Jon Ferrara interview - pioneering customer relationship management
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How are you tracking your contacts so that opportunities don't fall through the cracks? How are you reaching out in a way that's effective for you, but not annoying to them? My guest on the podcast today was one of the early pioneers of customer relationship management systems. Jon Ferrara is here to talk about the future of CRM and how we can better use them to create a great experience for both your team and your customers. Throw those yellow sticky notes away, we're going to future proof-your customer relationships with Jon Ferrara from nimble CRM.
David Avrin: I am David Avrin if you're listening to the audio version, we're of course available everywhere, if you want to watch us on video and see this interaction i've really good hair today, so you can go to my website at DavidAvrin.com, or you can go.
David Avrin: on YouTube and watch it there, but i'm excited about this one, I will tell you i'm going to be really honest, this early on was the bane of my existence back when I was in my 20s.
David Avrin: And, of course, this is pre Internet pre Google if we wanted to research, something we would go to the library or find some resource within our company that had a database that was quickly outdated.
David Avrin: But as I would talk to customers and clients and others as well, I had.
David Avrin: A desk covered with sticky notes and i'm trying to remember this one was there and somebody who says don't send my don't don't judge I don't judge anything.
David Avrin: Because I knew where everything was to the point where my my supervisor my boss got so frustrated with me that she sent me to like a two three day Franklin day timer.
David Avrin: Of course, if you're old enough like me in my late 50s to remember those as well now of course it's Stephen covey's involved with that.
David Avrin: But then there were some early pioneers was act, it was outlook, to an extent, and it was gold mine well, one of the pioneers of that.
David Avrin: Is my guest today john Ferrara was one of the painters behind i'll actually read his little bio and then we'll say.
David Avrin: An official welcome he's a serial entrepreneur noted speaker about social sales and marketing, he has reimagined CRM customer relationship management by building nimble.
David Avrin: The simple CRM for Microsoft 365 Google workspace Google workspace he's best known as the co founder of goldmine software corporation, one of the early pioneers of CRM.
David Avrin: For small and medium sized businesses he's been recognized by forbes as one of the top 10 social CEOs top 10 social sales people in the world and top 100 marketing influencers john welcome to the show today.
Jon Ferrara: David Thank you so much for giving the opportunity to join me for a conversation that I hope enlightens your audience about why relationships matter even today more than ever.
David Avrin: You know and and I think here's the things I don't think we have to convince anyone how important the relationships is just how do we do it.
David Avrin: How do we do it in an in an age of digital because we seem to have a sort of two competing forces.
David Avrin: On one side it's the.
David Avrin: That that social intelligence, the word what's the word i'm looking for.
David Avrin: Just understanding the importance of those relationships and how do we stay connected and how do we build meaningful relationships, on the other side.
David Avrin: Is this push towards automation and technology that purports in many ways to enhance those but sometimes creates a distance.
David Avrin: And so i'd love to talk about that, but almost before we do tell us a little bit about about the history of the genre of the category, what was the original need what was the antiquated way that we used to solve it and Where have we come.
Jon Ferrara: So these are great questions, I think the roots of CRM is the rolodex it's where we used to organize our business cards.
Jon Ferrara: And we found that it was a great place to store cards, but you couldn't access them, you can segment them you couldn't build a process for them, and ultimately.
Jon Ferrara: Building and nurturing relationships at scale and turning those relationships into measurable mutually beneficial business outcomes requires a process.
Jon Ferrara: And so I think that one of the first processes that happened was the six by nine index card, and what that was was.
Jon Ferrara: You could put in the the name and the company and some details about who you're calling, and you can make a note on the call and then you put a recall date on the card when you supposed to call back.
Jon Ferrara: Having a conversation with you know what are you going to make 20 3040 calls a day.
Jon Ferrara: When you have those conversations you say okay David i'll follow up with you in two weeks about that.
Jon Ferrara: So you put in the day, two weeks, and what that is right, and then you file it based off that date, and every day you come in.
