How to create amazing customer experiences using customer relationship management (CRM) software with Salesforce’s Jeremy Smith | #394

Jeremy Smith:

I think we might have a firing squad taking them down at the same time.

Tim Reid:

Now, I’m pretty excited about today’s chat because as someone who is passionate about helping small business owners grow. I think for many years they’ve struggled with this whole concept around (CRM) Customer Relationship Management Tools. And I’m really excited to demystify that because I think they deserve it. And the more that start to adopt this incredible technology or software the better for everyone. It’s a great way for a great business so hence why we’re here. So let’s talk about this report digital opportunities for today’s small businesses and it’s got some pretty interesting findings.

Jeremy Smith:

Yeah huge amounts and stats in there. Great findings some really enlightening results actually.

Tim Reid

Some of it kind go like I knew that others you go really? still. Let’s look at some of the key ones that kind of made me go wow. 70% of of (SMBs) have none or just a basic system to manage sales marketing and customer service information. That’s heartbreaking. Yeah.

Jeremy Smith:

It is a big challenge and it’s a very hot topic for (SMBs) . I mean when you look at the tech industry it is done one thing and that’s for sure it’s removed the barrier to entry for many companies. So small businesses can now get into business relatively inexpensively and they can do fantastic things. The enterprise companies are doing but let’s be honest there’s so much tech available today. So that’s that’s a real challenge.

Tim Reid:

Yes. So the barrier to entry of business generally I mean as I was saying to you before you hit record I mean I’ve just interviewed a 15 year old toyed porting entrepreneur. So the barriers are lower. It doesn’t mean though that you are necessarily any good at running a business. So this whole concept of basic systems or no systems. What are you seeing? Is it like people coming in with excel spreadsheets and scrawled notes on paper.

Jeremy Smith:

Yeah I mean that’s normally the iteration of when people need to mature up a CRM or a platform like us. They generally run everything out of excel spreadsheets to start with. It gets to a certain point in growing pains when you obviously need to adopt technology to help you I suppose grow have a more scalable business. And a lot of things I mean I like to concentrate on when we look at technology and we look at how it can empower employees within an organization. You’ve got to understand if someone’s using an excel sheet it’s limiting how productive they can be for everyday . So if someone coming in and I know if one company has a CRM or one company doesn’t the employees are going to be more productive more happy in their work. So it also has that benefit which a lot of people miss out when they’re actually looking at technology as a whole.

Tim Reid:

I have an excel sheet phobia but they freak me out but I tell you what I mean I can reflect on years ago starting out in my own business where I’d get someone’s email address and I would quickly like I’d put it into a column and then I’d go I a of another column about when I last spoke to them. And remind me what football team did they barrack for and try to build up this profile. I mean I I actually think I’ve still got that excel spreadsheet I should. Can you frame excel spreadsheets. I mean the reality is what have you got 70% still in that space.

Jeremy Smith:

I mean the thing that is an interesting point you bring up around excell’s and adding that you know we call it progressive profiling over time.

Tim Reid:

Those big words for you.

Jeremy Smith:

The adding individual bits of information about someone over time. So whether it be their email, first name, where they live, their household income, those kind of things we always need to pivot back. So what’s going to be the customer experience at the end of the day. So doesn’t matter how big you are to go back to the customers now in control of everything that doesn’t matter if you’re a small company or a large enterprise they dictate when they want to be communicated to and how they want to be communicated to. So if you have that information you need to use it. It’s just one thing as a take away for today. I think that’s probably really important.

Tim Reid:

Well fantastic because customer experience and  you’ll be the around the 390 fourth or something business owner or person that I’ve spoken to and customer experience is one of those things that links successful business owners they get it. They get that the customer is pivot table pivotal of their business and they provide experiences that make the customer go wow make the customer go talk to others about that business and get excited. What you want you want to be a shareable business. Another finding in this report 22% report using personalized marketing only. So what does the report define as personalized marketing and why so few?

