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What We Talked About

• 0:00​ - CRM expertise
• ‍1:25​ - CRM burnout (setup)
• ‍2:46​ - SaaS onboarding
• ‍3:50​ - Are the Integrations I want already built in?
• ‍5:08​ - Team onboarding tips & tricks
• ‍6:40​ - Zapier integration frustrations (am I stupid?)
• ‍8:55​ - Is It normal to pay for onboarding/consulting?
• ‍12:00​ - Sticking with a CRM
• 14:00​ - Who should be leading this process? (customer champion)

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Background Context

The other night my girlfriend and I were on our daily walk, she had just gotten off a call with her Australian client, teaching a sales team of 10 how to implement Acuity (a simple appointment booking software). A packed out conference room and a 2-hour video call later, and let's just say, they are getting there.

She was talking about how simple the software is meant to be, and yet how much training is required for a proper execution and rollout internally.

This got us talking about the SaaS industry (Software as a Service), and how software is often marketed as "simple to set-up", and yet it often requires a lot of thought to execute properly.

"A lot of people must buy software and just think it's an out-of-the-box solution" we said.

It sparked other discussions about how many people we get reaching out tangled up in the middle of a Zapier x Copper integration that "isn't quite working even though it should be so simple."

Things these days seem to be sold as "simple".  But in reality, they're not so simple.

So, basically we sat down to do a live stream to talk candidly about some of the realities of implementing tech into your business. Check it out and let us know your thoughts?

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Video Transcript

Andra Vomir  0:00  
I think software is typically sold that's like it's one click, and you're set up and you're ready to go. But the reality is that it does take a level of expertise. And I think, even meeting you, like when I had met you, I remember I said to you like, I'm a CRM expert, because I had configured a CRM for a couple of clients. And I've used this CRM before. So like, I know, everything that there is to know. And the more we spoke, the more I realized that there's just so much more, I guess, expertise that goes into it, and things that you need to think about in terms of reporting and how you want to, like if you need, what's an example, like

Alex Bass  0:37  
Certain data points is pretty much like, yeah, if if you if this is like, at the end of the day, what is the ultimate report that we're trying to get from upper management? And depending on whatever that answer is, you should maybe set up custom fields with multi select drop downs, or single select drop downs, not text fields, and people don't realize, I guess, you know, okay, cool, just create a custom field and make it a text field. And it's like, you're never gonna get reporting capabilities on that, because you've made that one decision. Now all of this data is going to be deprecated. Because people are inconsistently filling it out. So it's about consistency processes, and structured data formats. It's not sexy stuff to talk about. But it's like, it's you need someone to champion and think through that before setting it up.

Andra Vomir  1:20
Yeah. And I think that's part of the burnout that happens with people is that if you're trying to set up a software that works for you like a CRM, and you're in there, and you're trying to configure a few fields, but then you run into the issue of not being able to pull the reporting that you want, or, like, What's another common problem, like a common thing, but another one is like an integration you've had, you're trying to set it up really simply using Zapier, and then you feel really frustrated. I know, I felt this way before of like, this should be really simple. There's like a button that I need to click, and it's not working. And then you before you know it, you've spent like three hours trying to do this thing, and it still is not working, how you want it to work. And then you start feeling stupid, like why's why, like, Is it me? But in reality, I think what I'm trying to say is since meeting you, and seeing the level of knowledge that you have to make things work together so seamlessly, it's like, no, we're actually not supposed to know, softwares, I think are sold, and I get why they're sold that way. You know, it's easy, set it up really quickly. But in reality, you have to put a lot of thought into how you set up your software to actually make it effective for your business. And I think that's when working with a consultant comes in handy because they've seen, you know, 10s and 10s of accounts that have already been set up. So they can say, Hey, here's how you need to set it up to get the most out of it for your business. Because in reality, a lot of businesses are very similar as we, as we know, when it comes when it comes to processes.

