? If I'm super young, which I'm not, so whatever, but if I'm super young I'm likely going to be more aggressive or whomever is handling you know my investments are going to be more aggressive because I have more time to rebound if there is a huge dip versus if I'm 61 we're probably gonna be more conservative because there's a lot more to lose. But that's all understanding context and kind of where... things inside when you're investing your money. And same thing with CRM.

Kasey Luft: Absolutely.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah.

Kasey Luft: And I'd say that's the same thing with honestly any business. Like we all as business owners, as my own business owner, I struggle to picture what my business will look like one year, three year, five year, 10 year. Like I absolutely get it. And so that's where we kind of come in and be like, well, what do you want? Do you want this? Do you want that? And so we can kind of guide people along the way if they're not sure and showcase like, these are the different options available to you. And this is how you could use these different tools more effectively. So even just having a conversation with someone to kind of pull that out. whether it's your internal team or you're looking and talking with a consultant like myself or yourself, what do you want your digital marketing strategy to be? That's a big question for a lot of businesses. And so if you can actually come back and have a conversation with your internal team or talk with someone about it, because a lot of business owners feel they need to do it themselves. Even the business coach, I know we've like all of these things out there that can help you pull out the information you need to be more successful, utilize it, utilize those resources as much as possible, utilize your team. to be more effective. And then you can pull that information out so that when you go to someone or when you start planning strategically, you actually are able to use information that you've gathered throughout this process. And that's really, really important.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Are there any CRMs, if you ever run into a circumstance where somebody's trying to divest from one CRM going to another one and there's been an issue securing their data and transferring it. Cause I know that's been

Kasey Luft: Yep.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: the trepidation with clients in the past. I don't do CRMs, but they're like, we want to do this, but this company is telling us that it's something they own today, kind of holding hostage.

Kasey Luft: Yeah, and I, I hate those companies. I think it's ridiculous. You as a business, it's your data, you should own it. If you're not owning your data, and I'll actually take this back to one of those first questions you asked, you should look up and see who actually owns the data and make sure that it fits with your potential long-term strategy. If you want access to this data, how easy is it to get out? How easy can you pull reports? Most places, most software will, you know, you kind of have to go under the radar a bit. And that's kind of how we typically do it with those companies. I can think of a few, I won't name names, but I know there's a few out there that struggle with that. And they make it really, really difficult. They can make it super easy for you to pull out their information. And we've had some clients in the roofing space, in the legal space. And in the legal space, it was like talking to a wall. You couldn't, like when you told them, hey, we're actually migrating. they just stopped communicating with you because they don't wanna lose your business and they're gonna make it as difficult for you as possible.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Sure.

Kasey Luft: And in order to get some information out, and there's two different types of information you need to get. You need to get the information that's in the record itself. So like the text fields, the name, the address, that stuff. What's almost trickier are the files. So the images that you're taking on a job site, how do you get those out? Those are stored in a different area. Those are very difficult to get out because... they are in, think of it like a drop box location, right? They're hosted on a server somewhere in some location and it's actually more difficult to get that out than some of the other records. So you have to be very careful when you're pulling that information out. And so we kind of go underneath the radar and we ask, oh, we need this information. We need that information. We're not telling them anymore that our clients are moving and migrating to another tool because that's when the prickly hairs pop up and they just stop helping. So if you can kind of go under the radar and, you know, ask nicely, like, hey, we need these images out. And then you just use that information to start pulling more and more out. They're not gonna help you get the information out. It's on you.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah, and you know it's kind of the same thing when you're switching with an agency from one to another. You know, you kind of have the conversation like try to get access to Google Analytics, try to get access to Google Search Console. You know, because if you send them a breakup text, they're not going to be as obliged to accommodate you. You know, they're going to be spiteful, they might be petty. Maybe they won't be, who knows? But if we're playing the odds here, when you give people bad news, they're more likely to have negative emotions towards you, and if they feel negative emotions towards you, So, let's play the

Kasey Luft: Absolutely.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: odds. And let's just, you know, maybe not tell them. We'll be sneaky.

