August 4, 2025 • 24 mins
In this perceptive episode, Andy Audate, President of AudateMedia, shares strategies for leveraging CRMs to scale your business predictably. If you struggle with disorganized customer tracking or inefficient sales processes, you won't want to miss it.
You will discover:
- Why a CRM tracks customer journeys to streamline your sales process
- How to choose a CRM tailored to your customer’s specific journey
- What mission-critical data to capture in your CRM for profit
This episode is ideal for for Founders, Owners, and CEOs in stage 3 of The Founder's Evolution. Not sure which stage you're in? Find out for free in less than 10 minutes at https://www.scalearchitects.com/founders/quiz
Andy Audate is an international speaker, renowned small business marketing expert, and the founder of Progreda. With a proven track record, he specializes in assisting small businesses in effectively marketing their high-ticket services through webinars that have attracted over 9,500 entrepreneurs. Andy's SaaS has achieved a seven-figure run rate, and his guidance has empowered thousands of small businesses to create marketing campaigns that have collectively generated $20+ million in revenue.
Want to learn more about Andy Audate's work at AudateMedia? Try Progreda for Free for 14 Days at https://progreda.com/lory 'Buy No More Average' Book : How to Take Control of Your Mindset, Overcome Fear, Reach Peak Performance and Achieve Your Goals https://a.co/d/2FnrZUz Text ”Progress” to # 702-830-7408 for access to a FREE live webinar hosted by Andy Audate for a full breakdown of his marketing system for online business owners
Mentioned in this episode:
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Scott Ritzheimer (00:00):
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once
(00:02):
again to the start, scale andsucceed. Podcast, the only
podcast that grows with youthrough all seven stages of
your journey as a founder. Andtoday, we're going to talk
about a topic that you haveall heard of. There's a tool
that you pretty much all use,or maybe should, on a weekly,
even daily basis. And in myexperience, working with
founders who are trying toscale their sales beyond their
(00:24):
own ability, I have found thatmost of us use it wrong. What
are we talking about today? Weare talking about the CRM and
I'm hardly an expert in CRMs,so we've got one with us here
today, and that is the one andonly Andy Audate, who is an
international speaker,renowned small business
marketing expert, and thefounder of progreta, with a
(00:47):
proven track record, hespecializes in assisting small
businesses in effectivelymarketing their high ticket
services through webinars thathave attracted over 9500
entrepreneurs. Andy's S, A, A,S or SaaS has achieved him a
seven figure run rate, and hisguidance has empowered 1000s
of small businesses to createmarketing campaigns that have
(01:07):
collectively generated $20million more than $20 million
in revenue. He's here with ustoday. Andy, I'm so excited to
have you on the show. I haveto admit out of the gate here
that I have a little bit of alove, hate relationship with
the CRM world, and I thinkyou're going to be able to
solve that for us. So you helpbusinesses to streamline, to
(01:29):
grow faster. And for a founderwho a remarkable number of
folks still meet, meet thisdefinition, but they're
relying on spreadsheets ornapkins or some other form of
keeping track of things,particularly that their
clients. How is that holdingthem back?
Andy Audate (01:48):
Well, I mean, it's processes and systems the
way to grow and scale abusiness. Once again. Thank
you, Scott for having me here,man, so it's when you think
about scaling a business, it'sthe processes and systems that
you have that allows you topredictably scale, or it's
going to hold you back withoutthem. And when we think about
processes and systems, a CRMis going to allow you to
effectively keep track ofevery single customer at the
(02:11):
specific stage of theirjourney with you. So you can
keep track of people who areleads, and maybe they're not
specific customers, but youcan also keep track of people
who are specific customers.You ever get those emails or
text messages from a companythat you might already be
doing business with them?You're already a long term
subscriber with them? It couldbe a gym, and you've been a
(02:32):
member of the gym for years,and they send you a message,
and that message says, Hey, wewould love to have you as a
customer. Here's a discount.How do you feel when that
happens? Scott, I know for me,when I get those I'm like,
Dude, I've been with you guysfor years. What's wrong with
your processes? What's wrongwith your systems? Yes, and
that's what small businessowners need, or founders need,
(02:52):
is they need those systems tobe able to track their
customers so that way they cancommunicate effectively based
on where that customer is atin the journey.
Scott Ritzheimer (03:00):
Yeah. Very cool. All right, so there are
a lot of CRMs out there, and Ihave found when you're buying
something like a CRM, you'rebuying it from someone who not
only has a sales team, but isa sales company, and that's
got its own challenge, becausethey tend to be pretty good at
what they do, lots of smoothtalk. There's lots of great
(03:21):
presentations. But how do youget behind all of that you
know, for better or worse, andknow which is the right CRM
for you?
Andy Audate (03:31):
Well, we got to look at you what your
customer's cycle is. What isthe journey for your customer,
and maximize the toolspecifically for your customer
identify. So first step is toidentify what is your
customer's journey. And itdoesn't have to be a company
that that's that's salesdriven. It could be a company
that is direct responsemarketing, where you create
marketing funnels and a leadcomes in and you automatically
(03:53):
email them. You may not have asales team, but all the sales
are automatic. That in itself,needs a CRM. And because what
you're going to do here is youcan use a CRM to track the
customers in their journey,communicate with the
customers, and have a systemto track all the communication
that you've had with yourcustomers. So that way you can
go back and look at so as yourcompany grows, when you get to
(04:17):
100 customers, maybe you'll beable to manage it on yourself.
