Podcasts about crm customer relationship management

In this episode of the Grow A Small Business Podcast, host Troy Vance Morris, the founder of Deliver Service Now institute, joins the podcast to share his journey from a decade at Disney to building and scaling multiple successful home service businesses. He talks about creating premium customer experiences, growing his companies to a point where he now works only 90 minutes a week on operations, and the strategies he uses to retain loyal clients. Vance also explains how he transitioned from employee to entrepreneur, overcame major financial challenges, and built a strong team culture. His story highlights resilience, smart marketing, and the power of systems in business growth. Why would you wait any longer to start living the lifestyle you signed up for? Balance your health, wealth, relationships and business growth. And focus your time and energy and make the most of this year. Let's get into it by clicking here. Troy delves into our guest's startup journey, their perception of success, industry reconsideration, and the pivotal stress point during business expansion. They discuss the joys of small business growth, vital entrepreneurial habits, and strategies for team building, encompassing wins, blunders, and invaluable advice. And a snapshot of the final five Grow A Small Business Questions: 1. What do you think is the hardest thing in growing a small business? Vance Morris has shared that the hardest thing is simply sticking with it. Most people give up too early when they hit financial pressure, setbacks, or slow periods, but long-term success comes from pushing through those tough moments. 2. What's your favorite business book that has helped you the most? Vance Morris has shared that his most valuable business book is "The Ultimate Sales Letter" by Dan Kennedy, which transformed how he approaches marketing and communication with customers. 3. Are there any great podcasts or online learning resources you'd recommend to help grow a small business? Vance Morris has shared that he regularly uses MasterClass for high-level learning from experts, and finds it extremely useful for expanding mindset and gaining inspiration from top performers in different fields. 4. What tool or resource would you recommend to grow a small business? Vance Morris has shared that every small business must have a CRM (Customer Relationship Management system) to track clients, marketing, and follow-ups — it becomes essential once your customer base grows. 5. What advice would you give yourself on day one of starting out in business? Vance Morris has shared that he would tell himself "Don't give up." There were many moments when quitting seemed easier, but staying persistent through financial challenges is what led to long-term success. Book a 20-minute Growth Chat with Troy Trewin to see if you qualify for our upcoming course. Don't miss out on this opportunity to take your small business to new heights! Enjoyed the podcast? Please leave a review on iTunes or your preferred platform. Your feedback helps more small business owners discover our podcast and embark on their business growth journey.     Quotable quotes from our special Grow A Small Business podcast guest: Deliver an experience your competitors can't copy and your customers won't forget — Vance Morris You can't grow a business you're not measuring every single day — Vance Morris Freedom in business comes from systems, not from working more hours — Vance Morris      

