What the Heck Is a CRM?‍

Michael Murray: Hey, welcome back to the Price Sell Paint podcast. I'm Michael Murray. I'm joined by Jon Bryant. Today we're excited to talk about all things CRM. Jon, what the heck is a CRM? Get us started.

Jon Bryant: CRM is a wide sprawling term, Michael, that people throw out like candy when they're talking about software. So today, my hope is that we can define what CRM is and help people understand, in our space you can leverage a CRM as a sales rep tremendously. And it gives you an incredible amount of power not only as a rep but to power your marketing too. And so we're talking about this today in light of the fact here at PaintScout we've made a decision to incorporate a CRM into our software. Breaking news, breaking news alert. And we've done that. Exactly. Exactly. So yeah, I will say, actually, let's get into it after. I'll give you some thoughts on where it all came from, but that's, I mean, my definition of CRM is it's pretty broad and you really got to figure out what you're looking for because it can kind of do everything or very little. So anyways, how do you understand it?

Michael Murray: Yeah. I mean, I think if you went, you asked 10 people, what is a CRM? Let's just go in our industry. You're at the PCA expo that's upcoming February in Orlando, and you're walking around the show, the vendor floor, and you're talking to PaintScout. And I don't know, maybe there's another competitor there and you're, hey, I need software. Oh yeah. What are you looking for? Oh, I need a CRM. It's like, okay. What do you, what does that mean? You're going to get 10 different answers. If you ask 10 different people, what are they looking for? Everything from, I need to be able to create a quote. I need to be able to create an estimate. I need to be able to collect payments. I need to be able to manage my painters. They need to be able to clock in and out. Maybe we're taking pictures in there. This is CRM. I just believe has become this term for Swiss army knife of software that needs to be able to do everything. And I just kind of push a button and my business runs itself. Living the dream. CRM. That's all.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, it's all automated. You don't actually, you now own a business and you don't do anything. That's the way a CRM works. Customers contact you, the CRM talks to them, collects their data, sends a crew, hires the crew, sends the crew out, takes the money and all you do is sit there and start just counting your money.

Michael Murray: Money gun.

Jon Bryant: Money guns, exactly. I want to back up just a little bit because there's been, I've talked a lot about not wanting to build a CRM over the years and why that's not something we should be doing because ultimately I thought that that space is really broad. There's a lot of different.

Michael Murray: I've heard you say things like that.

Jon Bryant: Products out there and a lot of different options for what you can do. And deep down, I thought it kind of covered what we needed and that PaintScout was just a bit of an add-on to that solution of managing your customer. And I guess we should say CRM is customer relationship management tool essentially. So some people say it should send emails and texts like broad emails and texts and it's like, well, where does it end, where does it stop? So that's where I got into, we got into some trouble.

Michael Murray: I think the CRM was really created, the way that I think of it at its basic core level. If we went back to before computers and all of this stuff, let's go, you're running a painting business in the nineties and back in the 1900s, right before I started, the way that you would want to keep track of your customers. That makes sense. Oh, did we ever work for this customer or, I don't know, I need to call somebody back. I probably want to remember to do those things. I would probably do it in maybe a little notepad that I'd keep in my pants pocket or something. I'd pull it out and look at my little checklist of who I need to call for the day. Maybe I've got a little, I don't know if you remember, but they had on the desk, the huge calendar.

Michael Murray: I think we still had one of those around here not that long ago. It's kind of helpful. I'm a visual person and yeah, I might keep all my appointments right there on my calendar on the wall or on the desk. And then software or computers and the internet and software started coming around. Salesforce, I mean, is one of the biggest original main players in the CRM space. And they really kind of reinvented how we can use software to take that away, to take away the paper, the Rolodexes and the paper calendars and some of that kind of stuff and make it a much more digital, portable, all that kind of stuff. To me, at the end of the day, that's kind of what a CRM is supposed to be doing, is making it so that my brain doesn't constantly have to remember, who am I supposed to call tomorrow? I don't want to forget to do this. I don't want to forget to call that person. I need to send them an email. That type of stuff is I can just create an activity reminder to do in the CRM and then I can remember it. I'm like, wait, when was the last time I called that person? I remember I talked to them. I feel like it was just a couple of days ago. Oh man, that was two weeks ago already. And I can see that in the CRM and really start to pay attention to the types of communication that I'm having with my customers and maybe the upcoming communication that I need to have. That's, I think, kind of at a pretty simple level, but a really important level, what I need a CRM to do. Does that resonate with you?