Okay, so if you're a founderright now, you're at 100 under
100 customers. Maybe you canmanage it on your personal
iPhone and you can remember,like, Yeah, Bob, I sent him a
text message. Let me find Bobin my my contacts. Oh yeah,
Tim, and so on and so forth.But then you start scaling
your business, and you startgetting past 100 customers.
(04:37):
You got 200 300 400 customers.You're gonna need to bring in
a team. One of the valuepoints for a CRM is you can
have one platform that you andyour team can log into and
respond on behalf of thecompany. I'll give you an
example. We have in our CRM.We have 1000s of customers.
However, one of our customers,for example, is in the hair
(04:58):
salon industry. So they run a.Hair Salon business, all 12
stylists that work in thathair salon, every single text
message, every single phonecall, every single email was
originally coming from eachand every single one of their
cell phones individually atthe salon. So you walk into
the salon, there's 12 stylistsworking at 12 different hair
stations. Each of them havetheir own personal iPhone.
(05:20):
They're communicating onbehalf of the cus of they're
be they're communicating onbehalf of the business to each
and individual customer. Sowhen a customer walks in, they
get a hair stylist phonenumber, and they're like,
Yeah, Barbara, shoot me a textmessage to book the next
appointment. Well, guess whathappens when Barbara, the hair
stylist is sick that day andthe client comes in for the
hair appointment? Well,Barbara sick, the client comes
(05:42):
in, they're like, Hey, I had ahair appointment with you
guys. Barbara sick, cool. Putme in touch with someone else.
No one else is in relationshipwith the fact that that
customer had a had a had a hada appointment. The CRM, what
it does for that hair salon isit allows them to use one
software. Everyone has thesame mobile app on their
phone, and when a customerwalks in, Barbara's sick,
(06:05):
she's no longer she's nolonger there, all the other
team members can log in, intothe customer's account inside
of the CRM and say, Oh yeah,you did have an appointment,
and we already saw that, andwe actually already scheduled
you with another hairstylist.So you're going to be sitting
with Sandra today, who's anamazing hairstylist. Think
about that customerexperience. One is unaware of
the customer journey of wherethey're at, and the other one
(06:26):
is aware which one you thinkis going to be able to grow
predictably, have more revenueand have more customer
satisfaction, the one that hadthe systems that prepared for
the Barbara, the hair salonstylist being out.
Scott Ritzheimer (06:38):
Yeah, it's, I mean, it's a no brainer. I
think what's reallyinteresting about this, and
this is something thatfounders don't necessarily
think about when it's just youmanaging just your phone, like
it's not going anywhere. Youmight, like, you might get
your phone wet, I guess, butlike, your phone's not gonna
walk out the door. But if it'syour employees, and it's their
(07:01):
phones, and they leave like,who owns the customer, the one
who has the customer's dataand and so if you're going to
start like you mentioned, ifyou're going to start bringing
in other people to help withthe sales process, either in
kind of an ad hoc fashion,like in a salon, or bring in
other sales reps, you don'twant that All. You don't want
that source of data to betheir phone, because when they
(07:24):
leave, their phone goes withthem, and not that. We want
people to leave, but when wedo, we don't want to lose the
customers as well. That's areally great point. So when
we're thinking about a CRM,especially if, like the hair
salon, we don't have one inplace, it's not enough to just
implement it right, becauseit's not like if you have a
(07:45):
CRM all of a sudden youautomatically know the
journey. So what do we have towhat are some specific
mindsets or specific steps orapproaches that we need to
take when onboarding a new CRMto make sure we get the most
out of it?
Andy Audate (07:59):
So one, one tool, one feature in a CRM that you
that most business owners aregoing to need and founders are
going to need. It's going tobe a pipeline management tool.
I know in progress we haveone. However, in any CRM that
you decide to choose, you wantto make sure that you have an
ability to track a customer'sjourney through the pipeline.
And what the pipeline doesit's a visual is visual cards
(08:22):
that allows you to understand,is this customer just a lead,
or did they already inquireabout services? Did they get
in touch with a salespersonalready? Did they get pricing
already? Did? How are theycurrently receiving email and
marketing campaigns? Have theyalready purchased from us? So
imagine that you have a bunchof cards laid out in different
(08:44):
lines, like columns and rows.Each column represents a stage
of doing business. Each cardin the column as it moves
along the journey, as it movesalong the different columns,
it tells you, and it allowsyou to identify where that
customer is at when you'rebuilding a scalable business,
primarily, what you're doingis you're moving each customer
(09:07):
through the same predictablejourney. That's important
here. It's kind of like, it'skind of like working fast
food. If any of you foundershave worked fast food, or even
have a concept of how fastfood works, when I worked at
Wendy's over a decade ago, Iused to work at the fast food
company Wendy's. It'scompetitor to McDonald's, and
the stage of the burger wasthe same for everything. The
(09:29):
process to complete a burgerwas the same. We would make
the burger on the grill. Wewould take that burger from
the grill, we will put it on awarmer plate. From the warmer
plate, we would take theburger, the actual meat, and
put it on the sandwich Patty,or put it on the sandwich bun,
and then we would add ketchup,cheese, ketchup, cheese,
tomato, and any condiments,and then we'd wrap it. So
(09:51):
those are the stages. Stagenumber one, have it be in the
grill. Stage number two, haveit be on the warmer plate.