Jeremy Smith:

Well I think people when you’re starting out in any sort of marketing initiative you need to look at what the end goal is. So a lot of people get really bogged down in that they have to offer the Amazon of the world. So when you receive I don’t know just say an email from Amazon it’s here’s what you purchased previously, Jeremy. Here’s all you have recommendations. Now Amazon I’ve been working on that for many many years to get that right. They have huge marketing teams huge data science teams to make all of that a reality for them. So people a lot of (SMBs) get bogged down or say well we’re never gonna be able to achieve that. It’s just too hard. But you know just respecting but to the point earlier what data someone has actually given you. So if someone has said here is the product category I’m interested in you as a brand may offer 10 different product categories. Just make sure that the content you’re delivering is in that product category because a lot of companies just disrespect someone’s wishes and their they put their hand up and they have an interaction with you as a brand. If you don’t respect that wish then they will go somewhere else. And I have this saying that people are low to an experience no longer low to a brand. If you’re not offering the best customer experience and you respect what they’ve given you this data. Then they’re going to go somewhere else. I mean that’s the reality of it. But it’s just the complication people over index on how much personalization should be within a communication to a customer.

Tim Reid:

You’re talking about Amazon and yet there’s big warehouses full of people who are just literally creating this personalized marketing that’s off the charts. What I love about today’s marketing landscape is that it’s changed so much and the tools that Amazon are using now. I mean the kind of stuff they’re doing in their marketing is now available to the smaller business owner to the vet or the plumber not at the same level necessarily. We can get a lot more personalized these days correct.

Jeremy Smith:

Yeah I mean technology has removed the barrier to entry for a lot of companies and a lot of what’s great about software companies and companies like Salesforce is that they offer the same tools to every single customer so it doesn’t matter whether you’re a small business or an enterprise you have the same access to the same level of tools and they are at your fingertips so you can basically create communications out your customers the same as Amazon would if you really wanted to. And the advancements in A. I and all of these wonderful weather terms artificial intelligence that everyone’s talking about just makes things a lot easier for everyone.

Tim Reid:

We go back to that first of 70% having just a basic system of management and you’re talking about A.I and all this fancy stuff. Maybe one of the things that stopping the average small business owner it does sound a little bit scary. It sounds confusing I mean clearly we’re here to demystify that and we’ll get there. But I think up until now and me included is that looking at these crm systems it’s like wow that’s a Lambo. That’s a Lamborghini and I only need a Holden. But what you’re saying is there’s the opportunity to utilize some aspects for your business and leave the fancy stuff alone for the time being. As you get better at it.

Jeremy Smith:

I mean let’s look at Prospa. Prospa a great company and a sponsor your show which is fantastic. Have a lot of good friends over prosper. So they started out they offer small medium size loans to to businesses over a 12 month period. Their growth is exponential. I mean they’re going gangbusters at the moment they’re a really great company to work with. They started off really small so they started off in the sales side of things. So how do they give their sales reps the ability to track all of their transactions they’re doing with their customers. But they started off with a very small instance of that then as they’ve grown over time because it’s a scalable platform a product for a CRM they’ve added on you know more sales reps they voted on the ability to serve customers through one interface and then look into the future. They’ve now looked at how they can improve their marketing to actually bring more leads into their system to offer their customers more information on the types of loans that they could have and really look at that entire customer journey. But they started out really small with us and now they’re growing.

Tim Reid:

And what I’ve noticed about Prospa too is that despite their growth and I mean it’s exponential growth they’re experiencing is that the way they communicate with you is still very personal. It feels like you’re dealing with someone of a similar size which is kind of nice. And again that’s what the modern marketing world allows.

Jeremy Smith:

And that’s going back to today. I mean they use the system to capture all of that data. Someone they respect the individual and they will use that data to personalize communications to them. So whether it be in an e-mail or if someone has a service issue they might want to contact Prospa about maybe a settlement maybe it’s a collections issue or an issue of their application. The rapper on prospa knows everything about them because they have one view and they know that data.

