Director of Marketing of SANY America: Steve Smith, on CRMs

Steve Smith of SANY America joins us to discuss the ups and downs of building a CRM for your sales team. How do you make sure they actually use it?

Danny:

Okay, let’s jump into today’s episode. I have Steve Smith here, Director of Marketing from SANY America, Steve, thanks so much for joining us today.

Steve:

For sure, yeah, for sure.

Danny:

So for those who aren’t with the illustrious Steve Smith and SANY America tell us a little bit about who you are.

Steve:

Steve Smith, lifelong equipment junky, flunky, kind of got into marketing by default ’cause we didn’t have a marketing department.

Danny:

I’ve never heard that before.

Steve:

So, yeah, yeah, I know it’s standard in our industry, but we started from the ground up, I had to learn everything from the group up, but managed a couple hundred people and got into digital marketing back in the late ’90s which at the time was, we made a decision that relationships were going to be managed differently and so we just got full boat into the internet and the rest is history, as they say. But so now I work with heavy equipment manufacturers and dealers and help them improve their brand presence.

Danny:

That’s awesome. So what I want to talk about for today’s episode, and there’s a lot of things, obviously you’ve got a tremendous amount of experience, we were talking about off camera that, I mean you were into this back in the late ’90s, I mean who else was doing that at that time?

Steve:

Nobody that I know of.

Danny:

Yeah.

Steve:

Yeah, at the time, yeah. There was a precursor to, I would say I was doing Google before Google was Google. By that I mean there was a company called Overture and Overture had these analytics that they used, key word, bars and charts, and there were two and three, four-word phrases that if you match the content of that search term into the title tag and the body of your website you would own the internet. You could have four or five, you know, first-place positions and that’s not true today ’cause things have shifted–

Danny:

Sure.

Steve:

But it’s possible with good strategy to make a huge difference in digital so it’s doable it just takes a lot of work and strategy.

Danny:

Yeah, so I would ask, you know, back then and then to now, like how important is it to be able to have that digital strategy, that online strategy?

Steve:

Fundamentally the most important thing marketing wise.

Danny:

Why is that?

Steve:

I just think that people engage with brands differently. I think that they do a lot of research in the beginning, they’re kind of qualified before they buy, and we can’t control that buyer journey. And so if you’re creating a good first impression, and you’re doing this throughout the course of their interaction with your company I think by default they’re going to give you a chance.

Danny:

Yeah.

Steve:

Absolutely.

Danny:

Yeah, you know- you mentioned the whole buyer’s journey and how that’s all shifted and it’s dramatically shifted, you know, even before we were talking about the Amazon effect, I mean just as consumers you know it’s like we are all, I feel like we’re, we are conditioned to buy differently, and it’s like this speed and I want this information and I want it now.

Steve:

Yeah.

Danny:

And it’s no more of let me make a phone call to a rep and try to set up, to get some preliminary information I’m going to wait however long it takes them to get back we want that immediately, we want it right now.

Steve:

Yeah, yeah.

Danny:

So, you know one of the other things that I think was interesting that I really want to talk about on today’s episode a little bit more is really this whole thing around CRM, okay, so, you know–

Steve:

A lot of thoughts on CRM.

Danny:

Yeah, a little bit huh?

Steve:

A lot of thoughts, yeah.

Danny:

So, well let’s, you were telling me, you were telling me a story actually of GoldMine back in the day and I remember actually which GoldMine now, the new founder did a– there’s a new CRM called Nimble, Nimble CRM which is pretty cool, but how you were rolling out with that and I feel like most manufacturers, you know, we talked to a lot and they’re still using an Excel spreadsheet.

Steve:

Yeah, yeah.

Danny:

Right, so, why have you guys transitioned over to that and like what, you know, what does that look like?

Steve:

Well we– back in the late ’90s and early 2000, we had a sales staff of, say, 28 people, all doing 28 things differently. And so we started– I know that’s probably a common thing and so we had this a, this vision of, we had a very big territory selling into what was arguably at the time the sixth largest economy in the world selling a commodity-based industrial product, a forklift, and we were told that we needed 40 some odd people to cover our territory but we decided that we, that was too many people, there’s overhead, there’s more management there’s more–

Danny:

Right.