Stage number three, have it beon the bun? Stage number four
wrap it. So we have these,this four step process for
every burger. Every singleburger goes through this
process in a scaling business,whether you're at $1 million
at $1 million remember, I mademy first million when I was 21
(10:13):
I used to I'm the youngest TMobile franchise, and so I
owned a bunch of, I owned 4tMobile stores before my 24th
21st birthday, and that helpedme understand what it's like
to scale a business and everysingle customer that comes in,
whether it's a T Mobile store,whether it's a franchise,
whether it's a CRM company,every single customer should
have the same predictableprocess. Now, if we can
(10:37):
identify what are those stagesin the CRM, we should put it
into the CRM, so that way weknow what is the next step for
every customer. It's no longeron top of your mind. It's no
longer like Bob the customer,oh yeah, he just, I just
signed him up to do X. This iswhat he should do next. It's
no longer in your mind. It'spredictable and it's
documented, and that's whatthe CRM does. So that way your
(10:57):
team can actually be the oneto fulfill for you, rather
than you as the founder beinginvolved in the day to day
minutia. Yeah, CRM is gonna beable to track that for you.
Scott Ritzheimer (11:06):
That's good. So when it comes to fast
forward a little bit, we'vegot it set up. And one of the
challenges that I've seen, I'mwondering if you could speak
to this for us, is there is somuch data that you can track,
there's so many fields thatyou can fill in so many boxes,
you can check so many cards,you can move that if you're
(11:27):
not careful, you can end upjust kind of checking boxes
and making notes and movingcards and and not actually
getting a whole lot else done.How do you make sure that your
CRM serves your needs, asopposed to your team serving
what the CRM wants.
Andy Audate (11:41):
So I would ask you to this, what is mission
critical in net profit, whenyou look at the net profit,
what data points is missioncritical? Is it important that
you understand that yourcustomers are men or women?
Does your business? Does itmatter to your business if
it's a man or a woman thatyour your company is serving.
(12:03):
If it's not important to youthat it's a man or a woman,
then that's totally fine. Skipthat piece of data. Most CRMs
could track that information,but it's not important to you.
Skip that data. Is itimportant to you where the
geographical area of yourcustomers? Maybe you're a
business that that drives outto people and you only serve a
specific zip code. Well, ifthat's important to you, you
(12:24):
can capture that specificdata. But for like, for
example, for an online coachwho is working with people
internationally on online,doesn't matter where, what zip
code that they're in, but ifyou're a a business that
delivers products or servicesto your customers in a
geographical area, it may beimportant to capture a zip
code. So if you want toidentify what is mission
critical to net profit, onceyou identify that, for
(12:47):
example, if I am a onlinecoach, I know what's going to
be important to me. It couldbe the revenue. If I'm a
business coach, it could bethe revenue of the of the
client. Well, that's importantto me, so I'm going to catch
I'm going to capture thatinformation, because it tells
me what plan my that acustomer who's buying my
services from, what plan thatthey can't afford based on
(13:07):
their revenue. So I'm gonnacapture that information. If
I'm a business coach and I'mconsulting a team, how many
members on the team Am Italking to a company that has
three employees? Am I talkingto a company that has 400
employees? I want to know thatinformation that's mission
critical to net profit,because it tells me how many
coaches I need to deployinside of that or consultants
I need to deploy inside ofthat campaign. So whether
(13:29):
three employees that I'm goingto be coaching, or 400
employees, that's that'smission critical to my profit,
right? So now that weunderstand what's mission
critical to profit, you wantto update custom fields inside
of the CRM and any CRM, mostlyarms are going to have a
section called Custom Fields.Those fields allow you to
customize data that's specificfor your business, everything
(13:50):
that that is not missioncritical to net profit.
Disregard so if you're anonline coach, it doesn't
matter where they live, itdoesn't matter about the zip
code you're coaching them onZoom or online. Disregard the
zoom the zip code, disregardthe address, but if it's
mission critical to have thenumber of employees capture
that information, and nowyou're telling your team to
only fulfill what is in thecustom field section, kind of
(14:12):
like a check box, which isonly going to be the
information that's missioncritical to net profit.
Scott Ritzheimer (14:16):
Yeah, that's perfect. I love that. So it
seems like just, I'm going toshift gears on us a little bit
here, because it seems likejust about every guest we have
on AI is doing something intheir world. We it's almost
obligatory now that we talkabout it, but I think that's
particularly true of CRMs andmarketing automation
specifically. So what are youseeing as some of the best
(14:38):
practices right now forleveraging AI specifically to
boost sales.
Andy Audate (14:43):
Well, specifically to boost sales is
the ability to communicatewith your customers faster
than a human could. If you'rea founder, you're at between 1
million to two, maybe three,maybe $5 million in revenue.
One of your challenges isgoing to be payroll and
staffing. That's one of yourchallenges. Challenges,
whether you hire domesticallyor you hire internationally,
remote employees and theirvirtual team members, the
(15:05):
biggest the biggest line itemon most businesses, most
service based businesses, isgoing to be your payroll. And
for you to have someone online24/7 is quite challenging, and
it's very costly. The nextalternative is to hire an AI
agent that is online, thatcosts pennies to operate, that
can communicate with customerson your behalf. So there's one
(15:28):
specific AI tool calledconversational AI.