Alex Bass  2:43  
I guess one of the things that I've learned a lot, especially lately, as I was transitioning the business more into essentially a product as a service or software as a service. It's that the biggest difficulty that the software companies have is actually onboarding, they can have the most robust, powerful tool and all of existence. But the product team time and time again, struggles with how do we onboard these customers to get them using the CRM and the capabilities without having to touch or speak to anyone else, because that would be the golden ticket. Essentially, you sign up for the software, and the software intuitively teaches you how to use it. But that is so rarely the case. Yet, you're going to have companies like Asana that are going to make it sound like yeah, sign up for this and project management projects will take care of themselves. And it's taken me four years of using Asana to get to a place that I'm like, I think it's actually finally working for me. So I think that's the part that that is really I guess deceptive. And it's not really necessarily answer. It's not their fault by any means. It's just teaching software is very difficult. using software is very difficult. And the great marketers will make it seem like it's easy. They will say copper integrates with MailChimp. Well guess what every single client that we've worked with that uses copper and MailChimp, it does not integrate in the way that they want it whatsoever. Similarly works with QuickBooks so on the marketer could just say, hey, yep, copper, yep, we integrate with QuickBooks, and their sales team could be like, yeah, we integrate with QuickBooks. But when you're actually working with a client, they're gonna say, Okay, cool. So this integrates with QuickBooks, right? So I wanted to want to move to this stage is going to create an invoice and send it to the customer. And it's like, oh, no, that's a custom integration. Like, wait, what I thought you said that it integrated with QuickBooks? No, no, like, you can view top level open invoices when you're on a customer record and QuickBooks, it's just like kind of a view only sync. And what people actually typically want are kind of workflow automation. So they're doing their job, they're doing the job. As they do their job. It starts doing things for them. So they have a reporting QuickBooks integration, and most people want an actual workflow, process integration. And I think that's the biggest disconnect that I guess I've seen working in this space. Especially marketers ruin everything is Gary Vaynerchuk says, but not not really and

Andra Vomir  5:00  
i'm currently a marketer so i guess you can say that to me but i mean i've experienced it myself and i'm you know having a pretty like monday.com was one for me that i love their marketing i love their interface and i was so excited to set it up and i remember getting it and even doing some basic setup for my team and then sending it around and being like hey guys we're using monday.com now and it's like this is so cool and then it's like crickets on the other end and it's like hold on a sec there's something wrong here way way way way way we're not getting this right and then it's like slowly getting some of the team on boarded but like it's just not flowing and i remember just being so frustrated at like everyone that i was working with and myself and i was like this is just not working for project management and i think that's again you get that dopamine from setting up a new software and you said this to me when i signed up for new software alex is like you're on the dopamine high right now just wait until you actually have to implement it and then once that wears off it's like okay let's think through how literally everybody on the team is going to use this cohesively so it starts to sing and dance and that takes a lot of thought and a lot of trial and error and a lot of communication so i don't think it's realistic to expect that you can implement the software and then it's like oh well ah it's it's done and it's doing what it says it's going to do and i think it's also not fair to the software companies because all of these software's from monday to asana to copper they're fantastic software well yeah they're they're really great platforms but we can't expect ourselves like you if you're not with an olympic athlete analogy you always use like you can go into usa and you essentially

Alex Bass  6:32  
i think people think that really again marketing really makes you think that you're smarter than you are in certain ways so i think zapier is the prime example people dive into zapier because it's so accessible and it feels so easy to use and then they get frustrated when they're trying to connect like one step to the next and they're like hey i'm trying to push this and i'm getting an error message it's like totally understand and don't feel stupid because it's taken me six years of using this thing learning api's being a developer i'm a developer and i still struggle at times with it because api's are weird and confusing and they're not as straightforward as they seem so i empathize with people that are using zapier and they're getting frustrated but then similarly they reach out to a zapier expert like us for example and then they're like hey i almost have this thing set up like we're pretty much good to go i just need a little bit of help and they want to spend like $50 or $100 or like whatever to get this thing set up and it's like hold on like what are you using this for how can we actually build this in a way that will do more and i think people just try to take so much on themselves and it's really that thing where if someone's running a business and how much time should you be spending learning software versus running your business and you shouldn't be spending your time learning software you should hire an expert or at least work with an expert to help you get to where you need to go and save time in that way