How to Build a Winning Strategy for Your B2B Brand In a fast-paced business environment, marketers, agencies, and consultants must proactively help clients differentiate their brands in the marketplace. One way of doing this is by analyzing the strategy, messaging, and brand positioning, both for their own brands and key competitors. So how can teams conduct this kind of brand research and competitive analysis in a way that's insightful, efficient, and actionable for planning the next steps? Tune in as the B2B Marketers on Mission Podcast presents the Marketing DEMO Lab Series, where we sit down with Clay Ostrom (Founder, Map & Fire) and his SmokeLadder platform designed for brand research, messaging and positioning analysis, and competitive benchmarking. In this episode, Clay explained the platform's origins and features, emphasizing its role in analyzing brand positioning, core messaging, and competitive landscapes. He also stressed the importance of clear, consistent brand positioning and messaging, and how standardized make it easier to compare brands across multiple business values. Clay also highlighted the value of objective, data-driven analysis to identify brand strengths, weaknesses, and gaps, and how tools like SmokeLadder can save significant time in gathering insights to build trust with clients. He provided practical steps for generating, refining, and exporting brand messaging and analysis for internal or client-facing use. Finally, Clay also discussed how action items and recommendations generated from analysis can immediately support smart brand strategy decisions and expedite trust-building with clients. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4_o1PzF1Kk Topics discussed in episode: [1:31] The purpose behind building SmokeLadder and why it matters for B2B teams [12:00] A walkthrough of the SmokeLadder platform and how it works [14:51] SmokeLadder's core features [17:48] How positioning scores and category rankings are calculated [35:36] How differentiation and competitors are analyzed inside SmokeLadder [44:07] How SmokeLadder builds messaging and generates targeted personas [50:24] The key benefits and unique capabilities that set SmokeLadder apart Companies and links: Clay Ostrom Map & Fire SmokeLadder Transcript Christian Klepp  00:00 In an increasingly competitive B2B landscape, marketers, agencies and consultants, need to proactively find ways to help their clients stand out amidst the digital noise. One way of doing this is by analyzing the strategy, messaging and positioning of their own brands and those of their competitors. So how can they do this in a way that’s insightful, efficient and effective? Welcome to this first episode of the B2B Marketers in the Mission podcast Demo Lab Series, and I’m your host, Christian Klepp. Today, I’ll be talking to Clay Ostrom about this topic. He’s the owner and founder of the branding agency Map and Fire, and the creator of the platform Smoke Ladder that we’ll be talking about today. So let’s dive in. Christian Klepp  00:42 All right, and I’m gonna say Clay Ostrom. Welcome to this first episode of the Demo Lab Series. Clay Ostrom  00:50 I am super excited and very honored to be the first guest on this new series. It’s awesome. Christian Klepp  00:56 We are honored to have you here. And you know, let’s sit tight, or batten down the hatches and buckle up, and whatever other analogy you want to throw in there, because we are going to unpack a lot of interesting features and discuss interesting topics around the platform that you’ve built. And I think a good place to start, perhaps Clay before we start doing a walk through of the platform is, but let’s start at the very beginning. What motivated you to create this platform called Smoke Ladder. Clay Ostrom  01:31 So we should go all the way back to my childhood. I always dreamed of, you know, working on brand and positioning. You know, that was something I’ve always thought of since the early days, but no, but I do. I own an agency called Map and Fire, so I’ve been doing this kind of work for over 10 years now, and have worked with lots and lots of different kinds of clients, and over that time, developed different frameworks and a point of view about how to do this kind of work, and when the AI revolution kind of hit us all, it just really struck me that this was an opportunity to take a lot of that thinking and a lot of that, you know, again, my perspective on how to do this work and productize that and turn it into something that could be used by people when we’re not engaged with them, in some kind of service offering. So, so that was kind of the kernel of it. I actually have a background in computer science and product. So it was sort of this natural Venn diagram intersection of I can do some product stuff, I can do brand strategy stuff. So let’s put it together and build something. Christian Klepp  02:46 And the rest, as they say, is history. Clay Ostrom  02:49 The rest, as they say, is a lot of nights and weekends and endless hours slaving away at trying to build something useful. Christian Klepp  02:58 Sure, sure, that certainly is part of it, too. Clay Ostrom  03:01 Yeah. Christian Klepp  03:02 Let’s not keep the audience in suspense for too long here, right? Like, let’s start with the walk through. And before you share your screen, maybe I’ll set this up a little bit, right? Because you, as you said, like, you know, you’ve built this platform. It’s called Smoke Ladder, which I thought was a really clever name. It’s, you like to describe it as, like, your favorite SEO (Search Engine Optimization) tool, but for brand research and analysis. So I would say, like, walk us through how somebody would use this platform, like, whether they be a marketer that’s already been like in the industry for years, or is starting out, or somebody working at a brand or marketing agency, and how does the platform address these challenges or questions that people have regarding brand strategy, analysis and research? Clay Ostrom  03:49 Yeah, yeah. I use that analogy of the SEO thing, just because, especially early on, I was trying to figure out the best way to describe it to someone who hasn’t seen it before. I feel like it’s a, I’m not going to fall into the trap of saying, this is the only product like this, but it has its own unique twists with what it can do. And I felt like SEO tools are something everybody has touched at one point or another. So I was using this analogy of, it’s like the s, you know, Semrush of positioning and messaging or Ahrefs, depending on your if you’re a Coke or Pepsi person. But I always felt like that was just a quick way to give a little idea of the fact that it’s both about analyzing your own brand, but it’s also about competitive analysis and being able to see what’s going on in the market or in your landscape, and looking specifically at what your competitors are doing and what their strengths and weaknesses are. So does that resonate with you in terms of, like, a shorthand way, I will say, I don’t. I don’t say that. It’s super explicitly on the website, but it’s been in conversation. Christian Klepp  05:02 No, absolutely, absolutely, that resonated with me. The only part that didn’t resonate with me is that I’m neither a coke or a Pepsi person. I’m more of a ginger ale type of guy. I digress. But yeah, let’s what don’t you share your screen, and let’s walk through this, right? Like, okay, if a marketing person were like, use the platform to do some research on, perhaps that marketers, like own company and the competitors as well, right? Like, what would they do? Clay Ostrom  05:32 Yeah, so that’s, that is, like you were saying, there’s, sort of, I guess, a few different personas of people who would potentially use this. And initially I was thinking a little more about both in house, people who, you know, someone who’s working on a specific brand, digging really deep on their own brand, whether they’re, you know, the marketing lead or whatever, maybe they’re the founder, and then this other role of agency owners, or people who work at an agency where they are constantly having to look at new brands, new categories, and quickly get up to speed on what those brands are doing and what’s the competitive space look like, you know, for that brand. And that’s something that, if you work at an agency, which obviously we both have our own agencies, we do this stuff weekly. I mean, every time a new lead comes in, we have to quickly get up to speed and understand something about what they do. And one of the big gaps that I found, and I’d be curious to kind of hear your thoughts on this, but I’ve had a lot of conversations with other agency owners, and I think one of the biggest gaps is often that brands are just not always that great at explaining their own brand or positioning or differentiation to you, and sometimes they have some documentation around it, but a lot of times they don’t. A lot of it’s word of mouth, and that makes it really hard to do work for them. If whatever you’re doing for them, whether that’s maybe you are working on SEO or maybe you’re working on paid ads or social or content, you have to know what the brand is doing and kind of what they’re again, what their strengths and weaknesses are, so that you can talk about that. I mean, do you come across that a lot in your work? Christian Klepp  07:33 How do I say this without offending anybody? I find, I mean jokes aside, I find, more often than not, in the especially in the B2B space, which is an area that I operate in, I find 888 point five times out of 10. We are dealing with companies that have a they, have a very rude, rudimentary, like, framework of something that remotely resembles some form of branding. And I know that was a very long winded answer, but it’s kind of sort of there, but not really, if you know what I mean. Clay Ostrom  08:17 Yeah. Christian Klepp  08:17 And there have been other extreme cases where they’ve got the logo and the website, and that’s as far as their branding goals. And I would say that had they had all these, this discipline, like branding system and structure in place, then people like maybe people like you and I will be out on a job, right and it’s something, and I’m sure you’ve come across this, and we’ll probably dig into this later, but like you, it’s something I’ve come across several times, especially in the B2B space, where branding is not taken seriously until it becomes serious. I know that sounds super ironic, right, but, and it’s to the point of this platform, right, which we’re going to dig into in a second, but it’s, it’s things, for instance, positioning right, like, are you? Are you, in fact, strategically positioned against competitors? Is your messaging resonating with, I would imagine, especially in the B2B context, with the multiple group target groups that you have, or that your company is, is going after? Right? Is that resonating, or is this all like something that I call the internal high five? You’ve this has all been developed to please internal stakeholders and and then you take it to market, and it just does not, it just does not resonate with the target audience at all. Right? So there’s such a complex plethora of challenges here, right? That people like yourself and like you and I are constantly dealing with, and I think that’s also part of the reason why I would say a platform like this is important, because it helps to not just aggregate data. I mean, certainly it does that too, but it helps. To put things properly, like into perspective at speed. I think that might be, that might be something that you would have talked about later, but it does this at speed, because I think, from my own experience, one of the factors in our world that sometimes works against us is time, right? Clay Ostrom  10:19 No, I totally agree, yeah, and, you know, we’re lucky, I guess would be the word that we are often hired to work on a company strategy with them and help them clarify these things. Christian Klepp  10:33 Absolutely. Clay Ostrom  10:34 There are a million other flavors of agencies out there who are being hired to execute on work for a brand, and not necessarily being brought in to redefine, you know what the brand, you know they’re positioning and their messaging and some of these fundamental things, so they’re kind of stuck with whatever they get. And like you said, a lot of times it’s not much. It might be a logo and a roughly put together website, and maybe not a whole lot else. So, yeah, but I think your other point about speed is that was a huge part of this. I think the market is only accelerating right now, because it’s becoming so much easier to start up new companies and new brands and new products. And now we’ve got vibe coding, so you can technically build a product in a day, maybe launch it the next day, start marketing it, you know, by the weekend. And all of this is creating noise and competition, and it’s all stuff that we have to deal with as marketers. We have to understand the landscape. We’ve got to quickly be able to analyze all these different brands, see where the strengths and weaknesses are and all that stuff. So… Christian Klepp  11:46 Absolutely. Clay Ostrom  11:46 But, yeah, that, I think that the speed piece is a huge part of this for sure. Christian Klepp  11:51 Yeah. So, so we’re okay, so we’re on the I guess this, this will probably be the homepage. So just walk us through what, what a marketing person would do if they want to use this platform, yeah? Clay Ostrom  12:00 So the very first thing you do when you come in, and this was when I initially conceived of this product, one of the things that I really wanted was the ability to have very quick feedback, be able to get analysis for whatever brand you’re looking at, you know, right away to be able to get some kind of, you know, insight or analysis done. So the first thing you can do, and you can do this literally, from the homepage of the website, you can enter in a URL for a brand, come into the product, even before you’ve created an account, you can come in and you can do an initial analysis, so you can put in whatever URL you’re looking at, could be yours, could be a competitor, and run that initial analysis. What we’re looking at here, this is, if you do create an account, this is, this becomes your, as we say, like Home Base, where you can save brands that you’re looking at. You can see your history, all that good stuff. And it just gives you some quick bookmarks so that you can kind of flip back and forth between, maybe it’s your brand, maybe it’s some of the competitors you’re looking at and then it gives you just some quick, kind of high level directional info. And I kind of break it up into these different buckets. Clay Ostrom  13:23 And again, I’d love to kind of hear if this is sort of how you think about it, too. But there’s sort of these different phases when you’re working on a brand. And again, this is sort of from an agency perspective, but you first got the sort of the research and the pitch piece. So this is before maybe you’re even working with them. You’re trying to get an understanding of what they do. Then we have discovery and onboarding, where we’re digging in a little bit deeper. We’re trying to really put together, what does the brand stand for, what are their strengths and weaknesses? And then we have the deeper dive, the strategy and differentiation. And this is where we’re really going in and getting more granular with the specific value points that they offer, doing some of that messaging analysis, finding, finding some of the gaps of the things that they’re talking about or not talking about, and going in deeper. So it kind of break it up into these buckets, based on my experience of how we engage with clients. Does that? Does that make sense to you, like, does that? Christian Klepp  14:28 It does make sense, I think. But what could be helpful for the audience is because this, this almost looks like it’s a pre cooked meal. All right, so what do we do we try another I mean, I think you use Slack for the analysis. Why don’t we use another brand, and then just pop it into that analysis field, and then see what it comes out with. Clay Ostrom  14:51 So the nice thing about this is, if you are looking at a brand that’s been analyzed, you’re going to get the data up really quickly. It’ll be basically pop up instantly. But you can analyze a brand from scratch as well. Just takes about a minute or so, basically, to kind of do some of the analysis. So for the sake of a demo, it’s a little easier just to kind of look at something that we’ve got in there. But if it’s a brand that you know, maybe you’re looking at a competitor for one of your brands, you know, there’s a good chance, because we’ve got about 6000 brands that we’ve analyzed in here, that there’s a good chance there’ll be some info on them. But so this is pipe drive. So whoever’s not familiar Pipedrive is, you know, it’s a CRM  (Customer Relationship Management), it’s, it’s basically, you know, it’s a lighter version of a HubSpot or Salesforce basically track deals and opportunities for business, but this so I flipped over. I don’t know if it was clear there, but I flipped over to this brand brief tab. And this is where we we get, essentially, a high level view of some key points about the brand and and I think about this as this would be something that you would potentially share with a client if you were, you know, working with them and you wanted to review the brand with them and make sure that your analysis is on point, but you’ll see it’s kind of giving you some positioning scores, where you rank from a category perspective, message clarity, and then we’ve got things like a quick overview, positioning summary, who their target persona is, in this case, sales manager, sales operation lead, and some different value points. And then it starts to get a little more granular. We get into like key competitors, Challenger brands. We do a little SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis, and then maybe one of the more important parts is some of these action items. So what do we do with this? Yeah, and obviously, these are, these are starting points. This is not, it’s not going to come in and, you know, instantly be able to tell you strategically, exactly what to do, but it’s going to give you some ideas of based on the things we’ve seen. Here are some reasonable points that you might want to be looking at to, you know, improve the brand. Make it make it stronger. Christian Klepp  17:13 Gotcha. Gotcha. Now, this is all great clay, but like, I think, for the benefit of the audience, can we scroll back up, please. And let’s just walk through these one by one, because I think it’s important for the audience/potential future users,/ customers of Smoke Ladder, right? To understand, to understand this analysis in greater depth, and also, like, specifically, like, let’s start with a positioning score right, like, out of 100 like, what is this? What is this based on? And how was this analyzed? Let’s start with that. Clay Ostrom  17:48 Yeah, and this is where the platform really started. And I’m going to actually jump over to the positioning tab, because this will give us the all the detail around this particular feature. But this is, this was where I began the product this. I kind of think of this as being, in many ways, sort of the heart and soul of it. And when I mentioned earlier about this being based on our own work and frameworks and how we approach this, this is very much the case with this. This is, you know, the approach we use with the product is exactly how we work with clients when we’re evaluating their positioning. And it’s, it’s basically, it’s built off a series of scores. And what we have here are 24 different points of business value, which, if we zoom in just a little bit down here, we can see things like reducing risk, vision, lowering cost, variety, expertise, stability, etc. So there’s 24 of these that we look at, and it’s meant to be a way that we can look across different brands and compare and contrast them. So it’s creating, like, a consistent way of looking at brands, even if they’re not in the same category, or, you know, have slightly different operating models, etc. But what we do is we go in and we score every brand on each of these 24 points. And if we scroll down here a little bit, we can see the point of value, the exact score they got, the category average, so how it compares against, you know, all the other brands we’ve analyzed, and then a little bit of qualitative information about why they got the score. Christian Klepp  19:27 Sorry, Clay, Can I just jump in for a second so these, these attributes, or these key values that you had in the graph at the top right, like, are these consistent throughout regardless of what brand is being analyzed, or the least change. Clay Ostrom  19:42 It’s consistent. Christian Klepp  19:43 Consistent? Clay Ostrom  19:44 Yeah, and that was one of the sort of strategic decisions we had to make with the product. Was, you know, there’s a, maybe another version of this, where you do different points depending on maybe the category, or, you know, things like that. But I wanted to do it consistent because, again, it allows us to look at every brand through the same lens. It doesn’t mean that every brand you know there are certain points of value that just aren’t maybe relevant for a particular brand, and that’s fine, they just won’t score as highly in those but at least it gives us a consistent way to look at so when you’re looking at 10 different competitors, you know you’ve got a consistent way to look at them together,. Christian Klepp  20:26 Right, right, right. Okay, okay, all right, thanks for that. Now let’s go down to the next section there, where you’ve got, like this table with like four different columns here. So you mentioned that these are being scored against other brands in their category. Like, can you share it with the audience? Like, how many other brands are being analyzed here? Clay Ostrom  20:51 Yeah, well, it depends on the category. So again, we’ve got six, you know, heading towards 7000 brands that we’ve analyzed collectively. Each category varies a little bit, but, you know, some categories, we have more brands than others. But what this allows us to do is, again, to quickly look at this and say, okay, for pipe drive, a big focus for pipe drive is organization, simplification. You know, one of their big value props is we’re an easier tool to use than Salesforce or HubSpot. You can get up to speed really quickly. You don’t have all the setup and configurations and all that kind of stuff. So this is showing us that, yes, like their messaging, their content, their brand, does, in fact, do a good job of making it clear that simplicity is a big part of pipe drive’s message. And they do that by talking about it a lot in their messaging, having case studies, having testimonials, all these things that support it. And that’s how we come up with these scores. Is by saying, like the brand emphasizes these points well, they talk about it clearly, and that’s what we base it on. Christian Klepp  22:04 Okay, okay. Clay Ostrom  22:06 But as you come, I was just gonna say as you come down here, you can see, so the green basically means that they score well above average for that particular point. Yellow is, you know, kind of right around average, or maybe slightly above, and then red means that they’re below average for that particular point. So for example, like variety of tools, they don’t emphasize that as much with pipe drive, maybe compared to, again, like a Salesforce or a HubSpot that has a gazillion tools, pipe drive, that’s not a big focus for them. So they don’t score as highly there, but you can kind of just get a quick view of, okay, here are the things that they’re really strong with, and here are the things that maybe they’re, you know, kind of weak or below average. Christian Klepp  22:58 Yeah, yeah. Well, that’s certainly interesting, because I, you know, I’ve, I’ve used the, I’ve used the platform for analyzing some of my clients, competitor brands. And, you know, when I’m looking at this, like analysis with the scoring, with the scoring sheet, it, I think it will also be interesting perhaps in future, because you’ve got a very detailed breakdown of, okay, the factors and how they’re scored, and what the brand value analysis is also, because, again, in the interest of speed and time, it’d be great if the platform can also churn out maybe a one to two sentence like, summary of what is this data telling us, right? Because I’m thinking back to my early days as a product manager, and we would spend hours, like back then on Excel spreadsheets. I’m dating myself a little bit here, but um, and coming up with this analysis and charts, but presenting that to senior management, all they wanted to know was the one to two sentence summary of like, come on. What are you telling me with all these charts, like, what is the data telling you that we need to know? Right? Clay Ostrom  24:07 I know it’s so funny. We again, as strategists and researchers, we love to nerd out about the granular details, but you’re right. When you’re talking to a leader at a business, it does come down to like, okay, great. What do we do? And so, and I flipped back over to slacks. I knew I had already generated this but, but we’re still in the positioning section here, but we have this get insights feature. So basically it will look at all those scores and give you kind of, I think, similar to what you’re describing. Like, here’s three takeaways from what we’re seeing. Okay, okay, great, yeah, so we don’t want to leave you totally on your own to have to figure it all out. We’ll give you, give you a little helping hand. Christian Klepp  24:53 Yeah. You don’t want to be like in those western movies, you’re on your own kid. Clay Ostrom  24:59 Yeah. We try not to strand you again. There’s a lot of data here. I think that’s one of the strengths and and challenges with the platform, is that we try to give you a lot of data. And for some people, you may not want to have to sift through all of it. You might want just sort of give me the three points here. Christian Klepp  25:19 Absolutely, absolutely. And at the very least they can start pointing you in the right direction, and then you could be, you could then, like, through your own initiative, and perhaps dig a little bit deeper and perhaps find some other insights that may be, may be relevant, right? Clay Ostrom  25:35 Totally. Christian Klepp  25:36 Hey, it’s Christian Klepp here. We’ll get back to the episode in a second. But first, I’d like to tell you about a new series that we’re launching on our show. As the B2B landscape evolves, marketers need to adapt and leverage the latest marketing tools and software to become more efficient. Enter B2B Marketers on a Mission Marketing Demo Lab where experts discuss the latest tools and software that empower you to become a better B2B marketer. Tune in as we chat with product experts. Provide unbiased product reviews, give advice and deliver insights into real world applications and actionable tips on tools and technologies for B2B marketing. Subscribe to the Marketing Demo Lab, YouTube channel and B2B Marketers on a Mission, on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Christian Klepp  26:21 All right. Now, back to the show, if we can, if we could jump back, sorry, to the, I think it was the brand brief, right? Like, where we where we started out, and I said, let’s, let’s dig deeper. Okay, so then, then we have, okay, so we talked about positioning score. Now we’re moving on to category rank and message clarity score. What does that look like? Clay Ostrom  26:41 Yeah. So the category rank is, it’s literally just looking at the positioning score that you’ve gotten for the brand and then telling you within this category, where do you sort of fall in the ranking, essentially, or, like, you know, how do we, you know, for comparing the score against all the competitors, where do you fall? So you can see, with Slack, they’re right in the middle. And it’s interesting, because with a product like Slack, even though we all now know what slack is and what it does and everything. Christian Klepp  27:18 Yeah. Clay Ostrom  27:19 The actual messaging and content that they have now, I think maybe doesn’t do as good of a job as it maybe did once upon a time, and it’s gotten as products grow and brands grow, they tend to get more vague, a little more broad with what they talk about, and that kind of leads to softer positioning. So that’s sort of what we’re seeing reflected here. And then the third score is the message clarity score, which we can jump into, like, a whole different piece. Christian Klepp  27:48 Four on a tennis not a very high score, right? Clay Ostrom  27:52 Yeah. And again, I think it’s a product, of, we can kind of jump into that section. Christian Klepp  27:57 Yeah, let’s do that, yeah. Clay Ostrom  27:59 But it’s, again, a product, I think of Slack being now a very mature product that is has gotten sort of a little vague, maybe a little broader, with their messaging. But the message clarity score, we basically have kind of two parts to this on the left hand side are some insights that we gather based on the messaging. So what’s your category, quick synopsis of the product. But then we also do some things, like… Christian Klepp  28:33 Confusing part the most confusing. Clay Ostrom  28:36 Honestly to me, as I get I’d love to hear your experience with this, but coming into a new brand, this is sometimes one of the most enlightening parts, because it shows me quickly where some gaps in what we’re talking about, and in this case, just kind of hits on what we were just saying a minute ago. Of the messaging is overloaded with generic productivity buzzwords, fails to clearly differentiate how Slack is better than email or similar tools, etc. But also, this is another one that I really like, and I use this all the time, which is the casual description. So rather than this technical garbage jargon, you know, speak, just give me. Give it to me in plain English, like we’re just chatting. And so this description of it’s a workplace chat app for teams to message, collaborate, share files. Like, okay, cool. Like, yeah, you know, I get it. Yeah, I already know what slack is. But if I didn’t, that would tell me pretty well. Christian Klepp  29:33 Absolutely, yeah, yeah. No, my experience with this is has been, you know, you and I have been in the branding space for a while. So for the trained eye, when you look at messaging, you’ll know if it’s good or not, right. And we come I mean, I’m sure you do the same clay, but I also come to my own like conclusions based on experience of like, okay, so why do I think that that’s good messaging, or why do I think that that’s confusing messaging? Or it falls short, and why and how can that be improved? But it’s always good to have validation with either with platforms like this, where you have a you have AI, or you have, you have a software that you can use that analyzes, like, for example, like the messaging on a website, and it dissects that and says, Well, okay, so this is what they’re getting, right? So there’s a scoring for that, so it’s in the green, and then this is, this is where it gets confusing, right? So even you run that through, you run that through the machine, and the machine analyzes it as like, Okay, we can’t clearly, clearly define what it is they’re doing based on the messaging, right? And for me, that’s always a it’s good. It’s almost like getting a second doctor’s opinion, right? And then you go, Aha. So I we’ve identified the symptoms now. So let’s find the penicillin, right? Like, let’s find the remedy for this, right? Clay Ostrom  30:56 Yeah, well, and I like what you said there, because part of the value, I think, with this is it’s an objective perspective on the brand, so it doesn’t have any baggage. It’s coming in with fresh eyes, the same way a new customer would come into your website, where they don’t know really much about you, and they have to just take what you’re giving at face value about what you present. And we as people working on brands get completely blinded around what’s actually working, what’s being communicated. There’s so much that we take for granted about what we already know about the brand. And this comes in and just says, Okay, I’m just, I’m just taking what you give me, and I’m going to tell you what I see, and I see some gaps around some of these things. You know, I don’t have the benefit of sitting in your weekly stand up meeting and hearing all the descriptions of what you’re actually doing. Christian Klepp  31:59 I’m sorry to jump in. I’m interested to know, like, just, just based on what we’ve been reviewing so far, like, what has your experience been showing this kind of analysis to clients, and how do they respond to some of this data, for example, that you know, you’re walking us through right now? Clay Ostrom  32:18 Yeah, I think it’s been interesting. Honestly, I think it can sometimes feel harsh. And I think again, as someone who’s both run an agency and also built worked on brands, we get attached to our work on an emotional level. Christian Klepp  32:42 Absolutely. Clay Ostrom  32:42 Even if we think about it as, you know, this is just work, and it’s, you know, whatever, we still build up connections with our work and we want it to be good. And so I think there’s sometimes a little bit of a feeling of wow, like that’s harsh, or I would have expected or thought we would have done better or scored better in certain areas, but that is almost always followed up with but I’m so glad to know where, where we’re struggling, because now I can fix it. I can actually know what to focus on to fix, and that, to me, is what it’s all about, is, yes, there’s a little bit of feelings attached to some of these things, maybe, but at the end of the day, we really want it to be good. We want it to be clear. We don’t want to be a 4 out of 10. We want to be a 10 out of 10. And what specifically do we need to do to get there? And that’s really what we’re trying to reveal with this. So I think, you know, everybody’s a little different, but I would say the reactions are typically a mix of that. It’s like, maybe an ouch, but a Oh, good. Let’s work on it. Christian Klepp  33:55 Absolutely, absolutely. Okay. So we’ve got brand summary, we’ve got fundamentals, then quality of messaging is the other part of it, right? Clay Ostrom  34:02 So, yeah, so this, this is, this is where the actual 4 out of 10 comes. We have these 10 points that we look at and we say, Okay, are you communicating these things clearly? Are you communicating who your target customer is, your category, your offering, where you’re differentiated benefits? Do you have any kind of concrete claim about what you do to support you know what you’re what you’re selling? Is the messaging engaging? Is it concise? You’ll see here a 7% on concise. That’s basically telling us that virtually no brands do a good job of being concise. Only about 7% get a green check mark on this, and kind of similar with the jargon and the vague words big struggle points with almost every brand. Christian Klepp  34:55 Streamline collaboration. Clay Ostrom  34:58 So we can see here with Slack. You know some of the jargon we got, KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), MQLs (Marketing Qualified Lead), if you’re in the space, you could argue like, oh, I kind of know what those things are. But depending on your role, you may not always know. In something like Salesforce marketing cloud, unless you’re a real Salesforce nerd, you probably have no idea what that is. But again, it’s just a way to quickly identify some of those weak points, things that we could improve to make our message more clear. Christian Klepp  35:27 Yes, yes. Okay, so that was the messaging analysis correct? Clay Ostrom  35:33 Yeah. Christian Klepp  35:33 Yeah. Okay. So what else have we got? Clay Ostrom  35:36 Yeah, so I think one other thing we could look at just for a sec, is differentiation, and this is this kind of plays off of what we looked at a minute ago with the positioning scores. But this is a way for us to look head to head with two different brands. So in this case, we’ve got Slack in the red and we’ve got Discord in the greenish blue. And I think of these, these patterns, as sort of the fingerprint of your brand. So where you Where are you strong? Where are you weak? And if we can overlay those two fingerprints on top of each other, we can see, where do we have advantages, and where does our competitor have advantages? So if we come down, we can sort of see, and this is again, for the nerds like me, to be able to come in and go deep, do kind of a deep dive on specifically, why did, why does Discord score better than Slack in certain areas. And at the bottom here we can see a kind of a quick summary. So slack is stronger in simplification, saving time, Discord has some better messaging around generating revenue, lowering costs, marketability. But again, this gives us a way to think about what are the things we want to double down on? So what do we want to actually be known for in the market? Because we can’t be known for everything. You know, buyers can maybe only remember a couple things about us. What are those couple things where we’re really strong, where we really stand out, and we’ve got some separation from the competitors. Christian Klepp  37:18 Right, okay, okay, just maybe we take a step back here, because I think this is great. It’s very detailed. It gets a bit granular, but I think it’s also going back to a conversation that you and I had previously about, like, Okay, why is it so important to be armed with this knowledge, especially if you’re in the marketing role, or perhaps even an agency talking to a potential client going in there already armed with the information about their competitors. And we were talking about this being a kind of like a trust building mechanism, right? For lack of a better description, right? Clay Ostrom  38:03 Yeah, I think to me, what I like about this, and again, this does come out of 10 years of doing work, this kind of work with clients as well, is it’s so easy to fall into a space of soft descriptions around things like positioning and just sort of using vague, you know, wordings or descriptions, and when you can actually put a number on it, which, again, it’s subjective. This isn’t. This isn’t an objective metric, but it’s a way for us to compare and contrast. It allows us to have much more productive conversations with clients, where we can say we looked at your brand, we we what based on our analysis, we see that you’re scoring a 10 and a 9 on simplicity and organization, for example. Is that accurate to you like do you think that’s what you all are emphasizing the most? Does that? Does that resonate and at the same time, we can say, but your competitors are really focused on there. They have a strong, strong message around generating revenue and lowering costs for their customers. Right now, you’re not really talking about that. Is that accurate? Is that like, what you is that strategically, is that what you think you should be doing so really quickly, I’ve now framed a conversation that could have been very loose and kind of, you know, well, what do you think your strategy is about? What do you know? And instead, I can say, we see you being strong in these three points. We see your competitors being strong in these three points. What do you think about that? And I think that kind of clarity just makes the work so much more productive with clients, or just again, working on your own brand internally. So what do you think about that kind of perspective? Christian Klepp  40:08 Yeah, no, no, I definitely agree with that. It’s always and I’ve been that type of person anyway that you know you go into a especially with somebody that hasn’t quite become a client yet, right? One of the most important things is also, how should I put this? Certainly the trust building part of it needs to be there. The other part is definitely a demonstration of competence and ability, but it’s also that you’ve been proactive and done your homework, versus like, Okay, I’m I’m just here as an order taker, right? And let’s just tell me what to do, and I’ll do it right? A lot and especially, I think this has been a trend for a long time already, but a lot of the clients that I’ve worked with now in the past, they want to, they’re looking for a partner that’s not just thinking with them, it’s someone that’s thinking ahead of them. And this type of work, you know what we’re seeing here on screen, this is the type of work that I would consider thinking ahead of them, right? Clay Ostrom  41:18 No, I agree. I think you framed that really well. Of we’re trying to build trust, because if we’re going to make any kind of recommendations around a change or a shift, they have to believe that we know what we’re talking about, that we’re competent, that we’ve done the work. And I think I agree with you. I think like this, it’s kind of funny, like we all, I think, on some base level, are attracted to numbers and scores. It just gives us something to latch on to. But I think it also, like you said, it gives you a feeling that you’ve done your work, that you’ve done your homework, you’ve studied, you’ve you’ve done some analysis that they themselves may have never done on this level. And that’s a big value. Christian Klepp  42:08 Yes, and a big part of the reason just to, just to build on what you said, a big part of the reason why they haven’t done this type of work is because it’s not so much. The cost is certainly one part of it, but it’s the time, it’s a time factor and the resource and the effort that needs to be put into it. Because, you know, like, tell me if you’ve never heard this one before, but there are some, there are some companies that we’ve been working with that don’t actually have a clearly, like, you know, a clear document on who their their target personas are, yeah, or their or their ICPs, never mind the buyer’s journey map. They don’t, they don’t even have the personas mapped out, right? Clay Ostrom  42:52 100% Yeah, it’s, and it’s, I think you’re right. It’s, it’s a mix of time and it’s a mix of just experience where, if you are internal with a brand, you don’t do this kind of work all the time. You might do it at the beginning. Maybe you do a check in every once in a while, but you need someone who’s done this a lot with a lot of different brands so that they can give you guidance through this kind of framework. But so it’s, you know, so some of it is a mix of, you know, we don’t have the time always to dig in like this. But some of it is we don’t even know how to do it, even if we did have the time. So it’s hopefully giving, again, providing some different frameworks and different ways of looking at it. Christian Klepp  43:41 Absolutely, absolutely. So okay, so we’ve gone through. What is it now, the competitor comparison. What else does the platform provide us that the listeners and the audience should be paying attention to here? Clay Ostrom  43:55 So I’ll show you two more quick things. So one is this message building section. So this is… Christian Klepp  44:03 Are you trying to put me out of a job here Clay? Clay Ostrom  44:07 Well, I’ll say this. So far in my experience with this, it’s not going to put us out of a job, but it is going to hopefully make our job easier and better. It’s going to make us better at the work we do. And that’s really, I think that’s, I think that’s kind of, most people’s impression of AI at this point is that it’s not quite there to replace us, but it’s sure, certainly can enhance what we do. Christian Klepp  44:36 Yeah, you’ll excuse me, I couldn’t help but throw that one out. Clay Ostrom  44:38 Yeah, I know, trust me, I’m this. It’s like I’m building a product that, in a sense, is undercutting, you know, the work that I do. So it is kind of a weird thing, but this message building section, which is a new part of the platform. It will come in, and you can see on the right hand side. And there’s sort of a quick summary of all these different elements that we’ve already analyzed. And then it’s going to give you some generated copy ideas, including, if I zoom in a little bit here, we’ve got an eyebrow category. This is again for Slack. It’s giving us a headline idea, stay informed without endless emails. Sub headline call to action, three challenges that your customers are facing, and then three points about your solution that help address those for customers. So it’s certainly not writing all of your copy for you, but if you’re starting from scratch, or you’re working on something new, or even if you’re trying to refresh a brand. I think this can be helpful to give you some messaging that’s hopefully clear. That’s something that I think a lot of messaging misses, especially in B2B, it’s, it’s not always super clear, like what you even do. Christian Klepp  45:56 Don’t get me started. Clay Ostrom  45:59 So hopefully it’s clear. It’s, you know, again, it’s giving you some different ideas. And that you’ll see down here at the bottom, you can, you can iterate on this. So we’ve got several versions. You can actually come in and, you know, you can edit it yourself. So if you say, like, well, I like that, but not quite that, you know, I can, you know, get my human touch on it as well. But yeah, so it’s a place to iterate on message. Christian Klepp  46:25 You can kind of look at it like, let’s say, if you’re writing a blog article, and this will give you the outline, right? Yeah. And then most of the AI that I’ve worked with to generate outlines, they’re not quite there. But again, if you’re starting from zero and you want to go from zero to 100 Well, that’ll, that’ll at least get you to 40 or 50, right? But I’m curious to know, because we’re looking at this now, and I think this, I mean, for me, this is, this is fascinating, but, like, maybe, maybe this will be part of your next iteration. But will this, will this generate messaging that’s already SEO optimized. Clay Ostrom  47:02 You know, it’s not specifically geared towards that, but I would say that it ends up being maybe more optimized than a lot of other messaging because it puts such an emphasis on clarity, it naturally includes words and phrases that I think are commonly used in the space more so than you know, maybe just kind of typical off the shelf Big B2B messaging, Christian Klepp  47:27 Gotcha. I had a question on the target persona that you’ve got here on screen, right? So how does the platform generate the information that will then populate that field because, and when I’m just trying to think about like, you know, because I’ve been, I’ve been in the space for as long as you have, and the way that I’ve generated target personas in the past was not by making a wild guess about, like, you know, looking at the brand’s website. It’s like having conducting deep customer research and listening to hours and hours of recordings, and from there, generating a persona. And this has done it in seconds. So… Clay Ostrom  48:09 Yeah, it’s so the way the system works in a couple different layers. So it does an initial analysis, where it does positioning, messaging analysis and category analysis, then you can generate the persona on top of that. So it takes all the learnings that it got from the category, from the product, from your messaging, and then develops a persona around that. And it’s, of course, able to also pull in, you know, the AI is able to reference things that it knows about the space in general. But I have found, and this is true. I was just having a conversation with someone who works on a very niche brand for a very specific audience, and I was showing him what it had output. And I said, Tell me, like, Don’t hold back. Like, is this accurate? He said, Yeah, this is, like, shockingly accurate for you know, how we view our target customer. So I think it’s pretty good. It’s not again, not going to be perfect. You’re going to need to do some work, and you still got to do the research, but, but, yeah. Christian Klepp  49:13 Okay, fantastic, fantastic. How do, I guess there’s the option, I see it there, like, download the PDF. So anything that’s analyzed on the platform can then be exported in a PDF format, right? Like, like, into a report. Clay Ostrom  49:28 Yeah, right now you can export the messaging analysis, or, sorry, the the messaging ideation that you’ve done, and then in the brand brief you can also, you can download a PDF of the brand brief as well. So, those are the two main areas. I’m still working on some additional exports of data so that people can pull it into a spreadsheet and do some other stuff with it. Christian Klepp  49:49 Fantastic, fantastic. That’s awesome, Clay. I’ve got a couple more questions before I let you go. But this has been, this has been amazing, right? Like and I really hope that whoever’s in the one listening and, most importantly, watching this, I hope that you really do consider like, you know, taking this for a test drive, right? How many I might have asked you this before, because, you know, I am somebody that does use, you know, that does a lot of this type of research. But how much time would you say companies would save by using Smoke Ladder? Clay Ostrom  50:24 It’s a good question. I feel like I’m starting to get some feedback around that with from our users, but I mean, for me personally, I would typically spend an hour or two just to get kind of up to speed initially, with a brand and kind of look at some of their competitors. If I’m doing a deep dive, though, if I’m actually doing some of the deeper research work, it could be several hours per client. So I don’t know. On a given week, it might depend on how many clients you’re talking to. Could be anywhere from a few hours to 10 hours or more, depending on how much work you’re doing. But, yeah, I think it’s a decent amount. Christian Klepp  51:07 Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, this definitely does look like a time saver. Here comes my favorite question, which you’re gonna look at me like, Okay, I gotta, I gotta. Clay Ostrom  51:17 Now bring it on. Let’s go. Christian Klepp  51:22 Folks that are not familiar with Smoke Ladder are gonna look at this, um, and before they actually, um, take it upon themselves to, like, watch, hopefully, watch this video on our channel. Um, they’re gonna look at that and ask themselves, Well, what is it that Smoke Ladder does that? You know that other AI couldn’t do, right, like, so I guess what I’m trying to say is, like, Okay, why would they use? How does the platform differ from something like ChatGPT, Perplexity or Claude, right? To run a brand analysis? Clay Ostrom  52:00 Yeah, no, I think it’s a great question. I think it’s sort of the it’s going to be the eternal AI question for every product that has an AI component. And I would say to me, it’s three things. So one is the data, which we talked about, and I didn’t show you this earlier, but there is a search capability in here to go through our full archive of all the brands we’ve analyzed, and again, we’ve analyzed over 6000 brands. So the data piece is really important here, because it means we’re not just giving you insights and analysis based on the brand that you’re looking at now, but we can compare and contrast against all the other brands that we’ve looked at in the space, and that’s something that you’re not going to get by just using some off the shelf standard LLM  (Large Language Model) and doing some, you know, some quick prompts with that. The next one, I think, to me that’s important is it’s the point of view of the product and the brand. Like I said, this is built off of 10 plus years of doing positioning and messaging work in the space. So you’re getting to tap into that expertise and that approach of how we do things and building frameworks that make this work easier and more productive that you wouldn’t get, or you wouldn’t know, just on your own. And then the last one, the last point, which is sort of the kind of like the generic software answer, is you get a visual interface for this stuff. It’s the difference between using QuickBooks versus a spreadsheet. You can do a lot of the same stuff that you do in QuickBooks and a spreadsheet, but wouldn’t you rather have a nice interface and some easy buttons to click that make your job way, way easier and do a lot of the work for you and also be able to present it in a way that’s digestible and something you could share with clients? So the visual component in the UI is sort of that last piece. Christian Klepp  54:01 Absolutely. I mean, it’s almost like UX and UI one on one. That’s, that’s pretty much like a big part of, I think what it is you’re trying to build here, right? Clay Ostrom  54:13 Yeah, exactly. It’s just it’s making all of those things that you might do in an LLM just way, way easier. You know, you basically come in, put in your URL and click a button, and you’re getting access to all the data and all the insights and all this stuff so. Christian Klepp  54:29 Absolutely, absolutely okay. And as we wrap this up, this has been a fantastic conversation, by the way, how can the audience start using Smoke Ladder, and how can they get in touch with you if they have questions, and hopefully good questions. Clay Ostrom  54:47 Yeah, so you can, if you go to https://smokeladder.com/ you can, you can try it out. Like I said, you can basically go to the homepage, put in a URL and get started. You don’t even have to create an account to do the initial analysis. But you can create FREE account. You can dig in and see, you know, play around with all the features, and if you use it more, you know, we give you a little bit of a trial period. And if you use it beyond that, then you can pay and continue to use it, but, but you can get a really good flavor of it for free. Christian Klepp  55:16 Fantastic, fantastic. Oh, last question, because, you know, it’s looking me right in the face now, industry categories. How many? How many categories can be analyzed on the platform? Clay Ostrom  55:26 Yeah, yeah. So right now, we have 23 categories in the system currently, which sounds like a lot, but when you start to dig into especially B2B, it’s we will be evolving that and continuing to add more, but currently, there’s 23 different categories of businesses in there. Christian Klepp  55:46 All right, fantastic, fantastic. Clay, man. This has been so awesome. Thank you so much for your time and for your patience and walking us through this, this incredible platform that you’ve built and continue to build. And you know, I’m excited to continue using this as it evolves. Clay Ostrom  56:06 Thank you. Yeah, no. Thanks so much. And you know, if anybody, you know, anybody who tries it out, tests it out, please feel free to reach out. We have, you know, contact info on there. You can also hit me up on LinkedIn. I spend a lot of time there, but I would love feedback, love getting notes, love hearing what’s working, what’s not, all those things. So yeah, anytime I’m always open. Christian Klepp  56:30 All right, fantastic. Once again, Clay, thanks for your time. Take care, stay safe and talk to you soon. Clay Ostrom  56:36 Thanks so much. Talk to you soon. Christian Klepp  56:37 All right. Bye for now.