Conversational AI. What thatdoes is you first create a
knowledge base documentation,and if you're a scaling
business today, many of youmay not have that, but that's
what's necessary. That's toget you past 6,000,007 $8
million is going to bedocumentation of your
processes. So whether you'rebuilding documentation for
(15:50):
humans or AI, it's necessaryto build a knowledge base. So
step one, you're going tocreate a knowledge base. That
knowledge base is going to beevery all your price points,
of your offers, what'sincluded, what your sales
process is, where to getinformation from now,
specifically in pro Greta,what, how we build our
knowledge base is we crawlyour website. So if you have a
(16:11):
fully built website with yourhours of operations, your
price points, the informationabout the team, information
about past customers,testimonials, information
about your your uniqueprocess, on how you deliver
your products or services, andall the information that's
about your business. What thecrawlers are going to do, it's
going to go through everysingle web page, capture all
(16:32):
the text and put it into a andstore it into a knowledge
base, where the AI will thengo and research it to answer
questions later. Then when acustomer sends you a DM on
Instagram, a message onFacebook, or a text message or
an email, the AI can actuallyrespond on your behalf and act
as a human on your behalf toyour customer. So for example,
(16:53):
if you get a text message toyour to your business, this is
what an example, what a CRMcan do to help you generate
sales if you get a textmessage to your business that
says, hey, I'm interested inyour services, but I wanted to
find out the pricing. First,can you tell me the pricing on
the on the hair salonproducts? And then the AI can
actually respond and say,Thank you so much for your
inquiry. To best identifywhich one you need. We have
(17:16):
redkin, we have salon we havesalon air. Which one do you
think is going to be the bestfor you, and the customer
says, I don't know. Well, ifin your website you have the
Frequently Asked Questionssection, we can actually take
that data, feed it into chat,GPT, and have a conversation
back and forth where the AIsays, Okay, great. Do you have
long hair or do you have shorthair? Let's start off with
(17:36):
that and go back and forthwith your customer via text
message to identify the bestproduct for them and then
pitch them the product, and ifyour website has the ability
to buy it, send them the linkdirectly, without you ever
getting involved. And that'sright, then, that's just a
text message. We have voice AIavailable as well to actually
manage conversations when aphone call comes in.
Scott Ritzheimer (17:58):
Stunning, stunning. Andy, there's a
question that I have for youask him. I guess I'm
interested to see what youhave to say, especially from
this perspective. But whatwould you say is the biggest
secret you wish wasn't asecret at all. What's that one
thing you wish everybodywatching or listening today
knew?
Andy Audate (18:14):
I wish that everyone watching. If you're
scaling your business,everyone in your company
should have a key performanceindicator that helps with the
bottom line. Words, inside ofour company, I feel like I
have this, this secret thatI'm holding on to. Inside of
(18:35):
my company, I've assignedeveryone a KPI key performance
indicator that helps with thebottom line, and we are
passing profit margins thatare industry standard, because
everyone has a number or ametric that's assigned to
them. I'll give you anexample. Most people, I'll
(18:55):
give you an example. I'll giveyou one that's that's pretty
unorthodox. In my company, wehave dozens of employees, and
even my bookkeeper has a KPI.You know what my books keeper,
my bookkeepers KPI is, is annoi percentage, net operating
income percentage. When Ilooked at chatgpt, and I went
to a mastermind full of mypeers, and I'm like, Hey, does
(19:17):
everyone in your company havea KPI? Everyone's like, yes,
yes, yes, yes. And I said, youknow, I'm stuck. I'm stuck on
my my bookkeepers KPI. Andeveryone's like, dude, the
bookkeeper doesn't get a KPI.The bookkeeper is there to
Track, track data, ofhistorical data. And I'm like,
No, I want everyone to have aKPI. And what that meant for
for me was I had to get getkind of creative. And then I
(19:39):
remember, my bookkeeper sent amessage to me. He said, he
said, Hey, I just want to giveyou a cogs report on cost of
goods sold. And I said, that'syour KPI. Your KPI is managing
cogs. So now my my bookkeepergoes through every department
inside of my company, the techdepartment, the admin
department, sales department,and they're tracking where
there's opportunity to save oncogs or to increase. Revenue.
(20:01):
We're on track for 50%revenue, 50% margins, inside
of a SaaS business, inside ofa in a marketing services
business. Marketing Servicesis typically between 10 maybe
12, as high as 18% but we'reon track for 50% total net
bottom line, revenue, netprofit, because I put a KPI on
(20:25):
my bookkeeper, on my adminsupport representative, on my
customer supportrepresentative. So the biggest
secret that I knew of likethree years ago, four years
ago, five years ago, is everysingle person that's involved,
including contractors, shallhave a key performance
indicator that drives profitto your bottom line.
Scott Ritzheimer (20:45):
So good, so good. Couldn't have said it
better. Andy, folks want helpwith their marketing, their
CRM. They want to learn moreabout the work that you guys
do, the software that youoffer. Where can they find out
more?
