April 15, 2026 • 25 mins
Ryan Pollyniak is a seasoned sales professional with a rich background in the Microsoft Dynamics space. Before joining Western Computer in 2015, Ryan spent time with an ISV in the Microsoft Dynamics ecosystem, working closely with partners to sell products to other companies. Catering to medium to enterprise-sized businesses, Ryan is well-versed in ERP and CRM strategies and heavily involved in the Microsoft Dynamics Channel. Ryan's website: https://www.westerncomputer.com/ Show notes: https://successgrid.net/sg265/ If you love this show, please leave a review. Go to https://ratethispodcast.com/successgrid Join AI Marketers Club: https://www.successgridacademy.com/3a30d0c6
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hallo, I welcome to the Success Great Podcast with also Santali.
I am excited to introduce you to a series of
conversations with some of the most successful and sparing individuals
from various industries. My aim is to dive into their
stories behind their success and explore the knowledge, strategiest, habits, mindsets,
and wisdom that have propelled their success. Each hibishud of
(00:21):
the Success Great Podcast will feature a different guest who
will share their unique journey, the challenges they faced, and
the reasons they have learned along the way. I would
also be covering topics from entrepreneurship and innovation to leadership
and personal development. Whether you are inspiring entrepreneur, a seasoned
business profession or just someone looking to improve your life,
(00:41):
the Success Great Podcast is for you. My goal is
to bring you valuable insights and inspiration that will help
you achieve your own success in business and life. So
get ready to learn and be inspired. The Success Great
Podcast starts now. This episode of the Success Great Podcast,
(01:02):
we are going to be talking about system CRMs and
aligning your SALSM marketing strategy for success of your CRM.
Introducing Ryan Pollinier, a seasoned sales professional with a rich
background in the Microsoft Dynamics space. Before joining Western Computer
in twenty fifteen, Ryan spend time with an ISV in
(01:22):
the Microsoft Dynamic ecosystem, working closely with partners to sell
products to other companies catering to medium to large businesses.
Ryan is wellware's in ERP and CRNM strategies and heavily
involved in the Microsoft Dynamic channels. Ryan, welcome to the
Success Podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
I who's saying thanks for having me answer?
Speaker 1 (01:43):
So this is the Success Great podcast. What does success
means to you? And what do you see other people
you work with, or your team or other businesses have
certain conceptions around success.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Yeah, great question. So we work with lots of companies
who are looking to implement or prove the use of
their CRM systems and drive efficiencies with sales and marketing.
Success to us is helping companies achieve their goals and
having a company at the end of an engagement say
that was worth it. We're more than happy to sing
(02:15):
the praises of Western Computer. It's helped our business and
if we've done that, if we've actually helped the customers
achieve their goals, then we've achieved our goals. So that's
what success means to us. Now. I think, you know,
some pitfalls in terms of success would be basing it
purely on budget, right. You know, you want to make
sure that you are achieving your goals in any kind
(02:38):
of engagement that you have. And in terms of technology,
you know, business process, automation, artificial intelligence, which is such
a buzzword these days. It's very difficult to look at
it from a you know, a dollars and cents perspective,
which of course is important to every business. And everybody's
got a bottom line that they're driving towards in a
(02:58):
budget number that they're construed by. But the long term
value of engagement is in its success, you know, not
in not in it being one hundred percent of budget
or one hundred and twenty percent of budget or eighty
percent of budget, and you know, help understanding, you know
what what the company's trying to do, and how you
(03:19):
can get there with technology and and then making that happen.
You know, the return on investment is tremendous, you know,
tremendously more than the costs to go into it. So
I think it's more important to find success by achieving
goals rather than by you know, achieving.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Budget talking about the bus and CRMs now businesses and
even individual learning accepting things nowadays with the other things
like you mentioned evolving very fast and they are a
lot of things. We need some some things or tools
that would heelp businesses or companies to navigate like I
would say, maybe the overall picture of the whole business
(03:59):
under one umbrella. So does this where the CRM systems
come in for businesses?