Tim Reid:

One of my favourite definitions of marketing is it’s what you can do when you can’t go and see somebody because they’re not in an ideal world. What we would do is we’d get up out of our chairs and we’d go and visit every single person prospect customer that could potentially do business with us right. We’d sit down have a chat what’s your problems how can we help but time of course doesn’t allow for that. But now we can have a similar conversation at a personal level through some of these technology. So that’s exciting in itself. The report another thing that astounded me. The top four strategies for achieving growth involve working with existing customers. So here we have a whole lot of business and I think there’s a sample of 500 (SMBs) in Australia and New Zealand. So we’ve got the top four strategies. They’re mining existing customers. Not a bad thing. But what would be stopping them from looking over the fence to new customers.

Jeremy Smith:

I think if you look at our business we’re only successful when our customers are successful. I mean that’s how salesforce has built its company and built its huge ecosystem that we have and we want to empower our customers do better things and service their customers better. But if you look at a great local use case it makes them so it started out as a mobile provider. They started out and their vision is to empower customers to better manage their household services. So more recently they have actually diversified and they’ve had it on different product lines. So they start our mobile and they voted on broadband they voted on energy and they’ve had it on devices. So within their annual report this is all public that they are one of their main strategies is yes to go off the subscriber growth. So they want new customers for the door but they realized that actually there is a huge opportunity in share of wallet. So now they’re actually working out how they can utilize the existing base that they have and start selling into energy and broadband to empower people to better manage their household. They’re really good company.

Tim Reid:

So this is not just a bad thing this finding. What you’re saying is that a customer like it makes it more these businesses that are saying the top four strategies we’re focussing on existing customers they’re trying to find more of the value chain.

Jeremy Smith:

And is also offering the customer you got to think and it’s the same as tech is something why we’ve built the company that we’ve built is that it’s very confusing. I mean if you look at the amount of technology that’s available if companies are able to say hey this is your or is that requirement and need and we will grow review and these all the other products over time when you’re ready and you need to you don’t need to go to 50 different providers and work out how it all connects together. And it’s the same for Amazon.

Tim Reid:

Face to face transactions are on the decrease. I get it. Nothing beats a bit of face to face action. So what’s the implication then for businesses.

Jeremy Smith:

I think it helps them. I mean I personally like to transact with people face to face.

Tim Reid:

But it’s like doing an interview face to face. I think it leads to hopefully a better conversation.

Jeremy Smith:

That’s great. I mean I wouldn’t have the opportunity to come down to Melbourne today in the bright sunshine and leave my home city of Sydney in the rain today. But saying that I like other things to be easy. I think the mundane tasks. I would just like to be not face to face. So I have a car insurance of bingol I don’t have to speak to anyone. Doesn’t matter if I’m moving house if I’m changing car just go online and update my details don’t have to speak to anyone. I think that’s fantastic. But there are other purchases that you need to make you need to have that face to face relationship. You know mortgage advisers if you want to do loans if you want to go and buy a car you actually need that physical experience. But the advancements in technology have enabled us to still offer that highly personalized experience for a customer and that’s important. When you speak some face to face it is highly engaging. You can feel the emotion with someone and we have all of the advancements today. You can still have that in a digital landscape is not missing.

Tim Reid:

So this is where CRM will get into the kind of some of the key applications of a CRM tool but this is where these tools this software comes into its own right where you can as a customer feel as though that company really kind of talking just to me.

Jeremy Smith:

So I mean if you look at through marketing through sales when you initially do a transaction with someone that’s why we say these things can’t operate in silent from one another they have to be all or all on the same playing field. So when you look we might sell someone something you might market to them. But when you actually phone the service and how many times have you phone someone and they have no idea who you are what promotion you were just given or you’ve passed from one person to another and there’s no handover of all courtesy. So it’s a frustrating thing right. I mean that’s the reality of it. And that’s not a personalized experience. So it sometimes it’s easier to just go and see that person.