Andy Audate (20:56):
You can learn more about me Andy Audate on
all social media platforms, an, d, y, a U, D, A, T, E, or
learn more about our companyat progreda.com P, R, O, G, R,
E, D, A, now progreda standsfor progress daily. We just
took those two words, progressdaily, we mash it together. We
dropped that s, s on progress,and then we dropped the i, l,
y on daily. So we put progressdaily together, and now we got
(21:18):
proGreda. progreda.com is ourwebsite,
Scott Ritzheimer (21:20):
amazing, amazing. Andy, thanks for
being on the show. Really aprivilege and honor. Having
you here really appreciate theconversation. It was
fantastic. And for those ofyou watching and listening,
you know that your time andattention mean the world to
us. I hope you got as much outof this conversation as I know
I did, and I cannot wait tosee you next time. Take care.
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once
(00:02):
again to the start, scale andsucceed. Podcast, the only
podcast that grows with youthrough all seven stages of
your journey as a founder. Andtoday, we're going to talk
about a topic that you haveall heard of. There's a tool
that you pretty much all use,or maybe should, on a weekly,
even daily basis. And in myexperience, working with
founders who are trying toscale their sales beyond their
(00:24):
own ability, I have found thatmost of us use it wrong. What
are we talking about today? Weare talking about the CRM and
I'm hardly an expert in CRMs,so we've got one with us here
today, and that is the one andonly Andy Audate, who is an
international speaker,renowned small business
marketing expert, and thefounder of progreta, with a
(00:47):
proven track record, hespecializes in assisting small
businesses in effectivelymarketing their high ticket
services through webinars thathave attracted over 9500
entrepreneurs. Andy's S, A, A,S or SaaS has achieved him a
seven figure run rate, and hisguidance has empowered 1000s
of small businesses to createmarketing campaigns that have
(01:07):
collectively generated $20million more than $20 million
in revenue. He's here with ustoday. Andy, I'm so excited to
have you on the show. I haveto admit out of the gate here
that I have a little bit of alove, hate relationship with
the CRM world, and I thinkyou're going to be able to
solve that for us. So you helpbusinesses to streamline, to
(01:29):
grow faster. And for a founderwho a remarkable number of
folks still meet, meet thisdefinition, but they're
relying on spreadsheets ornapkins or some other form of
keeping track of things,particularly that their
clients. How is that holdingthem back?
Andy Audate (01:48):
Well, I mean, it's processes and systems the
way to grow and scale abusiness. Once again. Thank
you, Scott for having me here,man, so it's when you think
about scaling a business, it'sthe processes and systems that
you have that allows you topredictably scale, or it's
going to hold you back withoutthem. And when we think about
processes and systems, a CRMis going to allow you to
effectively keep track ofevery single customer at the
(02:11):
specific stage of theirjourney with you. So you can
keep track of people who areleads, and maybe they're not
specific customers, but youcan also keep track of people
who are specific customers.You ever get those emails or
text messages from a companythat you might already be
doing business with them?You're already a long term
subscriber with them? It couldbe a gym, and you've been a
(02:32):
member of the gym for years,and they send you a message,
and that message says, Hey, wewould love to have you as a
customer. Here's a discount.How do you feel when that
happens? Scott, I know for me,when I get those I'm like,
Dude, I've been with you guysfor years. What's wrong with
your processes? What's wrongwith your systems? Yes, and
that's what small businessowners need, or founders need,
(02:52):
is they need those systems tobe able to track their
customers so that way they cancommunicate effectively based
on where that customer is atin the journey.
Scott Ritzheimer (03:00):
Yeah. Very cool. All right, so there are
a lot of CRMs out there, and Ihave found when you're buying
something like a CRM, you'rebuying it from someone who not
only has a sales team, but isa sales company, and that's
got its own challenge, becausethey tend to be pretty good at
what they do, lots of smoothtalk. There's lots of great
(03:21):
presentations. But how do youget behind all of that you
know, for better or worse, andknow which is the right CRM
for you?
Andy Audate (03:31):
Well, we got to look at you what your
customer's cycle is. What isthe journey for your customer,
and maximize the toolspecifically for your customer
identify. So first step is toidentify what is your
customer's journey. And itdoesn't have to be a company
that that's that's salesdriven. It could be a company
that is direct responsemarketing, where you create
marketing funnels and a leadcomes in and you automatically
(03:53):
email them. You may not have asales team, but all the sales
are automatic. That in itself,needs a CRM. And because what
you're going to do here is youcan use a CRM to track the
customers in their journey,communicate with the
customers, and have a systemto track all the communication
that you've had with yourcustomers. So that way you can
go back and look at so as yourcompany grows, when you get to
(04:17):
100 customers, maybe you'll beable to manage it on yourself.
Okay, so if you're a founderright now, you're at 100 under
100 customers. Maybe you canmanage it on your personal
iPhone and you can remember,like, Yeah, Bob, I sent him a
text message. Let me find Bobin my my contacts. Oh yeah,
Tim, and so on and so forth.But then you start scaling
your business, and you startgetting past 100 customers.
(04:37):
You got 200 300 400 customers.You're gonna need to bring in
a team. One of the valuepoints for a CRM is you can
have one platform that you andyour team can log into and
respond on behalf of thecompany. I'll give you an
example. We have in our CRM.We have 1000s of customers.