Andra Vomir  7:53  
yeah and to that point i mean you've helped me set up a zapier integration i was doing one between a software called clickfunnels and shopify and here i am again being like i couldn't do this and i live with you so i'm very lucky that i'm like hey this isn't working what do i do and like he ended up coding something to make it work and i remember just being like i would have never figured that out and this you because you have that level of knowledge this was solved in like five minutes but in reality there's just no way that i would have known and i'm i consider myself more like technical depends who's watching it to some people i'm very technical and to others it's like no but um yeah so i guess what we're trying to say is if you're feeling burnt out and you're feeling frustrated that a crm or any software is not working for you it's actually not you at all and that's why we wanted to talk about this because we're just seeing it come up over and over again

Alex Bass  8:49  
so i mean so much in fact that i guess it was bringing this up a little bit earlier as well that like salesforce is an industry that has existed there they're one of the largest companies in the world and along with the software component there's like a seven or $8 billion a year partner network and that's just service based services a top of salesforce so people like me that do salesforce consulting i do copper consulting and the industry of the consultants is actually larger than the software itself which is so bizarre yet now we are moving to these smb crms and people are setting them up and they're like this isn't doing everything that salesforce can do for one it's like yep you also didn't spend $250,000 on between the software and hiring a consultant and getting all this set up yeah but there's something about like but i'm also spending a lot of money which i also understand if you're a small business and you're spending $50 a user a month or $60 a user a month and you have five seats like it's a substantial amount of money that you're spending per month but realistically the software is only going to do what it's going to do and actually setting it up like you should be investing the resources in the sending in a properly because now every year and every month that you're paying for the software On a proper Foundation, you're gonna get more from it each time. And the value, I guess the rolling value that comes from CRM is having it set up properly. And then using it over a long enough period of time having clean data in the system, not just running with it ad hoc, and just like everyone's adding random custom fields and things in there. Because it's like, Okay, cool. We've been using this for five years. Now, let's pull insights out. And it's like, well, actually, you guys use text fields for everything. And we actually can't pull any insights out of this.

Andra Vomir  10:24  
So it's a nightmare for any business. So

Alex Bass  10:26  
why did you spend any time logging stuff? It was a waste?

Andra Vomir  10:30
Yeah. So I guess our advices if you're feeling that way, like we said before, it's normal. And then yeah, in in, back in the olden days, companies hire IT teams or consultants to set up the software's and enterprise companies still do that. And SMBs, it's not there yet, again, because all these software's are DIY, do it yourself. However, what we're saying is, if you start looking at implementing software into your company as a bigger task than you think it is, it's not something that should be done between like, you know, nine to 10pm, while like the CEO was in bed, and then he's like, expecting that it's going to be implemented by tomorrow, and his sales team should be using it by the next week or her sales team pay. So what we're saying is make a plan. So if you're going to implement a new software, I think working with a consultant is really smart, because you're gonna save a crapload of time, because someone like Alex can be like, Hey, here's five things that you should do right away. And they can tell you things that have worked for other companies, and then have an internal champion of somebody who's going to run with it and set it up internally, and then allocate the proper time, allocate days and hours worth of training consistently for your team. And that copper champion really needs to be the person who's keeping everybody else accountable. So instead of looking at it as like, here's the small one hour task, look at it as this is going to be a six month implementation to really get this up and running to the way that we want it. And that way, the companies that do do that have a really healthy start a really healthy foundation. And then they're not the ones that are constantly flip flopping and being like, hey, should I change my CRM? What should I be using? instead? Should I be going to Salesforce? It's like, no, because you set this up right from the get go. And that also results in burnout, when you're constantly wondering if there's a solution, shiny object syndrome, when you're constantly thinking, Hey, is there something out there better for me, because in reality, like, a lot of the serums are exactly the same? Yeah,