How to Optimize Your PPC Campaigns for Maximum Impact Every Pay-Per-Click campaign has symptoms. While some are mild, others can be critical. With the B2B marketing environment becoming more competitive and as budgets continue to shrink, ensuring your PPC campaigns are well thought out and “healthy” is imperative. So how can B2B marketing teams ensure they run high-performing PPC campaigns? That's why we're talking to Serge Nguele (Founder, Your PPC Doctor), who shares proven strategies and expert insights on how to optimize your PPC campaigns for maximum impact. During our conversation, Serge emphasized the value of understanding PPC as a tool to test market assumptions and validate messaging. He also highlighted common pitfalls that B2B marketers should avoid such as launching campaigns without a clear strategy, relying on poor or incomplete tracking, and generic ad copy that doesn't resonate. He advised that teams must fix their tracking, define what business success looks like, segment audiences with intention, and relentlessly test to discover what drives conversions. Serge stressed the importance of having a comprehensive, full-funnel approach to maximize the potential of PPC campaigns through Google and Microsoft ads. He also shared his “no excuses, no complaints, no self-pity” philosophy to illustrate the mindset required to drive stronger results and leverage the true potential of PPC. https://youtu.be/oSmgdh2Jfgw Topics discussed in episode: [2:13] The importance of PPC in B2B marketing [4:49] Some common misconceptions and pitfalls in PPC [15:04] How B2B marketers can avoid major PPC pitfalls [23:11] Practical steps to optimize PPC campaigns for predictable results Fix your tracking Define success in business terms Segment your audience in a smart way Differentiate messaging based on audience's stage in the funnel Testing relentlessly [29:22] How AI is reshaping PPC and what B2B marketers must prepare for Companies and links mentioned: Serge Nguele on LinkedIn Your PPC Doctor Transcript Christian Klepp  00:01 Every pay per click campaign has symptoms. Some are mild, while others are critical. With the marketing landscape becoming more competitive and budgets shrinking, ensuring your PPC (Pay-Per-Click) campaigns are well thought out and healthy is imperative. So how can marketing teams ensure they optimize their PPC campaigns for maximum impact? Welcome to this episode of the B2B Marketers in a Mission podcast, and I’m your host, Christian Klepp. Today, I’ll be talking to Serge Nguele, who will be answering this question. He’s the founder at your PPC doctor who specializes in implementing PPC solutions for companies. Tune in to find out more about what this B2B marketers mission is. Okay, and here we go. Mr. Serge Nguele, welcome to the show.  Serge Nguele  00:49 Thank you for having me, Christian. How are you today? Christian Klepp  00:52 I’m great, and I’m really looking forward to this conversation, because I’ll be honest with you, I was looking through the archive of all the past episodes, and I have to say nobody has been on the show that is going to talk about this topic, so this is the first time. Serge Nguele  01:05 Oh, yeah, good to hear. We’ll try to bring some value to all the millions of you know listener out there. Christian Klepp  01:13 Absolutely, absolutely. So let’s dive in, because I think this is going to be an interesting topic. And I don’t know about you, perhaps you run across this many times, but in my space and in my network, the moment people hear pay per click or PPC, they get a little bit like, I don’t know. Oh, I’m not sure. And this is part of the reason, a big part of the reason why I’ve asked somebody like yourself to come on the show. It’s to take the ickiness out of this topic and get them to understand why it’s important, right? So let’s dive into the first question. Okay, so Serge, you’re on a mission to listen. I love this one. Listen, diagnose and prescribe the right paperclip solutions for B2B companies. So for this conversation, let’s focus on the topic of how to optimize your PPC campaigns for maximum impact. So I’m going to kick off this conversation with the following question, what is it about PPC that you wish more people understood? Serge Nguele  02:16 Yeah, thanks. Yeah. Thanks, Christian for your question, and to quickly touch on what you’ve said about PPC. That’s the story of my life. You know, when people are asking, what do you do? And I will say, Pay Per Click, I will start explaining, you know, and they will just nod, and I will be like, not quite sure they got it, but you know, the quick way would be just to tell them, whenever you search for anything online, you go on Google or whichever search engine. And we’ll touch on it, there is not only Google, you know, when we when it comes to PPC, you type your keyword, and you will see a lot of links coming and the one with a little ad, which means advertising that’s pay per click. Ah, they would say, Yeah, that’s fine. Serge Nguele  03:03 But to come to your question when it’s come to PPC, really, what I wish most marketers are understanding is that PPC, which stands for pay per click, and it’s pay per click, because whenever you type a keyword and you click on the link coming there is someone paying the advertiser, not usually the user. That’s why it’s pay per click. And what is good to I wish many people you know understood about it is that PPC it’s about buying time to test your market assumptions. Because, yeah, all of us, all the businesses, it’s really happening, not when you have the click, but it’s after the click. What’s happening there. So when done right? PPC is the fastest, one of the fastest way I know of to validate the messaging, your offer, your positioning, and I wish more marketers understood that PPC is in a silo. It’s a feedback engine, really, and when you use it to inform your market, product fit your sales messaging, or even your customer experiences. It really goes beyond clicks, and that’s where you get the magic out of PPC. Christian Klepp  04:30 Yeah, that’s a really good way of putting it. Serge, and thanks for sharing that. We’re going to touch on this, I think even more later on. But like just you know, from a very top level perspective. Why do you think a lot of people feel, even marketers, feel that PPC is a waste of marketing investment? Serge Nguele  04:49 Yes, with this one, if I’m taking from advertiser, let’s say you Christian, you are, you know, a business person, the way. Well. Yeah, when it’s coming to PPC, it’s fair to talk more about Google, because, yeah, Google is having 90% of the market. So we will say Google, but Google is not the world. PPC has rules here a bit later. So let’s say what Google has done over the year is to really make it easy for pretty much anyone on the planet to be in a position to choose a few keyword enter the credit card, and in a matter of minutes, they would have another running showing up to people. So that’s the easy part, but that’s not doing PPC, and what is happening out of it, soon enough, they will realize, Okay, we are having a lot of clicks, but not what we are expecting, which means sales, or whatever is that is making their bottom line. And a lot of client I would be seeing advertiser. It will be after that phase where they found them themselves, you know, out of pocket of 100, if not 1000s, of click. And they will all, all of them. They will come like, PPC doesn’t work. And I would say, yeah, it’s normal for it not to work, if you because it’s a job, you know, I’m not here to defend, you know, my job, but, yeah, it’s taking time to be a PPC expert. So really, for me, starting from the beginning, where people are doing what they are not meant to do is not like me. You know, tomorrow I won’t be going out there and say I’m a podcast host. You know, that will be an insult on, you know, all the learning you went through, you know, to be where you are. So for me, that’s really the key problem. So basically, it’s, yeah, it’s a West because a lot of unqualified people, and I’m saying this, you know, respectfully, are just, you know, wasting budget, essentially. Christian Klepp  07:16 Yeah, so what I’m hearing you say is, like part of it is certainly a lack of expertise. The other one is also, perhaps even a lack of strategy, and we’re going to talk about that later on in the conversation, but that is a great segue to the next question about key pitfalls that you think B2B marketers should avoid when it comes to PPC. So what are those key pitfalls, and what should they be doing instead? Serge Nguele  07:38 Yes, and this will be complementing my answer, because, yeah, I focus it on advertiser directly. But let’s say when PPC experts are doing are running campaigns for their clients. So this is to this question to as mainly PPC has said, it’s one of the quickest way to really generate clicks out there. That’s fine, but that just the beginning, but even before getting there. So it’s the strategy beforehand, because, yeah, it’s quite easy to set the keyword, generate click and realize the website is not ready. The offer is not what it was supposed to be, and it’s bringing us, you know, to really plan before even starting creating your first campaign. That means the strategy. What is your product? Are you understanding your market? What’s your positioning your competition. What are you bringing to the market? So that’s the strategy. Once you clear with it, it will make it easy for you to say, Okay, I’m understanding the market. This is my offer. This is what I’m bringing, different, you know, in the market space. And now this is the strategy, the approach I’m going to use to reach out to those people. Where are those people? Even, you know, searching for the product or service I’m going to promote online. Because, yeah, when we say PPC, it’s a full funnel.  Serge Nguele  09:16 If we take Google, for example, people will be having multiple touch point to see your product. Yeah, I’ve been talking more about keywords, but there is a lot more than that. And if I ask you, how are you searching online? You are not only typing keyword, but you are self advertising because you’ve given some information about who you are, and search engine and marketing platform are having those information about you, your age, your job, how much you earn, all of those inside are what would be part of the strategy, how you approach market.  Serge Nguele  10:01 Now, once that is done properly, and let’s say the companies, company is already running it’s how are you measuring success? And there it will be all the vanity metrics. So okay, it’s good to have impression clicks, but what about the bottom line? Because, yeah, if you are investing, who says investment? Expect a return out of that investment? So if you measure only how many people are clicking on your website, that’s you are missing the point. So question would be, how many are converting whatever is that you know you define as a conversion.  Serge Nguele  10:44 Now, another part would be how you set your campaign. I said, how easy Google could, you know, make it to create a PPC campaign, they have also a lot of automatic function that have. This is not the point. I’m not here, you know, to do a very cheap Google bashing. But, I mean, yeah, this platform are having, well, I will say polite, just insane, you know, feature making it just kind of waste of budget, you know, where you’ll have the keyword targeting the, you know, network you shouldn’t be, you know, advertising on to sell it. So do setting and also aligning to the sales objective. So those are, you know, a few ways. So I said quite a lot. To bring it more into structure, I would say, first of all, it’s strategy before even, you know, thinking of creating the campaign. You have your strategy, and then once your company are there, I said, but yeah, I would keep on repeating it, the clicking, just the beginning of it. So what are you measuring? So having, you know, real matrix, not vanity metrics like click, CTR  (Click-Through Rate) and then setting your campaigns. A lot of advertisers are on set and forget, you know, not doing anything. And guess what? It wouldn’t work, you know, because you have to optimize continuously and then align with business goals. Christian Klepp  12:33 Absolutely, absolutely no. I’ve been writing furiously as you’re talking, but like what I’m hearing you say, and I think it’s absolutely right but people tend to forget that PPC, and in fact, a lot of these other initiatives, they’re all part of an ecosystem, right? And it’s all you all. You have to think about it like, Okay, so where is this going to go? Because the, as you rightfully said, the click is just the beginning. When they click, where are they going? Where are they going to land? Is it going to be a landing page? Is it going to be an ad? And after they’ve scanned the content on that said page or that ad, what do you want them to do? So what’s the call to action? Where are you going to funnel them from there after that? What’s the follow through? So it almost seems to me like this has to all be mapped out. It doesn’t just stop with PPC, right? Serge Nguele  13:21 Yes, and even there quickly, before you asked your other question, yeah, sorry to interrupt. I will say it’s all tied to the strategy, because, yeah, could be a lot of things. You know, you can use PPC because you want to test something on your website. You can use PPC because you want to complement what you are doing with your organic traffic strategy. Most recently, I had, I was referred a prospective client, and they came to me saying, we are doing well on our organic search. Now we want to bring PPC to complement all of that and expand. So, yeah, you know, all of those things are part of the strategy. So, and it will be different if you are coming because you want to test something on your landing page that’s been, for example, your main metrics. To go back to what I’ve said, clicks. Your clicks wouldn’t be a vanity matrix, because you really want people you know to come there and you know, validate whatever you want on the landing page. Whereas, if you are there to generate leads, probably you want, you know, content yourself only with clicks. You will want people you know to fill your lead form. You know. Christian Klepp  14:43 Absolutely, absolutely so sales you’ve tried. You’ve touched on this already, but like, let’s expand on it further. So what do you think are the main causes of underperforming paid search campaigns? So from your experience, what do you think the real underlying problems are, and I suppose one of them is a lack of strategy. Certainly.  Serge Nguele  15:04 Yeah, it’s starting from there. Christian, yeah, you said it a lack of strategy. But okay, let us assume you are there, you know, you are getting clicks. So there one of the main cause of on the performing campaign, I would say it’s that whenever I audit account, a lot of them are just flying kind of blind. That means the tracking is even, you know, wrong. This is something I should start with it, you know. But he has a good case to, you know, talk about it. It’s, yeah, when you have the campaign, so you need to make sure you track every single click. Otherwise, how would you even know what is performing? So this is the main cause of underperforming campaigns. For me, it’s weight tracking and measurement, and that’s mean, if you can’t trust your data, you can’t optimize and at this point, because, yeah, you have business people listening to this an important part, an important one, you know, a lot of people are not advertising. It’s also the invalid traffic. You have a lot of, you know, especially now with AI and all boats, you know, we have are there. And this there is a staggering, you know, number of invalid traffic so, and this is, you know, a proper study, so in certain vertical more than 20% of click received are all invalid. So that’s mean, if you factor that to properly understand that mean whatever you are receiving, 20% of those clicks are wrong. So that’s mean you’re working with wrong data. That’s mean everything that would follow after that are just, you know, assumption based on 20% of you know wrong information. So this is an important one.  Serge Nguele  17:09 And I would say, has advertiser, and this is something, for example, yeah, I don’t want to oversell, but what we do in which your PPC doctor. Those are things I’m putting in place to really be working with, in value, traffic, you know, company. There are a few out there, but yeah, I’m working with lunio, for example, which is our partner. So those I would recommend, not necessarily, you know, but you find whoever you want to work with, but this is really important to make sure you are receiving, you know, the right information, so weak tracking and measurement and then ignoring the funnel in the process. So you know when, again as I was saying, depending on what you want to achieve, you will have different goals, and you will be optimizing your campaign differently regarding what you want to achieve. So a lot of campaign are only targeting bottom up funnel intent, but you know, and they will be missing all the other funnels. So yeah, to develop quickly about the funnel. So yeah, roughly, we would have the awareness and then, so that’s mean people are just discovering they want something. So they want to know what their options are out there into that phase, and then they would have the consideration where, okay, then they are quite definite about what they want. Now they are starting making, you know, their decision. And then it will be the conversion phase, where they are in a position to decide and buy, essentially.  Serge Nguele  19:04 So when you set your campaign, you have to, you know, be considerate of all those phases, because they are someone who is in their awareness phase, they will just be there to consider their options. They won’t be buying. And you need to factor that so that your campaign, your strategy that’s tied back to strategy that’s mean, okay, you will plan your campaign to spend a certain amount, or invest a certain amount to reach people in their awareness phase, and then another amount to bring them to consider, and another one in consideration. And when you tie that to the wall ecosystem, we said, PPC is just a fraction of you know your the world, the world marketing ecosystem. So that’s mean, okay, awareness. How are you going to you? Know, once they click and you have that information, are you following up with an email, you know, to just keep them alive and making sure when, when they are in a position to convert if they see your ad, take that decision, you know.  Serge Nguele  20:14 And then the third one, it’s generic ad copies all we’ve said so people, when they are considering they won’t be in the same, you know, set of mind, like when they are just there to discover, or when they want to buy. So you need also, you know, with your messaging, to differentiate all those phases people in the awareness you want them to to know you are there. They might even be coming, you know, online already having their assumption some, some of their preferred planned. You know, so if you come into that moment, your message should be to tell them we are here. We could be an option for you when they are there to consider your message. Need to be different and so on, when they are ready to, you know, to convert. And even there could be, you know, remarketing as well, you know, because they, if they already know about you, you won’t come again with the same message. You need to try something different. It could be, if you have a discount, or whatever, you know, could bring value. So a lot to say, Yeah, but here to to summarize, I know, yeah, I said quite a lot. But to summarize, you know, the main thing would be, really the tracking and measurement you need to track. If you don’t track your flying blind, then consider the funnel. So at which stage people are which micro moment? Are they there because they want to know? Are they there because they want to buy? Are they, you know, all those the funnel, and the third one would be having a differentiated ad copy to match all of that. Christian Klepp  21:58 Fantastic, fantastic. You did say a lot, but I think it was very important, because I what you’re, what you were explaining was you were expanding on, not just again, it’s, I think for me, it’s also beyond the PPC, because it’s understanding the buyer’s journey. First of all, who the buyers are, and what stage of the journey that you’re at. I think you mentioned at least three times, from what I from what I can remember, are they… No, no. And I think it’s important, because are they in the Discover stage where they haven’t, you know, they’re just looking around for us to see what the options are, or are they at the stage where they’re already bought in and they’re and they’re ready to buy two completely different motivations, different messaging, different copy, is required, right? And if people are using this, I would just call it like the one size fits all approach, right? That’s a recipe for failure, right?  Serge Nguele  22:52 Exactly, exactly.  Christian Klepp  22:53 Okay, fantastic. Moving on to the next question. So break it down for us here. How can you know based on everything that you’ve said, How can marketers optimize their PPC campaign. So what are the steps? What are the key components that need to be in that process to make this successful? Serge Nguele  23:11 So at this point, yeah, we’ll assume they had their strategies, right? So yeah, the first one would be, fix your tracking to make sure you are tracking the right things, and that’s been making sure your GFO (General Marketing Automation), which used to be Google Analytics, is there to or if you’re using Adobe, but GFO is the most common one, making sure your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) integration is also right. I didn’t touch on it, but offline data are also important to really get the best out of your of your optimization, because, yeah, that’s mean, you are taking information from real your real customer, your real buyer, and when you feed the system with those information, offline information, it helping you get the best out of what you are currently doing.  Serge Nguele  24:09 Then the second step would be defining success in business terms. I mentioned earlier, vanity metrics. But yes, really, what is that? What does success means to you as a business person you know not only clicks you know, so that’s mean making sure you have your return on your ad spend right, and even tied it to the profit, because their return on ad spend would not even be considering, you know, all the other aspects. So really, are you profitable or no? And once you consider all of that, it will help you properly optimize the campaign and make them work.  Serge Nguele  24:56 Then the third step would be segment your audience smartly. This is touching on what we’ve said that’s been differentiator, who are decision maker, who are influencer, who are researcher, that they won’t be having the same impact, and if we identify them properly, that will also help you allocate the budget accordingly and have more efficiency on that part. I will take an example, one of our clients. When analyzing their channels, we found that on meta, they were having the highest cost per acquisition. However, when looking at the lifetime value of those clients, those were the most relevant. So that’s mean it wasn’t a problem to allocate more budget there, because we knew that’s where they are making more money if you don’t have that you know segmentation, you might just be saying, Okay, we have a cost per acquisition, which is one of the metrics. You could say cost per acquisition is too high there, but without having the offline information about the lifetime value, you will be missing the point. You could cut out, you know, that channel where, really, you know, it’s where you are getting the most value, and then it will be the differentiation on the messaging.  Serge Nguele  24:56 So build a creative, creative and message that speaks directly to the pinpoint so. And this is, again, you know, understanding your audience, really, if you know, if you understand them, that means you will talk their language. And then the fifth one I would add, there would be test, test and test relentlessly. Again. You counting probably this is the 10th time I would say the click. Click is just the beginning. So that’s been once you have the click, what can I do from that point? You know, understanding your client, testing a few different, you know, different aspect of your messaging, on your landing pages. That how you know, really, and that’s why, coming back to where we started, yeah, a lot of advertiser, when they will be coming, they would not have the time to do all of this, because it’s a full time job, you know, to be testing different aspects, you know, for a few weeks to have to validate one hypothesis. If you are a business person, your job would not certainly be, you know, doing that, and that’s why it’s a recipe for failure. When you know business people start trying to do what is not their job. And even here, you could see, even has a marketer, there are a lot of steps, you know, to be taken. And all of us, you know, digital marketer, we are not necessarily taking those. Christian Klepp  24:56 Fantastic, fantastic. Okay, so I’ve written this down. Let me just quickly recap for the audience, yeah. So the first one you said is fix your tracking, so GFO for Google Analytics, with the CRM integration that should also be right, defining success in business terms. I think that’s an extremely important one. Like, why are we doing this right? Like, what’s the objective here? Right?  Serge Nguele  24:56 Yeah. Christian Klepp  24:56 Segmenting your audience smartly, back to what you were saying earlier. Like, at what stage are they at? Right? How many, how many different groups, especially in B2B, right? How many different groups are we targeting? Differentiation in terms of messaging. I think that’s another big miss with a lot of these campaigns, right? That the messaging is just too generic, or perhaps they’re just using whatever ChatGPT gave them. And Testing, testing, which leads me to another question, Serge, because I’m pretty sure it’s impacted your area of expertise as well. And we are in 2025, at the time of this recording. But AI, how has AI impacted PPC, and where do you see this going? Like, how can AI help or hurt? PPC. Serge Nguele  25:42 Yeah, that’s a good one, you know. And I didn’t have it this issue added. I was like, okay, Christian is, you know, just uncommon. Not asking anything about AI. I was surprised. No this. So there we go, yeah, AI is, you know, it’s a part of our lives, all of us, and now it’s starting from the beginning. So, why so? So the question I’m asking myself is, you know, why do I, why do I even need AI, you know, for because, yeah, guess what, if it’s just, you know, to be following the  trend, it will be just noise, more than anything. However, coming to PPC, AI has been in PPC for a long while, even, you know, long before ChatGPT. We have more and more, you know, smart bidding, all those AI influence, but I remember when I started PPC 16 years back, not making me look younger. But yeah, don’t worry. I’m 25. Christian Klepp  26:06 For those that are listening, you know, they’re only listening to the audio version. I mean, Serge is a young looking guy. Serge Nguele  26:06 There you go. Yeah, yeah. I would say PPC used to be manual, you know, where you could freely influence but AI now and automation are part of the question to answer in a very simple, you know, term to your question about AI, it’s, yeah, AI is there. It’s a tool like any other tools, and it’s what you do with that tool that really matters. And also it what I’m what I’m trying to avoid it, you know, being, yeah, being lazy, as you mentioned, you know, when talking about the ad copy differentiation and people just getting what they are, you know, receiving from ChatGPT, yeah, the question is, using it as a tool, which means it could be doing a lot of stuff, you know, calculation, pulling together information, all those things that are boring, you know, let’s use the word, you know, I can say otherwise. So AI would be doing that and freeing us, you know, space to be strategizing, doing all you know, the steps we mentioned, understanding our market, the competition, segmenting, differentiating, you know, our messages, putting together the strategy. Because, yeah, AI won’t be able to do that, at least not properly.  Serge Nguele  26:06 So yeah, that’s for me. You know, how, how I’m, yeah, you know, positioning, you know, ourselves with AI, but yeah, we are using it definitely, you know, to make our life easier, not the other one, not to replace us. And actually, this, this one, yeah, I was at the conference last week in Manchester, and that was, you know, the very topic, and also a personal experience. It was my birthday last week, and so when there we had Ed Sheeran, you know, the singer, you probably know, we had his impersonator, you know, who came at the event. Now, at a personal level, I’m just one of those guys who can walk past any celebrity, you know, art. So I went for my selfie, and I was pretty much convinced, you know, that it was the real one, because I went, had a chat, told him it was my birthday. Oh, so he sung me, you know, a happy birthday, which I was pleased to publish. Like, okay, I had the real Ed Sheeran, you know, singing me happy birthday. But it turned out, you know, it was a fake one. So coming back to AI, one of the I had an academic who was discussing on that topic, and he said one of the main competency we need in the future with AI would be for expert to really be expert to drive AI and, you know, tell it when it’s wrong or right. And that was a, you know, perfect example, you know, with that HR experience. Christian Klepp  26:06 Absolutely, absolutely and belated Happy Birthday, by the way. And so I did see the post, and I looked closely at the picture, and I’m like, Yeah, that’s not the real guy. Serge Nguele  26:06 You were, right? And the thing is, I didn’t have a lot of people, you know, coming to say it looks like for a lot of people, you know, I wasn’t scummed, you know, on my own. Christian Klepp  26:06 Fantastic, fantastic. Okay, so we get to the next question, which I call the soapbox question, what is the status quo in your area of expertise? So, PPC, that you passionately disagree with and why? Serge Nguele  26:06 Okay, yeah, one of those we already touched on it. For me, it’s PPC, it’s set it and forget it. And a lot of campaigns auditing just that way, so you could see people, they just, you know, created the campaign. And they are expecting the system, you know, to turn it magically, you know, positively. So, yeah, that’s, I disagree. So you know, when I mentioned that the step to go, the very last one was, you know, to test, test and test. So, yeah, this is where the real magic is happening. You know, within PPC, when we testing. So if we set and forget, we won’t be able to really see what works. And at this point, I would also, you know, blink, the diversification, you know, Google is 90% of the PPC ecosystem. That’s fine. However, it’s not the world, the entire ecosystem. And on this one, we have just the second search engine, you know, in the world, Microsoft Art, which is getting ignored, sorry. And so with that, I would just use metaphor to say, if PPC, it’s a brain, and our brain is having two hemisphere, Google will be the left one, and then Microsoft will be the, you know, the right one. And I’m seeing a lot of PPC or advertiser just running on one hemisphere. So if you have one hemisphere, you will never know, you might even be successful on Google, but it will never be complete. You know, once you have a functioning PPC brand where you have Google’s running, and then Microsoft, who is coming, and the way is working, because it’s two different search engine would be coming incrementally to what you are achieving on Google. So that’s really where, you know you have the magic of, you know, the full potential of your PPC. Christian Klepp  26:06 Absolutely, absolutely. And you know it was, it goes back to what you were saying earlier on the conversation. It’s a set it and forget it. It’s also a very dangerous mindset, and it could lead to, it could lead also to a tremendous waste of money if you don’t know what you’re doing. Serge Nguele  26:06 Yeah, exactly. Which is some time for when business owner are managing the Google ad that just, that’s just naturally happens, because, yeah, it’s not their job, you know, they are focused on, you know, running their business, doing what they are good at. So they will be like, Okay, we have some PPC running, and that just, you know, was for everyone. Christian Klepp  26:06 Absolutely, absolutely, okay. Here comes the bonus question, which I kind of like, I hinted at it already previously. But you know, the rumor, the rumor on LinkedIn, is that you’re a runner, and I’ve seen some, I’ve seen some videos of you running, and you’ve clearly, like, participated in some marathons and the like. So my question to you, Serge, is like, what is it? What is it about running that you’ve learned that you’ve applied in your professional life? Serge Nguele  26:06 Oh, yeah, that’s a profound one. Okay, so yeah? Well, I would say yeah, the rumor on LinkedIn is right, yeah, running is an important part of my life, and even exercising, it’s an important part of my life. I’m coming from a football background, and most gradually, I went into running, and past six years, I’ve been more of a runner participating to that, I participated to three marathons, so Paris, Eden trail and London this year, and most recently completed a half marathon the Royal Park one in London. So with with running, long distance running, remind me just the way life is. So life is a marathon. So it’s not a, you know, it’s not a sprint, and which is running it. You know, if, when you get that mindset, a marathon, a marathon doesn’t mean you are going the distance that’s in you, that means you need to really well, I will bring it back a bit to the PPC. So we need to strategize if you are to cover 42 kilometers while it is becoming serious. So you need to make sure you really manage, you know, time your effort, you have a proper strategy, because you can just, you know, wake up and say, Okay, I will cover 42k you will be, you know, really going into trouble. So strategizing and then planning and that will be influencing, you know, even your worth living, because, yeah, how you rest, how you recover, how you eat, and so, yeah.  Serge Nguele  39:59 And then it’s also pushing you to the limit. That’s mean your mindset, which is actually the most important you know when doing this, because to run a marathon, it will be, yeah, a bit about you need to turn that for sure, but it will be about going beyond the physical battle, and at that point it will be more what you have in your mindset. Or no, do you believe you can do it? Or no, you know, are you fighting to keep on going when your body is saying, Okay, I can’t take it anymore. So and all of those things, when you bring them back to to normal life is just, you know, on a daily basis, your business person, you know, we have up and down. You will have no client, you know, sometime. So how are you behaving? You know, with when all those things are happening. And in between the running, I also developed my proper tools, one of them being what I call my three nose philosophies, which I’m happy to share with our listeners here, could be helping. It’s working for me. And yeah, I’m sure if you guys are testing it, it will be working. So the first, no, it’s no excuses. That’s been whatever you set yourself to do. You just go for it. You don’t find excuses. So it’s a respect you give to yourself. The second, no, it’s no complaint. Life is, you know, life is throwing us a lot of stuff. Not only is, you know, chocolate, if I can say but yeah, you have to face it. When is there? If you complain, it won’t change anything. So that’s mean not complaining set you to finding the solution. And the third one is no self pity. You can still say, Okay, I was born in wherever it is, this or that, that won’t change anything. The question it’s, are you willing to consider that however, whatever your condition is not what defines you, it’s what you do you know next that will be the important step. So yeah, my train of philosophy, Sophie would be the bonus for our listener, Christian Klepp  42:31 No excuses, no complaints and no self pity. So not only is sales a PPC expert, but he’s also a philosopher, no, but it’s awesome. Awesome. I love it. But, Serge, this has been such a great conversation. Thank you so much for coming on and for sharing your expertise and your experience and your running advice with the listeners, and quick introduction to yourself and how people out there can get in touch with you. And I did notice, you know, there were a couple of hints in the conversation. There were a lot of, like, medical terms floating around. What’s the story there? Serge Nguele  43:06 The story so, yeah. Quick Intro about me, yeah, I’m search your PPC doctor. I’m called the PPC doctor in the industry, I do quite a lot of public speaking in the digital marketing space. I’m George award at the search award in the UK, globally and at international level. I have 16 years experience in PPC, and I run my agency called your PPC doctor, if people want to be in touch with me, they can type my name online. I’m quite active on LinkedIn, so Serge Nguele, you will find me, yeah, wearing, you know, something with this PPC doctor. This is the branding. And to your question, why your PPC doctor? So there is a real story there. I’m a former Med student. So I studied medicine to become a proper doctor, but for some reason, I will spell spare the details. I pivoted into marketing and specialize into digital and PPC. So when I was creating my agency, the name was natural, your PPC doctor, which is also a real way of doing stuff. I don’t call the client. I still call, you know, my patients, and I’m having the doctor mindset within your PPC, where we really listen and then we listen, then we diagnose, prescribe, and from the prescription, we follow up with care. So yeah, that’s the doctor mindset at your PPC Doctor. Serge Nguele  43:52 Fantastic, fantastic. The only thing you don’t do is tell people to breathe in, breathe out and cough for me, please. Serge Nguele  43:58 Not yet.  Christian Klepp  43:58 Not yet, fantastic, fantastic. So once again, thank you so much for your time. Take care, stay safe and talk to you soon.  Serge Nguele  45:09 Okay, yes. Thanks Christian, thanks for having me.  Christian Klepp  45:12 Thanks. Okay. Bye, for now.  Serge Nguele  45:13 Yeah. Bye.

