One of the pivotal
decisions you’ll make for your business is the CRM that you choose.
De-risk this process by understanding how a CRM powers efficiency.
Let’s talk about it on today’s episode of Closing Time.
Thanks for tuning in to Closing Time, the show for Go to Market Leaders.
I’m Val Riley, head of marketing for Unbounce, Insightly, and LeadsRx.
Today I’m joined by Vanessa Hunt.
She is a CRM consultant with over 20 years of experience in this category.
Vanessa, thanks so much for coming back and visiting with us.
Thank you very much, yeah, lovely to be back again.
And you’re showing my age there.
I do love speaking with you, Vanessa, because I feel like
you have such a unique perspective.
You know, we’re talking about
CRM day in and day out here because we work for a CRM.
But you’re out there fighting the good fight,
working with businesses really hands on, rolling up your sleeves
with multiple CRMs.
So your perspective is super valuable to us.
Thanks very much.
Yeah, it’s a really exciting place to be working.
All right.
So what are you seeing right now as the main issues
that people are having with CRM selection and implementation?
I think in some ways the problems haven’t really changed since 20 years ago.
Because if anything, it’s the technology’s going really, really fast.
The development,
the speed that we see, new features and functionality coming out is amazing.
But unfortunately, people still only have
a certain capacity to be able to adopt new technology.
And it’s almost like a lot of companies are running even leaner than before.
You know, we’ve seen a lot of redundancies recently in the,
you know, in the software space especially.
And so those teams are much smaller.
They’re trying to do business as usual.
But in addition to that, you know, they’re also trying to implement,
you know, really strategic, exciting projects around AI and CRM.
And and I just feel
that, you know, resource wise, we’re kind of more stretched than before.
But, you know, obviously that gives us great, great,
opportunities to make massive improvements.
If we can make our implementation successful.
I like that you note how old this category is,
but that there’s still innovation happening in this category.
But what do you say when people say, oh, CRM, it’s just old, stodgy technology.
I think I think what’s really amazing is, you know, looking back
right at the start of my CRM career, you know, it was revolutionary
to be adding, you know, new tasks and activities to a CRM.
And what we’re seeing now
is that technology and AI are helping us do that even faster.
We are getting access to scripts and recordings that are helping,
you know, surface, you know, the, the insights
and the things that we might say first to a customer and,
and so it’s taking a lot of the legwork, if you like, out of putting the data in.
And we truly are starting
to see the value that those CRMs, you know, promised us 20 years ago.
But but now, you know,. I think that that really is realistic
to to to know that we are saving time, we are being more productive.
And technology
is supporting us to do the things, you know, that only humans can do.
So it’s it’s not your grandfather’s CRM.
That’s what I’m hearing.
no, definitely no, no, I yeah, definitely always learning every day.
You know, we’re learning new things and and so again as a as you know my role
as a consultant,
you’re often trying to distill and find the things that are going to make
a massive difference to customers rather than them finding it themselves.
They just they just haven’t got the time to absorb all of that.
There’s new communications
and new functionality that’s being brought out every day.
That’s very true.
We see that in our daily practice.
So it’s nice to hear you echo that insightly recently commissioned
a research report.
We partnered with an organization, a research firm called Ascend2.
And the that firm, they, interviewed,
GTM professionals about CRM selection.
There is one really interesting data point, that said, 86% of fully
adopted CRMs are seen as a good fit.
But when a CRM is only partially adopted,
that that satisfaction ranking drops by, you know, more than 20 points.
So it seems pretty obvious.
But what’s that data point telling us about what the implementation
and adoption really means for CRM?
I think, I think it really comes back to whether people were clear
on their objectives and requirements of the value that CRM might bring.
And so often when you don’t see, you know, really high figures,
in those sort of metrics, it could be
that people knew they needed a CRM, but they didn’t really know why.
And so that clarity, of why
a particular CRM should win over another one, is a bit more blurred.
When you have really clear requirements, you already have things that, you know,
you want to measure, whether that’s improvements in customer satisfaction,
the rate in which deals are moving through your pipeline,
the hit rates of your marketing emails, all those things
are really clear measures.
But if you don’t know what you’re measuring from the outset,
I think somebody famous said that, you know, then,
you know, you can’t really say whether you’re improving or not.
And if you don’t feel that improvement and feel those benefits in your daily role,
you know you’re going to be a bit more nonplused about it.
You know, people don’t get particularly excited about using word.
You know, it just works.
But with CRM, I think you because it’s another piece of technology
on top of what you’re already using as standard, I think it’s really important
to know, you know, why why you were introducing it from a company
perspective as well, not just, you know, your team and your part of the world.
Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.
And that really does add up with what that statistic is telling us.