Kasey Luft: Hehehe

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: So, well then that makes me think, right? So, because I know as owning a marketing agency, you know, there's two dozen questions you should ask a marketing company. as far as like, hey, do I own my website? Will I own my domain? Will I own my ad account? Am I gonna have access to reporting? What are expectations? Like there's certain things that you should ask to have a clear understanding of who you're getting in bed with, so to speak. What are the questions that a contractor considering a CRM should ask the representative of that CRM to make sure that they're not landing in a precarious situation and finding out?

Kasey Luft: Yeah, I think data control is absolutely one of them. Data security is another one. How secure is your system? Now, a lot of people take that for granted and the roofing industry definitely needs to take some notes from some other industries and make sure that, like your information is secure. There's been a lot of issues with data breaches recently. And... Working with our legal clients in the data breach space, it's really eye-opening how easy it is for some people to just take advantage of that and how easy it is for other people to push lawsuits on you because of that too. So it's something that you wanna be careful of. As well, just as a side note to better understand and ask those good questions. And then I'd say, what are your support? What is your support like? How quickly am I gonna get support if I send an email versus let's say a chat versus this other method? Is there a need for further support? Do they help with setting up the system? Do they help with training and getting you trained up as well? And I know most places do, which is great, but understanding what that actually means, just because they are actually gonna train you on how to use the tool doesn't mean they're gonna train you well or they're gonna train you in a way that you learn. So I think understanding that a little bit more effectively as to what goes into their training process. how what goes into their support process. Just getting more information and asking those deeper questions. People don't do enough of that. People just ask that surface level question and they think that's enough. But in order to get to that four years down the road, like you said, you really need to dive into those a little bit deeper.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: yes all what's your

Kasey Luft: Yeah, my answer is the tool we use that we really push for and try to build out for people is that, it's as secure as it can possibly be. It's a SaaS application. It has its own web portal. It has its own functionalities. It's as secure as you could possibly be right now in the current state. And if you want more information, I'd be happy to share with you their security protocols and things like that. But typically I won't dive into that unless they really ultimately ask. But I'm open and honest and say like, This is stuff that you're probably not gonna understand, but I can provide that for you and actually can get a rep from the security team to talk with you about it in case you're worried about that.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah, that's a good point. Because if I'm not up to speed on internet security and these protocols, it's going to be very hard

Kasey Luft: which

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: for

Kasey Luft: most

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: me

Kasey Luft: people

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: without

Kasey Luft: aren't.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: that.

Kasey Luft: Let's be

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Right,

Kasey Luft: real.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: if we don't have that, it's going to be very hard to sort through without that level of sophistication and understanding. I'm assuming most sales reps would be like, it's very secure. And it's like, OK, is there a simple thing at that point that the contractor could say to be like, OK, send me the protocol. what level of encryption is it or whatever the case may be. Or like you said, talk to the security team.

Kasey Luft: Yep, yep, ask us to talk to someone from the security team or someone who actually knows that and can convince you that, you know what, like, it's not gonna be an issue. Yeah, absolutely. The more you ask, the better off you're gonna be and they're gonna, the company, the software company might go either way on this, depending on, you know, hey, this is more work, I don't. want to deal with this person anymore, this person's needy, that could happen, but that's also a red flag. If they're not willing to share with you and follow up on this, then that also is like an extra, you know when you're going through your hiring process and you're putting hoops for people to jump through, it's an extra hoop for that salesperson to say, hey, you convinced me, how are you gonna convince me? You want me to use your product? You convinced me that it's worth it. The salespeople, the software that's gonna go the extra mile to showcase this for you, whether it's. security, support, all these other things that you're asking about, you're gonna have a better relationship with. If they don't go the extra mile and they're just looking for a quick sale, that's a red flag for me.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Are there CRMs that work for the guy that's doing a half million, work for the guy that's doing five million, work for the guy?

Kasey Luft: There absolutely are.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Or gal.