Steve:

Cost burden to do that and so we said, you know what if we own the internet, we focus on our target market, ’cause not all the market that we were told to cover was targetable, it wasn’t an addressable market which I think is a big distinction. We needed an automated system that’s predictable and visible but we didn’t want to overbuild it ’cause salesmen sometimes, or salesmen or woman, they want to, they don’t always do the right thing, their hearts are always in the right place I think–

Danny:

Sure, yeah.

Steve:

And so we developed the CRM system back in 2001, 2002, at the time was GoldMine an Enterprise Level 6.7 Edition, I remember it like it was yesterday, time goes by fast, and we hooked that system up to our website and, our fully optimized website, and got leads and pushed leads out to flip phones so that we’re getting leads on our phone and that was a revelation. And just by automating those processes and defining the amount of fields that we wanted the sales staff to put into the field, ’cause I’m a big believer in CRM at its core it’s to help you manage customer relationships but it’s not designed to help management manage salesmen, and so the distinction is different because we just don’t like to pull out of, as a former equipment guy, we don’t like to put any more than is necessary in the system.

Danny:

Right, yeah.

Steve:

So we designed a system, my quarterly speech was, “Garbage In and Garbage Out,” where I would say, “If you put in this kind of information here’s what we’re going to do on your behalf.” At the time, this dates me a little bit too, we were starting to do emails with the information, this is in the early ’90s so we had a good email system that was already going out and we had, or a, recommendation engines so we’re already promoting our other products and services that people have and we’re able to track all these analytics through our CRM system, but it was garbage in garbage out.

Danny:

Yeah.

Steve:

As long as they gave us good information we would help the salesmen penetrate new accounts in their territory and once they saw that we were actually not acting as a Big Brother for them, then they’re like, okay, now I’m all in and the whole thing sort of just took off. And at the end of our, we had sort of a five-year lead study that we did we went from 430 qualified leads to 4,800 plus qualified leads and the salesmen bought into it, and management bought into it, but the key at the end of the day was we didn’t overbuild the system and we didn’t over complicate it because I think that’s… in my experience, people overbuild CRM systems, they have the best of intentions, but very seldom are they actually installed and done correctly,

Danny:

Yeah, I think that’s a huge thing. We hear a lot of times, you know I’m not trying to knock a big-name CRM, I’m not, I won’t mention, but we all know who we’re talking about.

Steve:

I will.

Danny:

Yeah.

Steve:

No.

Danny:

Yeah, I mean, look it’s, we’re talking about Salesforce in case you didn’t, you didn’t pick up on that, for our audience there, but… Salesforce is a great product, it really is, but it’s like the Ferrari.

Steve:

Yeah.

Danny:

And if you don’t know how to drive per se, or you know, it’s like: don’t get the Ferrari. And then we see that a lot where it’s like “We have to have a CRM! We go from Excel spreadsheet, Where are our leads from this trade show?” “Well, it’s in Susie’s drawer.” “Well, let’s dig,” you know.

Steve:

Stack of business cards.

Danny:

Yeah exactly.

Steve:

Yeah, like that.

Danny:

And then we, you know, you get into this thing it’s like, “Hey well, and it just falls apart,” and I think a key thing you mentioned was buy-in. Particularly on the, you know, I think management, upper management typically is like, “Yes, this is great because we’ve got all these metrics and we have all these great things we can look at.” But where the wheels fall off a lot is that actual, that behavioral change. That buy-in. So how, talk to us, talk to me a little bit on how you, some of the tactics and strategies you’ve used to be able to kind of, you mentioned that a little bit like taking the data and reducing that, but how long did that take and what does that look like?