So one thing we hear a lot
is speed of implementation and time to value.
So folks are looking at this like huge piece of software
and they’re investing in it.
And they want to know, you know how how soon are we going to see value.
But we want to make sure they’re not rushing through the key details.
How does that show up in in the real world, in your work?
I think yeah.
It’s like in the, in the olden days, you know 20 years ago
it was very much around, you know waterfall projects
where you would be planning for months and months
until you actually implemented the CRM in full.
Certainly nowadays people are working in,
in a no more agile way, not necessarily using an agile methodology,
but trying to see small benefits for each team right from the outset.
And so that actually it’s kind of harder in a way, because you have to strip out,
all of the things that you could do and would like to do and really focus on
what can we do in the next ten days, what can we do in the next 30 days?
But but if you do it that way, then often users are going to start
seeing benefits that even you didn’t see from the outset.
And help drive, you know, how the system should be improved for them going forward.
So I think allowing, you know, having a maybe a lower threshold in terms
of adoption from the outset and the amount of functionality that you’re covering,
actually, you know, helps you get that maturity gets get the adoption
so that you can then do the more exciting things later.
But I think the more that you’re holding off, you know, there’s an opportunity cost
in that, you know, every kind of month or quarter of delay is actually costing
you efficiencies that you could probably have had by implementing the CRM first,
you know, with a much smaller amount of features for people to adopt.
So it might just be things
like activity tracking, collaboration in terms of your email tracking,
using it, you know, for marketing and campaign management.
And those are just,
you know, quite standard things really, that most organizations would be doing.
But if you didn’t do those and you’ve been living out of an Excel spreadsheet,
those things in themselves can have a massive impact.
You know, just within a quarter, you know, of the year.
I imagine, too, that that type of process where we’re, doing
sort of like a minimum viable product, where we’re saying, okay,
we’re going to start using these features and then we’re going to add these
and then these almost plays to the human nature element
that you mentioned earlier,
meaning that you don’t have to learn to use every single button
that’s on the left side of the CRM or every single menu item in week one.
Let’s just start with these.
So it almost allows you to phase training in
in a way that maybe doesn’t seem so overwhelming to users.
Yeah, yeah.
And I think,
you know, again, many years ago,. I would I’d be shipped across, you know,
to Europe to do a training course, you know,
a 2 or 3 day training course, even for sales team members.
And now it’s much more about, you know, let’s do an hour,
you know, as a prerequisite, let’s do a little bit of e-learning.
Let’s follow that up with, you know, a couple of hourly sessions every day.
So sort of smaller, you know, regular sessions, again, are much more,
palatable in terms of your, your time and availability.
But equally just your, your capacity to learn.
So, yeah, small, small and modular training is definitely, the way to go.
I think.
Thanks for pointing that out.
The capacity to learn, because, you know, people are doing their jobs
and have many other things going on, and so they might not have the mindshare
to, you know, spend eight hours in one week learning this new system.
But, you know, would they watch a 30 minute video
or attend a small session and then start using it and then practice?
Yes, they probably will.
So I think sometimes on paper, our expectations
of people’s learning capacity might not really match the real world.
No. Absolutely no. Yeah.
And I think also, you know, people get, you know, a lot of everybody’s free
or a lot of people are very conscientious.
You know, they don’t want to feel that they’ve missed out,
that they haven’t done as much as they need to.
So there is certainly a fear factor that you don’t necessarily get,
you know, with a younger audience,
you know, with children, they’ll they’ll try anything.
But as adults, you know, trying to say to people, don’t worry about that bit,
we’re going to cover that later.
You know, actually people, people do worry.
And so, yeah, going back to the design of the system,
you need to try and trim it back as far as you can
and, and not overwhelm them in the same, same way that you do with web design.
You know, it’s very much about designing something that looks comfortable as well
You touched on this a little bit but I want to go back.
If there were a handful of vital features that you would say, okay,
in our initial implementation or in our first iteration or our,
our first sprint, we’re going to make sure that these
couple of features are definitely in the hands of the teams.
What would you say those are?
Yeah,. I think, definitely outlook integration
or Gmail or whatever your, your email client is.
That that’s definitely a must because one
of the key drivers usually for CRM is that, you know,
collaboration across teams and knowing that you’re not duplicating effort.
So that’s one of the first things.
It has to work really well and be straightforward.
I think just
simple things like having, you know, clear pipeline stages,
making sure that your sales process, is, you know, is easy to understand.
Shows you some, some visual clues or cues.
As to data that’s needed or missing, alerting you.
Yeah.
And again, none of it’s particularly rocket science, but,
you know, having those alerts, you know, you for following up on tasks,
it just helps, you know, instilling that kind of discipline,
that, you know, helps you also feel secure in your CRM
that you don’t have to remember everything your CRM is going to show you.