Kasey Luft: There are, yeah, I mean, you're actually gonna find two sides of the coin here. You're gonna find fully customizable solutions, which absolutely do work, but those fully customizable solutions are gonna require more input on your end. It's gonna require more effort for you to understand if you're only a $500,000 business. If you're a $5 million business, you likely have some funds available to hire someone to do it for you, so you don't have to be as in the weeds as you maybe would otherwise. Then you have the out of the box solutions and the Acculinks, Rufr, JobNimbus, those are the out of box solutions. Well, Rufr coming up here shortly with their CRM. So all of these tools are gonna have a process for you already in place. And that's why they're great because you don't have to think about it. And so when you're actually creating this and you have to be careful in the future, will this meet my needs in the future? And that's the question you need to ask. in three years from now, when we're doing, if you're a 500K company and you wanna be a $5 million company, how many clients do you need? How many customers need to be going through the door? How many crews do you need? Are you gonna have inventory? Are you not gonna have inventory? At a high level, have an understanding of whether that tool will be able to serve you at that point in the business lifecycle. Whereas some of these other more customizable ones, they will easily fit that role. from now until then, but it's just the amount of time and energy and effort you put into it upfront or the money that you're able to put upfront to ensure that it's set up the right way at the beginning. Ha ha ha!

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: I got a question. So if I'm doing seven and a half million, and I got, you know, let's say I've got a fully customized solution, and I wanna bring someone like yourself on, right? And I'm like, I'm just gonna bring on a console, and this is what they do, this is what they're good at, I'm really bad at this, let's hire someone. What are the questions I should ask you?

Kasey Luft: That's a great question. How are you gonna help me go from X to Y? That's gonna be the number one. What can you do or what is your service gonna be able to do to get me there? And then my rebuttal to that would be, where do you wanna go? How do you wanna get there? What do you need in order to get there? So it's a lot of information sharing at the end of the day. It's being open to talk with a potential consultant about what your goals are. what your ambitions are to really help them get to know you and your business to understand. So with that, I would also ask, what is the structure of your team? How many people do you have? Are you gonna be able to take on the complexity? If I feel it's really complex, if my roofing business is, we're gonna need bookkeeping, we're gonna need or accounting systems, we're gonna need invoicing, inventory, all this stuff. Do you have a team who can handle that? Who's gonna be able to handle that on your team? Do you have the ability to scale and grow? That is another thing. as well just to be asking these types of questions. Understand who's gonna be doing the work. Understand who's gonna be managing the project. Likely the person you're talking to, if someone's coming to me, I'm not gonna be on your project. I'm helping get you to a point that I can pass you on to other members of my team because they do that better than I do. I'm here to help and provide initial guidance for people. but my team is really good at what they do on the backend. And so I'm gonna push them, push you onto them because they're gonna get into the weeds with you. I can't do that. And I recognize that. So knowing the company that you're gonna work with, knowing their limitations as individuals, what they know and what they don't know is also gonna be really helpful so that you know who to go to. And then lastly, I'd say, what's your support like? What if I have a question? What's your response time gonna be? That's always a big one too, right? Like, you know, if my system is going down right now, How am I gonna be able to get it up and running? Like it's a high priority, like nothing's working. If I can't get leads in the door, like that's business 101. If you don't have that, you're fucked.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah, or contracts, right? Like, hey, my contracts aren't selling. Like, what the fuck? I gotta, yeah. I can see that being very frustrating. Hmm. So, and those are really good points, and I think those will be helpful for anyone watching this. So I'm assuming, and this is an assumption, you can correct me if I'm wrong, just say shut up, Mike, when I'm wrong, but my assumption would be, like, if we're building out a customized solution, there's gonna be a lot of things that are going to... things fire, things like Zap your connection, things like that, to create these automations. So, as a consultant, I pay you X amount of dollars to build out this customized solution, let's call it Zoho, let's say we're using Zoho, and I'm gonna pay you and you're gonna fix up my Zoho real nice, and then I stop paying you. Do I have to be concerned that my Zaps and my automations are gonna be disconnected?