Tim Reid:

And they’re the big guys.

Jeremy Smith:

Yep. It’s a challenge and I think the perception around small businesses have a somewhat disadvantage in that it’s the same with the big guys as well. The difference with small businesses is that they have the ability and the agility to change things quickly. They have the ability to fail fast improve big organizations take them take them six months 12 months to get to a decision to then do something which then doesn’t work.

Tim Reid:

That’s why we love small business, Jeremy. That is why we let’s why the show exists. One last finding on this report 30% of them are confident their marketing is working good but find it hard determining which strategies provide the best ROI. Why would that be.

Jeremy Smith:

I think for me when I have and I’ve been in this industry for 10-11 years now one of the main things that I see all the time is the companies don’t decide what it is they’re actually trying to achieve. They just think let’s just go into business let’s say marketing out let’s do less sales programs and we’ll just see what happens. But it’s really hard to actually track what’s actually working for them. Like in my world I run a sales team. So for me I know that there are different levers I can pull at different times in the year to increase lead flow within the system or I can enable my guys to be better at talking about certain products. Therefore we’ll sell more products. But there has to be an overall goal to that.

Tim Reid:

That’s interesting. I mean I’ve got another mate who talks in the world of levers. And I find it fascinating. I’m a visual guy and I go wow so hang on. You’ve got a lever that can open up more prospects to your business.

Jeremy Smith:

I wish it was easy as that.

Tim Reid:

But it does. I mean that you have the ability to do that. Thanks to the system you’ve got the CRM system you’ve got set up.

Jeremy Smith:

We can look at trends are what people are doing. We can pull subsets of customers to say hey these are our best for these products that are in my head. We probably should be doing that every day anyway. But the reality is life goes on and there’s more there’s more demanding things within your day to day role. And people it is just the way it is. So I think these levers I have of not physical levers but in my head they’re things that we can pull if we need to accelerate and put a bit more gas on.

Tim Reid:

I think this finding of the 30% who just kind of trying to figure out what marketing is working there don’t have dashboards. I mean some of the successful business owners I speak to have these things called dashboard’s where you’ve got the key kind of figures measurements that go what if that’s up then we’re doing okay and they can literally with the click of a finger. Figure out where their businesses at. So again the CRM tool allows for that.

Jeremy Smith:

Yet all of those kind of wonderful things pulling order giving you the power in your hands to make decisions on the fly report in real time. I mean it’s if I wouldn’t be able to do my job without our CRM. I would let you be in the dark.

Tim Reid:

Well we’ve raised a few problems. Let’s find a solution. We’re talking to Jeremy Smith who is the V.P. the vice president of the marketing cloud at Salesforce its impressive title the marketing cloud. I’ve been on that a few times. So (CRM) customer relationship management software tool technology whatever you want to call it. There’s a lot out there. Now, I’ve been using a basic I mean I started years ago with MailChimp. I’ve used AWeber, Active Campaign. These are CRM  Tools. Basic email marketing. They allow for a little bit more than that. But then you’ve got something like a salesforce which really really opens up the world to you. But for some could be a little bit confusing. Just explain what a tool like salesforce can do. And let’s not maybe break it down to the top five applications.

Jeremy Smith:

So I mean let’s go back to when sales also first created. How do we make money. See I remember how do we actually help sales people to be empowered to do more within their job. So we initially started out as this is just designed for salespeople how do they enter their information about prospects, how do they follow up on leads and how do they manage that relationship with their actual customers. Then over time we added on service which was the ability to raise cases support cases if you like. And then more recently we had it on marketing cloud. There’s a lot of other products in our recent lack of confusing the audience we added on marketing because we believe that in this world where you would use mailchimp that’s very siloed marketing. So if you if I had an issue with your company team I would then have to phone someone. Which would it be connected to your marketing.