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Yeah, well CRM is going to encompass a certain subsection
of the business. Right you have things like financial management
and inventory management, supply chain management that are going to
live elsewhere, but certainly in terms of sales and marketing
and business development, the heart of that really should be
at a CRM for any organization. We talk to companies
(04:30):
all the time who are managing sales interactions, prospecting pipeline
leads in excel and outlook on paper, in antiquated systems
that have not been adopted by their user base, by
their sales people, by their sales managers. And there's a
tremendous cost to that long term. You know, having an
(04:55):
aggregated set of contacts and interaction history and an opportunity
pipeline and updated set of contact information in one place,
consolidated in a CRM system is really the key to
driving organizational growth and making you know, you know, hitting
(05:20):
the sales targets that you have. It's very difficult to
do this in a manual process. And if somebody leaves
the organization and they take their knowledge with them and
they take their Excel sheet or their notebook with them
and it's gone, there's a huge cost to that to
any organization. So there's an element of of governance there
where you're going to have to mandate to a certain
(05:42):
degree that your sales team is utilizing CRM in the
way that that you have intended and and and in
order to achieve that, there has to be uh, top down,
uh you know, requirement to use this system. And and
(06:02):
you know, when you have some systems right, if you're
receiving inventory or if you're driving your accounting, you can't
run the business without executing those functions. CRM is not
that way. If a CRM is not easy to use,
and if it's not beneficial to a salesperson, it's not
going to be used. And so, you know, user adoptions
the other side of that, you have to mandate it
(06:24):
from the top down, and you have to make it
easily usable, and you have to make it advantageous for
your sales team and help them understand that it is
there to help drive uh, you know, success for them
and to and to hit their own goals. And and
you know, I have a long history in sales and
I couldn't not have done it without a CRM and
(06:45):
without properly implementing a CRM.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Yeah, definitely it's very important. But now, like you mentioned,
and you'll speak now, there might be some set and
things that we use it as many electric sol sheets
and some times notepads or would who would use it
to one person? So this is that good to have
one person having all of this CRM and regard as
(07:11):
too sales marketing customer success. I would say, because the
commission if that person is gone, who would see to
continue the process of things for the CRM or the
whatever it is that they're operating with. So in your opinion,
what are the most important that's say, elements that I
(07:31):
s a RM should have.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Yeah, and you nailed one, which is you know, I
would not recommend developing an in house CRM or buying
a CRM from a very small company. And it's for
the reason that you mentioned who saying, which is that
just like the person walking out the door with their notepad,
if the person who developed your internal CRM finds a
(07:56):
new job, you're out of luck, right, So investing in
a market leading CRM. Of course, you know where my
organization is a big believer in Microsoft Dynamics. That's a
great example, right, Hundreds of thousands of companies use this product,
and if the person who can figured it walks out
the door, there are thousands more people that you can
(08:17):
go hire to fit backfill that. Right. You know there
are other CRMs that that are the same way in
the marketplace, and and so you want to have that
backing of a world class company, someone who can you know,
not only provide up time, reliability and ongoing development and
(08:38):
feature enhancement for the platform that you're using, but some
but a platform that can provide you with some redundancy
in terms of resources, who can manage it. If it's
a small market platform, you do run some risk of
losing the person that owns it and being out of luck,
(08:58):
especially that's developed internally. So I would say developing an
internal CRM is a bit like giving a notepad in
that regard from a business risk, there's tremendous amount of it.
Your your final question there was, you know, what what
makes a CRM great or what's important for a CRM
in my opinion, and this is something Microsoft is fantastic at.
(09:23):
It's connecting to the tools that you already used to
communicate with your customers. So if you're emailing something that
communicates with your email platform, typically that's Outlook, sometimes it's Google.
Sometimes companies are leveraging teams for chat or for for
meeting invitations. You know, that's how you're communicating with your customers.
(09:48):
So having a CRM that that respects that communication layer
and automatically archives it is tremendously tremendously important. Right if
I send you an email who's saying about a proposal
that I've submitted, I want that track in the CRM.
I don't want to have to go spend a bunch
of time doing it either, right, I want to have
(10:08):
it so that you know I can I can go
back and I can look at your record in my
CRM and I could say, Okay, yeah, I sent an
email to who's saying about X, Y and Z on
X date and here's what it said, and then I
can I can communicate back to you effectively. You know,
I don't know about you, but I can't remember every
communication that I've had with every customer ever, right, So
(10:30):
I need a system to do that, and one that
that respects those channels of communication is probably the number
one thing.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
So basically what's the most important thing in the cl
system is to be a client centric. So because you
want to have these of communication with the other clients
and the guards with to says marketing, how do you
communicate with them if they have maybe complaints feedback? Well,
it is and to keep one the messaging them for
(11:02):
the future, because clients should be served for the long goal.
I would say, it's not just one one transaction and
you're done with the client that you have. You should
be in it, say, in their sharing your clients. So
the CRM makes it easier for businesses and companies to
actually do that in a simpler manner instead of like
(11:23):
juggling multiple things with paper or excel sheets.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Yeah, absolutely, and so client centric, yes, absolutely, But being
client centric, you know that includes considering how your organization
operates and communicates, right, if your if your organization uses
outlooking teams and Excel and word and these these types
of applications, you need to see around that works with these, right,
(11:47):
and then in the end result of that is improved communication,
improved visibility to what you've discussed with the client. And
in the end of the day, that that drives that
client centric ideal that that you're mentioning. Absolutely you want
to see around that will remind you, you know, I, uh,
(12:08):
you emailed Hussein seven days ago, you haven't heard back.