Jon Ferrara: You have that set of cards that you need to call, and this is your sort of system your recall date system that was kind of the early days of contact management and ffa.
Jon Ferrara: But that really didn't translate into the digital world as we started to adopt microcomputers people started to use spreadsheets for this, and then they said well there's got to be a better way but.
Jon Ferrara: gotta remember back in these days there wasn't.
Jon Ferrara: There was an outlook outlook was outlook express it was an email inbox and dos, and so it was about this time that I was working as a sales REP for a technology company out of Dallas.
Jon Ferrara: And they would give me lead, which really weren't leaves there a piece of paper with phone numbers of it people large corporations, they.
Jon Ferrara: don't really.
David Avrin: Give us a time check on this about what year was.
Jon Ferrara: that she 687.
David Avrin: that's what I remember as well yeah.
Jon Ferrara: So in 8687 I was cold calling.
Jon Ferrara: People at large corporations, making notes on paper put my appointments in my day timer and I do my forecast to the spreadsheet once a month and I before it's due.
Jon Ferrara: And this was contact management SF bay and what you might call the roots of CRM and I knew that there had to be a better way to do this and.
Jon Ferrara: Because I had a computer science degree and I worked my way through my degree at a computer store.
Jon Ferrara: I knew every software program in the market at the moment I knew that wasn't appropriate integrated email contact calendar and sales and marketing automation.
Jon Ferrara: What I did find was a number of tools that we're taking stabs at it one was a.
Jon Ferrara: thing called APP, which was a plug into symphony to manage contacts so back back then wasn't even the contact manager that you know of today.
Jon Ferrara: It was basically a tool that allowed you to manage tasks for contacts for an individual person not a team.
Jon Ferrara: there's think i'll tell a magic which basically automated the old recall date system that I mentioned earlier there's a thing called snap which was sales automation or it was.
Jon Ferrara: Sales forecasting pipeline management and there's a thing called sale maker, which was a telephone calling system where you found out 50 calls a day.
Jon Ferrara: What I wanted was really a blend of all that that gave me the contact management, but for a team, because I worked as part of a team in this district office.
Jon Ferrara: And that district office work with corporate, not just for prospects and customers, but even after the sale happen.
Jon Ferrara: So I wanted a relationship manager that enable the whole team to participate in the entire journey of the customer, which is much different than CRM, which is a tool to power lead by salespeople So when I pioneered goldmine.
Jon Ferrara: We started a company on $5,000 never took a dime adventure grinch about 120 $5 million a year in revenue sold it about 10 years later.
Jon Ferrara: And I think what made us unique was our focus on a relationship manager for a team, not just a serum for salespeople, in fact, there was no terms here and back then it really was conflict management for workgroups That was my sort of vision.
Jon Ferrara: Then, as it evolved from that.
David Avrin: Let me ask you a question when you're talking about teams because because we're dealing with some of this right now to as we do some sales for my speaking and my other ventures as well, is part of the teams portion of that is to make sure that everybody's clear who's contacting whom.
David Avrin: So that they're not stepping on each other when we have the physical rolodex which we still use the term of kids don't know.
David Avrin: What that even means is that we did somebody already called from that and.
Jon Ferrara: shows clarification.
Jon Ferrara: If you're not a one page about who you're talking to what's pending who's going to do it what's been done who's done it then you don't have the context unique contacts is.
Jon Ferrara: That history and pending insights is who are they and, what is your business about without context and insight you can't get anything done.
Jon Ferrara: And when you call up American express you better believe they know who you are they know who's talked to you, they know it's pending.
Jon Ferrara: And they do it right, and that is the secret to business is the basics and so that's why I really emphasize contact management for the whole team.
Jon Ferrara: and think about this it's not just sales it's not just prospects and customers enable you to grow your business.
Jon Ferrara: And nimble we engage with editors analysts bloggers influencers third party developers investors advisors.
Jon Ferrara: there's a constituency around my business and there's a team of people that engage with them, so if you're listening to us today throughout the idea of CRM.