However, one of our customers,for example, is in the hair
(04:58):
salon industry. So they run a.Hair Salon business, all 12
stylists that work in thathair salon, every single text
message, every single phonecall, every single email was
originally coming from eachand every single one of their
cell phones individually atthe salon. So you walk into
the salon, there's 12 stylistsworking at 12 different hair
stations. Each of them havetheir own personal iPhone.
(05:20):
They're communicating onbehalf of the cus of they're
be they're communicating onbehalf of the business to each
and individual customer. Sowhen a customer walks in, they
get a hair stylist phonenumber, and they're like,
Yeah, Barbara, shoot me a textmessage to book the next
appointment. Well, guess whathappens when Barbara, the hair
stylist is sick that day andthe client comes in for the
hair appointment? Well,Barbara sick, the client comes
(05:42):
in, they're like, Hey, I had ahair appointment with you
guys. Barbara sick, cool. Putme in touch with someone else.
No one else is in relationshipwith the fact that that
customer had a had a had a hada appointment. The CRM, what
it does for that hair salon isit allows them to use one
software. Everyone has thesame mobile app on their
phone, and when a customerwalks in, Barbara's sick,
(06:05):
she's no longer she's nolonger there, all the other
team members can log in, intothe customer's account inside
of the CRM and say, Oh yeah,you did have an appointment,
and we already saw that, andwe actually already scheduled
you with another hairstylist.So you're going to be sitting
with Sandra today, who's anamazing hairstylist. Think
about that customerexperience. One is unaware of
the customer journey of wherethey're at, and the other one
(06:26):
is aware which one you thinkis going to be able to grow
predictably, have more revenueand have more customer
satisfaction, the one that hadthe systems that prepared for
the Barbara, the hair salonstylist being out.
Scott Ritzheimer (06:38):
Yeah, it's, I mean, it's a no brainer. I
think what's reallyinteresting about this, and
this is something thatfounders don't necessarily
think about when it's just youmanaging just your phone, like
it's not going anywhere. Youmight, like, you might get
your phone wet, I guess, butlike, your phone's not gonna
walk out the door. But if it'syour employees, and it's their
(07:01):
phones, and they leave like,who owns the customer, the one
who has the customer's dataand and so if you're going to
start like you mentioned, ifyou're going to start bringing
in other people to help withthe sales process, either in
kind of an ad hoc fashion,like in a salon, or bring in
other sales reps, you don'twant that All. You don't want
that source of data to betheir phone, because when they
(07:24):
leave, their phone goes withthem, and not that. We want
people to leave, but when wedo, we don't want to lose the
customers as well. That's areally great point. So when
we're thinking about a CRM,especially if, like the hair
salon, we don't have one inplace, it's not enough to just
implement it right, becauseit's not like if you have a
(07:45):
CRM all of a sudden youautomatically know the
journey. So what do we have towhat are some specific
mindsets or specific steps orapproaches that we need to
take when onboarding a new CRMto make sure we get the most
out of it?
Andy Audate (07:59):
So one, one tool, one feature in a CRM that you
that most business owners aregoing to need and founders are
going to need. It's going tobe a pipeline management tool.
I know in progress we haveone. However, in any CRM that
you decide to choose, you wantto make sure that you have an
ability to track a customer'sjourney through the pipeline.
And what the pipeline doesit's a visual is visual cards
(08:22):
that allows you to understand,is this customer just a lead,
or did they already inquireabout services? Did they get
in touch with a salespersonalready? Did they get pricing
already? Did? How are theycurrently receiving email and
marketing campaigns? Have theyalready purchased from us? So
imagine that you have a bunchof cards laid out in different
(08:44):
lines, like columns and rows.Each column represents a stage
of doing business. Each cardin the column as it moves
along the journey, as it movesalong the different columns,
it tells you, and it allowsyou to identify where that
customer is at when you'rebuilding a scalable business,
primarily, what you're doingis you're moving each customer
(09:07):
through the same predictablejourney. That's important
here. It's kind of like, it'skind of like working fast
food. If any of you foundershave worked fast food, or even
have a concept of how fastfood works, when I worked at
Wendy's over a decade ago, Iused to work at the fast food
company Wendy's. It'scompetitor to McDonald's, and
the stage of the burger wasthe same for everything. The
(09:29):
process to complete a burgerwas the same. We would make
the burger on the grill. Wewould take that burger from
the grill, we will put it on awarmer plate. From the warmer
plate, we would take theburger, the actual meat, and
put it on the sandwich Patty,or put it on the sandwich bun,
and then we would add ketchup,cheese, ketchup, cheese,
tomato, and any condiments,and then we'd wrap it. So
(09:51):
those are the stages. Stagenumber one, have it be in the
grill. Stage number two, haveit be on the warmer plate.