You may want to send him an email. And and
so we're opening up a brave new world of artificial
intelligence where that that kind of automated assistance is real
world and it's certainly something that you should look for
(12:30):
in a CRM as well.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Yeah, so, so you fully support having integrations with the
CLM system, and you do you think that if a system,
a CLM system does not have AI support, now is
is a loser.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
And and you know, let's be perfectly honest. AI is
still cutting edge. So nobody has it fully figured out.
But the big the big players in the market, certainly Microsoft,
have a huge advantage in terms of the technology foundation
that they have with AI, because you know, all a
(13:10):
homegrown system or a small company, they're not going to
have that backing, They're not going to have that foundation,
they're not going to have that long term vision where
you know, organizations need to be utilizing AI or at
least considering how they plan to utilize AI in the future,
or you will get left behind. And I do think
you know, it's important to say AI will it's not
(13:33):
going to replace your sales team, it's not going to
replace your marketing team, and it's not going to come
take your job if you're a salesperson or a marketer,
but it will enhance your employee's ability to do their jobs,
you know, drafting emails, setting up meetings more efficiently, trimming
down the amount of time that it takes to do
(13:54):
any of these typical tasks. And then if you're if
you are a sales personal or a marketer, AI may
not be coming for your job directly, as in you know,
you're going to be replaced by by a robot, but
somebody who's effectively using AI, on the other hand, may
be coming for your job. So it's it's very important
(14:14):
to understand these tools and understand how to use them.
You know you can. You can use AI in a
number of ways, right streamlining that communication like I mentioned,
or getting summaries of information and and and and summarizing data,
generating content. If you're a marketer, creating pitch decks, creating visualizations, graphs, charts,
(14:42):
and word or excel, that's all available now. And and
you know that extends, right, I mean, uh, you know,
following up by scoring opportunities and leads and saying, Okay,
I'm a busy salesperson, I've got a quote it to meet,
and I want to focus on the leads that are
(15:05):
most likely to generate some business from my organization. AI
can score leads for you. It can. It can tell
you what a customers or potential prospects looked at and
score the lead and prioritize your day on your behalf.
And that's tremendously important. So there are all kinds of
(15:25):
ways that AI can improve your your your your team,
uh or improve your personal sales performance.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
So that's because that when we talked about CRM, it's
mainly focus on sales marketing and the customers. But do
you think that's for example, that me personally, I see
CRMs that could have more functions and that like maybe
you mentioned earlier financial things or financial papers or account
(15:57):
thinking for the business. So do you think that CRM
is the best CRM systems or platforms to is the
one that focused or niche to certain things like focus
on sales, marketing and customers or do you think it's
a good idea to have systems that could replace every
tool that you have for business in one place.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Maybe there are a lot of layers to this question.
So let me say first of all, I do firmly
believe that you know, e er P and CRM are
really two different worlds. Usually you're going to see and
you know, enterprises up to the fortune five hundred, you're
gonna have separate platforms for for CRM and e r
(16:41):
P if if you if you need full functionality, right,
financial management, supply chain management, warehouse management has a lot
of auditibility requirements that you don't have on the CRM side.
And you may not want every lead and everyone who
crosses your sales and marketing team's desk to live in
your EURP system, right, That's that's later when they're a
(17:02):
customer and you're building them and you're invoicing them, So
you know, I think that CRM from me you mentioned
at the beginning something that caught my ear. Looking at
CRM from a purely feature perspective is a little bit
of a pitfall. Right. You may find somebody who's built
(17:24):
a CRM specific for your industry, and it's very easy
to get sucked in in a demo and say, Okay,
I work in the in a nonprofit industry and this
CRM is great because instead of you know, customers, it
says donors and that means something to me, right. Or
(17:47):
maybe you work in another industry that has some specific requirements.
Maybe you're a home builder and you want to have
a CRM where you can go and have somebody choose
options to build a home if anyone ever built a home.
What doorknobs do I want? What paint finish do I want?
What granted counter jobs do I want? And while features
(18:08):
are important to some degree, platform is in my opinion,
far more important where you get a solution that is
strong from a technology standpoint, that's strong from a standpoint
of something like artificial intelligence, cybersecurity. You know, something that's
hosted and secure and then it's also flexible. And so
(18:32):
for example Microsoft Dynamics, right, it's very configurable. It's a
it's a no code, low code platform where if you
need to do things that it doesn't do out of
a box, you're not developing code. You're not paying a
developer to write code to fix it or to make
it do what you want. You're configuring it and you
(18:55):
can train people inside of your organization to do that
so that then it becomes, you know, a ball of
clay that you can make what you want with it.