Este podcast tiene preguntas de emprendedores que fueron llegando. Es un espacio en donde comparto algunas experiencias que tuve que me sirvieron, sin tener nada resuelto, pero creo que la información se comparte y puede que algo de lo que me sirvió a mi le agregue valor a otro en su experiencia. Estas fueron las preguntas que respondí:00:00 Comienzo 00:35 ¿Cómo creés que va a ser la vida del emprendedor en un futuro? ¿Qué herramientas tendremos?02:35 ¿Le recomendarías a un emprendedor que se tome vacaciones en el primer año de su proyecto? ¿Cuánto tiempo?03:34 ¿Cómo se maneja la presión en un emprendimiento grande y a lo largo de los años?Abrazá un propósito. ¡Desafía al mundo e inspirá a otros!Recordá que si querés enviarnos tus preguntas, consultas o sugerencias podés hacerlo a podcast@emprendeconproposito.com.arTambién podés seguirnos en las otras redes:Web: emprendeconproposito.com.ar IG: @sebasosaemprende @somosecp YT: Emprende con propósito TikTok: @somosecp Te dejo las frases destacadas del podcast: ¿Cómo creés que va a ser la vida del emprendedor en un futuro? ¿Qué herramientas tendremos?A veces, a los emprendedores nos cuesta no tanto encontrar esas herramientas, sino sostener el uso, el compromiso y formar buenos hábitos. No se trata solo de la herramienta, sino de la disciplina para usarla consistentemente.Por supuesto, hoy la inteligencia artificial, el data mining, toda esa información nos ayuda a llegar mucho más preparados a un cliente y nos permite escalar. Antes, era un proceso mucho más humano y analógico, ¡y hoy podemos optimizar mucho más nuestros tiempos!Identifica dos o tres herramientas clave. Tal vez una que te ayude a ordenar tu agenda y establecer prioridades. Otra podría ser un CRM (Customer Relationship Management) para llevar un seguimiento de tus clientes, identificar el proceso de venta y darle un seguimiento adecuado. ¡Incluso para recordar fechas especiales! También puedes usar un BI (Business Intelligence) con tablas y herramientas que te permitan volcar y procesar la información de manera rápida y ordenada. Pero al final, lo más importante no es la herramienta en sí, sino la capacidad de sostener el compromiso con esas decisiones.¿Le recomendarías a un emprendedor que se tome vacaciones en el primer año de su proyecto? ¿Cuánto tiempo?En lo personal, yo no lo hice, y creo que a la "máquina" hay que cuidarla siempre desde el principio, teniendo en cuenta cuáles son los momentos y prioridades.Me ha pasado ver a gente que, a mi criterio, se toma vacaciones demasiado rápido, se desentiende o corta por completo. ¡Y todavía no hay equipo, proceso, ni sistemas! ¡Es como un embrión apenas gateando y ya nos vamos!Por eso, creo que en los comienzos se requiere tiempo y dedicación. Sí, hay que cortar, salir, buscar aire y oxígeno para volver con más fuerza. Pero para mí, funciona mejor quizás dos o tres fines de semana de escape en el primer año, y a medida que la cosa empieza a caminar, ¡viajes largos! ¡Pero no descuidar el negocio!¿Cómo se maneja la presión en un emprendimiento grande y a lo largo de los años?En Argentina, 20 años son como un tanto más de años en otras partes del mundo. El desafío que tiene cualquier emprendedor en nuestro país es sortear todos los desafíos diarios. ¡En un país volátil, con reglas cambiantes y mucha inestabilidad!Y después, está el desafío de trabajar, liderar y trabajar con personas. Lo más lindo que tiene mi trabajo es trabajar con personas, ¡pero también lo más desafiante!Estas han sido nuestras recetas para llegar hasta acá, para poder sostener y seguir creciendo. No perder el hambre, las ganas de hacerlo. Y ese hambre no está atado a un extracto bancario, sino a alcanzar a más gente, a dejar una huella y un impacto mayor, a ser de valor, a hacer la diferencia. Como dicen los americanos, Make a difference. ¡Que lo que hagas no dé lo mismo! Que moviste la estantería, hiciste una pregunta incómoda, movilizaste a alguien.

KI-Agenten übernehmen Vertriebsaufgaben, die viele als belastend erleben: Datenpflege, Recherche, zeitfressende Routine. KI-Experte Dominic von Proeck zeigt in dieser Folge Wege auf, wie du deinen Sales-Funnel massiv verbessern kannst: Durch Deep Research zu besseren ICPs (Ideal Customer Profile), durch Vor- und Nachbereitung deiner Meetings auf Knopfdruck oder CRM-Pflege ohne Klickorgien. Gemeinsam zeigen wir konkrete Anwendungsbeispiele, erklären die möglichen Effekte und stellen Tools vor, mit denen sich all dies im Vertrieb umsetzen lässt. Du erfährst... ...wie KI-Agenten den Vertrieb revolutionieren und echte menschliche Beziehungen stärken ...welche Tools und Strategien den Einsatz von KI im Sales optimieren ...wie Unternehmen durch KI-gestützte Datenanalysen ihren idealen Kunden finden __________________________ ||||| PERSONEN |||||

Autumn is officially here! If you're anything like me, you're loving the changing leaves, cosier jumpers, and maybe even a new cardigan (thanks, Facebook recommendations). But aside from sweater weather, this season brings something else that's just as important for your business: the ideal time to get serious about your CRM. If you've ever found yourself wondering, “What's the BEST CRM system out there?”—you're not alone. I've had this question tossed my way every month for the past five years, and it's finally time for a real, practical answer. So, why is autumn the perfect time to tackle your CRM setup? Simple: December in the B2B world is slow. Corporate clients are winding down, so your best bet is to use that lull to choose, set up, and actually populate your CRM. Trust me, you want to enter the New Year with your sales process locked and loaded. Let's get clear: What is a CRM? Put plainly, a CRM (Customer Relationship Management system) helps you record every activity you do to build and nurture customer relationships—and then report on those activities. It's not just a glorified email list, it's not a marketing tool masquerading as a sales system, it's about tracking real sales moves and seeing what works (and what doesn't), so you can stop guessing and start growing. Who needs a CRM?  If you want repeatable, predictable, consistent sales—you do. If you're genuinely invested in refining your sales process—you do. But if you're dabbling, or not sure you want to run your business long-term? Save your time and money. Why do so many people avoid them?  The honest truth: CRMs require you to record and review data consistently. It's less fun than getting likes on social media, but infinitely more profitable. If you hate the idea of tracking your calls, deals, and targets then you're not harnessing the full money-making power of a CRM. The pros and cons (no sugarcoating): Pros: Relationship tracking, standardised customer experience, no missed invoices, faster deal cycles, instant troubleshooting and clear data for future opportunities. Cons: If you don't use it, it's a wasted expense. It requires effort to set up and maintain and yes, you're at the mercy of software updates and price changes. So… what's the BEST CRM? Here's the twist: There IS no universal best. The best CRM for you depends on your unique needs and sales process. Before signing up, ask yourself: Do I have a proven sales process to record and report on? How much am I willing to invest? What information do I need to record, and what other features do I want (email, SMS, etc.)? What kind of user interface will I actually enjoy using? Take those free trials. Book the demos. Be choosy! The right system will motivate you to take action and help you grow—not gather dust in your toolkit. And one final reminder: If you want live support and game-changing sales training for 2026, this is your LAST call for The C Suite ®. Doors close 31st October 2025 at 5pm UK, for good.  Once it's closed, it's closed. Don't miss out. Make autumn count—wrap yourself in a new business habit, not just a new cardigan. Key Quotes; Last Chance to Join The C Suite ® "I am most importantly super excited to run it one last ever time and to get to support our new participants and getting to support people who are re enrolling for life support to really make a change to their corporate sales process next year and see them skyrocket, streamline, expand and enjoy their B2B sales processes." 00:02:3900:03:06 Why Serious Business Owners Need a CRM: "Certainly everybody who wants to be a genuine business owner who is actually interested and invested in creating a sales process that works in monitoring existing sales processes so they can continue to work in troubleshooting sales processes effectively so that they can make them more efficient. Those people should have, use and rely on a CRM system, without a doubt." 00:13:3900:14:08 How to Choose the Best CRM System: "There are questions that you should be asking yourself before you choose a system, right? So any piece of software or most pieces of software that you'll see on the Internet, whether it's a CRM system or an email marketing system or, I don't know, any other platform that you want to use, all of them will give you free trials." 00:26:5300:27:13 Why a CRM is Useless Without a Proven Sales Process "It doesn't matter if your sales people are making money, if they don't know metrics, if they don't know their key performance indicators, if they don't know what activities are supposed to produce what type of results, there is no point having a CRM system that is all bells and whistles because at that point you're just recording any data and hoping that it gives you some insights." 00:31:4300:32:10   Key Resources Mentioned in this Episode:   Click here for the direct link to The C Suite ® 2026: https://smartleaderssell.thrivecart.com/the-c-suite-2026-live/   If you want to learn more about The Expert Services Directory, click here: http://bit.ly/4f3ch1I   If you've enjoyed listening to How to choose the best CRM system to sell your services to corporate clients check out these other episodes that may be of interest.   What are the best broadcast platforms to generate corporate clients https://bit.ly/SellingtoCorporate020 Why organising your sales activity is central to your success when selling to corporates https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/why-organising-your-sales-activity-is-integral-to-your/id1469526548?i=1000521680504   Converting Corporates is the B2B sales event of the year for service based entrepreneurs, if you want to join the waitlist for 2026 click the link https://smartleaderssell.vipmembervault.com/cc2026waitlist   If you would like to sign up for our weekly newsletter to stay in touch with the latest B2B sales tips and techniques click https://sellingtocorporate.com/newsletter/   Content Disclaimer The information contained above is provided for information purposes only. The contents of this article, video or audio are not intended to amount to advice and you should not rely on any of the contents of this article, video or audio. Professional advice should be obtained before taking or refraining from taking any action as a result of the contents of this article, video or audio. Jessica Lorimer disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on any of the contents of this article, video or audio.  