Jon Ferrara: What you need is a team contact platform with good sales and marketing capabilities in it that enable not just the sales people that eat route outreach at scale.
Jon Ferrara: But your biz Dev people your PR people your investor people, because all of them are quote engaging people to drive a an outcome.
David Avrin: Right, but I want to talk about also from the content of the contact.
David Avrin: Your perspective, what do we know about them, because I remember back.
David Avrin: In the early days, it was somebody called and, in some cases, it was even before caller ID and we quickly typed in their name and they say oh hey Jim I understand Oh, I know that joey had his birthday last week, how was that.
David Avrin: Right and was so primitive yeah.
David Avrin: Just birthday.
Jon Ferrara: It wasn't that much data, but you know the secret to relationships is commonality I call it the five life.
Jon Ferrara: The family friend food fun and fellowship These are the things that we share in common.
Jon Ferrara: In order to build intimacy and trust to get people to open up to us about their issues, so we can then solve them because, ultimately, business people are problem solvers we're really solving problems for people.
Jon Ferrara: The old days you go in somebody's office you look at the wall look at the books, they read the degree the school they went to the knickknacks they collect to identify those commonalities.
Jon Ferrara: Sure, we could do that electronically back in the goldmine days you're lucky if database USA had some basic on the business, so you could type in a company name and we might be able to give you the address, and maybe the sick.
Jon Ferrara: si si code and you know some other basic stuff but nothing that really gave you the type of intelligence, that we have today, you had to do your work and there was no Google so.
David Avrin: You know, but it was also kind of a repository for.
David Avrin: And a reflection of the call that we had just had right, we were typing on the.
David Avrin: left here when I like when I went to nimble the new CRM system to simplified one, but it is fairly robust as well, one of the things that I found really intriguing that.
David Avrin: Was was really attractive to me, is when we looked at a contact that was populated in there and I think we're going to assume, for the sake of this podcast that people understand the CRM system.
David Avrin: And the importance of that, but I want to talk about how it's morphed when I looked at the system that you've built.
David Avrin: And that is automatically incorporating all of their social media platforms as well, so that you can learn more about them, you can see what their interests are you can see where they're connected.
David Avrin: And that information, of course, gives you power in that conversation it helps you tap into where those commonalities are to create real connection tell me your thought process.
David Avrin: about taking CRM from what we have traditionally known and there's no shortage with salesforce and and confusion soft and all of those as well to.
Jon Ferrara: What you built with nimble Eva So the first generation of stuff that we build gave you a context.
Jon Ferrara: It was what you typed in about the person and what you log it was email content calendar notes and next actions right right your thing i've got to have a next action with this person.
Jon Ferrara: But with nimble what we did is it's really the first element automatically builds itself from the contacts you already have in your business, so you have contacts in.
Jon Ferrara: In your email productivity suite Google and Microsoft inside your social and inside your sales marketing customer service and accounting system, so your contacts are siloed today.
Jon Ferrara: Not just in your business Apps but also for each team Member because Microsoft and Google have a separate contact database every team Member so.
Jon Ferrara: The first thing that nimble does is it automatically unifies all those contacts into one cohesive system for the whole team.
Jon Ferrara: Then we enrich that contact with people and company data so you'd have to Google them your nimble them.
Jon Ferrara: And then we synchronize the history of interaction for you and the team on email calendar and social, so that when you bring up a contact you automatically know.
Jon Ferrara: Who are they what's happened, who did it what's happening who's going to do it and a little bit about their business and themselves because.
Jon Ferrara: You still need to break the ice you still need to share the commonalities we don't start conversations with.
Jon Ferrara: getting down to the business like did you sign the Po We might say, you know how's the weather in Denver today sure love dating that pro bowler from you, for the rams because that guy just rocked it guys to super bowl I think it was Miller, I love that guy.
Jon Ferrara: But it's basically sharing this commonality so what nimble does it really pioneered social serum and social selling because when I started to use social in 2006 seven and eight, I saw it was going to change the way we work play buy and sell.