Tim Reid:

Well I had Zendesk which is another software tool completely unrelated to Mailchimp where it was an opportunity for people to write a ticket.

Jeremy Smith:

And it’s a confusing thing but if I was if I had to contact you and say Hey Tim you said it is fantastic love the promotion on air. Tell me a little bit more about it and your the service rep on your end. You want to be able to tell me because you don’t have that holistic view. That’s the biggest issue. We as a company ourselves also are trying to solve for people and that’s across sales, service and marketing. They can’t they don’t exist in silos they exist together. here. So we’re really trying to and it doesn’t matter if you’re a large enterprise or a small business I came through a company which was called exacttarget. So Salesforce acquired exacttarget and we were at that stage the marketing cloud because they knew we needed marketing cloud to offer a holistic view of a customer experience.

Tim Reid:

I always say vits and plumbers are listening I don’t mean literally but lots of different small business owners. Listen to the show now going what. Like what Timbo says I’ve got to I’ve been doing a bit of. Marketing. I’ve got a support ticket software. I’ve got life chat on the website but all these disparate software things and I’m paying for them all it’s all software as a service. It would be lovely to bring them all in to the one place. I’ve got a holistic view. Where do they start? Salesforce sounds pretty good. What would be the first thing that they could sort of plug into?

Jeremy Smith:

I think probably to pick up the phone and get in contact but not here.

Tim Reid:

We’re working through my customer inquiries is an application feature of salesforce.

How can that benefit a business?

Jeremy Smith:

Well I think the first thing is that we’ve had customer inquiries is the biggest thing that (SMBs)  will face is it’s gonna be a scale issue straight away. That’s what they’re going to in their heads they’re going to get ahead of themselves and say well I have hundreds and thousands of inquiries. If I buy a system where it is how does it process those and how does it automatically respond to people in terms of inquiries and with the data in the system. We can relate to all the different things based on the the importance of the case itself. So something that’s high urgent or you might be able to you a bit we’d recommend that people or set up knowledge pulls on their website as an example. So you could actually move a lot of your support queries off onto through to your website. Love that. So common questions we have with our system you can actually analyse the types of cases you’re getting. So if it’s all around knowledge base all the time or it’s hey I’m I don’t know logged out of the system or I’m having issues in my billing what are the steps I need to go to. Or you’ve just bought a new product and I don’t know how it works by spending a bit of time and actually setting up a knowledge base to direct all of your customers knowledge base and more of a self-service type of service inquiry.

Tim Reid:

I love the knowledge base thing I talk about it in my book the boomerang effect where every business should have one. Go and identify every single question you’ve ever been asked as a business and set about answering it not a long effort Q Page it’s almost like a resource library where one question one very rich useful answer a helpful answer per page. And then you add something like salesforce can direct people with inquiries to the right page in the knowledge base.

Jeremy Smith:

We call it communities. And the good thing about knowledge base is you can actually add on that and if you wanted to you could open up to your customer base so they could actually ask each other questions about things.

Tim Reid:

Can I just be clear there. Does Salesforce have a plugin called knowledge base that allows you to set that up.

Jeremy Smith:

We have a thing called communities. Its where people can actually do that you can create their knowledge base and you can even open it up to people to engage each other. So if you think of someone like TripAdvisor for example obviously a big company but I think most people they go on holiday they will go on TripAdvisor and look at the hotel look at a resort they’re going to it’s basically that so it offers all of this additional information that the actual resort will provide themselves. But it also gives you great insights from all other customers who have been there before. You’re obviously going to get people who are pessimistic about these things sometimes. I mean when I went to them all days I did a review and we were staying in a beautiful water bungalow and one of the reviews was it’s too noisy at night time which you need just half take a take a different lens through some turns.

Tim Reid:

Hate tha ocean crashing noise.

