The Human Element: Why Your CRM Needs More Than Just Software

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here. Another episode of High Velocity Radio, and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show we have the founder of Cultivize, Jason Kramer. Welcome.

Jason Kramer: Thanks, Lee.

Lee Kantor: Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about cultivars. How are you serving folks.

Jason Kramer: Shirley. So we are helping a fundamental problem that I would say almost every business has. And you might ask, well, what is that? Um, and what I’m talking about, Lee, is follow up, um, salespeople don’t mind doing the follow up. We all know that, um, the problem is the process, right? Having a process to follow, to remember to do the follow up. And so what I help companies do is to make sure that things don’t fall through the cracks when it comes to their efforts to grow their business, to grow relationships. And we do that in a multiple. Different form of ways. But mostly we’re helping them build better systems to increase the lead to conversion they have for their business.

Lee Kantor: So where do these systems begin? Like where is usually kind of the hole in their swing?

Jason Kramer: So the hole is a great analogy. I love that one. It’s the first time I heard that. It usually begins because they don’t have a tool that they’re using, right? They’re working off of spreadsheets. Maybe they have a CRM, but they don’t really know how to use it or they’re not using it consistently. More importantly, management or leadership isn’t really giving them a clear direction on how to do what they need to do. So in other words, they’re hiring a salesperson because they’re a salesperson. They expect them to have all the tools in the toolbox. And I’ll throw another analogy at you. It’s like, hire a contractor who shows up with one hammer and one nail and one piece of wood. It’s not going to get very far if he doesn’t have the tools. Right? So that’s where we see the biggest flaws. The people are not given the tools to succeed.

Lee Kantor: So now so what happens? They say, okay, I’m having these issues. I call the folks at cultivars. What how does kind of relationship begin?

Jason Kramer: So think of me, Lee, as walking into a third grade classroom. I’m going to start talking to everybody to understand what are they doing now? Right. What are they doing at a very. The phone rings. Ring, ring. Somebody calling you to to potentially hire you for whatever you sell. What is the first thing you do? What are the questions you ask them? What’s the second thing you do? The third thing you do that starts to finding their process. As you can imagine, Lee, most people have that process up in their head. They don’t have it written down and they don’t follow that same process day in, day out. So we help them identify what their process is today, where those gaps are. Typically, we’re bringing in a piece of CRM software if they don’t have one. Or we might be looking at the current tool they have and figuring out why it’s not working, and make improvements and fixes with that tool.

Lee Kantor: So a CRM is that kind of a must have thing or a nice to have thing?

Jason Kramer: It depends upon what you’re doing. I would say in today’s day and age, I would say it’s a must have. Um, working off of scattered Google Sheets, writing things down on sticky notes or legal pads. It’s nearly impossible to scale a business with that mentality in that process. So if you’re in a business that I would say is over $1 million a year in revenue, you need to have some type of system where all your data is going in, and they can leverage that data to find those gaps, find what’s working, find what’s not working so that you can actually grow that business.

Lee Kantor: Now let’s play this out. So say I mean, I’ve been in business a long time and uh, we have used quite a few CRMs over the years, and I don’t think it’s the CRMs that are doing anything wrong, because I think inherently they’re doing, you know, what they’re supposed to do. But I think that the human that is working with it tends to be the, uh, kind of the, the thing that’s getting in the way because some of the CRMs are just too complicated. Like if you don’t, I guess if you don’t set them up properly initially or you don’t match the right CRM with your specific circumstance, you can run into a lot of problems. And there’s so many out there, some of them that are disguised as free or they start out being free, uh, can kind of get you into a path that might not really be the best end result.

Jason Kramer: I couldn’t agree more, Lee. And you said it very well. There’s nothing really more I can add to that to say that there are literally thousands and thousands of different CRMs out there. And you’re right, some of them are not even a CRM. They’re a project management tool that sells themselves as a CRM. And so it’s not the tool that’s going to make you a better salesperson or make the company grow or make your marketing better. It’s about understanding what it is you do right with your business, what makes you different, and and how are we going to use this tool right, to to enhance that. And so our role is what we we have something called the CRM fit assessment. And what that does is it helps identify where those gaps are, what the needs of the business are. Every business has a different need. You might have a business where you have 30 people driving around all day, going from house to house on appointments. You need something that’s mobile friendly, that’s going to help them track those routes, to organize them, to make them efficient. Another company may be just sitting at a desk all day writing quotes. So every business has different needs, different purposes. Um, our job is to find out what is the right solution to fit those needs. Um, but it comes down to something you mentioned, Lee.