Jon Ferrara: I started looking for a relationship manager, the integrated with social I couldn't find it I started looking for a CRM the integrated social I couldn't find it.
Jon Ferrara: I saw that CEOs one about relationships are about reporting serum should stand for customer reporting management not customer relationship management and the reason they called salesforce you have to for salespeople to use it so.
Jon Ferrara: I saw the need.
Jon Ferrara: or a CRM that basically utilize social for engagement before people really saw that happening and I went up to linkedin and gave they.
Jon Ferrara: got them to give me the public and private api's we integrated Twitter Facebook linkedin crunch base angel list, etc.
Jon Ferrara: And just really blew out the doors with social serum and social selling until linkedin decided they want to build sales navigator and.
Jon Ferrara: They cut everybody off the API and I had to sort of reimagine what nimble was going to be without access to all those api's and you know, one of the things that I saw was.
Jon Ferrara: Microsoft eight Novell back in the old days Novell was the network operating system to tie PCs together.
Jon Ferrara: And Microsoft does it innovate, they iterate they wave seven hours to build the market and they come in with big enough with their muscle.
Jon Ferrara: And they build something good enough and then use billions of users and hundreds of thousands of ours to dominate so they build nt server and they basically eight Novell and I saw that happening back in the goldmine days.
Jon Ferrara: and build a version that required nt server sql server an exchange server became a ISP partner with Microsoft, which helped us to grow to that hundred million.
Jon Ferrara: And when I saw that Microsoft was into launching Microsoft 365 I knew they would do the exact same thing, and so, when I lost a bit of the social API.
Jon Ferrara: I did two things first I build a Prospector widget that automatically live, where you live in your inbox in Twitter Facebook linkedin and I got back some of that social power.
Jon Ferrara: But then I basically integrated deeply with the Microsoft products but relations just the people and i'm happy to announce that Microsoft signed a global a reseller agreement where we become the simple serum for Microsoft 365.
Jon Ferrara: And they're basically globally reselling us.
Jon Ferrara: To all their end users and resellers and I think one of the big reasons why is their dynamics CRM while powerful and big doesn't suit the masses of the SMB users.
Jon Ferrara: And, most people don't need a big fancy serum they need a simple contact platform that layers on their Google and Microsoft.
Jon Ferrara: And that social because, ultimately, if you don't know who somebody is and what their business about you haven't done your homework and if you don't do your homework you don't win games.
David Avrin: You know I think one of the the trepidations that i've seen over the years and I certainly would count myself among them is some of the resistance to it is the.
David Avrin: The tedious nature of inputting data and inputting data and.
Jon Ferrara: The two biggest cause of failure serum is lack of use and bad data lack of use, because you have to beat people to do it and it's not human nature to type stuff into computers, most people don't know that type and and so, so your serum should work for you, by building itself.
David Avrin: And they were in that, but that's one of the things that that's intriguing I want you to talk more about that, because you talk very quickly because clearly.
David Avrin: As somebody who's built companies and raise money you've said this 100,000 times.
David Avrin: For our audience slow it down a bit yeah.
David Avrin: here's what I would like to hear is.
David Avrin: Mostly, what makes this different because part of what we're talking about is there's no shortage of CRM.
Jon Ferrara: Available database right absolutely and they all generally do the same thing, and if you want to convert.
David Avrin: one to the other, to migrate that data is not that difficult to to assign fields, but what I found really interesting is this one actively and I don't know if you if this was an accidental word or you intended to say automatically.
David Avrin: I love the word.
David Avrin: Is this for those who are on Google exchange or Microsoft 365 this goes and finds all the data connected to particular contacts and populates the fields finds the social media populates the fields finds the calendar data and builds all of that for you probably largely if not entirely.
David Avrin: It makes it much less daunting for an organization for an organization to adopt something like this.
Jon Ferrara: I think that, like like we talked about earlier, the biggest cause of failure, Sam is lack of use, because you have to work for it, it doesn't work for you.
Jon Ferrara: And, and then a bad data, because people don't like to type stuff in and even if they do the data decays like rotten fish.