Jeremy Smith:

I’ve got to get away to an island resort but I don’t like the ocean. It’s a very strange one but I mean open it up and letting customers engage one another. A lot of people think it’s a little bit dangerous but if you’re pointing in the right direction it’s the infirm and you’re using that data that you’ve been given within all the different services cases to point them in that direction. A lot of people are quite happy to self serve in service.

Tim Reid:

And I think customers these days realize I mean you’re you’re right you’re hear that feedback. It’s too noisy. Well I’ll make the value judgment of whether it’s too noisy or not. I see that on TripAdvisor all the time you know so. So to be clear that those communities can they plug in to businesses existing website. Yes 100%. That’s really good.

Jeremy Smith:

So it’s basically taken all the information about a customer. So within the CRM we’ve raised sales or service and actually surfacing to your customer base. So it’s I mean it’s when you look at that in scale in customer service that’s one of your one of your avenues. The other one is social media. So you obviously you’re going to get a lot of information from the social channels. People like to go and vent their frustration on social channels. You need to be there listening and engaging with those customers as well. But likewise that can then you know support cases within the service centre and service cloud On our site and it’s just that back to that whole entire list. Yeah.

Tim Reid:

How does that work? Explain that because that’s exciting So what you’re saying is a business has got a Facebook page. They get a complaint. A CRM tool like salesforce, how does it see that complaint?

Jeremy Smith:

I try to demystify it. So exactly your story so I could go onto Facebook and I could raise a raise an issue with a company and that company would have had and have someone with half of it would maybe be automated so at the common questions that are asked. So within our system if someone writes a question it works out the keywords in that question they can reply with an answer that it thinks it’s correct. If there isn’t a common answer for that question it will then automatically routes that question into service cloud and create a case and then a service rep will be able to contact that customer and engage them on the social channel because I think it is important if someone raises their hand on a social channel which that is the method that they want to be engaged on. So you need to respect that medium. But likewise again you can then tie that back and send them to a community after you’ve dealt with that complaint and say hey next time we’ve had this we have a community where you can there’s a lot of questions that are answered by our staff and also a lot of other customers. So it’s all technology is amazing now like the ability to do that.

Tim Reid:

That is amazing. Is it that easy to set up and all of a sudden need a whole new team of people to manage this.

Jeremy Smith:

No that’s a common thing as well around. If I set up a over thousand inquiries on social How do I how do I manage that. I’m a I’ve got three people in my team. And back to the point earlier probably not a natural. We’ve done intensive research on. But I would say probably 80% or 90% of your customer inquiries can be handled automatically. So in an automated fashion.

Tim Reid:

In a personalized sense you’re automated.

Jeremy Smith:

Yeah. So I mean this is a common inquiry we look at the keywords in our system. It would take initially saying hey what are the 10 or 20 most commonly asked questions that we have in our inquiry board or on social media networks. And what is the always the answer or what is the knowledge article that we can point someone to. So a lot of that is automated once that set up you can pretty much almost forget about it. And it’s the other 10% or 20% of people where you actually need that one to one interaction on a phone or by email or whether you’re actually real responding as a individual on social mediums. So, a lot of it can be automated. That’s the beauty of Tech where we’re heading it’s it’s all to me and now you set it up.

Tim Reid:

Well automated and personalize and was going to come back to personal automated. Automated is great. You have to be there and you get on with doing what you do best. But as long as it’s personalized and by the sounds of it even simple things like addressing the person by name or acknowledging the question.

Jeremy Smith:

So again that’s back to the data around people if you’re not using the data or if you say thanks to your inquiry this is a knowledge article. Does that person feel like you’ve actually connected with them. And back to you know people are loyal to an experience they’re not loyal to a brand. So if the experience is not great then it’s not going to do your brand any favours.