Your CRM will notify you.
And it’s just layering that kind of richer information that joins
all of the records and connections together that you just don’t get in
a, you know, in a simple spreadsheet that’s very flat and one dimensional.
So I think just that interconnection of the data
and the structure and then that obviously lends itself to better reporting.
So instantly,
you know, you should be getting insights that you, again, didn’t have before.
If you didn’t have a CRM.
Yeah, I mean that’s just where the value really starts to drive home.
So back to that report.
There was another data point that really stood out to me.
It showed that when folks were extremely satisfied, which is pretty strong word,
extremely satisfied with their CRM, they are five times more likely to see,
strong efficiency gains and four times more likely to report
significant revenue growth, which is, you know, what we’re all after.
So if you had to say what would be the pathway
to extremely satisfied, because that the revenue growth
and the and the efficiency gains,. I mean, that’s valuable stuff.
So how can we get CRM purchasers to that, that level
where they’re extremely satisfied?
I think, I think the key thing, again,
is having reasonable but ambitious expectations.
So, so knowing what I think really, being clear
about what the key drivers are for your own business and what will
what you’re really trying to achieve, you know, that’s one thing
that you have to have before you start, because, you know, a lot of businesses
will say, well, I want I want a new CRM because I want to generate new business.
Okay.
Actually, a lot of business can be, you know, brought from the customers
that you already have.
So one of the key things that, you know,. I like looking at with customers is
what which of your customers is already, you know, a
fantastic customer, which of the customers that you may be all serving.
But, you know, it’s probably better
not to because you know, you’ve moved on in terms of your strategy.
So actually just understanding who your customers are,
you know, that’s one of the first things that your CRM will provide you with.
Once you start understanding that, then,
you know, okay, well, why were we successful with that customer?
What should we be doing more of?
And it isn’t necessarily about doing lots of new lead generation.
It may be more about providing better customer service.
It may be about having regular touchpoints.
How do you expand, you know, the growth of your revenue
with those, clients that you already have.
And so, yeah, so being ultra satisfied,. I guess it’s it’s very personal as well.
You know, it might be for one person that they, they don’t get nagged
by everybody in the team and chased for every little bit of information.
For someone else, it might be,. I just want to be on the road
more, speaking to customers more and having more customer meetings.
So everybody’s measuring it in a different way.
So it’s it is very subjective.
But ultimately if you have happy users, who are doing,
you know, more of the things that they, they know they should be doing and enjoy,
then naturally you get this,
these efficiencies which naturally help you drive more revenue
because you can spend time on the things that are most important.
So I think, yeah, it’s
I guess it also points to the fact that you need
you need a custom approach, you know, one CRM implementation is
is not the same as another because teams are different.
Responsibilities of those teams are different.
And so an implementation for one group of ten people might be very,
very different to another group in another sector of ten users.
So I think
understanding that it’s personal
and understanding that everybody has personal motivations,
and that’s really what will then help you satisfy
those people to get the best out of the CRM.
That’s a long answer to a short question.
Sorry.
Now it’s very thoughtful though.
And and it really does resonate.
Let’s talk a little bit about budgets,. I think.
I think a lot of companies are looking realistically at their budgets.
One data point that we saw in the report, was that sales teams that fully adopt
their CRM are two times more likely to report a major boost in sales.
And the difference was pretty extreme.
With that in mind, you know, it can be tempting to move quickly.
But you’re seeing businesses being realistic about what they can
and can’t afford.
And afford in terms of like, what we can have,
what systems we can afford to buy and, and how much can we time and effort
and energy can we afford to get into this first iteration of a CRM?
So it’s a is that was that is am I zeroing in on the right thing?
Yeah, I think
I think sometimes people think they’ve got to have everything
right from day one, and sometimes that is best for that company.
But but equally, you can start small, you know, like we
said, seeing those sort of small benefits to start with
and then gradually expanding, you know, the software that you’re using.
So, so a lot of
my clients will start with you, you know, very much focused on sales pipeline.
And then they, you know, might progress to using marketing
because they now understand their customers
and now they know which customers they’d like to target next.
Other organizations might be focusing on customer service first.
Because again, they’re trying to keep the customers
that they already have by providing excellent service.
And then they, you know, move backwards
and go for pipeline and then marketing next.
So you can absolutely break up that kind of core functionality.
But I guess the other ways that you,
that you might save because if you’ve got quite a small company, actually,
you might need all of those at the same time.
So ways that you might, you know, look to reduce your total
cost of ownership for your software or can you commit for longer.
So just like telephone contracts,
you know, the longer you can commit and sign up for the better.