Jon Bryant: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So it's like keeping that relationship fluid and that you can get in touch, remind yourself, be present for your customers and keep track, honestly. And that's definitely needed. Having the paper calendar, it's hard to communicate with the rest of your team, what the appointment is that we're all doing. I think software has really played a huge role there. And if you don't have a CRM for your business and you're listening to this or you're a sales rep that is keeping track on paper, take this as now is the time to take a look and see what's possible.

Michael Murray: What if you're a sales rep? Hear me out, this is a hypothetical, I don't know if you can imagine this scenario. What if you're a sales rep and you don't actually use the CRM all that much? Kind of hate it, it sucks. I don't want to have to put stuff in. Hypothetically speaking, not naming any names.

Jon Bryant: Hypothetically you say? A friend, this happened to a friend of yours? Yeah, I mean, it's like I'm talking to myself. It's the pot calling the kettle black. Or as that one says, it's like.

Michael Murray: So safe space here.

Michael Murray: So why, I mean, as a, I don't know. So why as a sales rep do I, I mean, why should I even be using the CRM? It's just, it's a waste of time. I got stuff to sell here.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, I mean, there's a number of reasons, but the one that comes most to mind is just that you're able to remember what's critical about your customer, or at least your prospect, at the right time. That terrible word we've talked about before, follow up, where it's like, we gotta follow up and we gotta make sure we do it on a timely basis. We don't want to forget about that stuff, and sometimes you have multiple systems you're working with and that can get lost in the shuffle. I think as a sales rep, the other thing to understand is how important this data is for future sales and marketing and when things get slow, how do you identify opportunities? How do you go back to people and remember what you did for them? Remember what, you can even have things like birthdays and stuff in there, critical things that help you engage better with your customers. And I think we've seen it time and time again that great sales reps develop their own leads, develop their own relationships. And a CRM is critical to do that and be effective. I think, don't you have other thoughts there?

Michael Murray: Yeah, no, I 100% agree. I think it's making it so that you, it seems like you remember all these details without actually having to remember them all. I don't think, maybe some people are capable of doing that. My brain doesn't work that way. I have a really hard time keeping track of customers, people. If I'm selling work and stuff in our office, somebody will come ask me a question about a project. Hey, question on the John Smith project. And I'm like, I don't know who that is. Don't be bringing that over here. They're like, no, you sold it. I'm like, no, I didn't. And of course I did. I talked to hundreds of customers or whatever and it's like, all right, hold on, let me go look it up. And then I look it up and I'm like, oh, that's the one with the golden retriever dog and the kid that's going to this high school. And yeah, okay, now I remember. Okay, now we're on the same page. Oftentimes I remember what their house looked like. I just kind of forgot their name.

Jon Bryant: That's the problem.

Michael Murray: And it's like that's what the CRM allows us to do. I can just go reference that and not have to actually remember at all. I don't have to have that photographic memory.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, yeah. So let's talk a bit about other ways to leverage your CRM. So one, not a photographic memory. And you're trying to talk to your team as if you're trying to convince them to use this thing. What are you saying? What are your sales points for CRM to your team?

Michael Murray: Yeah, I think it's basically freeing up your brain to focus on more important things that are here and now and not forget to do the thing, the little things that are easy to forget. I got to call this customer back. I've got to send them an email. Customer had asked me for some data sheets on one of our products. I need to send that to them. Whatever you need to follow up all that. Follow-up's huge. So often it's like, oh, when's your last follow-up on this open deal that you've got here, this open quote that you've got. It's like, oh yeah, just last week. And you go in, if there actually is a CRM and you go and you look it up and it's like, no, it's actually been close to two weeks now. And it's just like, I feel all the time, I'm saying, man, can you believe that it's already the fall? It feels like summer just started. How is it already Friday? It feels like it's Tuesday. There's just no way. And that's what the CRM kind of helps to fix is I don't just let two or three days go by and forgot to do something as long as, again, as long as I'm using it, as long as I'm in there every day and I'm checking it out. So that's what I would say to our sales team is on a very micro level, it allows them to keep track of the individual communication that they're having with every single customer. So that no one customer is slipping through cracks. And it allows them to actually increase their volume of how many open quotes and deals that they can manage at a time without, again, dropping balls and forgetting to follow up and missing out on sales because of it.