Neste episódio do Canary Cast, Marcos Toledo, cofundador e General Partner do Canary, conversa com Allan Paladino, cofundador e CEO da Lastro, empresa fundada em 2021 que está reinventando as transações imobiliárias no Brasil com a Laís — sua “primeira funcionária digital” construída sobre o WhatsApp. A Laís já atende mais de 1.000 imobiliárias, engajando clientes 24/7, qualificando leads, marcando visitas, gerando conexões e respondendo dúvidas em tempo real. O resultado é um aumento de até 60% na conversão de leads em visitas, redução do tempo médio de resposta de 6 horas para 15 segundos e uma nova forma de corretores trabalharem com mais eficiência. No episódio, Allan compartilha sua trajetória do mercado financeiro ao empreendedorismo, o pivot estratégico que levou à criação da Laís e como a Lastro está transformando um dos setores mais fragmentados do país em um ecossistema mais inteligente, eficiente e humano.Convidado: Allan PaladinoAllan Paladino é cofundador e CEO da Lastro. Economista formado pela USP, iniciou sua carreira no Credit Suisse, foi CFO e sócio de uma operação de coworking e, em 2021, fundou a Lastro ao lado de José Thomaz. Hoje lidera a expansão da Laís, agente de AI que já conversa com centenas de milhares de brasileiros todos os meses.Host: Marcos ToledoMarcos Toledo é cofundador e General Partner do Canary, um dos principais fundos de venture capital no Brasil. Antes do Canary, Marcos construiu uma sólida carreira no mercado financeiro, iniciando no JP Morgan e depois cofundando a M Square Investimentos, gestora de ativos líder no país.Highlights do episódio:00:00 – 03:00 Boas-vindas e apresentação 03:01 – 08:30 Início da trajetória profissional do Allan08:31 – 13:50 Primeira experiência empreendedora e entrada no mercado imobiliário13:51 – 18:30 Formação da Lastro: encontro com o co-founder, José Thomaz e a tese inicial18:31 – 23:00 Primeiros sinais de PMF, desafios para atingir escala e decisão de pivot23:01 – 28:20 O impacto da chegada da AI generativa e a virada estratégica para criar a Laís28:21 – 33:00 A Laís como “primeira funcionária digital” das imobiliárias: proposta de valor e casos de uso33:01 – 37:00 O impacto da Laís em números 37:01 – 41:00 A diferença entre vender software e “sell work”: a Laís como funcionária que executa tarefas41:01 – 44:30 Implementação e confiança: como convencer imobiliárias a adotarem AI em suas operações44:31 – 48:00 Roadmap de futuro48:01 – 50:30 Aprendizados: erros, acertos e conselhos para empreendedores em busca de product-market fit50:31 – 52:00 Casos curiosos com a LaísGlossário de termos mencionados ao longo do episódio: Pivot — Mudança estratégica relevante no produto/modelo de negócioAI (Artificial Intelligence) — Inteligência artificial; aqui, tecnologia utilizada para automatizar conversas, tarefas e decisões.Generative AI — IA generativa; modelos que produzem texto/áudio/imagem, usados para dialogar e responder clientes.LLM (Large Language Model) — é um tipo de inteligência artificial (IA) projetado para compreender, gerar e interagir com a linguagem humana. Esses modelos são treinados com um volume massivo de textos e dados da internet, o que lhes permite aprender padrões, relações e contextos para executar diversas tarefas linguísticas.Agentic AI — Abordagem em que “agentes” de IA executam tarefas de ponta a ponta (ex.: qualificar lead, agendar visita).ChatGPT — Aplicativo popular baseado em LLM, citado como marco de adoção em massa de IA.OpenAI — Organização por trás de modelos como GPT; o “Playground” foi citado como ambiente de testes.Playground — Interface web que permite a desenvolvedores e usuários testar, experimentar e interagir diretamente com os modelos de linguagem da OpenAI, como o GPT, sem a necessidade de escrever código. Ele funciona como um "laboratório" onde é possível explorar as capacidades e os limites dos modelos, ajustando parâmetros e visualizando os resultados em tempo real.WhatsApp — Canal principal de comunicação/atendimento no Brasil; a Laís opera nele 24/7.Lead — Potencial cliente que demonstra interesse (ex.: pergunta por um imóvel).Lead Qualification — Qualificação do lead; filtrar/priorizar conforme intenção e perfil.Conversion Rate — Taxa de conversão (ex.: de lead para visita ao imóvel).Cold Lead — Lead “frio”, com baixa intenção ou pouca resposta; a IA ajuda a filtrar/evitar gasto de tempo.B2B (Business-to-Business) — Vendas entre empresas; no caso, Lastro → imobiliárias.Onboarding — Processo de implementação/integração inicial da solução no cliente.CRM (Customer Relationship Management) — Sistema de gestão do relacionamento com clientes; integrações recebem resumos das conversas da Laís.API (Application Programming Interface) — Interface para integrações entre sistemas (site, CRM, portais).Product–Market Fit (PMF) — Ajuste produto–mercado; momento em que o produto resolve uma dor crítica e “vende sozinho”.Founder–Market Fit — Aderência entre a experiência/interesse do fundador e o mercado/problema atacado.Selling Work — Em vez de “vender software”, vender a execução de trabalho (a Laís atua como “funcionária digital”).Vertical / Horizontal — Estratégias de foco. Vertical: resolver profundamente um setor (imobiliário). Horizontal: atender vários setores com a mesma solução.Dashboard — Painel com métricas/insights (ex.: bairros mais demandados, canais com melhor retorno).Roadmap — Cronograma de evolução do produtoScale / Scaling — Escalar; crescer com eficiência Pre-IPO / IPO — Financiamento pré-IPO e oferta pública inicial; citados no histórico do convidado.Slack — Ferramenta de comunicação interna; usada para alertas sobre conversas marcantes da Laís.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

W tym odcinku sprawdzamy co to jest system CRM i dlaczego może on diametralnie usprawnić Twoją firmę – niezależnie od tego, czy prowadzisz jednoosobową działalność gospodarczą, czy masz już większy zespół sprzedażowy.

Neste episódio do Canary Cast, Marcos Toledo, cofundador e General Partner do Canary, recebe Eduardo del Giglio, cofundador e CEO da Caju, empresa que nasceu como uma solução inovadora para benefícios flexíveis e evoluiu para um ecossistema abrangente de diversas soluções financeiras e software para RH. Durante a conversa, Edu relembra sua jornada empreendedora, desde a experiência desafiadora ao fundar um marketplace de serviços domésticos, logo após se formar na faculdade, até os aprendizados fundamentais adquiridos em sua passagem como consultor na McKinsey, que o incentivaram a voltar a empreender. Ele conta como a paixão pela criação de produtos, descoberta em sua primeira jornada, e uma visão clara sobre as ineficiências do mercado tradicional de benefícios o levaram a identificar uma nova oportunidade e fundar a Caju. O episódio explora a construção da Caju desde o início e sua antiga conexão com o Canary, iniciada logo após Edu decidir sair da consultoria e voltar a empreender. Edu fez parte do programa de empreendedores em residência que existia na época, desenvolvendo sua tese dentro do escritório do Canary. Desde então, a Caju se destacou como uma empresa que criou uma nova categoria dentro do segmento de benefícios, transformando completamente a experiência de colaboradores, empresas e estabelecimentos parceiros, substituindo os antigos modelos de arranjos fechados e engessados por uma plataforma aberta, ágil e centrada no usuário. Quase seis anos depois de sua fundação, a Caju evoluiu para uma plataforma de multissoluções em gestão de colaboradores, despesas e benefícios corporativos e atende mais de 50 mil empresas de todos os portes. Entre os grandes nomes estão Grupo Boticário, Aurora e Embraer. Edu também compartilha a visão de futuro da empresa, detalhando como pretende continuar contribuindo para a transformação dos processos operacionais do RH por meio de soluções integradas, automação inteligente e uso estratégico de inteligência artificial. Além disso, Edu traz insights importantes sobre a relevância de atuar proativamente junto ao ambiente regulatório, especialmente em setores fortemente regulados como o da Caju. Por fim, ele compartilha conselhos valiosos para quem está iniciando sua jornada empreendedora, destacando a importância de confiar nos próprios instintos, agir rapidamente e controlar a ansiedade diante dos desafios. Convidado: Edu Giglio Edu Giglio é cofundador e CEO da Caju, empresa que oferece soluções flexíveis de benefícios, pagamentos corporativos e software integrado para gestão de pessoas. Eduardo iniciou sua jornada empreendedora com a Blumpa, empresa de marketplace para serviços domésticos, e posteriormente acumulou experiência significativa na McKinsey, consultoria onde desenvolveu uma visão crítica sobre produto, estratégia e formação de equipes. Atualmente, lidera a Caju, impactando milhares de empresas e mais de um milhão de usuários ativos em todo o Brasil. Apresentação: Marcos Toledo Marcos Toledo é cofundador e General Partner do Canary, um dos principais fundos de venture capital no Brasil. Antes do Canary, Marcos construiu uma sólida carreira no mercado financeiro, iniciando no JP Morgan e depois cofundando a M Square Investimentos, gestora de ativos líder no país. Destaques do episódio: 00:00 - 02:20 Boas-vindas e apresentação00:51 - 03:37 O que é a Caju hoje 03:43 - 08:05 Jornada pessoal e profissional do Edu antes da Caju 08:05 - 09:55 Conhecendo o mercado de benefícios e os primeiros passos da tese10:00 - 11:50 A primeira conexão com o Canary e início da jornada12:23 - 14:00 Como Edu conheceu Renan, seu co-founder técnico14:11 - 14:43 Lançamento da Caju e uma pandemia no meio do caminho06:51 - 12:15 Trajetória empreendedora anterior do Edu 12:16 - 17:46 Criando uma nova categoria: como era o mercado de benefícios antes da Caju17:49 - 20:00 O Ciclo vicioso da experiência anterior das empresas e usuários20:07 - 20:20 Identificando uma oportunidade através das ineficiências do mercado20:23 - 23:26 Quais foram as mudanças regulatórias e de infraestrutura que permitiram o surgimento da Caju 23:39 - 27:30 Como foram as primeiras vendas B2B e a busca pelo Product-Market-Fit28:43 - 32:08 Visão estratégica e expansão do portfólio de produtos da Caju para construir um ecossistema32:17 - 34:20 O uso estratégico de IA e automação de processos 34:37 - 39:10 Momento de tração e a importância da atuação proativa na esfera regulatória 39:50 - 40:30 Conselhos para empreendedores que estão começando40:40 - 41:42 Visão da Caju para os próximos 10 anos41:46 - 42:50 ConclusãoTermos em inglês mencionados ao longo do episódio:Pitch – Apresentação de uma ideia de negócio, geralmente feita para investidores, mas pode se aplicar também no processo comercial com clientesProduct-market-fit – Quando o produto satisfaz uma necessidade real de mercadoDeal – Contrato, negócio, acordoFundraising / Fundraising round – Rodada de investimentoB2B (Business-to-Business) – Modelo de negócio em que uma empresa vende para outraOnboarding – Integração inicial de um novo funcionário a uma empresaAll-in-one – Tudo em um só lugarSoftware as a Service (SaaS) – Modelo de negócio e produto que utiliza software como serviço para o cliente finalBack-end / Front-end – Termos técnicos de desenvolvimento de software (lógica por trás da aplicação / o que o usuário vê e interage)CRM (Customer Relationship Management) – Sistema de gestão de relacionamento com o clienteATS (Applicant Tracking System) – Sistema de rastreamento de candidatos (usado em processos seletivos)Run on Caju – Rodar/funcionar na Caju (expressão usada para indicar que uma empresa opera com as soluções da Caju)User – UsuárioWorkflow – Fluxo de trabalhoInsights – Percepções, descobertasPlaybook – Manual de boas práticas, instruçõesScaling / Scale – Escalabilidade / Escalar o negócioBenchmark – Negócio ou prática de referência para comparação e/ou inspiraçãoDeck – Apresentação visual de uma ideia (geralmente PowerPoint ou similar)Frameworks – Estruturas/metodologias de apoio para desenvolvimento de soluçõesWorkflow automation / autopilot – Automação de processos / "piloto automático"AI (Artificial Intelligence) – Inteligência ArtificialDeep dive – Exploração aprofundada de um temaInsights-driven – Orientado por dados/percepçõesGo-to-market – Estratégia de lançamento e venda de produto ao mercadoUser adoption – Adoção (uso) do produto por parte dos usuáriosTouchpoint – Ponto de contato com o clienteSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

#375 In part three of the four-part series we focus on the critical role of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tools and technologies in sales. Guest Sean O'Shaughnessy discusses the importance of leveraging CRM systems for improving internal business operations and managing customer relationships. The episode covers how CRMs help in making data-driven sales decisions, the necessity of integrating email and social selling strategies with CRM, and the invaluable role of such technologies in maintaining efficient communication and service to customers. The conversation also touches upon the versatility of CRM systems in managing prospects, leads, and ensuring consistent engagement through methods like email marketing and personalized contact strategies. (Original Air Date - 4/3/24) What we discuss with Sean: + Introduction to CRM and Its Importance + Advanced CRM Features: Email Integration and AI Tools + Maximizing Productivity with CRM: A Personal Experience + The Future of Sales: Embracing CRM and Technological Advances + Unlocking Data-Driven Sales Decisions + Exploring Industry-Specific Sales Strategies + Maximizing CRM for Customer Engagement + Leveraging Social Media and Email Marketing + Personalizing Customer Connections with Technology + Choosing the Right CRM for Your Business Be sure to come back for part 4. And make sure to check out parts 1-2 if you missed any of the previous episodes! Thank you, Sean! To connect with Sean on Linkedin, click here. To check out Sean's website, click here. For more information go to MillionaireUniversity.com To get access to our FREE Business Training course go to MillionaireUniversity.com/training. And follow us on: Instagram Facebook Tik Tok Youtube Twitter To get exclusive offers mentioned in this episode and to support the show, visit millionaireuniversity.com/sponsors. Want to hear from more incredible entrepreneurs? Check out all of our interviews here! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of Grow a Small Business, host Troy Trewin interviews Dr. Donna Smith Bellinger, founder of DS Bellinger Consulting, specializes in helping business owners and sales teams enhance their sales performance by mastering revenue-generating conversations. She launched the business part-time nine years ago, growing it into a thriving enterprise with a team of five and multiple six-figure revenues. Dr. Bellinger also brings a wealth of entrepreneurial experience, including successfully exiting a tech company. In this discussion, she shares her journey, the challenges she faced as a woman and a person of color, the critical role of financial literacy, the art of delegation, and the importance of fostering a strong business culture. Other Resources: Sales Is Not About Wait And See: Do You Want To Get Paid Now or Eventually? by Dr. Donna Smith Bellinger (Author) You Lost Me @ Hello: Actionable principles that move you beyond "Networking."  by Dr. Donna Smith Bellinger (Author) Why would you wait any longer to start living the lifestyle you signed up for? Balance your health, wealth, relationships and business growth. And focus your time and energy and make the most of this year. Let's get into it by clicking here.   Troy delves into our guest's startup journey, their perception of success, industry reconsideration, and the pivotal stress point during business expansion. They discuss the joys of small business growth, vital entrepreneurial habits, and strategies for team building, encompassing wins, blunders, and invaluable advice.   And a snapshot of the final five Grow A Small Business Questions: What do you think is the hardest thing in growing a small business? According to Dr. Donna Smith Bellinger, the hardest thing about growing a small business is understanding your value statement. She emphasises not trying to be all things to all people within your area of expertise. You simply cannot please everyone, so it is best to focus on what you do best and excel at that. What's your favorite business book that has helped you the most? According to Dr. Donna Smith Bellinger, her favourite business book that has helped her the most is The E Myth. However, she also mentions that The Purpose Driven Life, while not a business book, was very important to her. Therefore, she highlights two books as being particularly impactful. Are there any great podcasts or online learning resources you'd recommend to help grow a small business? Dr. Donna Smith Bellinger, doesn't recommend specific podcasts or online learning tools. Instead, she emphasises the importance of tailored research within the specific industry of a new client to remain relevant. She takes "a little bit of everything" for her own professional development. The host, Troy Trewin, suggests the Grow Small Business podcast itself as a helpful resource. What tool or resource would you recommend to grow a small business? She recommends the most direct tool recommendation for growing a small business is to have a good, robust CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system. She states that the days of just using a spreadsheet are over. What advice would you give yourself on day one of starting out in business? Her advice for herself on day one of starting out in business would be straightforward: "If you can't laugh at it, don't do it" Book a 20-minute Growth Chat with Troy Trewin to see if you qualify for our upcoming course. Don't miss out on this opportunity to take your small business to new heights! Enjoyed the podcast? Please leave a review on iTunes or your preferred platform. Your feedback helps more small business owners discover our podcast and embark on their business growth journey.     Quotable quotes from our special Grow A Small Business podcast guest: Confidence is your most powerful sales strategy—own it before you pitch it – Dr. Donna Smith Bellinger Revenue generation starts with a mindset, not a marketing plan – Dr. Donna Smith Bellinger Stop asking for permission to succeed—just go get it  – Dr. Donna Smith Bellinger

Join Jennifer Stats on the Life and Listings podcast as she dives deep into one of the most crucial tools in real estate—your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system! Whether you're a seasoned pro or just getting started, this episode is packed with must-know tips on organizing your contacts, optimizing your database, and setting yourself up for long-term success—without the dreaded rework. If you've ever struggled to keep your leads, clients, and business data in check, this episode is for you! Listen in and take your real estate game to the next level!    “Most people have way too many custom fields and tags that they're utilizing in their system. So think about segmentation. Segmentation is something that we want to be able to put a chunk of people in. If a tag only is going to apply to one person, it's not a tag or custom field, it's a note. If it's something that you want to segment, so it's all of your buyers, all of your sellers, all of your SLI, all of I don't know some other group of people that you want to be able to segment everyone that's interested in a specific city that is a tag or a custom field.”   Key takeaways: Understanding CRMs and Their Importance – Explanation of what a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is and why it's essential in real estate. Notes vs. Tags for Organization – Clarification on the difference between notes and tags, how to properly use them for segmentation. Consistency in CRM Usage – The importance of fully committing to a CRM, ensuring all contact details are correctly recorded. Updating CRM Information Regularly – Steps to keep contact details up to date, including adding new addresses after transactions. CRM Playbook Announcement – Introduction of the monthly playbooks, with a focus on the CRM Playbook. Connect with Jennifer Staats: Website: staatssolutions.com Staats Solution Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/staatssolutions/ Jennifer Staats Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jennifertherealtor LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/staatssolutions/

Take a deep-dive research into home inspector marketing using website designs by InterNACHI's Official Vendor for websites, Inspector Website Builder at https://www.inspectorwebsitebuilder.com/. Learn about website analytics, tracking, social media posting, live chats, online scheduling, lead generation, CRM Customer Relationship Management, and much more. 