But when you do make what you want with it,
you still have that strong foundation of technology and support
and security and AI and all those things that you're
(19:16):
going to need. Right, So I don't think feature set
out of the box feature set would be my number
one uh you know decision point. If I were a
sales director VP of sales choosing a serum for my organization,
I would start with technology, foundation and flexibility. Am I
(19:37):
going to need a developer to make a change in
this platform or can I use settings configuration to do
what I want?
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Yeah, it's very important, And like I mentioned that, we
need some kind of systems that also kind of glow
with the business too. Don't want some kind of a
system that have some kind of limitations. It's very important
of flexibility in the system that can I with a
little bit of coding if available, so you have certain
things customized, customized for your business and have the potential
(20:08):
to grow as the business goes. That's very important. And
not to have certain limitations. So to that, what is
the let's say, the worst advice that you have ever
received someone told you and business in general or in
regards to RP or CRMs.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
That's a great question. Wow, let me think about that
one for a moment. I mean going back to the
feature thing, right, it's it's I've seen companies get sucked
in by flashy demos that do X, Y and Z
and and so imagine not knowing any of what's going
on behind the curtains and just looking at features. Right,
(20:48):
this could be one person who's developed this application and
maybe maybe he lives, you know, in a basement somewhere
and he's got his cousin that's supporting it, and that's it.
You know, you don't want to tie your business, your
enterprise to an organization like that, regardless of what the
application does. From a feature standpoint. So I think that
(21:10):
you know, getting sucked in, you know, by flashy features
is probably the number one pitfall that I've seen customers
you know, fall forward in the past, whereas it's much
more difficult to take a step back and understand what
is the organizational depth of the company, who's created this,
what are the support options, what happens if the person
(21:33):
who created it walks out the door, what happens if
the company folds? Right? Is there is there somebody else
I can go to to uh to leverage this and
and that helps mitigate business risks. So I think I
think that's probably it. We need to have make sure the.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
The systems that we're working on other sustainable, available and brusted,
wealthy and the scalable the same.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Points for their business to and secure. Right.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
Well, that's very important because we have certain data that
could be very sensitive for the business to have. So
what would be your finite point or finite tether for
the people who are listening to this episode, Well, I
would say that you.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Know, if if you're if you're looking to scale your organization,
it always comes down to sales and marketing and and
there's a certain amount that you can do manually. There's
a certain amount that you can do and excel and
on paper and in systems that aren't being used. At
some point to really drive growth, CRM is going to
(22:43):
be required, and it's going to have to be implemented
in a manner in which your people are going to
adopt it, and you know that might be painful and
costly out of the gate. Maybe you have salespeople that
have been doing it one way for fifteen years and
they're going to be resistant to change. There's a change
(23:03):
management element that will come into play where you've got
to articulate why the change is coming. Help your sales
reps and your marketers understand that you're making their lives
easier and that you're driving success in their job roles
with the change and not trying to, you know, come
(23:26):
in and ruin their lives. Right, You're helping And so
that organizational change management has to start before you begin
any project. I've seen companies try to adopt a CRM
and the first time some of the people have seen
it is when they're being trained on it and they say, well,
we're going live on this in two weeks. The process
owners have to be involved along the way. Maybe not
(23:48):
every end user, but certainly the managers and the owners
of the processes need to be involved in selecting a
CRM and need to be involved in more importantly implementing
a CRM and making the design decisions so that your
people actually end up using it, because your the biggest
pitfall is use your adoption. We've seen in a million
(24:08):
times with you know, different companies, and so I would say,
you know, matching that up and involving your team along
the way very very important and there's going to be
a little bit of pain, but the growth on the
other end of it will be well worth it.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Yeah, the learning care for anything is a pain new jury.
What the easier it is for the future to have
a simpler CRM that integrates all the things that we
mentioned back for example scalability, security and other things that
are important for businesses to grow there and have the
security for the people that are our.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Care.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
That's very important. So why and where can people learn
more about you, what you do and your business and
see how they can contact you.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Yeah? Absolutely so. Our company is Western Computer. We're a
Microsoft I n AMX partner implements r M all the time.
It's what we've been doing for twenty plus years e
ERP as well accounting finance supply chain. So go to
Western Computer dot com you'll get someone on the chat. Also,
feel free to directly message me on LinkedIn if you
like Ryan poliniac spelled like poly p, O L L
(25:17):
Y and IAK. Come find me on LinkedIn if you
have a question, more than happy to engage. That's what
I've been doing for over fifteen years now and I'm
passionate about it, So if you want to chat, feel
free to reach out. Awesome.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Thank you very much, important in the act for joining
me for this episode of the successive podcast. We were
talking about CRMs and the rps and how important is
to have a system that is suits the business growth
and have the security features that are prepicting the business
and the customers and help them with sales and marketing
(25:53):
for a future growth. Thank you very much for joining.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Thanks for having me, you saying
Hallo, I welcome to the Success Great Podcast with also Santali.