Kasey Luft: So I can't answer for every consultant that's out there. Some people are gonna have more control. I would say the biggest way to address that concern is you own everything. As a business, make sure you own everything. So if you are using the consultant's Zapier, that's a red flag because you are always gonna be slightly dependent on them to fix that when it goes wrong. Set up your own Zapier, give them access to it. You wanna make sure that you have full control of everything that you do and that you can remove their access. Let's be honest, like relationships deteriorate and at some point you may need to remove someone from these systems. We understand that fact. And so we make sure that our clients are set up with everything they need on their side. Their credit cards are paying for it. They're the ones that are managing it. They have the capability to manage it. And something we do quite... quite heavily and I'm not sure if you use this tool in your business or not, but we use Loom quite heavily to send video screen recordings between our internal team and to our clients to train them. So our goal is by the end of any engagement that you know what to do. And you're not depending on us for like the day-to-day maintenance of your system. It doesn't make sense for us. It's not worth our time. I'll be honest. It's not worth your time as well. So if you're not trained up on the system and ready to go, and that's where you need to take ownership too, you need someone on your team to champion this so that doesn't happen, and you're left flat-footed and dependent on someone else. So aim to never be dependent on anyone else, if you can help it.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah, that's a good point. I think where I take issue with these types of situations is where there's a lack of transparency. So there could be a solution where maybe this consulting company charges significantly less because they're playing more lifetime value to the customer. So they charge less and they have control. And that's just their business model. And if you agree to that and you understand that, then that's okay, right? It's the same thing, there's companies that, they'll charge you 200 bucks a month for a website. And it's gonna be kind of a cookie cutter. but it's better than nothing, but you're usually gonna lease that website. The problem is that most sales reps won't tell you that you leased it. So three years into your engagement, you're like, you know, we're gonna move on. And it's like, well, we own your domain and your website, so what the fuck are you gonna do? And it's like, well, I gotta start over, or I gotta stay with you. So it puts you in a precarious situation because of the lack of transparency. So I agree, if you can own your assets, you absolutely should, but I don't think it's always bad. I think that what really bothers me is when there's not transparency in people. until it's too late.

Kasey Luft: Yeah, I would absolutely agree with that. And I'd say that's actually something that, this is why I err more on the other side, because many of our clients have already been taken advantage of and they come to us frustrated. And they come to us pissed off because they've had a deal with shitty consultants who have taken advantage of them because they don't know any better at the end of the

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah.

Kasey Luft: day. They don't know what they don't know and which is fair. And so they don't know what to ask those questions. And so they get taken advantage of and it's just not good for anyone. And so you're left in this shitty situation and then we're left to pick up, you know, the pieces and they're already frustrated, you know, and they may not be willing to spend much more money because they may have sunk, you know, $50,000 into this project already and they're pissed off and they're frustrated. And then they're just more frustrated that they could spend more money to redo the things that they already had. And it's just, it's not great for anyone to be in that situation. I'm sure you've,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah.

Kasey Luft: you've come across that before too.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Oh yeah, I mean we're like the second or third person that people come to because we're not cheap. But we're good. And hey, it's not me saying it, it's what our customers say. So, you know, if you got beef, talk to them.

Kasey Luft: I would agree with that.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Quit hating. But honestly, like especially when you're investing in things like that back in two, like go talk to some current customers they have. Ask them to talk to three people that they've done, the most three recent builds that they've done. One that they've just launched, one they launched six months ago, a year ago. Because, you know, the other side of it is some people get really fucking hype. You could be halfway through a build and the experience could be really good. So if you call me and we're working together, I might be like, yeah, Casey's fantastic. It's fucking great. He knows everything and this isn't an attack at you, but like you can launch it and that thing could go to shit. And then

Kasey Luft: Totally.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: it's like, well, I just endorsed you to seven different people because the experience was great. But the efficacy of the actual product. wasn't there. You can say the same thing about the Senate. If you're excited about us building your website and we show you the homepage, it's fantastic. Okay, great. We go to show you the recipe and you're like, this sucks. But you've already been screaming about how great we are. And that's why I say, you know, make sure that you talk to people at different stages of the relationship because then that can really speak to what to expect from that company, much more so than a

Kasey Luft: Totally.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: sales rep who's motivated financially to sell. His family gets fed from him selling you. So there's a bias there. There's an inherent bias that he's going to try to get you to purchase. So I've seen it in the past. I'm not blasting sales people. I've seen it in the past where maybe they withhold a little bit of information or maybe they tweak the way that they deliver the message and the framing of it to where, you know, people want to pick up on it if you're not intimately familiar with the subject. It's a long saying.

Kasey Luft: And within kind of our industry, especially in the technology space, it's very easy to use technology, technological mumbo jumbo, that sounds really fancy. And people have no clue what it means. It's easy, that's what salespeople's main tactic is. They just, oh, I'm just gonna start rambling off, you know, this security protocol that you've no idea, SHA256, you're not gonna know what that means, but they're gonna

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Right.