Jon Bryant: So should we go through a couple of the elements that you can leverage here? Things that come to mind are when you're using a CRM, and I think it's probably worth talking about the few reasons why, or where you get real benefit here. So the follow-up is one big part. I think anytime you can use tagging to your advantage, if you have a CRM that allows you to tag different opportunities with different things, it allows you to go back and actually use lists to market, which becomes super powerful. An example I've seen before is, you paint someone's deck and you can put it on a reminder for yourself. If you're a sales rep, you should probably follow up in 1.75 years. And set a reminder where you can say, okay, hey, we did your deck two years ago. A maintenance coat might not be a bad idea. It's going to be a lot less work. So that's one really tangible way that I've seen it used. And I've also seen people generate lists that are relevant to that same problem, where you're like, I want to market to people who have done their decks three years ago and just say, maybe it's time for a maintenance coat. Or another example might be, you've done some cabinet work for them and they might not know about some other services and doing a sweep of your entire list isn't going to allow you to speak specifically to their needs. So now you can say, hey, we did those cabinets. Did you also know we do other interior work? And it becomes a way better message from a marketing perspective because it's far more direct and speaking to your customer. So I think a lot of times, I want to talk more about the value of sales reps, but there's a huge benefit for staying in touch with your customer from a marketing perspective and building better marketing campaigns. Have you guys done anything like that?

Michael Murray: For sure. I mean, yes, for sure. Yeah. We do this all the time. We're actually, we're recording this in the very beginning of the fall. We are really in our CRM this time of year because we're prepping for winter. And I know we did a separate episode on that, kind of more on winter type of an idea. But for us, beginning of August, we really start hitting winter sales. And the way that we do that is through a lot of very segmented lists. So it's not just past customers, although it is, but it's also different types of lost opportunities. And so we segment that in different ways. Maybe somebody requested a quote, but they never got one. We lost that lead. Basically we didn't convert that lead into a quote or we gave them an estimate and they didn't book. They did not sell with us either because they said no, or because they just kind of ghosted us, faded away and got lost in the ether. We followed up with them for a month or two and never heard back and just eventually marked it as lost. And so we want to create different lists so that we can hit people with different types of marketing. I don't want to tell somebody that had an exterior painting request that, it's time to schedule that interior painting project. I need to phrase that differently. It might be more of a, did you know that we do interior painting and now's a great time as we prep for the winter to take advantage of our best pricing. And it's by having those different segmented lists, it allows us to tailor our marketing to that. We even keep track of the reasons that somebody doesn't book. They might say they went with a competitor or the price was too high or things like that. And so then for example, if we can grab a list of interior projects that didn't book because reason was price was too high and now we can hit them with discount offers that are now available for winter work, which may very well resonate. And oftentimes what we find is many people six months, twelve months, even two years still haven't done the project. Life got busy and man, how's it already been two years since we last talked. So yeah, we do that a lot from that marketing perspective. One of the biggest things actually just hit my brain real quick and I'll let you jump in, is that a couple of years ago, we really started to focus in on lead conversion. And I think in our industry, in a lot of industries, not just painting, lead conversion is not something anybody talks about. We talk about estimate conversion, win rates or close rates, if you want to use that term. And people will talk about, I need more leads and how are your leads and leads are slow or leads are up or leads are this or whatever. Man, winter's coming, we're going to need more leads. We've got to spend more money on marketing. And I'm guilty as anybody. I mean, there's nothing I like more than spending some money on marketing. Don't tempt me with a good time, but the problem isn't always that we need more leads. The problem is for many of us that we need to do a better job of converting our leads into actual appointments and then do a better job of converting those appointments into actual sales. And that's where having a really good CRM and using it well can allow us to do that. Because it's not just somebody called us and we called them back and left them a voicemail. We called them a couple of days later and left them a voicemail and we never got hold of them. So they just never got an estimate. It's like, no, with our CRM in the way that we use it, it's a lot of automated texts, emails, but then again, these lists of people that we need to call and we can track and hey, did we call them the appropriate number of times in that first week and that second week and things like that. And we can.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, yeah, it gives you a lot more real insight into your funnel. And so there's benefits for sales reps and the benefit for sales reps is immediate. You're following up, you're doing a better job with your customer interactions. You're seeing how long things take and you can adjust your process accordingly. But there's also long-term benefits. And the long-term benefits is if you can use the way things are tagged properly, and just the actual pipeline of how these people interact with your company, there's gonna be a massive opportunity for this retargeting idea, and as well for spending marketing dollars in the right place, which helps the business overall and generates more leads, more healthy leads like you're referring to. Because we've had the internal discussion all the time of, we put a bunch of money into Google, we get some leads, we meet our sales goals, and then we think, we just gotta put the same amount of money into Google. And if you don't track the Google leads properly, you can sometimes spend a lot of money on someone who just needs two boards painted on their house. Well, that wasn't a great lead. But without the data behind it, you're kind of aiming blindly at a bunch of these things. You gotta keep track. And my experience is that keeping track is hard, especially if you're doing it outside of a system that kind of facilitates that. So a good CRM should be able to identify lead sources, be able to identify a win rate from that lead source. You should be able to compare your spend in marketing to that expense of getting a job and see this source actually costs way more money to get a good lead from than this one does. And we can start to make better decisions. Because you're right, the idea of a lead is not a lead. It feels good. Great, we got a lead. And they were looking to get their lawn cut. OK, that wasn't a good lead. So.