I am excited to introduce you to a series of
conversations with some of the most successful and sparing individuals
from various industries. My aim is to dive into their
stories behind their success and explore the knowledge, strategiest, habits, mindsets,
and wisdom that have propelled their success. Each hibishud of
(00:21):
the Success Great Podcast will feature a different guest who
will share their unique journey, the challenges they faced, and
the reasons they have learned along the way. I would
also be covering topics from entrepreneurship and innovation to leadership
and personal development. Whether you are inspiring entrepreneur, a seasoned
business profession or just someone looking to improve your life,
(00:41):
the Success Great Podcast is for you. My goal is
to bring you valuable insights and inspiration that will help
you achieve your own success in business and life. So
get ready to learn and be inspired. The Success Great
Podcast starts now. This episode of the Success Great Podcast,
(01:02):
we are going to be talking about system CRMs and
aligning your SALSM marketing strategy for success of your CRM.
Introducing Ryan Pollinier, a seasoned sales professional with a rich
background in the Microsoft Dynamics space. Before joining Western Computer
in twenty fifteen, Ryan spend time with an ISV in
(01:22):
the Microsoft Dynamic ecosystem, working closely with partners to sell
products to other companies catering to medium to large businesses.
Ryan is wellware's in ERP and CRNM strategies and heavily
involved in the Microsoft Dynamic channels. Ryan, welcome to the
Success Podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
I who's saying thanks for having me answer?
Speaker 1 (01:43):
So this is the Success Great podcast. What does success
means to you? And what do you see other people
you work with, or your team or other businesses have
certain conceptions around success.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Yeah, great question. So we work with lots of companies
who are looking to implement or prove the use of
their CRM systems and drive efficiencies with sales and marketing.
Success to us is helping companies achieve their goals and
having a company at the end of an engagement say
that was worth it. We're more than happy to sing
(02:15):
the praises of Western Computer. It's helped our business and
if we've done that, if we've actually helped the customers
achieve their goals, then we've achieved our goals. So that's
what success means to us. Now. I think, you know,
some pitfalls in terms of success would be basing it
purely on budget, right. You know, you want to make
sure that you are achieving your goals in any kind
(02:38):
of engagement that you have. And in terms of technology,
you know, business process, automation, artificial intelligence, which is such
a buzzword these days. It's very difficult to look at
it from a you know, a dollars and cents perspective,
which of course is important to every business. And everybody's
got a bottom line that they're driving towards in a
(02:58):
budget number that they're construed by. But the long term
value of engagement is in its success, you know, not
in not in it being one hundred percent of budget
or one hundred and twenty percent of budget or eighty
percent of budget, and you know, help understanding, you know
what what the company's trying to do, and how you
(03:19):
can get there with technology and and then making that happen.
You know, the return on investment is tremendous, you know,
tremendously more than the costs to go into it. So
I think it's more important to find success by achieving
goals rather than by you know, achieving.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Budget talking about the bus and CRMs now businesses and
even individual learning accepting things nowadays with the other things
like you mentioned evolving very fast and they are a
lot of things. We need some some things or tools
that would heelp businesses or companies to navigate like I
would say, maybe the overall picture of the whole business
(03:59):
under one umbrella. So does this where the CRM systems
come in for businesses?