Steve:

You know, because I had people come out and visit our dealership at the time and they would say, “Hey this is great.” Our dealership was studied as a best-practice digital dealership back in the early 2000s. And they would say, “How long does it take for you to get all this stuff in place and working in buy-in?” I said, “A couple years,” at the time. And they said, “Well, we don’t have two years.” And so I’d say, “Well, you can go back to your old strategy and do that if you want,” which is Excel spreadsheets and business cards, or whatever. I think that can be done in a lot less time today, I think six months is realistic. But it starts with having a roadmap of expectations that this is the benefit for the sales staff, this is the benefit for the customers, these are all the processes that we could do and Salesforce is a great example of saying they can do everything, and they can. For a small fortune, they can. But if the key is really just to stay in contact with likely prospects then you have to define what that, what that roadmap looks like.

And I think as far as sales staff is general is concerned, the easier you make it the better. And we started out, it was too complex, we had too many fields, we wanted to know 20 different things about customers and the reality is we really needed to know about five. And so the feedback that we got from the sales staff was, “Hey Steve, this is great we know what we’re doing and we love what you’re doing, we buy into it, but you’re asking for too much information, we have to sell.” And having sold equipment for a living I know a lot of my time was engaged in relationship building and it wasn’t always about doing reports and coming home every night with my family and filling out all this stuff. So to the degree I made it easier for them, they bought in exponentially. And that’s, when I’ve worked with clients in the past they kind of get that and I’ve engaged with people in CRM rollout programs and it’s always dumbing down what you first do. Lower your expectations, make it easy, get some traction, and then sit back and go, “Okay, that’s kind of nice. Maybe that’s good enough. Maybe we shoot for the moon next go around.”

Danny:

Yeah. I love that, there’s some really key things that, one thing I think as the most important piece is that you listened to the sales team. So it wasn’t like, “Okay, this is what we need to do and we’re pushing it and it’s all about us, and let’s hear to that feedback.”

Steve:

Yeah.

Danny:

I mean obviously you were there, that was your thing. So I think the other piece with that is making it easy. Make it really easy. And I think that’s where a lot, we get all tripped up like you mentioned. “Oh we want all theses fields, we want all this customer data, we’re going to have this,” and it’s like, “Am I data entry, or are we selling here?”

Steve:

I think the, I think all the intentions of management and IT, whoever’s involved in the initiative, are always well-intentioned, but if they haven’t sold equipment in the field and don’t know what that’s like, it’s great to start out with these plans, but the reality is is they haven’t lived that life, and so they don’t know how challenging it is. And we used to have this saying: “See 20 people in a day,” when you could physically knock on people’s doors and visit them, but you can’t do that now. People don’t want to see you. I don’t want to be called on by a sales rep. I get sales calls all the time. I don’t want to engage; I’m too busy doing what I’m doing, and I’ve already done all my own research now so I’ll call you when I need something that you’re selling.

Danny:

Right.

Steve:

So, and I think statistics say you have to be on someone’s radar like 20 times over the course of a calendar year, little impressions, messaging–

Danny:

A lot of touch points yeah.

Steve:

A lot of touch points, so that when they’re ready they’re warmed up and if you do that, and you do it well, then you’re in the hot seat, or you’re in the driver’s seat. But I think what we did differently is I had the benefit of selling equipment so I started off with a system that was designed to help the sales staff sell, not management or Big Brother to look at reports. And that’s a distinction because management wants to do, they want to see all this stuff, but it’s not grounded in reality of selling I think. And CRM systems will be a great tool for anybody, provided they’re executed and planned for the right way. It’s just, I think stats are like 90% of companies start and fail, or 95 or something like that.

Danny:

It sounds, that sounds about right.

Steve:

Yeah.

Danny:

You got rid of that process. So let’s, so my next question then would be, so for that company that’s saying, “You know what they’re talking about us right now,” or, “Yes, we are that company that’s got that, that’s got all the spreadsheets and we don’t have it, what are the first few things that we should be thinking about?”