Jason Kramer: Really important. You could have the best CRM out there, best one that money could buy and it could still be failing miserably. And you brought up the point. It’s about the people. If the people aren’t using the tool correctly, it’s never going to work. The biggest differentiator we have is that we’re not just coming in and making these recommendations and building a beautiful system. We’re an accountability partner. And that’s really our sweet spot, is that we’ll stay on board indefinitely. We’ve had clients we’ve had for years. Every single month we still meet with the entire sales team. We still meet with the leadership team on an ongoing basis. We look to see how the CRM is being leveraged. Is it being used in a way that is meaningful? Are there things we can improve? Um, that’s the other piece of this is that a CRM is a living, breathing thing, right? We both know that. And for the listeners that don’t know or may have seen this frustration, you can’t set it up and build it. It’s not like a website where you can just build it and walk away, and five years later it’s going to function the same way. You have to be in there consistently making adjustments to serve the better good of the company.

Lee Kantor: And, um, how do you help kind of manage, uh, create a balance, maybe is a better word than manage between or instead of balance, maybe a harmony between all of the things that a CRM can do and all of the things I needed to do. Uh, because a lot of these CRM just seem loaded with all kinds of features that sound good and would be fantastic, but I don’t know, sometimes that creates too much complexity that gets too hard to even, you know, input information or manage the information. So it doesn’t really serve me in the long run. Like how do you help me? Number one, choose the right CRM. And number two, um, make it work seamlessly in the way that my people work.

Jason Kramer: Sure. So to answer the first question, we have to identify the immediate needs. What are those needs? You might be a need to track your pipeline, right? The deals that are going through the stages of your sales process. It might be a need to do email marketing. It might be a need to build better communications between prospects or existing customers for your customer service team. So we have to identify what those needs are. And you’re absolutely right. Most CRMs are going to have more tools than you actually need, or even have a value for it to bring to the company. It doesn’t mean you’ll never need those tools. It just may be a phase two, phase three, or even a year or two down the road situation where that might come into play. Um, we do a lot of work with HubSpot. Hubspot is a great platform, but it’s a perfect example where there’s all these different tools they offer. Every set of tools is a different price point. And so sometimes you get sold all these things that you don’t really need. Um, and so that’s how we do it. We, we, we understand what are the immediate goals and the future needs. And we make sure that the tool we’re providing and recommending is going to service both you in the short term while you’re meeting those initial goals. But it’s also going to help you in year two, year three, year five to meet those new needs as your company grows. And I’m sorry, if you don’t mind repeating the second part of the question, I’d be happy to answer that as well.

Lee Kantor: Sure. I just think that, um, a take HubSpot, for example. I mean, they start out with some free thing that you can kind of they the implication is this is easy to implement in, uh, in, you know, to start with. Right. And then as soon as you take a step in, all of a sudden there’s a lot of choices I have to make. And there’s a lot of, you know, it’s a choose your own adventure kind of thing starting to happen here. And and as you’re doing it, you’re realizing the more I do this, the more I’m getting wed to HubSpot. Um, and I gotta. Now I have to be kind of careful, because do I really want to go down these variety of paths before I even know if this is going to work?

Jason Kramer: Absolutely. And so and that’s a great example where, you know, there’s a study that Harvard Business Review did that said, almost 70% of businesses that try to implement a CRM on their own will completely fail. It’s not because they’re not smart people. They’re doing something they’ve never done. If I were to go to my car in my driveway, Lee, and try to rebuild that engine, and I’ve never rebuilt that engine before, I might be able to figure it out. Chances are I’m going to break something, cause more damage, and it’s going to be more expensive to fix the mess I made. A CRM is no different. Um, and by all means, you know, and HubSpot does one of the best jobs, and I’m not knocking them because there’s a great product. They make these systems seem simple. We’ve been doing this for over 15 years. It still takes us 30 to 50 hours to fully set up, at minimum, a HubSpot account the right way. And we know what we’re doing right. So imagine we didn’t know what we were doing. Now you’re talking about probably six months to a year of fiddling around on and off, and it’s still not perfect. And so that’s the trap is that it’s the allure, that it looks simple. But the reality is, is that you have to understand the inner complexity of how it all works and how all the pieces go together. Otherwise it’s never going to deliver what you’re hoping it’ll deliver.

Lee Kantor: So now it sounds like, um, your hypothesis and your value proposition is that, look, CRMs, they might be selling it to the end user as a simple, easy to implement solution, but in fact, it’s not. This is something you need an expert to really help you, um, launch if you want to really get the most out of it and that you can’t kind of not have an expert holding your hand to sherpa you through the beginnings of this, or else the odds are this is not going to work for you in the manner that you’re you’re thinking it is.

Jason Kramer: Yeah. And the other piece too, is so there’s other two huge factors that people don’t think about. So one is the total cost of ownership. You brought up a great point, Lee, where a lot of these software companies will offer you a free trial or they’ll they’ll come in and be like, oh, it’s $50 a month for a basic tool. But then when you realize that you don’t have access to like 80% of what the tool can do, and now you go from 50 a month to 850 a month, or to a couple thousand a month, you don’t anticipate what the total cost of that tool is going to be as your team grows over time as well. And so what I often caution people is if you could afford even $50 a month today, the real question is, can you afford $2,000 a month in year two when you need to afford $2,000 a month or a year from now. And if you can’t afford that, and if you have no budget for that, you shouldn’t even be using the $50 or the free version. Reason being moving from one CRM to another, and I’m sure I don’t know. Lee, I’m sure you’ve moved from one house to another at least once in your life. And how I have. It’s like moving, right? It’s a pain in the butt. It is not a pleasant experience. It’s not difficult in the sense of when you work with somebody that knows how to do it, but it could be a real time suck. And it could be expensive too, perhaps. So it’s not to say that it can happen, but it’s the one thing you want to try to avoid.