Alex Bass  12:24  
there's like the person to see absolutely mind blowing, is that a lot of this is the backbone of most of it is the exact same, like a CRM as a CRM is a CRM, absolutely, there's slight opinionation. So for example, if you're using Google workspace, copper integrates very deeply with it more than any other CRM on the market. And a lot of the resources are going toward that. So it's like, that's one of the positives, but one of the negatives is like, they might not allow you to work as flexibly with like, multi select drop downs as maybe some other CRM. So it's like, there's these little pieces that it's like, well, if that's really important to you, maybe you should use this year, um, that does, or if using Office 365, maybe you shouldn't be using copper. So there's little things that can kind of direct you in the right direction, I guess, but going to a different CRM is not going to solve your problems. And I want to speak, you're just going to be in the same problem over and over again, for a multitude of years, instead of actually just having a solution that we're gonna keep starting from scratch and never really investing you should you should have invested enough into setting up the foundation that you wouldn't want to leave because you're like, I just invested you know, 1020 $30,000 into this thing, and it's actually doing what it needs to be doing. And when you do it properly when you invest resources properly and just software you don't want to change software's you don't have shiny object syndrome, because you know, your there will always be a better CRM, a new CRM will come out tomorrow but do they have the resources and the team behind them but it's probably gonna be better in many different facets and you can't run a business by switching the software constantly you need to focus on running your business and just have a software that does what you need it to do.

Andra Vomir  14:01
What were you gonna say I cut you off there

Alex Bass  14:03  
the so the customer champion, I feel like that's something that's just it is so I know that the largest companies in the world struggle with it Asana struggles with it, when they're taking on a massive massive client where it's like, Okay, cool. We have like 500 seats from you know, Netflix or whoever is using them, they struggle with getting customer champion. So they've asked us in general, like just the other Asana experts and things like that, how we deal with champions and and with that, it's such a struggling question, I guess, struggling question. I feel so struggled to answer it because it's like that typically, if it's a small enough team, it's gonna fall on the CEO and the CEO is not the right person know to be doing it, but like, who is the right person?

Andra Vomir  14:44  
I say somebody like a sales manager or a project manager, someone like we're whoever is going to be in there using it every day is the best person to do it. So I don't think it should come from the CEO either. I think it needs to come from somebody. Yeah, this like the CEO. ops person or something like that,

Alex Bass  15:02  
if you if you're large enough, where you have an operations person, that would be super helpful,

Andra Vomir  15:05  
they need to be using it on a regular basis. So don't let it be like somebody who is just in charge of setting it up. But it's actually so disconnected from the reality of what the team needs. Yeah, so even if it's like a sales rep, or something like that, I feel like that champion.

Alex Bass  15:21  
Yeah, cuz I mean, I've also seen the path where people are like, cool, like, we have an IT department, IT departments gonna run with it. And it's like it, they don't they, they're so disconnected from what it's actually being used for. And the processes and systems like they could understand technologically in the sense of cool, we can create some custom fields. But you actually need people in the system. So here's a good example, we have a client that is that has an IT person that's running it. And they are creating custom fields and people request it and then the actual sales team is like Hold on, there's like five different custom fields for like employee or number of employees within a company once a drop down once a single select one, or sorry, a single select drop down the same once a drop down with a number ones a text field, and there's all these different things. And then the employees are like, I don't know, which one needs to fill out. And there's so many custom fields that they don't fill anything out. So it's like, if you just talk to the sales team, and you look at this junk cuz you're living in you're like, wait, why are none of these fields filled out? And that's super easy to see if you're using it. But if you're just the IT person, it's like, cool. Yep, I'll add another custom field for you because you reposted it

Andra Vomir  16:22  
Yeah, that's true, either. Yeah.

Andra Vomir  16:26  
So I think that's kind of that. That bit of a rant of sorts.

Andra Vomir  16:32  
Yeah. Well, then that's it for this video. Write

Alex Bass  16:37  
this a try again in the future. Hopefully this helps some people. Cool. No, bye bye.