Stage number three, have it beon the bun? Stage number four
wrap it. So we have these,this four step process for
every burger. Every singleburger goes through this
process in a scaling business,whether you're at $1 million
at $1 million remember, I mademy first million when I was 21
(10:13):
I used to I'm the youngest TMobile franchise, and so I
owned a bunch of, I owned 4tMobile stores before my 24th
21st birthday, and that helpedme understand what it's like
to scale a business and everysingle customer that comes in,
whether it's a T Mobile store,whether it's a franchise,
whether it's a CRM company,every single customer should
have the same predictableprocess. Now, if we can
(10:37):
identify what are those stagesin the CRM, we should put it
into the CRM, so that way weknow what is the next step for
every customer. It's no longeron top of your mind. It's no
longer like Bob the customer,oh yeah, he just, I just
signed him up to do X. This iswhat he should do next. It's
no longer in your mind. It'spredictable and it's
documented, and that's whatthe CRM does. So that way your
(10:57):
team can actually be the oneto fulfill for you, rather
than you as the founder beinginvolved in the day to day
minutia. Yeah, CRM is gonna beable to track that for you.
Scott Ritzheimer (11:06):
That's good. So when it comes to fast
forward a little bit, we'vegot it set up. And one of the
challenges that I've seen, I'mwondering if you could speak
to this for us, is there is somuch data that you can track,
there's so many fields thatyou can fill in so many boxes,
you can check so many cards,you can move that if you're
(11:27):
not careful, you can end upjust kind of checking boxes
and making notes and movingcards and and not actually
getting a whole lot else done.How do you make sure that your
CRM serves your needs, asopposed to your team serving
what the CRM wants.
Andy Audate (11:41):
So I would ask you to this, what is mission
critical in net profit, whenyou look at the net profit,
what data points is missioncritical? Is it important that
you understand that yourcustomers are men or women?
Does your business? Does itmatter to your business if
it's a man or a woman thatyour your company is serving.
(12:03):
If it's not important to youthat it's a man or a woman,
then that's totally fine. Skipthat piece of data. Most CRMs
could track that information,but it's not important to you.
Skip that data. Is itimportant to you where the
geographical area of yourcustomers? Maybe you're a
business that that drives outto people and you only serve a
specific zip code. Well, ifthat's important to you, you
(12:24):
can capture that specificdata. But for like, for
example, for an online coachwho is working with people
internationally on online,doesn't matter where, what zip
code that they're in, but ifyou're a a business that
delivers products or servicesto your customers in a
geographical area, it may beimportant to capture a zip
code. So if you want toidentify what is mission
critical to net profit, onceyou identify that, for
(12:47):
example, if I am a onlinecoach, I know what's going to
be important to me. It couldbe the revenue. If I'm a
business coach, it could bethe revenue of the of the
client. Well, that's importantto me, so I'm going to catch
I'm going to capture thatinformation, because it tells
me what plan my that acustomer who's buying my
services from, what plan thatthey can't afford based on
(13:07):
their revenue. So I'm gonnacapture that information. If
I'm a business coach and I'mconsulting a team, how many
members on the team Am Italking to a company that has
three employees? Am I talkingto a company that has 400
employees? I want to know thatinformation that's mission
critical to net profit,because it tells me how many
coaches I need to deployinside of that or consultants
I need to deploy inside ofthat campaign. So whether
(13:29):
three employees that I'm goingto be coaching, or 400
employees, that's that'smission critical to my profit,
right? So now that weunderstand what's mission
critical to profit, you wantto update custom fields inside
of the CRM and any CRM, mostlyarms are going to have a
section called Custom Fields.Those fields allow you to
customize data that's specificfor your business, everything
(13:50):
that that is not missioncritical to net profit.
Disregard so if you're anonline coach, it doesn't
matter where they live, itdoesn't matter about the zip
code you're coaching them onZoom or online. Disregard the
zoom the zip code, disregardthe address, but if it's
mission critical to have thenumber of employees capture
that information, and nowyou're telling your team to
only fulfill what is in thecustom field section, kind of
(14:12):
like a check box, which isonly going to be the
information that's missioncritical to net profit.
Scott Ritzheimer (14:16):
Yeah, that's perfect. I love that. So it
seems like just, I'm going toshift gears on us a little bit
here, because it seems likejust about every guest we have
on AI is doing something intheir world. We it's almost
obligatory now that we talkabout it, but I think that's
particularly true of CRMs andmarketing automation
specifically. So what are youseeing as some of the best
(14:38):
practices right now forleveraging AI specifically to
boost sales.
Andy Audate (14:43):
Well, specifically to boost sales is
the ability to communicatewith your customers faster
than a human could. If you'rea founder, you're at between 1
million to two, maybe three,maybe $5 million in revenue.
One of your challenges isgoing to be payroll and
staffing. That's one of yourchallenges. Challenges,
whether you hire domesticallyor you hire internationally,
remote employees and theirvirtual team members, the
(15:05):
biggest the biggest line itemon most businesses, most
service based businesses, isgoing to be your payroll. And
for you to have someone online24/7 is quite challenging, and
it's very costly. The nextalternative is to hire an AI
agent that is online, thatcosts pennies to operate, that
can communicate with customerson your behalf. So there's one
(15:28):
specific AI tool calledconversational AI.