Tim Reid:

Got it. Lisp buildings is another feature of a CRM tool like Salesforce. I say to every small business builder list build list because the reality is as a small business owner you all got websites. They’ve got websites. People will go to that website once maybe twice to check that business out. But a small business owner website is not like a Facebook where people are going back every 10 minutes. So it’s incumbent upon the business owner to have a lead magnet and to build a list and CRM tool facilitates this.

Jeremy Smith:

Yeah I mean we got a great example. Next generation Jim’s who have been a customer for quite a few years now they are to your point. What is the purpose. What is the purpose of someone coming to a Website so if they aren’t you only come once a month maybe to check their account balance. Is that the only interaction are going to have your website. So yes you can email that person but then how would you build upon and get more customers through the door. So one of the great things I’m hopefully going to blow your mind again here is we have a thing we have in marketing called lookalikes. So imagine your one of my customers and you have certain attributes about you as an individual and your a perfect profile of a customer for me. I can use that they can use that data which is all within my CRM and I can actually then advertise to people who look like you on Facebook. So then get more leads in the door so I can utilize that data our already have and all of the rich information I have about you to use that in a segment and advertise to you on it’s not just social media you can do it on Google you can do it on Facebook you do an Instagram pretty much wherever you want to advertise now but you’re using that data and you’re not no longer just sending out a mass campaign and hoping that leads come through a door. These are going to be real primes perfect profile customers for you and next thing we’re doing that amazingly they using it look like audiences and they reach tens of thousands of people and they could be extra potential customers.

Tim Reid:

These things, Jeremy like look alike like communities like Marketing Cloud these like little plug ins that a tool like Salesforce has where you going I’m going to now activate lookalikes. Is that how it works?

Jeremy Smith:

So they were all probably everyone’s like what is all there are things we could do. Where do we start. They’re all iterations of the platform. So like you said earlier when you’re ready for that you can turn them on. So you might be back to their original comments around we need to define what the overall goal is. So is the overall goal like your maysam is trying to grow subscriber subscribe list but also share of wallet. So they’re harvesting that data and obviously offering different products across the board what’s right for their existing customers. But they would look at what is our strategic goal to acquire new customers so they might do something like look alike so they might turn this functionality on and say hey now it’s time we need to activate this because we feel like we’ve done a lot of the above the line advertising bus stops on buses on TV etc. And now we’re ready to use what we have in our data and start harvesting new customers through the door. But they are just fun features and functionalities you can turn on as and when you’re ready. Don’t do all this at once. Definitely don’t do a lot at once but concentrate on what is the actual go at the beginning what is your strategic directive. What are you trying to achieve as a company and we are Salesforce our customers do they every day. We come out and consult with you guys and help what’s important.

Tim Reid:

Okay. That’s interesting because I am. I sound like a broken record but I’ve seen this for too long now where businesses are avoiding this kind of software because it’s complicated. One of my keynotes to small business owners I say why are so many businesses struggling to create effective market in the go lack of time lack of money and lack of knowledge. It’s too complicated. So we’re here to kind of make that dispel that too complicated. So Salesforce do offer the ability to come in and help you set up get going.

Jeremy Smith:

I mean that’s literally what we believe in. If our customers aren’t successful we aren’t. We don’t grow. That’s the reality of it and we have over 150,000 customers globally. A high percentage of those assemblies. We found a great way to help small companies get into business. A colleague of mine who’s actually mentioned in the book Adrian Towse he believes that when you’re setting up a business CRM should just be part of the foundation. It shouldn’t be an add on that happens in a couple of years time it should be foundational. But we actually come in and we consult and work out. You know it depends on their level of engagement some things take weeks or months at the bigger scale you are but for small companies we can come in and listen to what you want to achieve and actually make clear recommendations on what you need to be doing now in the next three to six months. And then in a year’s time what you’re ready for that’s the reality. We hope you grow that we’ll consult with you on that. We make our recommendations.