Jon Ferrara: And so um So if you have to Google somebody before meeting and then go to the serum to log that and then go engage with that, where you can email and linkedin and then go back to the serum to log that.
Jon Ferrara: who's going to do that nobody's going to do that so so basically if your CRM could i'm actually take any name, whether it's a string john Ferrara or an identity john underscore for our my Twitter handle or to email.
Jon Ferrara: john at nimble calm nimble can heuristic Lee take that data if it's a string.
Jon Ferrara: It could go suggests the identities and you could usually say oh yeah that's john click and then, once you add one identity automatically adds the other and the ancillary data behind it.
Jon Ferrara: So you get an Avatar you get a location, you get a title you get a company you get a bio you get on.
Jon Ferrara: Recent social posts and if it's company you get that all the company details, if you want revenue location CEO all that good stuff.
Jon Ferrara: And then, if anybody in your team's ever spoken to that person, if you have the email, it will log the history.
Jon Ferrara: If you don't have the email nimble will actually give you the email, because if you give nimble first name last name company domain name it'll automatically go find their email, and maybe even their phone number.
Jon Ferrara: And then it automatically builds this record for you and literally two clicks like.
Jon Ferrara: there's no typing and then you can have built that record in nimble or in a conversation in Twitter Facebook linkedin.
Jon Ferrara: Or, in your email inbox or in your CRM that you're using because a lot of people are forced to use some corporate CRM like salesforce and dynamics.
Jon Ferrara: But you know what even if you do use a corporate CRM you still have to buy sales intelligence linkedin sales navigator zoom info for your route.
Jon Ferrara: Then you need to buy outreach software sales loft outreach io because sales REPS aren't given the marketing automation system, you need to give them a rifle.
Jon Ferrara: Which is template it trackable emails so by the time you get done buying all this stuff like that just said salesforce hundred dollars per user per month sales loft hundred dollars per user per month zoom info hundred dollars per user per month.
Jon Ferrara: The sales REPS don't even use it, because they don't have a house, you have to hire a sales administrator to do it and so.
David Avrin: And then it also becomes a point of friction within the organization's.
David Avrin: yeah and you get all the pushback of saying oh now they're going to make us do all of this i'm too busy trying to do and i've been a part of organizations, where there was a revolt.
David Avrin: That started off as.
David Avrin: Just.
David Avrin: Passive aggressive aversion you know you see that a lot of just not doing it, or you go back to what's that movie monsters interested like Mike was asking and, in turn, in your sales reports right because he's too busy doing the work to do this.
Jon Ferrara: Like the tool, should be able to dance with the rap in the way that they dance, because not all REPS dance the same way, and so I think that.
Jon Ferrara: If your system can tell the rap something they don't know who is this person, what is your business about automatically create records for them log the basic stuff of email and calendar so don't need to.
Jon Ferrara: Then they can do the basics, the basics in business is login and note on the call and scheduling the next action that's you.
Jon Ferrara: Know to have a log of a call and the next action that you're supposed to do, then you can't follow up and follow through, but if you don't have to do everything else we just talked about.
Jon Ferrara: Google in them type in and all that stuff logging email and calendar and it automatically did everything but the basics and it didn't where you're living if you're prospecting and linkedin or if you're in an email or if you're in some other business APP.
Jon Ferrara: it's game changing.
David Avrin: we're talking to john Ferrara with nimble CRM um talk to us about smaller businesses certainly larger enterprises they've understood, for a long time, they have to have a robust CRM system they'll always be pushed back from sales people in other as well.
David Avrin: And in those kind of cases you're really looking even from a sales perspective for your company.
David Avrin: it's not really customer acquisition for you it's customer conversion, you have to convince them to stop working with WHO they're working with why your system is better, but for small businesses for emerging businesses who have not yet adopted a system for their organization.
David Avrin: As they build a company, as I have a new venture on building as well.
David Avrin: What is your counsel, what is your advice what's your admonition to them about starting this early.