Kasey Luft: say, oh yeah, because of that it's secure.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah, exactly. And you know, there was a recent double-blind independent study that suggested that 97% of the people that are saying proprietary are completely full of shit. I'm kidding. There wasn't a study, but in my

Kasey Luft: Hahaha

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: experience, in my experience, that's somebody waving a huge fucking red flag, alright? They

Kasey Luft: A

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: started

Kasey Luft: double

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: to...

Kasey Luft: blind study, that's pretty impressive on that. Ha ha ha.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: What is one thing that somebody can do or have done relatively easily within the CRM that they're using, any CRM that would make a meaningful difference?

Kasey Luft: Honestly, map it out. Walk through your steps. Map out, there's plenty of different mapping process, workflow tools. I'm a very visual person, so that's what we use with our clients. Maybe you're not visual, but I still suggest that it's the best learning tool for your team to understand how everything works. Map it out and see. where the inefficiencies lie. Once you, like, it's amazing when we go through this process, when we talk with our clients, they said, tell me what you do right now. And they're like, oh, we do this. And I was like, oh, I think we do this. But sometimes we do that. And like, this is kind of like a circle that we put on the map saying, hey, this is an area that you need to focus on

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: We've

Kasey Luft: and get

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: got

Kasey Luft: clear

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: no fucking

Kasey Luft: on

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: clue,

Kasey Luft: and build

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: it turns

Kasey Luft: SOPs

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: out.

Kasey Luft: around. Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah.

Kasey Luft: So even just by sitting down, talking with your team. production level team, sales members, like what is your process? Like a lot of people just don't have a clue what they do. So if you just sit down, map it out, you're gonna get more granularity. You're gonna see, okay, this is a bottleneck. How do we fix that? Does it need to go to this person? Can we set up automations here? It is actually really simple, but a lot of people just don't take the time to sit down and even map it out.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: That's an incredible point. And even if you think about it, the assumption that, hey, I think, we're super busy, right? And we can, the process can change over time, and we can assume this is the process, and I'm sales, and the marketing team can assume this. So there's a disconnect while you think you both know the process, you really don't. And that would be an opportunity to very easily point that out and address it and make sure that everybody's on the same page. That's fucking great. Yeah.

Kasey Luft: Yeah. And then internally, you can use that as a training tool for new members when they get onboard. And that's something that's not done enough. Like, hey, this is what we build the SOPs off of. This is how you can understand what we do. Whether you're marketing, whether you're sales, whether you're production, whether you're a site supervisor, whether you're on the roof crew, if you're giving people more insight to how the business works, it allows them to connect with the business more effectively so that they can understand the mission, the vision, and values that you are creating within the business and the difference that you're making. Thank you.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Mmm, preach. That's good. Well, dude,

Kasey Luft: I'm gonna

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: I

Kasey Luft: have

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: am

Kasey Luft: to take

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: so...

Kasey Luft: a few of these snippets as well.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah, we're gonna, listen, we're gonna get you out there. This is awesome. And then

Kasey Luft: Ha ha!

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: what we're gonna do is we're gonna cliff hang because there's gonna be a part two because in light of all the technical issues that we had leading up to this, my battery's at 6% and I don't want to get cut

Kasey Luft: Oh...

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: off. I got a real problem with people dictating when things end, like, you know, Riverside.fm or my camera or... So I'm gonna end it initially here before it dies. And dude, I wanna say thank you for all this information. It was absolutely incredible. There's no doubt in my mind. I get asked these questions all the time. So we're gonna chop it up. People are gonna watch the whole episode. And if people wanna reach out to you directly and inquire, what's the best way for them to do?

Kasey Luft: Yeah, reach out directly is my email. So Casey KSEY at clientric.co. So we're clientrics here, I'm consulting Casey at clientric.co and that's just my email. You can also come to us on our website at www.clientric.co and reach out and fill out our contact us form and we'll get back to you as soon as we can.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Again, I appreciate you brother. Thank you to all you at home, in your truck, everywhere else listening. And thank you to Rufor, because you guys help make this happen. We really do appreciate you. And we gone. Yeah, man.

Kasey Luft: Thanks Mike.