Michael Murray: Yeah. Even, but to your point though, even if it's not, even if it's I need my whole house painted, if it's somebody that was referred to your business, that's different than somebody who found you on Facebook or somebody who got a flyer or saw your TV commercial or whatever types of lead generation campaigns you're doing. And tracking those things and not just seeing this as one number, but it's a number, you shouldn't have the same expectation for TV commercial return as you do for Facebook, as you do for maybe an email marketing campaign to your past customers. Those are completely different audiences and completely different, targeting parts of the funnel that you're doing there. And they can all be very valuable. Some of those are going to, might take a long time. They might have a long tail to them. We see a pretty long tail when we do direct mail. We get a bunch of calls when direct mail pieces hit, then for the next few months we'll still be getting calls from that. And if we're not careful, we can make bad decisions and maybe stop doing something that was actually performing really well.

Jon Bryant: Yeah. So we're kind of talking a little bit around the issue here, but at PaintScout now, we released a CRM. And so it was, we put a lot of thought into what this takes as a painting contractor to do it. But some of those critical elements, we understand, this isn't the program for everybody. And so as you're looking at CRMs, maybe you're evaluating it, what are the things specifically, Michael, you're looking for? You've chosen one, you've chosen many, I'm sure. I mean, it's too many. So how are you evaluating this stuff to make good decisions?

Michael Murray: I think one, it's ease of use. That's probably really much so at the top. Because if we're not going to use it, the team, the people in the company aren't going to use it, then all the bells and whistles really don't matter. I think it's got to play well with others, meaning I've got to be able to integrate it with some of the other software to some extent, so I can at least move data around. Maybe using Zapier or Make or things like that. And I want to be able to do some of the things that we just talked about, be able to segment some lists, get some quick visual ideas. We didn't really talk about, you mentioned the word pipeline before, but having a pipeline, a visual pipeline so that I can see different stages that sales opportunities are sitting in. It gives me some leading indicators as to where our sales may be headed so I can get ahead of issues. So it's not always just looking at lagging sales indicators, how much did we sell, how many estimates did we do, which I guess can also be a leading indicator. But yeah, anyway, so that's what I'm looking for when I'm thinking about a CRM.

Jon Bryant: And when you, okay, so love that. We've talked before about, I know if we've done it on the podcast or not, but this concept of all in one software being more watered down.

Michael Murray: Stupid.