Can you, you know, include more users from the outset.
So again, a lot of software companies, you know, will be happier
if you’re using more products
and using more products with more people in your team.
So if you can promise to, you know, adopt it from a wider perspective,
then there may be, you know, discounts or offers, that apply.
But I think ultimately, you know, I,. I when people say to me,
all CRM is expensive, you know, if you look at an hour of your time
and what you can do in an hour or in a day and you say, I prepare to pay,
you know, I might buy my team, you know, free pizza, you know, once a month.
Actually, you know, could that money, you know, go to providing more,
better software that allows you to do your work better?
You still have pizza as well?
Of course.
But, you know, ultimately,
there should be the software that you buy should be helping you.
You know, I, I have software that I use for process design.
And every month I think, oh, you know, it cost me quite a lot for this software.
But the moment that I need it saves me so much time.
So looking at how frequently people need the software,
the impact of it when they can, use it,
and then, you know, weighing up am I, am I getting enough bang for my buck?
But but that does mean that you have to think about
what do I expect users to be doing in the system?
Are they regular users, and not everybody needs a license?
You know, people have to kind of earn their license, to use the CRM.
And, and obviously,
you know, be able to have an impact on revenue or cost savings as a result.
Right.
I think you know with any software tool but specifically CRM, it’s
you know total cost of ownership versus the return on investment.
Right.
And like you say sometimes it’s
it’s just that it’s there and it’s ready and it does what I need when I need it.
That, you know, certainly fits into the equation
when you’re thinking about ROI.
Vanessa, any final thoughts before we wrap up any, trends
or anything you’re seeing as we move into 2026 with CRM?
I suppose it’d be interesting to know.
Yeah.
Insightly’s or Unbounce’s view on on AI.
And there’s obviously a lot of talk about AI.
Again, I mean, working with smaller organizations where, you know,
that’s going to be slower adopters again, just because of the nature
of all the other things that that are happening in their world.
But it feels like. AI has become the new CRM.
You know, we talked about the internet,
mobile phones changing everything, the internet changing everything.
Then it was Covid and then CR, CRM before Covid, and now it’s AI.
And I kind of feel like there’s this new big bubble, you know, coming.
But yeah, just be interesting to know what Insightly’s road
map is from that perspective as well.
Yeah, it’s very timely because we have, a copilot
that’s launching in the CRM.
So those queries that you need that rather than, you know, having to
request a report and put in all your parameters, you just tell the copilot,
hey, can you tell me the top ten deals that are most likely to close this month?
And out shoots your answer.
It’s a really exciting time to be in CRM through that lens,
because so many of the things that required a lot of work
and some drudgery are now going to be fast
tracked so much more quickly with this copilot.
And then, of course, we also have some additional
AI features in the platform where you can summarize an email
very easily using AI or respond to an email.
Get the AI to write a response for you very quickly.
So you know, little places
where we’re seeing a lot of value and a lot of ways to like just reduce
the drudgery of using a CRM is where
Insightly is looking to drop AI in.
Is that what you’re seeing in the market?
Yeah.
And I think that
that’s also one thing I would say is the going back to requirements is choosing
CRM is also about choosing a company that’s on the same roadmap as you.
So you know your goals and aspirations align with what a company is doing.
And so obviously yeah, everybody’s got an AI copilot
and agents, you know, coming down the line.
And I think that that is exciting.
You know, even,
you know, for me that the things that you’re used to, that,
you know, they’re out there.
But actually, when you start seeing people use it and,
you know, having that little, piece of excitement when their first draft
email is written for them and just allowing them, again, more time
to customize it.
And personalize it rather than writing out the same standard things.
So yeah, it’s definitely an area that I’m excited about.
And yeah, I don’t know what’s going to be next though.
Yeah, I think I think we’ll have a lot to chew on with AI for the,
for the next couple of years.
So many advances that we’ll likely see.
So, really, you know, it is an exciting industry.
I know you have a front row seat to it, so I really appreciate you
joining us on this episode.
Thank you very much.
Has been lovely to see you again.. Thank you.
The, the report that we referenced, we’re going to link that in the show notes.
Vanessa, if folks want to learn more from you or get some insights
from you and your expertise, what’s the best way to reach you?
Yeah. Like everybody else probably.
I’m on LinkedIn, so yeah, very happy to connect on LinkedIn.
I do have a website, which is VanessaHunt.co.uk.
But yeah, feel free to drop me a note on LinkedIn.
And, yeah, I can help you, either select
a CRM or, maybe just have a chat about CRM in general.
Thanks very much.
Thank you.
And thanks to all of you for tuning in.
Remember, you can get this episode and every episode of Closing Time
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We’ll see you next week.