Conversational AI. What thatdoes is you first create a
knowledge base documentation,and if you're a scaling
business today, many of youmay not have that, but that's
what's necessary. That's toget you past 6,000,007 $8
million is going to bedocumentation of your
processes. So whether you'rebuilding documentation for
(15:50):
humans or AI, it's necessaryto build a knowledge base. So
step one, you're going tocreate a knowledge base. That
knowledge base is going to beevery all your price points,
of your offers, what'sincluded, what your sales
process is, where to getinformation from now,
specifically in pro Greta,what, how we build our
knowledge base is we crawlyour website. So if you have a
(16:11):
fully built website with yourhours of operations, your
price points, the informationabout the team, information
about past customers,testimonials, information
about your your uniqueprocess, on how you deliver
your products or services, andall the information that's
about your business. What thecrawlers are going to do, it's
going to go through everysingle web page, capture all
(16:32):
the text and put it into a andstore it into a knowledge
base, where the AI will thengo and research it to answer
questions later. Then when acustomer sends you a DM on
Instagram, a message onFacebook, or a text message or
an email, the AI can actuallyrespond on your behalf and act
as a human on your behalf toyour customer. So for example,
(16:53):
if you get a text message toyour to your business, this is
what an example, what a CRMcan do to help you generate
sales if you get a textmessage to your business that
says, hey, I'm interested inyour services, but I wanted to
find out the pricing. First,can you tell me the pricing on
the on the hair salonproducts? And then the AI can
actually respond and say,Thank you so much for your
inquiry. To best identifywhich one you need. We have
(17:16):
redkin, we have salon we havesalon air. Which one do you
think is going to be the bestfor you, and the customer
says, I don't know. Well, ifin your website you have the
Frequently Asked Questionssection, we can actually take
that data, feed it into chat,GPT, and have a conversation
back and forth where the AIsays, Okay, great. Do you have
long hair or do you have shorthair? Let's start off with
(17:36):
that and go back and forthwith your customer via text
message to identify the bestproduct for them and then
pitch them the product, and ifyour website has the ability
to buy it, send them the linkdirectly, without you ever
getting involved. And that'sright, then, that's just a
text message. We have voice AIavailable as well to actually
manage conversations when aphone call comes in.
Scott Ritzheimer (17:58):
Stunning, stunning. Andy, there's a
question that I have for youask him. I guess I'm
interested to see what youhave to say, especially from
this perspective. But whatwould you say is the biggest
secret you wish wasn't asecret at all. What's that one
thing you wish everybodywatching or listening today
knew?
Andy Audate (18:14):
I wish that everyone watching. If you're
scaling your business,everyone in your company
should have a key performanceindicator that helps with the
bottom line. Words, inside ofour company, I feel like I
have this, this secret thatI'm holding on to. Inside of
(18:35):
my company, I've assignedeveryone a KPI key performance
indicator that helps with thebottom line, and we are
passing profit margins thatare industry standard, because
everyone has a number or ametric that's assigned to
them. I'll give you anexample. Most people, I'll
(18:55):
give you an example. I'll giveyou one that's that's pretty
unorthodox. In my company, wehave dozens of employees, and
even my bookkeeper has a KPI.You know what my books keeper,
my bookkeepers KPI is, is annoi percentage, net operating
income percentage. When Ilooked at chatgpt, and I went
to a mastermind full of mypeers, and I'm like, Hey, does
(19:17):
everyone in your company havea KPI? Everyone's like, yes,
yes, yes, yes. And I said, youknow, I'm stuck. I'm stuck on
my my bookkeepers KPI. Andeveryone's like, dude, the
bookkeeper doesn't get a KPI.The bookkeeper is there to
Track, track data, ofhistorical data. And I'm like,
No, I want everyone to have aKPI. And what that meant for
for me was I had to get getkind of creative. And then I
(19:39):
remember, my bookkeeper sent amessage to me. He said, he
said, Hey, I just want to giveyou a cogs report on cost of
goods sold. And I said, that'syour KPI. Your KPI is managing
cogs. So now my my bookkeepergoes through every department
inside of my company, the techdepartment, the admin
department, sales department,and they're tracking where
there's opportunity to save oncogs or to increase. Revenue.
(20:01):
We're on track for 50%revenue, 50% margins, inside
of a SaaS business, inside ofa in a marketing services
business. Marketing Servicesis typically between 10 maybe
12, as high as 18% but we'reon track for 50% total net
bottom line, revenue, netprofit, because I put a KPI on
(20:25):
my bookkeeper, on my adminsupport representative, on my
customer supportrepresentative. So the biggest
secret that I knew of likethree years ago, four years
ago, five years ago, is everysingle person that's involved,
including contractors, shallhave a key performance
indicator that drives profitto your bottom line.
Scott Ritzheimer (20:45):
So good, so good. Couldn't have said it
better. Andy, folks want helpwith their marketing, their
CRM. They want to learn moreabout the work that you guys
do, the software that youoffer. Where can they find out
more?
Andy Audate (20:56):
You can learn more about me Andy Audate on
all social media platforms, an, d, y, a U, D, A, T, E, or
learn more about our companyat progreda.com P, R, O, G, R,
E, D, A, now progreda standsfor progress daily. We just
took those two words, progressdaily, we mash it together. We
dropped that s, s on progress,and then we dropped the i, l,
y on daily. So we put progressdaily together, and now we got
(21:18):
proGreda. progreda.com is ourwebsite,
Scott Ritzheimer (21:20):
amazing, amazing. Andy, thanks for
being on the show. Really aprivilege and honor. Having
you here really appreciate theconversation. It was
fantastic. And for those ofyou watching and listening,
you know that your time andattention mean the world to
us. I hope you got as much outof this conversation as I know
I did, and I cannot wait tosee you next time. Take care.
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