Take a deep-dive research into home inspector marketing using website designs by InterNACHI's Official Vendor for websites, Inspector Website Builder at https://www.inspectorwebsitebuilder.com/. Learn about website analytics, tracking, social media posting, live chats, online scheduling, lead generation, CRM Customer Relationship Management, and much more. 

Take a deep-dive research into home inspector marketing using website designs by InterNACHI's Official Vendor for websites, Inspector Website Builder at https://www.inspectorwebsitebuilder.com/. Learn about website analytics, tracking, social media posting, live chats, online scheduling, lead generation, CRM Customer Relationship Management, and much more. 

Take a deep-dive research into home inspector marketing using website designs by InterNACHI's Official Vendor for websites, Inspector Website Builder at https://www.inspectorwebsitebuilder.com/. Learn about website analytics, tracking, social media posting, live chats, online scheduling, lead generation, CRM Customer Relationship Management, and much more. 

Take a deep-dive research into home inspector marketing using website designs by InterNACHI's Official Vendor for websites, Inspector Website Builder at https://www.inspectorwebsitebuilder.com/. Learn about website analytics, tracking, social media posting, live chats, online scheduling, lead generation, CRM Customer Relationship Management, and much more. 

Take a deep-dive research into home inspector marketing using website designs by InterNACHI's Official Vendor for websites, Inspector Website Builder at https://www.inspectorwebsitebuilder.com/. Learn about website analytics, tracking, social media posting, live chats, online scheduling, lead generation, CRM Customer Relationship Management, and much more. 

Take a deep-dive research into home inspector marketing using website designs by InterNACHI's Official Vendor for websites, Inspector Website Builder at https://www.inspectorwebsitebuilder.com/. Learn about website analytics, tracking, social media posting, live chats, online scheduling, lead generation, CRM Customer Relationship Management, and much more. 

Take a deep-dive research into home inspector marketing using website designs by InterNACHI's Official Vendor for websites, Inspector Website Builder at https://www.inspectorwebsitebuilder.com/. Learn about website analytics, tracking, social media posting, live chats, online scheduling, lead generation, CRM Customer Relationship Management, and much more. 

In this insightful episode, we sit down with Justin Taylor, a real estate marketing expert, to discuss the transformative power of a well-implemented CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system. Discover how a CRM can be the backbone of your real estate business, enabling you to stay organized, personalize your client communication, and unlock new levels of success.   Key Takeaways: - Understand the importance of maintaining an up-to-date database and the hidden opportunities it can uncover - Learn how to leverage CRM features to segment your contacts and deliver tailored, personalized outreach - Explore strategies to build trust and rapport with clients by incorporating personal details and communication preferences - Discover the long-term value of a well-managed CRM as a sellable asset when transitioning your real estate business - Hear about a practical, affordable solution in Blueprint Training and Coaching that can help you implement and optimize your CRM   Whether you're struggling to keep your database organized or looking to take your real estate business to new heights, this episode is a must-listen. Unlock the full potential of a CRM and position yourself for long-term success.   Follow Justin: www.bluprintpro.com   We Educate and Motivate All Things Real Estate!   Monte Mohr owns Realty One Group Music City and has sold over $1 Billion dollar's worth of real estate and over 3000 homes sold over his 30+ year career!   Interested in joining Monte as an agent? www.topagentsuccess.com   Carey Ann Cyr manages and operates one of the Top Branches for CMG Financial in Franklin, TN. She and her team have become known for closing nearly impossible deals! They have processed over 300 million in mortgages since 2016 with over 613 families ushered into their dream homes!   Contact Carey Ann: www.yourtnlendingsolution.com     The Talk of Music City Real Estate is Produced, Voiced and Edited by www.itsyourshow.co  

The Business of Meetings – Episode 248 Unlocking Success: The 5 Essentials You Need for 2025 with Eric Rozenberg  As the year draws toward a close, Eric shares five essential aspects you need to consider to set yourself up for success in the coming year.  Join us as Eric dives into a mix of visionary ideas and concrete steps that you can implement immediately to ensure next year is your best year ever! 1. Define Your Long-Term Vision The foundation of success begins with a clear long-term vision. Consider why you started your business and what you want to achieve over the next 10 years. Your vision is your guiding light in the inevitable ups and downs you will experience as an entrepreneur. Even though team issues, unexpected crises, or technical glitches will likely arise, having a written vision will help you stay grounded. Review it every six months and use it as a compass during tough times. Remember, your long-term vision is not just for next year. It is your North Star for the entire journey you have ahead. 2. Set Clear and Measurable Objectives Translate your vision into actionable, measurable objectives for the next 12 months. Goals, whether they are sales targets or strategic implementations, are there to guide your focus and energy. Be ambitious yet realistic. Aim for goals that stretch your capabilities without overwhelming your resources. Review and refine your objectives quarterly, and involve your team in your process. Sharing clear objectives ensures everyone understands their role and prevents distractions from derailing progress. Let your goals serve as a filter for prioritizing activities and staying on track. 3. Create Your Ideal Week Map out your schedule, blocking time for family, personal health, and key business responsibilities. Life is unpredictable, so always allow some flexibility for unforeseen events. A visual plan will help you focus on what truly matters without overloading your days. Translate your ideal week into your calendar and commit to tasks like daily sales outreach. Remember, success lies in deliberate time management and ensuring that everything that matters gets done. 4. Master the Sales Process Sales is the lifeblood of any business, and success requires systems and consistency. Develop a sales playbook that includes your pitch, common objections, scripts, and processes. Implement a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system to track interactions and commitments. A well-defined sales process will ensure you and your team operate effectively. Block dedicated time for sales activities in your calendar and review progress regularly. When you implement the right tools and processes, your sales efforts will consistently yield results. 5. Prioritizing Your Accountability Accountability is the glue that holds a plan together. Having an accountability buddy like a coach or a peer group or having someone to hold you responsible will ensure your consistent progress. Set weekly check-ins to review your commitments and plan upcoming actions. Remember that accountability fosters focus, forces follow-through, and keeps you aligned with your goals. It is a simple yet powerful tool for turning your plans into results. Final Thoughts To set yourself up for success next year, focus on a clear long-term vision, measurable objectives, an ideal week, a structured sales process, and accountability. By implementing those strategies, you will move from scattered efforts to a thriving, purposeful business. Connect with Eric Rozenberg On LinkedIn Facebook Instagram Website  

In this episode of Grow a Small Business, host Troy Trewin interviews Peter Curran and Renee Curran, founders of Digital Surfer, share their journey of building a $1.3M digital marketing business. They discuss the importance of work-life balance, quick recovery strategies, and the lessons learned from over 12 years in the industry. With a focus on leadership and team development, they highlight how investing in personal growth and embracing change has shaped their success. Tune in for insights on mastering business growth in a fast-paced digital world. Other Resources: Matt Raad, co-founder of e-Business Institute Australia, shares three decades of expertise and strategies to help elevate your business to new heights. (Episode 453) Liz Raad reveals the secrets to unlocking angel investment and accelerating businesses to million-dollar success through innovative online training. (Episode 457) Why would you wait any longer to start living the lifestyle you signed up for? Balance your health, wealth, relationships and business growth. And focus your time and energy and make the most of this year. Let's get into it by clicking here.   Troy delves into our guest's startup journey, their perception of success, industry reconsideration, and the pivotal stress point during business expansion. They discuss the joys of small business growth, vital entrepreneurial habits, and strategies for team building, encompassing wins, blunders, and invaluable advice.   And a snapshot of the final five Grow A Small Business Questions:   What do you think is the hardest thing in growing a small business? Pete and Renee Curran believe the hardest thing in growing a small business is managing cash flow and profitability. They stress the importance of understanding financials early on, particularly break-even points, and making quick decisions about which activities are truly profitable. What's your favourite business book that has helped you the most? Pete and Renee Curran's favorite business book that has helped them the most is "Profit First" by Mike Michalowicz. They believe this mindset shift of prioritizing profit over expenses has been invaluable for their business growth. Are there any great podcasts or online learning resources you'd recommend to help grow a small business? Pete and Renee Curran recommend listening to a variety of podcasts focused on business growth, self-development, and industry-specific topics. They enjoy podcasts related to management, self-improvement, SEO, digital marketing, and business success stories. They also mention podcasts like Matt and Lisa's, as well as those that focus on self-development and how to be the best version of yourself. What tool or resource would you recommend to grow a small business? Pete and Renee Curran recommend using Xero for managing business finances, as it helps track numbers and provides detailed insights into your business's financial health. They also mention the importance of having a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system, such as Go High Level, to manage customer funnels, automate reminders, and streamline quotes, which can significantly aid in managing customer relationships and business growth. What advice would you give yourself on day one of starting out in business? Pete and Renee Curran's advice to themselves on day one of starting out in business would be "speed to market". Pete emphasizes the importance of not waiting for perfection and launching quickly, as market feedback will reveal what works and what doesn't. Renee, on the other hand, highlights the importance of "speed recovery" –  being able to quickly bounce back from setbacks, learn from mistakes, and move forward without holding grudges. Both stress the need for agility and resilience in business. Book a 20-minute Growth Chat with Troy Trewin to see if you qualify for our upcoming course. Don't miss out on this opportunity to take your small business to new heights! Enjoyed the podcast? Please leave a review on iTunes or your preferred platform. Your feedback helps more small business owners discover our podcast and embark on their business growth journey.     Quotable quotes from our special Grow A Small Business podcast guest: Sustainable success comes from balancing ambition with resilience — Pete Curran Trust your vision, but let data guide your decisions — Renee Curran Strong teams build strong businesses — invest in your people — Renee Curran Consistency beats brilliance—show up and deliver every day — Pete Curran      

Many business owners neglect to utilize fully, or in some cases even maintain, a robust CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system. This oversight can result in missed opportunities and stunted business growth. In this episode, Adam navigates through a robust strategy of executing major email promotions to engage clients and maximize revenue. Adam highlights how a well-maintained contact list could become a goldmine for your business, detailing methods of capturing, nurturing, and utilizing contacts to ensure consistent communication and sales growth. Listen in to uncover the secrets to ensuring your business remains in the minds of prospects, a simple yet impactful approach pivotal to doubling revenue without significantly adding to your workload. Understanding the immense value of email lists and why maintaining one is crucial for long-term business success. The necessity of consistent communication with prospects through emails, texts, and other means of engagement. Insight into converting organics lists into revenue by creating regular promotions and offers. The importance of employing CRM systems for tracking and nurturing client relationships efficiently. A call to action for business owners to move from working in the business to working on the business by implementing systematic solutions. Get your Business Growth Secrets SUCCESS PLANNER for FREE and profit like a pro: https://adamstottplanner.com/free-book47315172 Adam's website: https://adamstott.com/?el=Pod Watch the Episode on Adam's YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/adamstottcoach?el=Pod Connect with Adam on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adamstottcoach/?el=Pod Join Adam's network on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-stott-coach/?el=Pod Coaches, consultants, and business owners - lower your marketing costs, increase ticket prices, and get more high-ticket clients: https://3daybrandbuilderworkshop.com/start-here?el=Pod

Is your business constantly scrambling to keep up with the latest tech trends? You're not alone. In this episode of The Liquid Lunch Project, we bring in Ryan Pollyniak from Western Computer to help untangle the complex world of enterprise technology. With over 17 years of experience in the Microsoft Dynamics ecosystem, Ryan is your go-to guide for understanding how to leverage ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems to streamline your operations and boost growth.  Join us as we do a deep dive with Ryan into why Microsoft Dynamics stands out in a crowded field, how small to medium-sized businesses can effectively implement these powerful tools, and what the future holds with AI advancements in the tech landscape.    Episode Highlights: What exactly is an ERP? Ryan breaks it down for the uninitiated. The edge Microsoft Dynamics has over competitors like NetSuite and SAP. How Western Computer helps SMBs integrate powerful tools seamlessly. Timing your tech upgrade: When should a company move to a more advanced ERP? The future of AI in business applications—what's coming next? Why You Should Listen: If you're a small to medium-sized business owner looking to upgrade your tech game, this episode is packed with insights that can save you time, money, and a lot of headaches. Ryan shares invaluable advice on choosing the right systems and avoiding common pitfalls. Don't miss out—your business's future tech strategy could depend on it.   Favorite Quote: You don't want to be caught flat-footed when your company starts to grow. Start planning your tech upgrade now.   Connect with Ryan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/microsoftdynamicssolutions/ https://www.westerncomputer.com   Stay Connected: Connect with Matt and Luigi on Instagram: @matthew.r.meehan @luigi_rosabianca @theLiquidLunchProject @ShieldAdvisoryGroup Visit The Liquid Lunch Project website and subscribe to The Weekly, our Friday morning newsletter, for all the latest in the world of finance, tech, small business, and more. www.theliquidlunchproject.com Make sure you never miss an episode — check out The Liquid Lunch Project on Apple Podcasts, and don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review.

In this episode of the Grow a Small Business podcast, host Troy Trewin interviews Aaron Chapman of Security National Mortgage company. Aaron shares insights into growing his business to $100M in production and building a high-performing team. He discusses the challenges and strategies behind his success, including his key achievements and the role of his dedicated team members. Tune in for valuable lessons on navigating business growth and leadership. Why would you wait any longer to start living the lifestyle you signed up for? Balance your health, wealth, relationships and business growth. And focus your time and energy and make the most of this year. Let's get into it by clicking here. Troy delves into our guest's startup journey, their perception of success, industry reconsideration, and the pivotal stress point during business expansion. They discuss the joys of small business growth, vital entrepreneurial habits, and strategies for team building, encompassing wins, blunders, and invaluable advice. And a snapshot of the final five Grow A Small Business Questions: 1. What do you think is the hardest thing in growing a small business? According to Aaron Chapman, the hardest thing in growing a small business is "getting your ass up and keep going when it seems as though everything is against you." He emphasizes that persistence and overcoming challenges are crucial, noting that the painful experiences often stick with you more than the wins. He advises using these difficulties as learning opportunities and not letting them deter you from continuing your efforts. 2 .What's your favourite business book that has helped you the most? Aaron Chapman's favorite business book that has helped him the most is "The Master Key System" by Charles F. Haanel. He also mentions "Outwitting the Devil" by Napoleon Hill as another highly impactful book. Both works focus on personal development and success principles. 3 .Are there any great podcasts or online learning resources you'd recommend to help grow a small business? Aaron Chapman suggests leveraging a few key resources for small business growth. He highlights Darren Hardy's business philosophy for its practical and in-depth advice. He also recommends Napoleon Hill's Master Key Series available on YouTube, which provides timeless lessons on success habits. Additionally, Chapman stresses the importance of CRM tools for managing contacts and maintaining personal connections, noting their critical role in fostering business relationships. 4. What tool or resource would you recommend to grow a small business? Aaron Chapman recommends using a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool to grow a small business. He emphasizes its importance for managing contacts, tracking interactions, and maintaining detailed records about clients. This helps keep connections personal and organized, which is crucial for nurturing relationships and driving business success. 5 .What advice would you give yourself on day one of starting out in business? Aaron Chapman advises his day-one self to heed the advice of experienced mentors rather than assuming he knows everything. He underscores the importance of embracing Napoleon Hill's belief in the power of belief and applying knowledge from influential books. This approach is crucial for achieving success. Book a 20-minute Growth Chat with Troy Trewin to see if you qualify for our upcoming course. Don't miss out on this opportunity to take your small business to new heights! Enjoyed the podcast? Please leave a review on iTunes or your preferred platform. Your feedback helps more small business owners discover our podcast and embark on their business growth journey. Quotable quotes from our special Grow A Small Business podcast guest: Surround yourself with great people and mentors; they'll help you see and achieve what you couldn't alone – Aaron Chapman A good business book is more than just words; it's a tool to reshape your thinking and drive your success – Aaron Chapman Remember, you're the sum of the five people you spend the most time with; choose wisely – Aaron Chapman

In this episode of Grow a Small Business, host Troy Trewin interviews Feras Alhlou, co-founder of Startup With Feras, sharing insights from 21 years of experience. He discusses scaling strategies for managing a 60-member team and cultivating a thriving business culture. With revenue generated exceeding $10 million, Feras offers practical advice on overcoming entrepreneurial challenges. To connect with Feras, feel free to reach out via LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. Other Resources: The Ultimate Recruitment Toolkit Online Short CourseThe 4 by 2 rule when growing a small business Why would you wait any longer to start living the lifestyle you signed up for? Balance your health, wealth, relationships and business growth. And focus your time and energy and make the most of this year. Let's get into it by clicking here. Troy delves into our guest's startup journey, their perception of success, industry reconsideration, and the pivotal stress point during business expansion. They discuss the joys of small business growth, vital entrepreneurial habits, and strategies for team building, encompassing wins, blunders, and invaluable advice. And a snapshot of the final five Grow A Small Business Questions: What do you think is the hardest thing in growing a small business? According to Feras Alhlou, the hardest thing in growing a small business is managing the mindset needed to handle unknowns and challenges. Entrepreneurs often underestimate the demands and difficulties, including financial constraints and the need to pivot or adapt. It's crucial to remain resilient and persistent, even when facing unexpected obstacles and uncertainties. What's your favourite business book that has helped you the most? Feras Alhlou's favourite business book that has helped him the most is "Good to Great" by Jim Collins. He found it foundational in understanding how to build and sustain a successful business. Are there any great podcasts or online learning resources you'd recommend to help grow a small business? Feras Alhlou recommends "The Startup of You" by Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, as a great book to help grow a small business. He also finds value in various YouTube videos and podcasts, such as Professor Scott Galloway's "Prof G Podcast," for insightful perspectives on business and entrepreneurship. What tool or resource would you recommend to grow a small business? Feras Alhlou recommends investing in a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool as a crucial resource for growing a small business. Additionally, he emphasizes the importance of implementing systems and processes, using tools like Asana or Basecamp, to streamline operations and enhance efficiency. What advice would you give yourself on day one of starting out in business? Feras Alhlou advises that on day one of starting out in business, you should "Don't quit." He emphasizes persistence and learning from mistakes, stating that no one can guarantee success, but having a good team, being smart, and putting in the effort greatly increase the chances of success. Book a 20-minute Growth Chat with Troy Trewin to see if you qualify for our upcoming course. Don't miss out on this opportunity to take your small business to new heights! Enjoyed the podcast? Please leave a review on iTunes or your preferred platform. Your feedback helps more small business owners discover our podcast and embark on their business growth journey.     Quotable quotes from our special Grow A Small Business podcast guest: You have to lead by example and live the culture you want to see – Feras Alhlou Don't quit; persistence and learning from mistakes are key to success – Feras Alhlou Manage the imbalance of work and life with resilience and hard work – Feras Alhlou      

Welcome to the Artificial Intelligence Podcast with Jonathan Green! In this episode, we explore how AI can enhance your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) with our special guest, Michael Hudlow, a CRM expert.Michael provides a comprehensive overview of CRM systems, explaining their importance in managing customer information and improving business development decisions. He discusses the challenges of CRM implementation, especially the difficulty in getting team members to consistently input data. Michael highlights how AI can automate and streamline this process, making it easier for businesses to maintain accurate and useful CRM data.Notable Quotes:“Everyone is already using a CRM system of sorts… It's just probably not a great system.” - [Michael Hudlow]“With an AI component, it's much more like it's looking at everything and it will be able to say that company that is on your hit list was in the news today and they said this.” - [Michael Hudlow]“Write down on a piece of paper what is failing at your company or something that is holding you back… make sure those two or three things that you've highlighted are addressed.” - [Michael Hudlow]“The good news is all of these systems are extremely capable from a technical standpoint.” - [Michael Hudlow]Michael also provides valuable advice for smaller businesses looking for the right CRM system, emphasizing the importance of identifying specific needs and problems before choosing a solution. He recommends starting with niche CRMs tailored to specific industries and leveraging free versions of larger platforms like HubSpot for initial setup.Connect with Michael Hudlow: • Website: https://bitxiacrm.com • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mmhudlow/Michael's expertise can help businesses navigate the complexities of CRM systems and ensure they get the most out of their investment.Connect with Jonathan Green The Bestseller: ChatGPT Profits Free Gift: The Master Prompt for ChatGPT Free Book on Amazon: Fire Your Boss Podcast Website: https://artificialintelligencepod.com/ Subscribe, Rate, and Review: https://artificialintelligencepod.com/itunes Video Episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@ArtificialIntelligencePodcast