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Yeah, well CRM is going to encompass a certain subsection
of the business. Right you have things like financial management
and inventory management, supply chain management that are going to
live elsewhere, but certainly in terms of sales and marketing
and business development, the heart of that really should be
at a CRM for any organization. We talk to companies
(04:30):
all the time who are managing sales interactions, prospecting pipeline
leads in excel and outlook on paper, in antiquated systems
that have not been adopted by their user base, by
their sales people, by their sales managers. And there's a
tremendous cost to that long term. You know, having an
(04:55):
aggregated set of contacts and interaction history and an opportunity
pipeline and updated set of contact information in one place,
consolidated in a CRM system is really the key to
driving organizational growth and making you know, you know, hitting
(05:20):
the sales targets that you have. It's very difficult to
do this in a manual process. And if somebody leaves
the organization and they take their knowledge with them and
they take their Excel sheet or their notebook with them
and it's gone, there's a huge cost to that to
any organization. So there's an element of of governance there
where you're going to have to mandate to a certain
(05:42):
degree that your sales team is utilizing CRM in the
way that that you have intended and and and in
order to achieve that, there has to be uh, top down,
uh you know, requirement to use this system. And and
(06:02):
you know, when you have some systems right, if you're
receiving inventory or if you're driving your accounting, you can't
run the business without executing those functions. CRM is not
that way. If a CRM is not easy to use,
and if it's not beneficial to a salesperson, it's not
going to be used. And so, you know, user adoptions
the other side of that, you have to mandate it
(06:24):
from the top down, and you have to make it
easily usable, and you have to make it advantageous for
your sales team and help them understand that it is
there to help drive uh, you know, success for them
and to and to hit their own goals. And and
you know, I have a long history in sales and
I couldn't not have done it without a CRM and
(06:45):
without properly implementing a CRM.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Yeah, definitely it's very important. But now, like you mentioned,
and you'll speak now, there might be some set and
things that we use it as many electric sol sheets
and some times notepads or would who would use it
to one person? So this is that good to have
one person having all of this CRM and regard as
(07:11):
too sales marketing customer success. I would say, because the
commission if that person is gone, who would see to
continue the process of things for the CRM or the
whatever it is that they're operating with. So in your opinion,
what are the most important that's say, elements that I
(07:31):
s a RM should have.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Yeah, and you nailed one, which is you know, I
would not recommend developing an in house CRM or buying
a CRM from a very small company. And it's for
the reason that you mentioned who saying, which is that
just like the person walking out the door with their notepad,
if the person who developed your internal CRM finds a
(07:56):
new job, you're out of luck, right, So investing in
a market leading CRM. Of course, you know where my
organization is a big believer in Microsoft Dynamics. That's a
great example, right, Hundreds of thousands of companies use this product,
and if the person who can figured it walks out
the door, there are thousands more people that you can
(08:17):
go hire to fit backfill that. Right. You know there
are other CRMs that that are the same way in
the marketplace, and and so you want to have that
backing of a world class company, someone who can you know,
not only provide up time, reliability and ongoing development and
(08:38):
feature enhancement for the platform that you're using, but some
but a platform that can provide you with some redundancy
in terms of resources, who can manage it. If it's
a small market platform, you do run some risk of
losing the person that owns it and being out of luck,
(08:58):
especially that's developed internally. So I would say developing an
internal CRM is a bit like giving a notepad in
that regard from a business risk, there's tremendous amount of it.
Your your final question there was, you know, what what
makes a CRM great or what's important for a CRM
in my opinion, and this is something Microsoft is fantastic at.
(09:23):
It's connecting to the tools that you already used to
communicate with your customers. So if you're emailing something that
communicates with your email platform, typically that's Outlook, sometimes it's Google.
Sometimes companies are leveraging teams for chat or for for
meeting invitations. You know, that's how you're communicating with your customers.
(09:48):
So having a CRM that that respects that communication layer
and automatically archives it is tremendously tremendously important. Right if
I send you an email who's saying about a proposal
that I've submitted, I want that track in the CRM.
I don't want to have to go spend a bunch
of time doing it either, right, I want to have
(10:08):
it so that you know I can I can go
back and I can look at your record in my
CRM and I could say, Okay, yeah, I sent an
email to who's saying about X, Y and Z on
X date and here's what it said, and then I
can I can communicate back to you effectively. You know,
I don't know about you, but I can't remember every
communication that I've had with every customer ever, right, So
(10:30):
I need a system to do that, and one that
that respects those channels of communication is probably the number
one thing.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
So basically what's the most important thing in the cl
system is to be a client centric. So because you
want to have these of communication with the other clients
and the guards with to says marketing, how do you
communicate with them if they have maybe complaints feedback? Well,
it is and to keep one the messaging them for
(11:02):
the future, because clients should be served for the long goal.
I would say, it's not just one one transaction and
you're done with the client that you have. You should
be in it, say, in their sharing your clients. So
the CRM makes it easier for businesses and companies to
actually do that in a simpler manner instead of like
(11:23):
juggling multiple things with paper or excel sheets.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Yeah, absolutely, and so client centric, yes, absolutely, But being
client centric, you know that includes considering how your organization
operates and communicates, right, if your if your organization uses
outlooking teams and Excel and word and these these types
of applications, you need to see around that works with these, right,
(11:47):
and then in the end result of that is improved communication,
improved visibility to what you've discussed with the client. And
in the end of the day, that that drives that
client centric ideal that that you're mentioning. Absolutely you want
to see around that will remind you, you know, I, uh,
(12:08):
you emailed Hussein seven days ago, you haven't heard back.