David Avrin: In a way, that's not daunting so that grows with the organization, so that new people as they grow, this is our system.
David Avrin: As opposed to the challenge of trying to to introduce something later on and i've been a part of those teams, where it came in later on and there's a lot of pushback talk to me about small businesses starting early putting systems in place.
Jon Ferrara: Great question David um I think that one of the great things about nimble is it's focused on contacts and relationships and in a small business there's a lot of people weren't a lot of hats it's not a defined role of urine sales you're in biz Dev your marketing your leadership.
David Avrin: What all doing everything.
Jon Ferrara: While really doing everything and so i'm the mistake people make with CRM is a basically think it's a place to put prospects and customers for salespeople to pound.
Jon Ferrara: But the reality is that in most companies hundred people there's only five sales people so what's the rest of people and company doing.
Jon Ferrara: I think that if you're an entrepreneur, and you have a small business, you should have a relationship manager that us by the whole team.
Jon Ferrara: So that no matter who picks up the phone they're on one page with whoever that person is.
Jon Ferrara: Because it takes a village, it takes a constituency around your business in order for you to grow it, and so, if you first thing you do as a business is you get a domain.
Jon Ferrara: You build a website and you get an email productivity system so you're going to either pick Microsoft or Google.
Jon Ferrara: So, now that you have email contacts and calendar, then what you need is a contact database and so that's what you bind number four and you give nimble ideally to anybody who's interacted with those customers and.
Jon Ferrara: And you just teach them to do the basics is if this person is significant to the company, make sure you build a record and login node and schedule the next task it's really the basics.
Jon Ferrara: And then, as you evolve and you build a website and you start driving leads to it, you want to capture those leads and put it into a lead qualification workflow we can do that, and speaking of workflows David how many times have you seen people use spreadsheets to manage contacts.
David Avrin: Most of the time.
Jon Ferrara: Yes, so there's 225 million global businesses less than 1% use any CRM most people CRM is their inbox or spreadsheets or post, it notes, and I think the reason why, is what we've been discussing all this time.
Jon Ferrara: But what do you think about spreadsheets what are they really use for they're used for workflow repeatable business processes for the people and companies that you're engaging with.
Jon Ferrara: It could be for investors, it could be for prospects, it could be for biz Dev it could be for podcasts outreach.
Jon Ferrara: And so I noticed that people were starting to sort of bastardized deals into more of a workflow for things non sales related.
Jon Ferrara: And so I myself suffered from building spreadsheets for press outreach or trying to use trial to build a board and a process for this.
Jon Ferrara: So what I did is I worked with our design team to build something called workflows and enables you to build a board of stages with cards that represent people or companies.
Jon Ferrara: That allow you to put the custom fields in there, that you want to collect to put people through the process and i'm just going to share one example of that that we're doing at nimble which is.
Jon Ferrara: Every business hiring so we put an ad in indeed and for a social media marketing associated we got 60 applicants.
Jon Ferrara: Imagine managing 60 applicants, so we did is we built a board for the applicants, the first stage is first pass where we do the sort of the sniff test we look at their linkedin we look at their resume we say does this person, a fit.
Jon Ferrara: And worth outreach in for an interview if they are we add them to that first board we link their linkedin we link their resume and we use a template email to send an invite to a meeting.
Jon Ferrara: And then basically we move them through those stages, but you can think about almost any thing across all departments in the company will you need workflow processes, including collected money.
Jon Ferrara: onboarding new new employees biz Dev etc, and I think that workflows is a game changer for businesses in order to build the repeatable processes, they need to scale.
David Avrin: Well, and it's it's more than.
David Avrin: Where I think what solves the problem of having too many systems, too many processes.
David Avrin: That don't necessarily talk to each other.
David Avrin: yeah I think the obvious solution is to work with those organizations get them to talk to each other, but the best solution, of course, is creating an all in one platform that does all of this, the part that comes to my mind, as somebody who is not detail oriented, is it sounds daunting.
David Avrin: As simple it is for somebody like you, who understands this, who does all of this.