This is going to be a fun episode because I have Travis, an expert in the real estate industry, joining me where he shares invaluable insights on the importance of the ISA role, lead conversion strategies, and the critical nature of follow-up. He highlights the need for simple and effective database management systems and the humanization of leads. Travis also discusses his work with Digital Maverick's DCM program, which has sent about 4 million texts and emails in just 106 days, underscoring the scale of their operations. Tune in to hear Travis's tips on training ISAs, handling difficult clients with grace, and maintaining a positive outlook in the fast-paced world of real estate.   “The more simple your system is, the easier it is for you to close deals. Because once you really boil real estate down, it's just talk to more people, sell more homes, make more money. Like that's really what it comes down to. So a lot of the gaps that we see in Database. Is, is they their smart lists don't match their stages, or they're too they're too critical on what the filters are and things like that. And it's just like last call made stage a, like, just, that's all you need.”- Travis Halverson   In this episode, let's explore:   Role and Importance of ISAs: Travis emphasizes that the ISA position is often seen as a stepping stone but he values it as a career.   Lead Conversion Tips: Effective follow-up and consistent action are critical for improving lead conversion. Simplifying the system and ensuring uniformity in managing leads can enhance efficiency and outcomes.   Database Management and System Setup: Clear definitions and simple systems for stages and smart lists in CRM (Customer Relationship Management) are essential.   Humanizing Leads:Treat leads as individuals with needs and interests rather than mere numbers. Effective communication involves having genuine conversations and understanding clients' needs.   Training ISAs: Training focuses on improving language and conversation skills rather than strictly adhering to scripts.   Digital Maverick and DCM: Digital Maverick offers various services, including database management through the DCM (Database Conversion Management) program. Travis's role involves helping multiple teams across states manage and optimize their databases for better lead conversion. About Travis Halverson:   Travis Halverson has been an ISA for 7 years, over 600 closings in his career, and currently managing 70+ databases across the country- he has finally found his niche in real estate. Travis is someone who is passionate about trying to ease the pain CEOs and Team Leads find with databases. Always coming from a place of simplicity- talk to more people, sell more homes, change more lives.   Connect with Travis:   Website: https://digitalmaverick.com Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/travishalversonnn/   Connect with Jennifer Staats:   Website: staatssolutions.com Staats Solution Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/staatssolutions/ Jennifer Staats Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jennifertherealtor LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/staatssolutions/

The hedge fund industry can learn a lot about monetizing data, especially through the lens of CRM - Customer Relationship Management.In this episode, long-time Salesforce executive Kyle Johnson joins us to discuss how CRM went from a fringe business concept to a core driver of today's corporate environment. And here's the key, CRM is really all about data. Names, phone numbers, emails, dates, etc. The genius comes in structuring that information in a format that salespeople can use to drive revenue and improve customer relations overall. And when it comes to hedge funds, customers are investors.Kyle explains how hedge funds can apply this CRM analogy directly - taking numbers from behind the scenes, structuring the data, then employing it through a platform that works specifically for the fund's investor relations. It's what CRM did for sales, yet customized for hedge funds. Key points include: automating investor outreachusing CRM to scale investor relationsenhancing brand perception and engagement via social mediadeveloping a customer-centric sales modelanalyzing investor dataintegrating CRM systemsimplementing technology solutions for operational efficiencyThe time is now for hedge funds to learn from the sales world. Structure their data. Improve investors relations and set new standards of customer care through technology. Thankfully, Kyle reveals it all in this critically valuable episode. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Sally stresses the significance of utilizing a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system for efficient follow-ups, automated reminders, and appointment management. She refers to the CRM as the "beating heart" of her business, acting as a virtual staff member, especially beneficial for solo entrepreneurs. Sally encourages listeners to invest in a quality CRM, emphasizing its affordability at less than $4 a day. Drawing from her own experience, she underscores the importance of choosing the right CRM, likening it to selecting a specialist over a generalist. Don't miss this episode for more insights on optimizing your business with a reliable CRM. We just got featured on Feedspot's list of Australian women's lifestyle podcasts. Check it out at https://blog.feedspot.com/australian_women_lifestyle_podcasts/ Register here and take the first step towards your course creation success: https://www.sparkleclassacademy.com/infographic Connect with Sally and the Sparkle World:  Website: https://sparkleclassacademy.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sallysparkscousins/ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@SallySparksCousins Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SallySparksCousin  

In this captivating episode of Bridging the Gap, Matt Reiner delves into the conversation of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tools with Kate Guillen, an operations and technology expert in the financial advisory sector. Kate's journey from aspiring whale trainer to tech-savvy specialist forms the backdrop as she shares her insights on revolutionizing CRM usage through her venture, Simplicity Ops. Together, they uncover the strategic approach to CRM adoption, emphasizing the foundational role of organized data and the progression towards sophisticated automations.As Kate and Matt navigate the complexities of CRM implementation, they address real-world challenges faced by financial advisors, from team adoption hurdles to data consistency issues amid organizational growth. Kate's advice shines through as she advocates for regular audits, the creation of a data style guide, and the appointment of a CRM champion to drive consistent usage. Through their discussion, it becomes clear that a well-maintained CRM not only streamlines contact management but also elevates client service models and bolsters operational scalability.This conversation highlights important topics within our industry including the phased CRM strategy, the importance of auditing data, and the standardization of client interaction processes. By embracing these actionable insights, financial advisory firms can transform their operational efficiency and enhance client servicing capabilities, paving the way for sustainable growth and success in the industry.

What does a balance beam have to do with scaling a business? More than you'd think. There's a reason gymnasts don't start on the high beam. In this podcast episode, Kimberly Spencer draws parallels between mastering skills on the low beam before aiming higher and how this applies to entrepreneurship. Whether it's honing focus or perfecting delegation, start small, build confidence, and when the time comes, you'll be ready for the big leagues. In this episode of the Crown Yourself podcast, host Kimberly Spencer shares a poignant moment she witnessed between a father and his daughter at a gymnastics class. The father's advice on overcoming fear and learning from falls resonated with Kimberly, prompting her to draw parallels to entrepreneurship. She reflects on her own business struggles, the emotional challenges of grief and motherhood, and the importance of resilience and self-care. Kimberly discusses strategic decision-making, the value of data in business and health, and the mindset shift from playing not to lose to playing to win. The episode is a blend of personal insights and professional strategies, ending with an empowering call to embrace one's journey and reign in life. #Entrepreneurship #GrowthMindset #PersonalGrowth What you will learn from this episode: Embracing the process of falling and getting back up Overcoming fear and embracing the coaching process Importance of trust and commitment in personal growth and entrepreneurship Practicing and building trust within oneself The metaphor of the balance beam and aiming for higher goals Embracing failure as a catalyst for progress and improvement Decision-making process and risks in entrepreneurship Reconnecting with purpose and prioritizing self-care Making strategic decisions and tracking key performance indicators Embracing resilience and commitment to playing to win Enjoy, sovereigns! Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast listening platform. You can also watch the episode on YouTube. Quotes: “If you want to grow to have a $1 million business, then you need to make sure all the team is swimming in the same direction.” ~ Kimberly Spencer “If you say that the goal is important to you and that's something you want to work toward but you aren't willing to do what the coach says as far as tasking is concerned, then you're not actually committed to the goal.” ~ Kimberly Spencer “The visionary needs space to create. And if you're in the grind of the day-to-day, doing all the things and doing all the stuff, then you don't have that space.” ~ Kimberly Spencer Moments of Note: The coaching conversation (00:00:00) A father coaches his daughter to embrace falling and getting back up, relating it to entrepreneurship and personal growth. The importance of falling (00:03:18) The father explains the importance of falling off the balance beam to overcome fear and make progress, drawing parallels to entrepreneurship. The practice on the lower beam (00:08:00) Kimberly discusses the significance of practicing skills and discipline on a lower level to prepare for higher goals. Fear of failure (00:13:47) The conversation about embracing failure and learning from it, with Kimberly sharing her own experiences and lessons learned. Playing not to lose (00:17:13) The concept of playing not to lose in business and the importance of shifting focus to playing to win. Investing and Pouring Money into Businesses (00:21:49) Assessing the purpose and risks of investing in businesses during a cash flow crunch. Rising from Grief and Reassessing Identity (00:23:00) Overcoming grief and redefining identity after personal losses and challenges. Empowering Business Decision-Making (00:24:19) Embracing humility and making empowered decisions to drive business success. Simplifying Business Processes (00:25:32) Transitioning to simpler systems and processes for better business management and growth. Data-Driven Decision-Making (00:28:18) Emphasizing the importance of tracking essential business data for informed decisions. Health and Fitness Assessment (00:29:17) Using data to make informed decisions about health and fitness practices. Commitment to High-Beam Practices (00:32:25) Embracing high-level practices for sustained success in business and personal growth. Mentions + Additional Resources: Dan Sullivan's Book "Ten X Is Easier Than Two X": 00:08:00 Brendan Bouchard's High Performance Academy: 00:08:00 Tim Ferriss: 00:09:00 Amanda Kaufman's Son Braxton: 00:13:47 Anthony Trucks: 00:09:00 Yosemite National Park: 00:09:00 Scarcity and Abundance Concept: 00:13:47 Iron Man: 00:13:47 Kimberly Spencer's Website "crownyourself.com": 00:00:00 Kimberly Spencer's TEDx Talk: 00:00:00 Kajabi: 00:26:42 CRM (Customer Relationship Management): 00:26:42 Tracking KPIs: 00:24:19 Simpler Program for Data Tracking: 00:28:18 Fitness Tracking App: 00:29:17 Additional Testing for Health: 00:29:17 Astrological Chart: 00:31:20

From Bootstrapped Beginnings to Rapid Expansion: Insights from the Founder of Drinxfactory. Learn How to Scale from 1 to 250 Team Members in just 4 Years! Gain Expert Strategies for Success in Business Development. (Ariah Michel) In this week's episode of the Grow Small Business Podcast, Troy chats with Ariah Michel, Founder of Drinxfactory Group based in Sydney, Australia. Ariah shares insights into his company's operations, focusing on merchandising and sales in the liquor sector of FMCG. They discuss the challenges of growth, the importance of operational processes, and Aria's vision to expand into New Zealand. Despite the rapid growth, Aria emphasizes the ongoing stress of managing a fast-growing business but also highlights the value of learning to use stress as a driver for high performance. Why would you wait any longer to start living the lifestyle you signed up for? Balance your health, wealth, relationships and business growth. And focus your time and energy and make the most of this year. Let's get into it by clicking here. Troy delves into our guest's startup journey, their perception of success, industry reconsideration, and the pivotal stress point during business expansion. They discuss the joys of small business growth, vital entrepreneurial habits, and strategies for team building, encompassing wins, blunders, and invaluable advice. And a snapshot of the final five Grow A Small Business Questions:  1. What do you think is the hardest thing in growing a small business? Ariah believes that the hardest thing in growing a small business is getting started, particularly coming up with the initial idea. He emphasizes that while many people struggle with the idea, the key is to take the first step and start, even without a fully formed concept. 2. What's your favourite business book that has helped you the most? Although not a traditional business book, Ariah's favorite book that has significantly helped him is "Greenlights" by Matthew McConaughey. He appreciates its message about seizing opportunities (green lights) in life and being prepared to navigate challenges (red lights) until those opportunities arise 3. Are there any great podcasts or online learning resources you'd recommend to help grow a small business? Ariah recommends several podcasts and online learning resources for personal development and business growth. He enjoys podcasts such as "Talking From Scratch" by George McEwan and "Diary of a CEO." He particularly highlights a podcast featuring George Heaton, founder of Represented 24/7, for its inspiring story and valuable insights. 4. What tool or resource would you recommend to grow a small business? One essential tool Ariah recommends for growing a small business is a good CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system. He acknowledges that initially, he didn't invest in or see the necessity of a CRM system. However, he now realizes its importance in streamlining operations and relieving stress. Ariah's team uses monday.com as their CRM system, which he describes as a "Godsend." 5. What advice would you give yourself on day one of starting out in business? Looking back, Ariah would advise his past self on day one of starting out to "just keep going" and to "keep your head down." He emphasizes the importance of perseverance, resilience, and enjoying the journey, regardless of the challenges or successes encountered along the way. Book a 20-minute Growth Chat with Troy Trewin to see if you qualify for our upcoming course. Don't miss out on this opportunity to take your small business to new heights! Enjoyed the podcast? Please leave a review on iTunes or your preferred platform. Your feedback helps more small business owners discover our podcast and embark on their business growth journey. Quotable quotes from our special Grow A Small Business podcast guest: "I think operation processes are the most important part of all businesses and are the backbone to success." – Ariah Michel "If you can master people, processes, and temperaments, you will have a very successful career." – Ariah Michel "If you're going to compromise quality, you have to turn it down." – Ariah Michel

Welcome to a detailed summary of the "Rainmaker Podcast" episode featuring Gui Costin and special guest Madeleine Sinclair, hosted by Dakota. In this episode, Gui and Madeleine delve into intricate discussions about sales strategies, team dynamics, leadership, and much more, tailored especially for professionals in sales and distribution roles.The episode kicks off with Gui Costin, the founder and CEO of Dakota, introducing the podcast's focus on sharing profound insights from leading sales and distribution executives. This session is particularly engaging as it features Madeleine Sinclair, the Head of Distribution for North America at Blue Owl Capital. Madeleine brings a wealth of experience from her previous roles at BlackRock and her comprehensive educational background with an MBA from NYU Stern.Madeleine begins by providing an overview of Blue Owl Capital, highlighting its growth in the alternative asset management sector and its expansive global presence with offices worldwide. Her personal journey from Kansas City to a leading position in a significant financial firm sketches a narrative of ambition, timely opportunity, and professional evolution.A significant portion of the conversation is dedicated to discussing the operational structure and sales strategies at Blue Owl. Madeleine outlines the organizational setup across various channels like wirehouses, regional independents, and RIAs. She emphasizes the importance of having a well-integrated team where each member plays a specific role, enhancing overall productivity and effectiveness in reaching and servicing clients.The sales process at Blue Owl, as Madeleine describes, is underpinned by a dual strategy of deepening relationships with existing clients and expanding the market by onboarding new producers. She mentions the use of "Market Activation Plans" which combine data analysis and strategic outreach to optimize sales efforts and team performance. The dialogue also touches on the importance of leveraging technology and data analytics to streamline processes and enhance decision-making.Leadership is another key theme addressed in this episode. Madeleine shares her philosophy of being a 'setup leader' who aims to empower her team by aligning their personal goals with the organization's objectives. Her approach emphasizes understanding and supporting her team's individual motivations and potential, fostering a culture of collaboration and collective achievement.Furthermore, the use of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tools is discussed in depth. Madeleine compares CRM to the central nervous system of an organization, essential for managing relationships and operational efficiency. She advocates for a strategic use of CRM to not only store information but to actively guide sales strategies and client engagement.Gui and Madeleine conclude the podcast by discussing the critical role of communication within teams and the executive level. They highlight the importance of maintaining a regular and structured communication cadence to ensure everyone is aligned with the company's goals and strategies.Overall, this episode of the Rainmaker Podcast provides invaluable insights into effective sales management, strategic planning, and leadership from a seasoned professional in the field. It serves as a resource for sales professionals looking to refine their strategies and learn from the experiences of industry leaders like Madeleine Sinclair.

Join me in today's episode where I dive into the essentials of building and growing an email list from scratch in 2024. Learn about the best CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tools to manage your subscribers, and discover actionable strategies for creating content that captivates and converts. This episode is packed with valuable tips on starting, expanding, and engaging your email list to enhance your brand's outreach and effectiveness. Tune in to start leveraging email marketing for business growth and engagement today! Watch this episode on YouTube!!   Links from today's episode: Five:Turn Instagram Followers Into Email Addresses Stan:he All·in·One Creator Store Kajabi: Creator Studio Keap: complete business automation Join Brock's Email List  55 Instagram Stories for FREE 20 Easy B-roll Reels for FREE 25 Viral Hooks for FREE   Check out the top 25 Things You Can Delegate to a BELAY Virtual Assistant Today! Just text TRIBE —that's T-R-I-B-E—to 55123 to get access to this list and get started with BELAY today   Check out InstaClubHub!!  For Just $7!! The ONLY All-In-One Instagram Resource Community Designed To...Grow Your Following and Reach More Customers on Instagram™(All in Just Five Minutes a Day!) Go to InstaClubHub.com/Trial   Not great at tech? Use the service we use to grow our email list, create custom flows, sales funnels and take care of our customers every day http://keapnow.com/chalene   We would love to hear from you! Leave your questions or messages for Chalene and Brock RIGHT HERE   Join me on Patreon 7 Days for FREE!! THE ULTIMATE show for Lifers who want insider-girlfriend-relatable content. In other words, lots more tea! Go to http://chalene.com/more   Sign Up For MY WEEKLY NEWSLETTER     Connect with us on your fav social platform: Chalene: Instagram: www.Instagram.com/ChaleneJohnson    Facebook: www.Facebook.com/Chalene    TikTok: @chaleneOfficial Twitter: www.Twitter.com/ChaleneJohnson Brock: Instagram: @Brock11Johnson TikTock: @brock11johnnson

Sales is EVERYTHING in Business - How to Win at the Game of Sales - Part 3 In part three of the four-part series we focus on the critical role of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tools and technologies in sales. Guest Sean O'Shaughnessy discusses the importance of leveraging CRM systems for improving internal business operations and managing customer relationships. The episode covers how CRMs help in making data-driven sales decisions, the necessity of integrating email and social selling strategies with CRM, and the invaluable role of such technologies in maintaining efficient communication and service to customers. The conversation also touches upon the versatility of CRM systems in managing prospects, leads, and ensuring consistent engagement through methods like email marketing and personalized contact strategies.   What we discuss with Sean: + Introduction to CRM and Its Importance + Advanced CRM Features: Email Integration and AI Tools + Maximizing Productivity with CRM: A Personal Experience + The Future of Sales: Embracing CRM and Technological Advances + Unlocking Data-Driven Sales Decisions + Exploring Industry-Specific Sales Strategies + Maximizing CRM for Customer Engagement + Leveraging Social Media and Email Marketing + Personalizing Customer Connections with Technology + Choosing the Right CRM for Your Business   Be sure to come back for part 4. And make sure to check out parts 1-2 if you missed any of the previous episodes!   Thank you Sean! To connect with Sean on Linkedin, click here. To check out Sean's website, click here.   Sign up for our FREE Business Course - Understand the 7 Phases of A business, so you know where you are now and where you need to go next! Go to https://www.millionaireuniversity.com/training.   If you enjoyed this episode with Sean, let us know by clicking on any of the links below to send him a quick shout-out: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, TikTok and LinkedIn. We'd love to hear from you! And if you want us to answer your business questions on an upcoming episode, drop us a line at support@millioinaireuniversity.com.