Michael Murray: Yeah. I don't think anybody, it's like, as much as we all say that, it's just nobody really thinks that that's possible. Even, I mean, in other parts of other industries or whatever, in home services, Service Titan is often seen as this big kind of all in one software. I would say that's the closest thing to it. It's extremely expensive. And it's, but I'm not saying it's not worth it. It is targeting a specific type of market. And to be clear, not really the painting market. It's really built for home service companies, not home improvement companies. Think HVAC and plumbing and electric, dispatch and just parts of the business that we don't necessarily have. But again, but even still, it's not like you only have one software because of that. I would imagine, you're still using QuickBooks and, whatever your accounting software is, or you're still having a phone system and, there's still a lot of different things that it's like, are we really looking for one perfect tool that does everything really well? Because what ends up happening, and this is you and I have really talked about, is you just end up with some watered down thing that is missing really key features, but then we don't have to have multiple logins. And it's like, yeah, but you're missing out on core functionality that would drive real value to your business.

Jon Bryant: Yeah. And I mean, I've likened it to, if you're a professional chef and you've got a Swiss army knife, you can probably still cook a meal, but it's going to leave a lot to be desired. And so to really, you need specialty tools to drive really high end. And in our case, control the business properly and deliver what our customers are looking for. And.

Michael Murray: I mean you could paint the entire house with a two inch paintbrush. Good. I don't know that that's more efficient than having a sprayer and a roller and a couple different sizes of rollers and a couple different brushes and all the different things.

Jon Bryant: You could, yeah.

Michael Murray: That was a paint analogy.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, yeah, it's hard to debate that. I think, as we've gone through this, for all those listening, Michael's breaking it down in language that we all understand. It's just an interesting concept. As I've gone through this process and fought this idea of not building the, sorry, building the best tool in a certain area. So in this case PaintScout tried to build the best world-class sales tool we can for painting contractors, generate quick pricing and deliver professional proposals and keep yourself organized. We've tried to fight any external shiny objects. And one of those things we fought is this idea that we're not going to try to be everything. It's like that's the last thing we want to do because of all the things we've talked about. And I think this change, this idea of CRM, when we're talking about what we need, when you actually go out and look at what's available, it's really not built specifically for what we need. Most softwares you see out there, you're gonna use 5% of it, it's the CRM for a painting contractor and it's gonna be kind of a little bit cobbled together. It's not really streamlined for what we do. And so evaluating that problem was really critical for us to say, we can actually do something here that complements a sales tool, really supports what we do as sales professionals and as painting business owners to go to the next level because nobody's actually spent the time to take interest in us specifically. It was a lot of general CRMs, like you said, you guys use one right now. I've used many. And it was a chance to say, you know what, actually there's a chance, a way here to build something world-class for what we do and take all those elements of what you do need and get rid of all the rest and just say, you know what, let's do this the right way. Let's make it easy, approachable, good for companies. And we can still do that in a world-class way and support this idea that world-class software is needed for what we do. I think deep down, I mean, I've talked about this before, but I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder about how I kind of hate the painting industry, if I'm honest, but I hate it in a way that's the painting industry is a person and that person went before us and has a bad reputation. And so you're associated with them, you're associated with that bad person. I don't, you're now lumped in with them. And I think there's a chance to actually change that dialogue about what we do and about our industry and institute a bit of pride. I've said it, you've said it, we don't deserve anything nice. Why do we think that? Where's the head trash there? There's a chance actually through systems and through software to train our customers to respect us more. And we can do that through.

Michael Murray: Mm.

Jon Bryant: Through software, I think, and through that customer interaction in CRM. And so it's highly motivating for me to be like, what can we do to change the dialogue here about our industry and what we do, and we are professional. And so, yeah, or there's parts of it that we just do really, really well. Actually, I think even better than some other industries with changes like this. So I'm highly motivated by that. And I think everything that we're talking about is something we've tried to take into account with that change. And if you're a sales rep it's going to vastly increase your efficiency, keep you focused. Like we talked about if you're a business owner it is going to streamline your business, revolutionize the way you feel, and interact with your customers. So those are all great reasons. And anyways, I'll get off my soapbox.