Steve:

I would sit down and have a round table meeting with the stakeholders that were expected to use the system and say, “Alright, we need to do something different. What are your thoughts, what are your ideas?” Do your research, you can google top 20 CRM systems and you’ll get a report that’ll tell you, who’s good and who’s bad. But understand: there’s strengths in the weaknesses. Salesforce has a lot of strengths, and it has a lot of weaknesses. There’s simple email automation, marketing automation programs, which can over automate if you’re not careful, but can be installed for 50 bucks a month and capture web data and push messages back out and sometimes for a lot of companies, that’s enough. And then, but then you sit down there with your group and you say, “What are the follow-on activities we’re going to do with this data? Are we going to have customer events, are we going to call them back once a quarter, are we going to drop a direct mail piece in the mail? Are we going to use that data to build custom audiences for social media or online promotion campaigns? What are you really trying to do with that data?” and you have to start there.

You just can’t say, “Hey, this is our CRM system let’s do this.” You just got to figure out what your… just start off with a planning strategy with the people that are going to be using the system and ask them, “Would you be willing to do this?” And there isn’t a sales staff alive that I’m aware of that likes Big Brother looking into their stuff. And so, and they’re not going to change in our lifetime. The psychology of the sales staff is not going to change. But if they know that the plan involved is doing something that benefits them so they can touch more prospects across the board, without them doing a thing and just taking orders and closing deals, or doing the final sale, I think that you’ll get the buy-in.

Danny:

Yeah, no, I think you’re 100% right, dead on, that totally makes sense. It’s like, so you’ve got to sell it to the salespeople you’ve got to use– But the reality of it is it should be, if it’s, if it a fully flushed out process in the system and you really do have a true integration, an alignment between sales and marketing and it should be, look, marketing should be helping to generate leads–

Steve:

Yep.

Danny:

That, you know, and get them from marketing qualified over to sales qualified–

Steve:

Yep.

Danny:

Take that education from, we don’t know you from Adam, or we met you at a trade show and we had a, we weren’t ready to buy, but the sales cycle is six to 12 to 24 plus months–

Steve:

Yeah, yeah, or under.

Danny:

How do we continue to engage and then have the right metrics saying, “Hey, okay, I know. We met this person two years ago and now they’re ready to go, and let’s get that over to somebody.” You tell that to a salesperson like, “Hey, instead of you spending 80% of your time prospecting and trying to figure that out,” it’s like, “Hey.”

Steve:

We don’t need to do that today.

Danny:

No, no.

Steve:

Yeah. I have a client I’m working with now, we can talk about them if you want, and I’m their Director of Marketing and they brought me in because they needed a complete brand overhaul, and they needed everything. New, good flashy website, brochures, at last count we have about 83 separate projects going on, but at the core of what we’re doing is to generate leads and awareness and get the sales staff qualified leads that have been pre-qualified, they’re warmed up so they can close the deal. So part of my practice is to go in and say, “We want to generate leads. We want to generate the right kinds of leads.” Here’s all the methods we’re going to do to do that.” And then the interaction that you have at each interaction level is critically important. Does the material look good? Are you touching all the emotional hot buttons that this audience may have because they’ve all got frustrations, I’m positive they have all got challenges.

Danny:

Yep.

Steve:

And if your messages touch that then they’re going to respect you for understanding who they are and the pains that they have–

Danny:

Right.

Steve:

They’re going to pay attention to you over time–

Danny:

Right.

Steve:

And then in the heavy equipment space the sales cycles can be from, you know, one minute to years long.

Danny:

Yeah.

Steve:

And so however that sales cycle is defined, you’ve got to make that initial first impression count and then every impression thereafter count, professional, good quality, good quality. You know followup processes we have the same, especially in your inbox, to be that welcomed guest not an uninvited guest, and if you just bomb them with meaningless information that’s not centric to that particular audience then, then they kind of turn you off.

Danny:

Yep.

Steve:

You know, so that balance is, it’s important to understand upfront.

Danny:

Yeah, no absolutely, and you don’t have to look very far- just look at your own inbox and get a sense of what do you value–

Steve:

“Delete, delete, delete.”

