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

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 kin