Sales is EVERYTHING in Business - How to Win at the Game of Sales - Part 3 In part three of the four-part series we focus on the critical role of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tools and technologies in sales. Guest Sean O'Shaughnessy discusses the importance of leveraging CRM systems for improving internal business operations and managing customer relationships. The episode covers how CRMs help in making data-driven sales decisions, the necessity of integrating email and social selling strategies with CRM, and the invaluable role of such technologies in maintaining efficient communication and service to customers. The conversation also touches upon the versatility of CRM systems in managing prospects, leads, and ensuring consistent engagement through methods like email marketing and personalized contact strategies. What we discuss with Sean: + Introduction to CRM and Its Importance + Advanced CRM Features: Email Integration and AI Tools + Maximizing Productivity with CRM: A Personal Experience + The Future of Sales: Embracing CRM and Technological Advances + Unlocking Data-Driven Sales Decisions + Exploring Industry-Specific Sales Strategies + Maximizing CRM for Customer Engagement + Leveraging Social Media and Email Marketing + Personalizing Customer Connections with Technology + Choosing the Right CRM for Your Business Be sure to come back for part 4. And make sure to check out parts 1-2 if you missed any of the previous episodes! Thank you Sean! To connect with Sean on Linkedin, click here. To check out Sean's website, click here. Sign up for our FREE Business Course - Understand the 7 Phases of A business, so you know where you are now and where you need to go next! Go to https://www.millionaireuniversity.com/training. If you enjoyed this episode with Sean, let us know by clicking on any of the links below to send him a quick shout-out: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, TikTok and LinkedIn. We'd love to hear from you! And if you want us to answer your business questions on an upcoming episode, drop us a line at support@millioinaireuniversity.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Troy sits down with Alyona Medelyan, the founder of Thematic, a thriving business with $5 million in revenue. Alyona shares her entrepreneurial journey and offers invaluable advice for small business owners aiming to scale their ventures. Tune in for actionable insights and inspiration from Alyona's remarkable success story. Why would you wait any longer to start living the lifestyle you signed up for? Balance your health, wealth, relationships and business growth. And focus your time and energy and make the most of this year. Let's get into it by clicking here. Troy delves into our guest's startup journey, their perception of success, industry reconsideration, and the pivotal stress point during business expansion. They discuss the joys of small business growth, vital entrepreneurial habits, and strategies for team building, encompassing wins, blunders, and invaluable advice. And a snapshot of the final five Grow A Small Business Questions: 1 .What do you think is the hardest thing in growing a small business? According to Alyona Medelyan, the hardest thing in growing a small business is prioritisation. She emphasises the importance of working on the right things and saying no to the wrong things, as there are many distractions that can divert focus from revenue and growth. 2. What's your favourite business book that has helped you the most? Alyona Medelyan's favourite business book that has helped her the most is "Challenger Sale." This book emphasises the importance of creating value for customers during the sales process and highlights the significance of teaching customers something new rather than just selling to them. 3. Are there any great podcasts or online learning resources you'd recommend to help grow a small business? Alyona Medelyan recommends several podcasts and online resources to help grow a small business. She suggests listening to "Y Combinator Podcasts," particularly "How to Start a Startup," which emphasises customer-centric approaches. Additionally, "Startups for the Rest of Us" offers insights into bootstrapping. For broader entrepreneurial journeys, she enjoys "How I Built This" with Guy Raz. 4. What tool or resource would you recommend to grow a small business? Alyona Medelyan recommends using a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool to grow a small business. Specifically, she suggests Pipedrive for its simplicity, affordability, and effectiveness in managing sales processes and customer relationships. 5. What advice would you give yourself on day one of starting out in business? On day one of starting out in business, Alyona Medelyan would advise herself to hire the best people for the job - the smartest and most knowledgeable individuals available. This emphasises the importance of assembling a talented team to drive the business forward from the outset. Book a 20-minute Growth Chat with Troy Trewin to see if you qualify for our upcoming course. Don't miss out on this opportunity to take your small business to new heights! Enjoyed the podcast? Please leave a review on iTunes or your preferred platform. Your feedback helps more small business owners discover our podcast and embark on their business growth journey. Quotable quotes from our special Grow A Small Business podcast guest: Listen to your customers, build, and everything else is a distraction – Alyona Medelyan   Building a kickass culture starts with spending time together, fostering empathy – Alyona Medelyan Learn by doing, test things out, and double down on what works – Alyona Medelyan  

The Growth Circle Podcast Episode 23: Building Your Investor Network In this episode, we delve into the essential strategies for building a robust investor list tailored to the real estate industry. Whether you're looking to sell or secure deals, understanding how to connect with the right investors can make all the difference. Here's what we cover: - Understanding Investor Intentions: We discuss the importance of identifying what you aim to share with investors. Are you looking to circulate off-market deals or seeking deals for yourself? - Types of Investors: We break down the different investor profiles you might need, including cash buyers, those preferring bank financing, or hard money lenders. We also explore the significance of understanding their preferred investment types, such as single-family homes versus commercial properties. - Finding Investors: Discover where to connect with potential investors, from local real estate groups and masterminds (both in-person and virtual) to leveraging social media platforms like Facebook. - Utilizing Online Resources: We introduce valuable online tools such as PropStream and ListSource, which can provide comprehensive lists of active property buyers in your area. The episode highlights the necessity of having a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system to organize your contacts effectively. This setup allows for ongoing communication, updates on investor preferences, and easier identification of matching opportunities. Learn what information to collect from your investors—beyond just their contact details. Understanding their investment criteria, annual goals, and specific interests can facilitate more targeted and successful deal-making. Lincoln wraps up the episode by emphasizing the importance of keeping your investors' best interests in mind. By actively listening to their goals and preferences, you can position yourself as a valuable resource in their investment journey, thereby fostering long-term relationships. Whether you're new to real estate or looking to expand your existing investor list, this episode is packed with actionable insights to help you succeed. Links Prop Stream: https://www.propstream.com/?utm_source=bing_ppc&utm_medium=msa&msclkid=e4d66564eeaa1326479c00b9b5a2f2e1 ListSource: https://www.listsource.com/ For more insights and resources on real estate investment, and to keep up with the latest episodes of The Growth Circle Podcast, follow us on: The Growth Circle Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/thegrowthcirclepodcast Growth Circle Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/growthcirclepod/ The Growth Circle Podcast on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-growth-circle-podcast/id1547508256 Join Lincoln Amstutz as he continues to explore various facets of real estate investment, offering listeners the knowledge and tools needed to grow and succeed in the dynamic world of real estate. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thegrowthcircle/support

La aceleración digital en una empresa se ha convertido en un imperativo estratégico en la era contemporánea, donde la tecnología evoluciona a un ritmo vertiginoso. Estos procesos no sólo son una respuesta a las demandas del mercado, sino también una herramienta vital para mejorar la eficiencia operativa, la toma de decisiones y la experiencia del cliente. Para saber cómo lograrlo, en este episodio contamos nuevamente con el conocimiento de Emmanuel Cristal, que es emprendedor, comunicador y  CEO de SalesUp, una agencia especializada en e-Commerce y consultoría. Él comenta que “para poder llevar adelante un proceso de aceleración digital tenemos que adicionar un proceso de transformación cultural dentro de la empresa”: “Tenemos que aprender a liderar un equipo, pero también liderarnos a nosotros mismos con un nuevo enfoque”, remarca. La adopción de tecnologías emergentes permite a las empresas procesar grandes cantidades de datos de manera más rápida y precisa, y para ello no es necesario implementar grandes tecnologías o asumir grandes costos, sino que simplemente “podemos automatizar procesos internos o quitar tareas que no agregan valor”, sostiene nuestro invitado. “Se puede poner en marcha un sistema de CRM (Customer Relationship Management), que administra nuestra relación con el cliente de manera muy cómoda y unificada. Además permite la interacción con otras aplicaciones, lo cual hace mucho más eficaz toda la operación dentro del proceso de aceleración digital”, aconseja nuestro especialista, y añade: “También es clave implementar la comunicación interna mediante herramientas que puedan facilitar el trabajo colaborativo”.  Asimismo, existe el concepto de agilidad, que es cuando adoptamos metodologías flexibles que permiten rápidamente cambiar frente a las adversidades y aprovechar las nuevas oportunidades que nos da el entorno. “Muchas veces, las personas se resisten al cambio y les cuesta llevar adelante un proceso de aceleración digital, porque le temen a lo desconocido y les cuesta romper esa zona de confort”, lamenta Emmanuel. El desafío de adecuarse a los cambios viene acompañado del uso correcto de las tecnologías: “Hay un sinfín de herramientas en el mercado que hacen que los líderes de negocios tengan que capacitar rápidamente a sus equipos para poder utilizarlas”, afirma nuestro invitado. Por otro lado, debemos saber que tenemos que estar preparados para las nuevas habilidades que el mercado necesitará. “Son habilidades blandas, como pensamiento crítico, la resolución de problemas, la autogestión, el aprendizaje proactivo, la capacidad de autonomía de tareas, la tolerancia al estrés, etc.”, enumera nuestro especialista. Por otro lado, la Inteligencia Artificial juega un papel fundamental en la aceleración digital de una empresa, brindando diversas ventajas y oportunidades para mejorar la eficiencia, la productividad y la toma de decisiones. “Hoy cualquier empresa puede adoptar herramientas de Inteligencia Artificial para mejorar todos sus procesos internos”, asegura Emmanuel. El proceso de identificación de oportunidades digitales se erige como una tarea muy importante, exigiendo una comprensión profunda de las tendencias tecnológicas, el análisis de datos y una visión estratégica. “Hoy las redes sociales son el lugar donde hay interacción de forma permanente entre el cliente y la marca y eso hay que poder utilizarlo como una herramienta beneficiosa para el negocio, porque nos permiten la medición de datos y saber rápidamente el impacto de nuestra estrategia”, recalca nuestro invitado. Es posible medir las estrategias de aceleración digital de una empresa mediante una combinación de indicadores clave de rendimiento (KPIs) y métricas específicas. “La aceleración digital tiene indicadores de crecimiento, como el retorno de la inversión, la tasa de conversión, la cantidad de seguidores, etc., para plantear objetivos medibles que podemos superar con el paso del tiempo”, cuenta nuestro especialista, quien también recomienda “la incorporación de nuevas tecnologías” para “medir la agilidad de la compañía y así saber cómo se puede adaptar a los cambios repentinos del mercado, los cambios de la tecnología, etc.”. Instagram: @emmanuel.cristal

Follow Up Boss is a game-changer for realtors, offering a plethora of benefits that streamline and enhance their workflow. This comprehensive real estate CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system empowers agents by centralizing communication, lead management, and task tracking in one user-friendly platform. With Follow Up Boss, realtors can effortlessly organize and prioritize leads, ensuring that no potential opportunity slips through the cracks.

In this engaging episode the guest, Brook Borup, founder of My Clone Solution, based in the USA. Shares invaluable insights on scaling her business to over 600 clients and generating multi-million dollar revenue. Her thought leadership focuses on growth strategies and effective time management, offering practical tips for small business owners seeking rapid expansion while balancing work-life demands. Tune in to discover her secrets for business success. Why would you wait any longer to start living the lifestyle you signed up for? Balance your health, wealth, relationships and business growth. And focus your time and energy and make the most of this year. Let's get into it by clicking here.   Troy delves into our guest's startup journey, their perception of success, industry reconsideration, and the pivotal stress point during business expansion. They discuss the joys of small business growth, vital entrepreneurial habits, and strategies for team building, encompassing wins, blunders, and invaluable advice. And a snapshot of the final five Grow A Small Business Questions:   The hardest challenge she highlighted in growing a small business is the struggle of not knowing how to efficiently manage the business aspects despite being skilled in the service or product offered. Brook Borup mentioned "The E Myth" as her favorite business book. This book seems to have made a significant impact on her, emphasizing the importance of systemizing and structuring a business effectively. Brook is a sprint learner, emphasizes the importance of podcasts for diverse skill acquisition. Strategic use of podcasts, like focusing on SEO-related content, aids professional development. Brook Borup emphasized a tailored CRM (Customer Relationship Management) as a pivotal tool for small business growth, enabling streamlined operations and efficient customer interactions, contributing immensely to sustained expansion. Brook Borup's advice to her younger self embarking on entrepreneurship nine years ago would be to sharpen her messaging promptly. Clear and concise communication about her business's essence would have facilitated better networking and streamlined client understanding, ensuring smoother growth. Book a 20-minute Growth Chat with Troy Trewin to see if you qualify for our upcoming course. Don't miss out on this opportunity to take your small business to new heights! Enjoyed the podcast? Please leave a review on iTunes or your preferred platform. Your feedback helps more small business owners discover our podcast and embark on their business growth journey.     Quotable quotes from our special Grow A Small Business podcast guest: Understanding priorities is key – if everything's a priority, nothing is – Brook Borup Jobs can be trained, personality cannot – it's the personality that makes or breaks your business – Brook Borup Be efficient and productive with your time, while ensuring a balance between work and personal life – Brook Borup      

Here's a secret foundation for building your real estate business. It's an acronym that most real estate agents don't know about, but it's essential to creating a successful business.  This episode will discuss the importance of setting up, optimizing, and engaging your database or CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system to generate a steady flow of deals for your business.  Your database is not just a tool for an organization but a valuable asset that can be sold if you decide to exit the real estate industry. Listen to this week's episode of The Real Estate Sales podcast to learn more about it! E - Everybody Goes in Your Database To ensure a comprehensive database, you must include everyone you know who could be a buyer or seller.  This includes renters, homeowners, and your sphere of influence.  Having a wide range of contacts in your CRM system allows you to reach out to them consistently and build relationships over time. N - Notes on Every Person As your database grows, remembering every detail about each contact becomes challenging.  Therefore, taking notes on each individual is crucial, capturing vital information and personal attributes that will help you deepen your relationship with them.  This includes interests, future plans, and anything discussed during conversations.  The more information you have, the better you can serve your clients, making your database more valuable. G - Generate Automated Property Emails By setting up your CRM system to send automated property emails, you can provide consistent value to your contacts.  For homeowners, these emails can feature updates on properties that have come on the market, gone under contract, or sold in their area, directly impacting the value of their home.  Potential buyers and renters can also receive property updates based on their preferred price range and preferences.  Prospecting becomes effortless as your CRM system generates property emails regularly. A - Add Personalized Value While automated emails are valuable, adding a personal touch can make a significant difference in building relationships.  Identify opportunities to reach out individually to contacts.  For example, if you come across a property that might interest a homeowner, send them a personalized email mentioning how it could affect their home value.  Similarly, if you notice milestones or achievements on social media, sending a congratulatory message demonstrates your attention and care.  Personalized value goes beyond automated systems, transforming your CRM into a relationship-building tool. G - Get Systematic and Social with Your CRM Establish a systematic approach for consistent communication to take full advantage of your CRM system.  Besides automated property emails, consider sending regular newsletters with community updates, featured properties, and local activities.  Highlighting events and happenings outside of real estate helps to engage your contacts on a more personal level.  Additionally, leverage social media platforms to connect with your contacts on a deeper level.  You can find them on social media, follow them, and engage with their posts.  Blending systematic and social elements makes your CRM a powerful referral machine. E - Every Interaction Prompts the Next Conversation Ensure no contact falls through the cracks by promptly recording and scheduling follow-ups for every interaction.  Each time you engage with someone, whether through calls, messages, or social media interactions, note it in your CRM system and set reminders for future conversations or actions.  Set specific to-do tasks for each contact, such as sending an unsolicited CMA to a homeowner in six months or suggesting properties to a potential buyer in three weeks. By following a systematic plan, you can maintain consistent communication and maximize deal opportunities. Effectively utilizing your CRM system as an ATM for your business requires an intentional and strategic approach. Following the ENGAGE framework, you can create a database that consistently drives deals for your real estate business. Stay proactive, organized, and engaged with your contacts to build a valuable asset that supports your business growth and success. “Your database or CRM is actually the opportunity of a lifetime for you. It is where you have the foundation of your business. It keeps you organized and allows you to have a sellable asset when and if you decide to exit real estate. As long as it is set up properly, it is set up to be systemized.” - Jimmy Burgess. Do you have a video or content idea perfect for your business? Share it with Jimmy! Connect with Jimmy Burgess on LinkedIn and Facebook, and his YouTube channel.  If you like what you heard today, we'd love it if you'd share a rating or review and then subscribe to the podcast and tell others about it. You can find The Real Estate Sales Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, and our website, The Real Estate Sales Podcast.

In this episode, I'm honored to interview Tyler King, the Founder of my favorite CRM which is Less Annoying CRM. We discussed the very essence of nurturing customer relationships. Tyler's visionary approach to CRM (Customer Relationship Management) has revolutionized the way businesses engage with their clientele. He shares his profound wisdom on creating not just customers but genuine advocates and partners. Learn how to establish trust, build lasting connections, and make your customers feel truly valued by using their application. We explore how he began creating CRM technology, the secrets to effective communication, and the power of a customer-centric approach in a digital age. Whether you're an entrepreneur, a seasoned business owner, or someone passionate about enhancing customer relationships, this episode is a goldmine of practical insights and inspiration. Join us as we unlock "The Power of Customer Relationships" with the exceptional Tyler King, and empower yourself to transform your business through the magic of authentic customer connections that are automated and you can access anytime anywhere.   Highlights Tyler's background in developing software and how it led him to create Less Annoying CRM How Curtis uses Less Annoying CRM with his assistant for scheduling and tasking. How a CRM increases one's business' value Ways users can link Less Annoying CRM with Google Calendar and MailChimp Different CRM platforms that you can use for your business Less Annoying CRM offers: Free, unlimited phone support to help personalize the CRM to a user's specific business Curtis' business strategy, which is broken down into lead generation, data management, and relationship building   Links and Resources from this Episode https://www.practicalwealthadvisors.com https://www.practicalwealthsolutions.net/ Email Curtis for a free report - curtmay@gmail.com Call his office - 610-622-3121 ERC Tax Credit - https://ercspecialists.com?fpr=curtis75 Schedule a call with Curtis: https://aptwithcurtis.as.me/Strategysession CashFlow Mapping: https://practicalwealth.cashflowmapping.com/lp/PWbudgetsstink Private Reserve Strategy: https://app.agent-crm.com/v2/preview/vWh4TyHnUBXdULimd82i Connect with Tyler King GET THE EXTRA FREE MONTH ADDED TO YOUR TRIAL: www.lessannoyingcrm.com/invite/1D48F https://www.lessannoyingcrm.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/tylermking Special Listener Gift Schedule a 15-Minute Call with Curtis: https://aptwithcurtis.as.me/Strategysession  Review, Subscribe and Share If you like what you hear please leave a review by clicking here Make sure you're subscribed to the podcast so you get the latest episodes. Click here to subscribe with Apple Podcasts Click here to subscribe with Spotify Click here to subscribe with RSS

Find More Episodes on PCA Overdrive: https://www.pcaoverdrive.org/the-contractor-fight PCA Overdrive is free for members. Not a member? Download the app on the Apple Store or Google Play and enjoy a 7 day free trial! Become a member: https://www.pcapainted.org/membership-resources/ Join Tim and Derek as they explore the power of using a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system to streamline communication and boost efficiency. They discuss how a CRM can improve customer communication, streamline processes, enhance data organization, and foster team collaboration. Tune in to learn how you can save time and increase productivity with this essential tool. In this episode, they discuss: The importance of organizing customer information digitally The benefits of using a CRM for your business Professionalism, accessibility, and information retrieval in today's business landscape The power of centralized information for enhanced performance The risks of losing valuable information without a CRM Improved customer service and sales through CRM usage Choosing the right CRM for your business

It really is more common place now than it has ever been to get a deposit on day of booking with your clients, especially for 1x cleanings.Customer Relationship Management SoftwearAlways get a 50% on DAY of Scheduling secures your spot on the Schedule.400.00 plus appliances 95.00 and 95.00= 590.00 divided by 2 is 295.00 deposit.Email plus add them into the digital calendar system. Method #1 OLD SCHOOLPDFPrint outsnap photossend back to your phone(always first come first serve) Method #2 getjobber.com https://share.getjobber.com/mzhfwVuMust have water and electricty on and in working condition prior to the arrival of cleaning tech.Merchant AccountValidate your Bank AccountSquareStripeQuickbooksMoney AppsZelleVenmoService FEE.Current CRM'sZenmaidGetjobberCustomer FactorSave yourself time...Get a digital calendar system.It's okay to get a deposit. When you purchase on line you always pay right then and there.Don't forget to get on the wait list for Cozy Blisshttps://purevergreen.com/Cleaning Business Contracts Class https://klean-freaks-university.newzenler.com/courses/basic-contract-bundlepurevergreen.com Kimberly Gonzales e/info@purevergreen.comkleanfreaksunversity.com Shannon Miller e/cleaningbusinesslife@gmail.comJoin my FB Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1583362158497744youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIjMz_-9YyiFvNVIgb61iYg

What is a CRM and how can it help your business? As the marketer of your business, you're in charge of finding ways of getting your business in front of more people and connecting them to the right services. A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) allows you to supercharge how you interact with your existing and potential client. Dom Hodgson, The Pet Biz Wiz, joins the show to break down how to make the most of a CRM and find the hidden money in your business. Dom explains what a quality CRM can actually do, how to communicate with your clients, and help you understand your clients better. Main topcs What is a CRM How do I make the most of it? What are my options? How does it foster client relationships? Main takeaway: You are the marketer of the business, so make the most of it with a CRM! About our guest: Dom Hodgson was born in Sunderland , in the North East of England in January 1978. He left school at 16 and began a career as a singer and dance teacher before getting a 'proper job' as sales rep for a tobacco company. 10 years later he fancied a change and launched a dog adventure business called Pack Leader Dog Adventures. From there he got into dog training which eventually led to his online and offline dog training program and the launch of his Amazon bestselling, highly acclaimed book 'How to Be Your Dogs Superhero'. The year after Dom penned Walk Yourself Wealthy, which shows pet business owners how to turn their passion for pooches intoa profitable business. In 2018 Dom wrote his third book 'Worry Free Walks: How to transform your dangerous, difficult and devilish dog into a problem free pooch that your proud to take to the park. The latest book 'Worry Free Walks' is the first in a 5 book series that aims to fill the knowledge gap for dog owners who love their dogs dearly, but have no control over them. He lives in Sunderland with his wife Beth, two sons, Alex and Toby, and Barry (the Dogue de Bordeaux) and Sidney (the Cocker Spaniel). In no particular order he loves red wine, ballet, HBO television shows, cheese, baking bread and chillaxing at the park with his dogs and a Jack Reacher book. Links: https://petbizsuite.net Grow Your Pet Business Fast Pet Business Marketing Free Copy of Walk Yourself Wealthy Poodle to Pitbull Podcast Dom was also on episode 151, episode 112, & episode 259 Buy PSC Merch Give us a call! (636) 364-8260  Follow us on: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter Email us at: feedback@petsitterconfessional.com Full show notes and transcript   Sponsored by: ❤️ Our AMAZING Patreon Supporters   Time to Pet Visit: https://timetopet.com/confessional Code: 50% off first 3 months   National Association of Professional Pet Sitters www.petsitters.org

Are you a contractor who often feels overwhelmed by a flood of customer interactions and finds it challenging to keep up with the demands? It's time for a game-changer — a CRM system.   Join Tim and Derek as they explore the power of using a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system to streamline communication and boost efficiency. They discuss how a CRM can improve customer communication, streamline processes, enhance data organization, and foster team collaboration.   Tune in to learn how you can save time and increase productivity with this essential tool.   In this episode, they discuss: The importance of organizing customer information digitally The benefits of using a CRM for your business Professionalism, accessibility, and information retrieval in today's business landscape The power of centralized information for enhanced performance The risks of losing valuable information without a CRM Improved customer service and sales through CRM usage Choosing the right CRM for your business Resources: == Attention Fighters! Don't miss your chance to grab tickets for the Mile High Profit Summit 2023. Visit http://MileHighProfitSummit.com and be part of our event in Denver. Together, let's conquer new heights!