Tim Reid:

I absolutely agree with the idea of starting a business then a CRM tool is foundational what if you are 10 years old and what if you’ve got two and a half thousand email addresses on that spreadsheet over there. And then your written diary you’ve got I must call John next Tuesday to talk about going to the forty one week or there’s all these. It just gets harder exercise to integrate from the start.

Jeremy Smith:

It is and it isn’t. I mean you have the data that’s a good start. We commonly bring on people who have been living out of excel sheets. And that’s the reality of small businesses. So I mean that’s I think that they are into systems pretty simple.

Tim Reid:

Is that a CSV file that you have to export?

Jeremy Smith:

Your favourite of all time. I mean we say that they don’t put and system and straight away the customer can see all of their data in one screen and they can go into the different customer profiles in terms of the task management CRM offers all of the what do I need to do as my next best action, what follow up do I need to do, what meetings do I have as a sales rep. All of that structure within the system. So those kind of things will need to be imputed. Unfortunately there’s no automated way to take off a bit of paper and put it on system but to be honest once you get going on a couple of days into creating the tasks within the system the reminders fly out the system you can communicate with emails through the actual CRM itself to your customers all of their because all of their details are in there. You don’t need to go to your bit of paper and say hey I need to call Tim next week let me use my excel sheet. What’s Tim’s details it’s all in one interface.

Tim Reid:

So to that point, Jeremy you see a lot of (SMBs) come in to Salesforce and take up the software in fact I think the report quoted somewhere where the majority have a great experience there was something like I can’t remember the numbers at 20% or something that don’t but working together with them they end up having a good experience. What does a small business need to do to make this CRM experience a success?

Jeremy Smith:

I think it goes back to again what does it actually want to achieve in terms of their goals.

Tim Reid:

But I’m more of a mindset to make this. It’s just part of what I do. I come to work. I make coffee. I sit down and spend 10 minutes on the system at the start of the day.

Jeremy Smith:

No it is forever on. So I use our system. We obviously Salesforce is everything I do. I’m always on the go I’m always travelling. We’re in San Fran a couple of weeks ago for our big user conference during force back here in Melbourne today I drove in my mobile phone. I’m probably in our app probably 90% of today. So it’s not a part of the business. That’s the way I think people should view CRM. It is the lifeblood of a lot of the time of the sales business. And it’s a productivity tool that increases productivity. If you go in once a day things could be happening on your website alerts could be coming through. And if you as a salesperson log in 10 minutes a day of the day you’ve missed out on an opportunity.

Tim Reid:

Okay. So this is a system very mobile friendly. It’s not just sitting on your big screen back of the office so accessible from any screen any device.

Jeremy Smith:

Well we have a saying Marc Benioff who is our CEO that you will need to run our business from our phone. That’s the reality of it. So I do pretty much 90% of my day on my phone. There’s a few things I do because sometimes I like a big screen. I mean but I could do it on my phone. There’s nothing I couldn’t do on a desktop that I can’t do my phone.

Tim Reid:

Brilliant. Jeremy, I think we’ve demystified the CRM acronym once and for all this will be an episode for the ages. Go back to that episode if you want to know about crm. How do people find out more. And can they get a hold of this report.

Jeremy Smith:

Yes. I mean we’ve created a great report with deloitte around for sales and marketing challenges for SMB’s and digital insights report for small businesses. They are the website we can share. I imagine not there on the podcast. I mean it’s quite a long run at the moment but I can share and we can obviously show on the on the on your side itself. But there is an e-book for everyone to download.

Tim Reid:

I’ll tell you what I’ll do to make it easy. People can go to smallbusinessbigmarketing.com/394 which is the episode number and I’ll put a link to download it. Is that cool?

Jeremy Smith:

Amazing. Perfect. Love my life. Easy for me.

Tim Reid:

Hey Jeremy. Thank you mate. I hope we see more small businesses adopting this technology and in the future.

Jeremy Smith:

And good luck to everyone out there.