You may want to send him an email. And and
so we're opening up a brave new world of artificial
intelligence where that that kind of automated assistance is real
world and it's certainly something that you should look for
(12:30):
in a CRM as well.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Yeah, so, so you fully support having integrations with the
CLM system, and you do you think that if a system,
a CLM system does not have AI support, now is
is a loser.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
And and you know, let's be perfectly honest. AI is
still cutting edge. So nobody has it fully figured out.
But the big the big players in the market, certainly Microsoft,
have a huge advantage in terms of the technology foundation
that they have with AI, because you know, all a
(13:10):
homegrown system or a small company, they're not going to
have that backing, They're not going to have that foundation,
they're not going to have that long term vision where
you know, organizations need to be utilizing AI or at
least considering how they plan to utilize AI in the future,
or you will get left behind. And I do think
you know, it's important to say AI will it's not
(13:33):
going to replace your sales team, it's not going to
replace your marketing team, and it's not going to come
take your job if you're a salesperson or a marketer,
but it will enhance your employee's ability to do their jobs,
you know, drafting emails, setting up meetings more efficiently, trimming
down the amount of time that it takes to do
(13:54):
any of these typical tasks. And then if you're if
you are a sales personal or a marketer, AI may
not be coming for your job directly, as in you know,
you're going to be replaced by by a robot, but
somebody who's effectively using AI, on the other hand, may
be coming for your job. So it's it's very important
(14:14):
to understand these tools and understand how to use them.
You know you can. You can use AI in a
number of ways, right streamlining that communication like I mentioned,
or getting summaries of information and and and and summarizing data,
generating content. If you're a marketer, creating pitch decks, creating visualizations, graphs, charts,
(14:42):
and word or excel, that's all available now. And and
you know that extends, right, I mean, uh, you know,
following up by scoring opportunities and leads and saying, Okay,
I'm a busy salesperson, I've got a quote it to meet,
and I want to focus on the leads that are
(15:05):
most likely to generate some business from my organization. AI
can score leads for you. It can. It can tell
you what a customers or potential prospects looked at and
score the lead and prioritize your day on your behalf.
And that's tremendously important. So there are all kinds of
(15:25):
ways that AI can improve your your your your team,
uh or improve your personal sales performance.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
So that's because that when we talked about CRM, it's
mainly focus on sales marketing and the customers. But do
you think that's for example, that me personally, I see
CRMs that could have more functions and that like maybe
you mentioned earlier financial things or financial papers or account
(15:57):
thinking for the business. So do you think that CRM
is the best CRM systems or platforms to is the
one that focused or niche to certain things like focus
on sales, marketing and customers or do you think it's
a good idea to have systems that could replace every
tool that you have for business in one place.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Maybe there are a lot of layers to this question.
So let me say first of all, I do firmly
believe that you know, e er P and CRM are
really two different worlds. Usually you're going to see and
you know, enterprises up to the fortune five hundred, you're
gonna have separate platforms for for CRM and e r
(16:41):
P if if you if you need full functionality, right,
financial management, supply chain management, warehouse management has a lot
of auditibility requirements that you don't have on the CRM side.
And you may not want every lead and everyone who
crosses your sales and marketing team's desk to live in
your EURP system, right, That's that's later when they're a
(17:02):
customer and you're building them and you're invoicing them, So
you know, I think that CRM from me you mentioned
at the beginning something that caught my ear. Looking at
CRM from a purely feature perspective is a little bit
of a pitfall. Right. You may find somebody who's built
(17:24):
a CRM specific for your industry, and it's very easy
to get sucked in in a demo and say, Okay,
I work in the in a nonprofit industry and this
CRM is great because instead of you know, customers, it
says donors and that means something to me, right. Or
(17:47):
maybe you work in another industry that has some specific requirements.
Maybe you're a home builder and you want to have
a CRM where you can go and have somebody choose
options to build a home if anyone ever built a home.
What doorknobs do I want? What paint finish do I want?
What granted counter jobs do I want? And while features
(18:08):
are important to some degree, platform is in my opinion,
far more important where you get a solution that is
strong from a technology standpoint, that's strong from a standpoint
of something like artificial intelligence, cybersecurity. You know, something that's
hosted and secure and then it's also flexible. And so
(18:32):
for example Microsoft Dynamics, right, it's very configurable. It's a
it's a no code, low code platform where if you
need to do things that it doesn't do out of
a box, you're not developing code. You're not paying a
developer to write code to fix it or to make
it do what you want. You're configuring it and you
(18:55):
can train people inside of your organization to do that
so that then it becomes, you know, a ball of
clay that you can make what you want with it.