Michael Murray: Yeah, I mean, I think just real quick, one of the most important or one of the most valuable things that we have as a business owner, if you're going to go to market and you're going to, I want to sell this asset. Well, that's what we're doing. If you're listening to this and you own a painting business, you need to think about that as an asset. It's an investment. You need to get a return on that investment and you need to be able to sell it to get that return. So, okay, fair. One of the things, once you start to see your business that way, you're going to say, okay, well, what does it mean to have a sellable business? And that's a big question. But in our industry, painting businesses have historically struggled to sell at a high multiple. And there's a lot of reasons for that. And one of the things though that can help to solve that is by having a really strong customer list and having really strong relationships. There is a huge increase in the realization that in residential home services and residential home improvement, there's a lot of value. But a lot of that value is in that relationship with the customer. It takes so much to get a customer to trust us to come to their house, work on their home, around their family, and things like that. And then if you do really well with it, we all know that they're going to want to come back and use you again because it's hard to find good, trusted home improvement professionals. And if you can show your business has the ability to do that and you've built these strong relationships and you keep it all organized and you keep track of it, you now have a much more sellable asset. And that's one of the things that a CRM can do. You're not trying to say, yeah, here's my shoe box of all the papers of all the customers that we did work for, which maybe somebody who's running their business back in the 1900s would do. But no, I've got this really well organized software and here's the login for it and once that check clears you get that login and you get to pick up those relationships that I've been building for all these years. That's worth something. It's worth something to you today and it's worth something to whomever might be interested in buying that business.

Jon Bryant: Yeah. I would say definitely in that meeting, they'll start with the shoe box. Bring that out and be like, yeah, here's all my stuff. Give me that check. It's really good. And then blow them away.

Michael Murray: Yeah. Scare them.

Michael Murray: I think that's what most people are expecting from our industry, unfortunately.

Jon Bryant: Exactly.

Jon Bryant: Yeah. I mean, it's absolutely right. There's value all over the place here for an effectively run business, effectively run sales department, effectively run sale. There's all of those value pieces that become good. CRM can tie together for you, kind of in a bow, and if done correctly, makes it feel seamless as it actually all happens. It shouldn't feel like friction.

Michael Murray: Yeah, it's making, you know, the hope here is we're gonna make people's lives easier to run the business, to sell really high profitable work, build awesome relationships with their customers, and not have to work an incredible amount of time and not have to try to remember it all in your head, and you now have this amazing tool that's gonna help you do that. Yeah, I don't think people need to be afraid that this is going to be super complicated or super difficult to use or anything like that. I've been lucky enough to play with the beta for the last couple of months. And it's something I'm really excited about. I'm really passionate about it. The reason you and I both were excited to start doing this podcast, however long ago that was, I can't remember anymore, was because we felt like if painting companies do a better job of selling, well, first of all, pricing jobs well. And then selling jobs at a high price that are fair, you can really start to fix a lot of the things in our businesses and then in our industry at large. You can take care of people, you can offer benefits, you can take care of your customers, you can invest in better equipment, better vehicles, do all the things. And, but if you're not pricing jobs well and you're not selling well, all of that other stuff downstream becomes really difficult and having a tool like this, I think it's going to make it even easier.

Jon Bryant: I mean, you said it to me last week about 70 to 80% of the problem in our businesses is just pricing and selling jobs properly. And that really resonates with me in that, like I said before, everything starts with a sale. We want to make sure that sale is well done. We want to make sure the price makes sense. You talk about a high price, I think more of a fair price. I think we've been undervalued and giving away our services for what is actually quite a complicated thing that we do and it's hard work. And so I think that if done properly, like you said, it brings tremendous value to our businesses, to our people, to our customers. And ultimately, I think the reason we started doing this is just to raise that level as slightly as we could, that there's an understanding out there that this information exists, this kind of product exists, that we're in this together and there's a way to solve this problem for all of us. And I get a lot of value out of that. I hope you guys as listeners do too, because it's driven from that perspective of let's share what we know. What little we feel like we know, we still have so much to learn, I think. And just what you can take away from this is that genuineness of us trying to be helpful. So yeah, anyways, Michael, thanks man. That's probably a good spot to end today.

Michael Murray: Cool. I'm excited for it. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I'm excited. I'm looking forward to all the feedback that we get. I do think there's a lot of awesome opportunities and hoping people are going to be taking advantage of it.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, so if you're a painting contractor listening, feel free to check out the new PaintScout CRM. I mean, I say new, I don't know when this is gonna be released, so it could be old by that point. And check it out, see how it works for your business. And we love that you've listened to the whole thing. So feel free to give us a like and subscribe. Keeps us energized. And we will see you next time on Price Sell Paint. Thanks, Michael.