David Avrin: There may be one or two people in the.
David Avrin: organization, who are responsible for this, but I, my understands you created something for everybody to.
David Avrin: Use so when you talk about workflow and others.
David Avrin: Is this a drag and drop is tell me about the the input methodology that makes it less daunting for especially solo printers small business and others to create something like this, we say i'm just not good at this.
Jon Ferrara: sure it so there's templates that you could pick from that we've already built for I think 15 different use cases across your entire company.
Jon Ferrara: So you have to think about it, I think a lot of times.
Jon Ferrara: When you go to imagine if you had to go to nordstrom and they showed you they basically said describe the suit you want as opposed you get to pick suits that are already pre made, and then they tailor them to you, you tailor them to yourself.
David Avrin: So you know.
Jon Ferrara: workflow that's applicable within a range to your business and then you can go and modify the stages and you can modify the data that you can collect on each card and um.
Jon Ferrara: and make it your own, and then, once you've done that, then you will understand how to build one it's really not that hard and I think that's one of the things that people love about nimble.
Jon Ferrara: Is that it is really super simple, and I think that it's it's really beneficial to any company considering a CRM because if you're going to go implement salesforce or dynamics it's going to take months and 10s of thousands of dollars.
Jon Ferrara: Right, but in many cases, people don't know what they want and what they should do is rather than going and buying a 25 speed road bike or a you know 25 speed mountain bike.
Jon Ferrara: They should buy something with training wheels, or they can get started with right a nice hybrid and get to know what they want, and then you know, a nice $300 bike and then and then graduate into that $3,000 one once you sort of figure out what you want.
David Avrin: As the name would suggest is nimble one of those platforms that can grow with you, or does it come as robust as it comes, or you can do it as a basic system and add features.
David Avrin: As you grow and as your needs grow.
Jon Ferrara: Well, you know, one of the cool things is you can tailor it to your own Jacob build custom fields and tabs.
Jon Ferrara: Because it's integrated with Microsoft, you can start using things like power bi power automate and flow and all these different things to extend it.
Jon Ferrara: We integrate with literally thousands of cloud SAS business Apps if you're using other front and back office Apps you can integrate them.
Jon Ferrara: And then, if, for some reason you outgrow nimble like you need one of those big dynamic siri dynamic or salesforce CRM.
Jon Ferrara: You could actually go and use that and then use nimble in conjunction with it because, as I said.
Jon Ferrara: If you buy salesforce today, you have to go by, sales intelligence zoom info or linkedin sales navigator you have to buy outreach doctor outreach io sales loft each of those $100 per user per month nimble is $25 per user per month.
Jon Ferrara: Every query still needs a team contact platform, so you could use nimble as your team contact from you could use it as ffa and sales intelligence add on for the wraps.
Jon Ferrara: You can give them salesforce to do the robust stuff that you want, but then they could use nimble in their inbox and linkedin and anyways also working to add records update records and all that added and updating.
Jon Ferrara: goes into salesforce for them, so we basically extend salesforce and make it more nimble for your sales REPS.
David Avrin: talk to me about the the support systems that you've built for new users to walk them through systems tutorial.
David Avrin: videos and things like that, how does somebody on board if they have a never worked with a CRM system before or looking to potentially migrate to something that's a little more.
David Avrin: Robust while at the same time, a little bit easier.
David Avrin: What systems.
David Avrin: What support do you guys offer to help people make all that happen.
Jon Ferrara: Well, you know, David we just launched this new onboarding widget I wish we had a different term than widget because he wanted to say technical.
Jon Ferrara: But essentially it's a it's a guidance system that that walks you through the key things that you should be doing in order to be successful, to learn that from our customers.
Jon Ferrara: Including walking you, through your first workflows adding your first records, as well as adding them all to your Microsoft or.
Jon Ferrara: Google email adding our mobile adding our browser Prospector plugin and and doing an even loading sample data, so you can sort of see nimble.
Jon Ferrara: As it would be with a company that's already been using it.