But when you do make what you want with it,
you still have that strong foundation of technology and support
and security and AI and all those things that you're
(19:16):
going to need. Right, So I don't think feature set
out of the box feature set would be my number
one uh you know decision point. If I were a
sales director VP of sales choosing a serum for my organization,
I would start with technology, foundation and flexibility. Am I
(19:37):
going to need a developer to make a change in
this platform or can I use settings configuration to do
what I want?
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Yeah, it's very important, And like I mentioned that, we
need some kind of systems that also kind of glow
with the business too. Don't want some kind of a
system that have some kind of limitations. It's very important
of flexibility in the system that can I with a
little bit of coding if available, so you have certain
things customized, customized for your business and have the potential
(20:08):
to grow as the business goes. That's very important. And
not to have certain limitations. So to that, what is
the let's say, the worst advice that you have ever
received someone told you and business in general or in
regards to RP or CRMs.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
That's a great question. Wow, let me think about that
one for a moment. I mean going back to the
feature thing, right, it's it's I've seen companies get sucked
in by flashy demos that do X, Y and Z
and and so imagine not knowing any of what's going
on behind the curtains and just looking at features. Right,
(20:48):
this could be one person who's developed this application and
maybe maybe he lives, you know, in a basement somewhere
and he's got his cousin that's supporting it, and that's it.
You know, you don't want to tie your business, your
enterprise to an organization like that, regardless of what the
application does. From a feature standpoint. So I think that
(21:10):
you know, getting sucked in, you know, by flashy features
is probably the number one pitfall that I've seen customers
you know, fall forward in the past, whereas it's much
more difficult to take a step back and understand what
is the organizational depth of the company, who's created this,
what are the support options, what happens if the person
(21:33):
who created it walks out the door, what happens if
the company folds? Right? Is there is there somebody else
I can go to to uh to leverage this and
and that helps mitigate business risks. So I think I
think that's probably it. We need to have make sure the.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
The systems that we're working on other sustainable, available and brusted,
wealthy and the scalable the same.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Points for their business to and secure. Right.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
Well, that's very important because we have certain data that
could be very sensitive for the business to have. So
what would be your finite point or finite tether for
the people who are listening to this episode, Well, I
would say that you.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Know, if if you're if you're looking to scale your organization,
it always comes down to sales and marketing and and
there's a certain amount that you can do manually. There's
a certain amount that you can do and excel and
on paper and in systems that aren't being used. At
some point to really drive growth, CRM is going to
(22:43):
be required, and it's going to have to be implemented
in a manner in which your people are going to
adopt it, and you know that might be painful and
costly out of the gate. Maybe you have salespeople that
have been doing it one way for fifteen years and
they're going to be resistant to change. There's a change
(23:03):
management element that will come into play where you've got
to articulate why the change is coming. Help your sales
reps and your marketers understand that you're making their lives
easier and that you're driving success in their job roles
with the change and not trying to, you know, come
(23:26):
in and ruin their lives. Right, You're helping And so
that organizational change management has to start before you begin
any project. I've seen companies try to adopt a CRM
and the first time some of the people have seen
it is when they're being trained on it and they say, well,
we're going live on this in two weeks. The process
owners have to be involved along the way. Maybe not
(23:48):
every end user, but certainly the managers and the owners
of the processes need to be involved in selecting a
CRM and need to be involved in more importantly implementing
a CRM and making the design decisions so that your
people actually end up using it, because your the biggest
pitfall is use your adoption. We've seen in a million
(24:08):
times with you know, different companies, and so I would say,
you know, matching that up and involving your team along
the way very very important and there's going to be
a little bit of pain, but the growth on the
other end of it will be well worth it.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Yeah, the learning care for anything is a pain new jury.
What the easier it is for the future to have
a simpler CRM that integrates all the things that we
mentioned back for example scalability, security and other things that
are important for businesses to grow there and have the
security for the people that are our.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Care.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
That's very important. So why and where can people learn
more about you, what you do and your business and
see how they can contact you.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Yeah? Absolutely so. Our company is Western Computer. We're a
Microsoft I n AMX partner implements r M all the time.
It's what we've been doing for twenty plus years e
ERP as well accounting finance supply chain. So go to
Western Computer dot com you'll get someone on the chat. Also,
feel free to directly message me on LinkedIn if you
like Ryan poliniac spelled like poly p, O L L
(25:17):
Y and IAK. Come find me on LinkedIn if you
have a question, more than happy to engage. That's what
I've been doing for over fifteen years now and I'm
passionate about it, So if you want to chat, feel
free to reach out. Awesome.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Thank you very much, important in the act for joining
me for this episode of the successive podcast. We were
talking about CRMs and the rps and how important is
to have a system that is suits the business growth
and have the security features that are prepicting the business
and the customers and help them with sales and marketing
(25:53):
for a future growth. Thank you very much for joining.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Thanks for having me, you saying
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