Danny:

Versus yep. Delete, ignore, or it doesn’t get through and I think that, you know, a lot of great things there, obviously the relevancy. You know having valuable, valuable information and solving their pain and I think, you know, I think that there’s been a huge, well now I think a lot of manufacturers are realizing hey we, we definitely need to make this shift and the marketing message of yesterday was, was of like, hey, we’re the big brand and we’re…

Steve:

I ask for no justifiable reason.

Danny:

Right, yeah, yeah.

Steve:

Rather than how we solve problems.

Danny:

Exactly.

Steve:

Yeah.

Danny:

And so you’re buying brand, you’re buying, you know, we’ve been around since hundred and twenty three, so we’re the 800 pound gorilla in this space, so you need to buy it from us and I think that that is–

Steve:

It doesn’t work.

Danny:

It doesn’t.

Steve:

It doesn’t work as well. And for the companies that have huge traction, good for them, but for the upstarts that are seeking to displace them, at the core level every company has a product and a service they got into business with before. There’s a reason they got into business and if you dig into the reason that product was developed it’s probably got some good value proposition stuff in there and you’ve got to bring that out into the marketing messages and let everybody know, “Hey this is how we solve the problem that’s unique to you. And old advertising guy, Claude Hopkins, I don’t know if you’ve heard of him. He’s from way back in the early ’20s, but he said, “Platitudes and generalities roll off your back like water does to a duck, and specifics sell.” How you specifically build a case based on evidence on why your product and service is statistically better and people just are inclined to believe in data and stats rather than a general message, and that should permeate throughout everything that you say and do marketing-wise I think.

Danny:

Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. I mean you’re talking about getting into looking at, you know what we talk about it here is a lot of persona development, so looking at, you know, okay we’ve got a product and that product could be sold in many different verticals, you know, just depending on what that is, but then even the person that you’re selling it to inside that organization you have different messages and there’s different pains there. So at the top level versus the end user, that it’s very different reasons or maybe look at the top, hey, how can we drive costs and save this and all that versus maybe end users, more ergonomics and more, you know, so how do we tailor those messages depending on that person that we’re talking to because if you’re talking to an end user, yeah we can save you all this money and, I don’t care about that. What I care about is, I don’t want to feel, I feel exhausted at the end of the day using all this other, whatever.

Steve:

Yeah, and in our industry, for example, uptime, having the equipment run all the time, and the support services that you put around and your 24/7 contact information and your uptime plan, or whatever creative marketing program you want to put together, the customer makes money in our space typically by having equipment up and running, up and running all the time. And when it’s down, it costs them money, so you have to build your support programs and your messaging around that, this is how we’re going to keep you up and running and instill some confidence in this new prospect before it becomes that customer. And I think at the fundamental level every audience has hot buttons you’ve got to dig into and say, “What do you hate most, or fear most in your day?” What does a customer fear or hate most? And when you understand that, when you understand that answer it drives the marketing messaging and makes our job easier.

Danny:

Absolutely.

Steve:

But I think a lot of companies… they don’t take the time to do that or they just, they sort of assume that, “We know what’s best for the customer.” Don’t do that! Ask the customer, do surveys, get in there and take the good news with the bad news and even ask about how your company’s currently doing and it is what it is and then go back to management, or whoever you’re trying to sell the concept of marketing to and say, “We’ve got some work to do,” or “We’ve got some strengths we need to focus on, But you know, we’ve got some work to do.”

Danny:

Yeah.

Steve:

Yeah.

Danny:

As they say, you can’t fix what you can’t measure.

Steve:

Exactly, yeah.

Danny:

So whether that is, you know, customer feedback, talking about net promoter score, whatever, if you don’t have the data, or you don’t have a way of being able to collect it, then yeah, you’re just kind of like, you know. You know it reminds me too, talking about it’s like, even with a lot of product development it’s the same thing, it’s like oh we can make this and this is amazing, this is super cool and this is going to be awesome. And what, the customers, is that a real need that the customers have?

Steve:

Customers have?

Danny:

Yeah, exactly, well, I mean, you know, and that’s, you know, that’s a big challenge.