Jon Ferrara: Plus we have onboarding videos across all the different sections and then you can join our success team for webinars that we hold throughout the week where you can get some one on one.
Jon Ferrara: Consulting and you can message us from within the APP and and will respond to you and answer your one on one questions we have knowledge bases.
Jon Ferrara: And then we have a partner network worldwide that you could work with partners that are have different skill sets.
Jon Ferrara: dependent on your needs of nimble all the way from straight up technology advisors to accountants that are doing front and back office technology consulting in addition to their bookkeeping.
David Avrin: You know I, I am a fan I be honest, that I hired somebody else to to set all this stuff up for me because she's really good at it.
David Avrin: But i'm always feel like I can follow process don't make me create it.
David Avrin: And, and I think i'm there are others who were who are like me as well, but I could not survive without CRM, it is the single number one thing that I attribute my growth and my success to.
David Avrin: From what I went to from being a solo printer.
David Avrin: 20 years ago.
David Avrin: To having full team full staff and everything else.
David Avrin: Is because I had those systems.
David Avrin: built in those systems in place for me it's fascinating to watch what you're doing because it's becoming so much more than just a repository for information.
David Avrin: Now, as a toy for, but if the integration that the the places that it finds.
David Avrin: information to make us.
David Avrin: better equipped to do the work we do go ahead.
Jon Ferrara: So everybody listening to this today should have their own personal CRM.
Jon Ferrara: they're absolutely rolodex they say your network is your net worth your personal brand and your professional network will help you achieve your dreams in life, which I hope include.
Jon Ferrara: Helping other achievers because the more people you help grow, the more you will grow.
Jon Ferrara: And so what you should be doing is building identity and all the places where your prospects and your customers and their influencers.
Jon Ferrara: have conversations about how to be better smarter and faster, you should be sharing content in those places to inspire and educate them.
Jon Ferrara: If you can't write they curate other people's stuff that inspires you and then listen and engage with the intent, not to connect and sell but to connect and serve because services, the new selling.
Jon Ferrara: And then basically begin to nurture those relationships, if you do what I just said, to do you're going to have 10s of thousands of connections and guess what.
Jon Ferrara: You won't be able to manage them because there's a Dunbar limit, you can only manage 100 200 people in your head at one time.
Jon Ferrara: And so you will need a system to do that and most serious aren't built for relationships, if you Google CRM and look up pipe drive.
Jon Ferrara: it's the sales operating system, so if all your company does is sales go buy a sales Sarah if you believe that relationships are critical to your business success and it's more than prospects and customers and sales and marketing people that do it go go try them.
David Avrin: If people want to get in touch with you john Ferrara Ferrara how do they get in touch with you and learn more about nimble.
Jon Ferrara: Well, you know what I think people should Google me because.
Jon Ferrara: In fact I think they should Google themselves and see if you show up on that first page, and if you don't.
Jon Ferrara: You can fix that go build a Wikipedia page for yourself it's free it's easy, as long as you follow the rules so Google me jail and space F G ra ra.
Jon Ferrara: and connect with me on whatever channel you're comfortable with, and if you want email me my email is john at nimble calm.
Jon Ferrara: And if you go to nimble calm and you sign up for a free two week trial and you did what you see and want to become a subscriber use the code john 4140 zero and you'll get 40% off your first three months.
David Avrin: Outstanding john hang on, on the other side we'll talk briefly afterwards big thanks to john for our for being my guest, you can remember you can pick up a copy of my new book, this is the self promotional part john of.
Jon Ferrara: My.
David Avrin: My pockets of my new book the morning huddle powerful customer experience conversations to wake you up shake you up and win more business if you're watching the video version.
David Avrin: You can see all the rest of my books here in this next to my head, most of them are on audible and other languages around the world as well.
David Avrin: Be sure to click to like this podcast subscribe leave a comment really important just leave a comment.
David Avrin: And click the little bell icon to receive notifications of new episodes you can learn more about my keynote speaking by consulting look me up at David Avrin.com.