Steve:

Yeah, yeah definitely.

Danny:

So, yeah so listen, I’ve really enjoyed our, you know, our conversation I think we could go on for hours talking about–

Steve:

Days.

Danny:

CRM and marketing and, is there anything else you want to add to that conversation there before we wrap up, any last parting thoughts maybe to a company that is still, you know, on that, saying, “Yeah, we need to make this jump, we need to make this jump to CRM.”

Steve:

You must make the jump to digital CRM in a comprehensive approach for sure. I think not doing that you’re leaving opportunities and money on the table. I think for our industrial network, industrial audience, we have nothing but upside on all levels, and there’s nothing that we can’t do, it’s not like somebody says, “Hey, I want you to build a rocket ship and go to the moon,” which is an analogy I use. I can’t do that. I’m overwhelmed with that. But to figure out who your audience is, what they’re hot buttons are, how to deliver the messages consistently over a long, short and long time horizon, with really compelling reasons to do business, is not difficult. There is a process, there’s an evaluation process where you evaluate how well you do now versus how well you want to do, but this industry in general has more upside than any I’m aware of, and I love being involved in it.

Danny:

Awesome. Well, we agree 100% and that’s why we love this. Here at IndustrialSage–

Steve:

Thank you.

Danny:

We’re super excited about it, so thank you so much for coming on and sharing a lot of valuable information and your story and your background. I think a lot of our audience will really latch on and I think what you’re saying will really resonate.

Steve:

Yeah, you’ve just got to take that step. Take the step.

Danny:

Take that step.

Steve:

Call this guy.

Danny:

Or these guys.

Steve:

Right.

Danny:

This is awesome. Thank you.

Steve:

You’re welcome, thank you.

Danny:

Thank you very much. Okay, all right so yeah, another awesome episode here. You know if you haven’t picked it up yet, if this is your first episode well then get excited we’re talking about this all the time. If you’re a listener, a loyal listener, or watcher, many of you are watching videos, we talk about this all the time. You have to make that transition but there’s a lot of, a lot of really key pieces for me on here particularly with the CRM piece because that is something that comes up all the time we talk to tons and tons of manufacturers and you hear that story of you know, we’re going this way and we’re going 100% into, you know, Salesforce. Look, I’m not knocking Salesforce I’m just saying, I’m knocking the process- that’s what I’m knocking. Salesforce is great but you’ve got to, you’ve got to qual-, well not qual, you’ve got to crawl, walk and run, right?

So let’s just start this off right and I love the advice where Steve was talking about, say, “Listen. Before we make this evaluation bring everyone together, get that round table, talk to the sales team, get some ideas, what those challenges are,” because he’s totally right. And if you haven’t actually sold these products you don’t understand. We were saying, “Oh we want all this information from a marketer’s standpoint and from a management standpoint, we’re going to generate all these reports and everything,” and that’s really a huge pain and a challenge for them and you know what’s going to happen? They’re going to resist. And I know a lot of you probably are saying, “Yeah, that’s exactly what’s happening in our organization right now. We’ve rolled out with this and people aren’t using it and they’re resisting. We have to make it easier, we have to be able to show what’s in it for them because really at the end of the day it’s this, it should be this shared unified goal.”

So, anyways, thanks for listening. Listen if you are listening to it on iTunes, or anywhere on the, any other podcasting tools there, we’d love a rating or review. If you are on social media we’d love you to share our content. And listen, if you are not on the email list you need to get on that. Go to IndustrialSage.com. We’ve got all kinds of valuable assets not only are we going to release these episodes and other educational content, but we’ve got some special content for you. We’ve got, you know, digital marketing planner guys, insights, persona development, we talked about that in here, all kinds of tools and resources to be able to help you to really take your organization and take it to the next level. So make sure you sign up there. If you have any questions you’d like us to answer we’ll make an episode out of it or answer it on another episode for you. Go to IndustrialSage.com/questions and we will answer those for you. We love doing that all day long. So, thanks for watching or listening, I’m Danny Gonzales and this is IndustrialSage.

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