Jason Kramer: So my point is, is that you don’t want to use a tool and be like, oh, this tool will be good for for me for six months, for a year. But then I know I’ll grow it. I’ll move into something else. You’re better off waiting to have the budget to get into that better tool, so that you can grow and scale into it. The other thing people don’t think about is support. A lot of these platforms have really terrible support. So now imagine I’m out there trying to change the engine to my car. I don’t have access to anybody with experience. You know, I’m sending an email to somebody that’s getting back to me three days a week later with a potential answer that may not even be the answer I’m looking for. And so it becomes a very frustrating experience. And so one thing that you always want to ask people when you’re looking at a CRM or quite frankly, any piece of business software, what kind of support do you have? And what are your your response times and how can I communicate? Can I actually get on the phone and talk to somebody in support? Can I get on a video call and share my screen? Is it going to be me submitting a ticket and waiting a week to hear back? A lot of people don’t ask that question, and often get quite unpleasantly surprised on how terrible the support is. And generally, the rule of thumb is the less expensive the software, the worse the support is.

Lee Kantor: Yeah, this is an example. I think that, um, from a consumer standpoint, you think you’re buying something that is a set it and forget it, and it’s way more complex than that. And in order to really get any true value from it, you need help. And it’s not being sold that way. They’re selling it as this is simple and easy and anybody can do this. And so you always think that it’s not working for me because I’m doing something wrong. We used to have a client, um, a while ago. We used to do the radio for a group called Oracle Application Users Group. And this, this were consultants that if a big company installed Oracle, they had to hire consultants to implement Oracle. Like it wasn’t like Oracle was going to do this. There’s a whole ecosystem of consultants that help you after you spent millions of dollars to buy Oracle to make it work specifically for your situation, you have to hire them. It’s not going to work. You can’t just buy Oracle, plug it in and then walk away. It doesn’t work like that. So CRMs to me seem like kind of a watered down version of that. Like this is something that’s not super expensive up front, but you do need help to make it work for you. It’s not going to work off the shelf.

Jason Kramer: No. And I always say, and it’s kind of a little saying I have, but software will not solve your problems. It’s only the people that are behind it that are going to help solve the problems. And that’s a marketing does a good job of making you convincing you that the software will solve the problem. Um, but it almost never does on its own.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. And I think that I think people always blame themselves. It’s like when you, you know, get that new diet or that new, um, weight loss thing, you think that, oh, I bought it. So now I’m done. But you still have to do the work or hire some expert to help you make it work. Or else it’s never going to work.

Jason Kramer: Yeah, you have to put in the work, too. I mean, it’s like going to the gym, right? And you could be working with the best trainer that’s training all these celebrities and getting amazing results for them. But if you’re not doing the work at the gym or you’re doing the work, but then you come home and you’re eating fast food every day, you’re not helping yourself, right? Get to to your goal. And so there’s definitely a human element to make this work for sure.

Lee Kantor: So now is there a story you can share, maybe a company that came to you with a challenge, and how you and you were able to help them get to a new level? Is there you obviously don’t name the name, but maybe shared the problem they had before you and then after you how it turned out?

Jason Kramer: Yeah, I would love to. So about a year and a half ago, um, we had a family run business in the, uh, commercial and residential roofing business, um, in, um, and I’ll name this state, that’s okay. In New Hampshire and New York, for those that are listening, maybe abroad. Um. I’m sorry. New Hampshire, us And, um, their problem was, is that they were just working off of spreadsheets. Li this was a company doing about, um, $7 million, roughly a year. Um, with only two salespeople at the time. And what would happen is what you would, might expect. They would get a phone call for a lead. Someone’s interested in getting a quote. Salesperson has to go to the home, do an inspection, look at the project, give a proposal, and then after a few weeks, if they didn’t hear back, they would just assume that that homeowner decided to hire somebody else or decided not to move forward. And they didn’t have the bandwidth to follow up past about the five week mark. And so you could only imagine doing about a thousand quotes a year, how much millions of dollars of revenue they were losing because they just couldn’t follow up. And so the solution we built was a automated, um, email system where after that stage, after the the salesperson reached out a bunch of times, couldn’t make any headway while the person ghosted them and just sort of disappeared.

Jason Kramer: The system would kick in and it would send an email roughly every six weeks and would say, hey, Lee, we came to your house at 123 Main Street, you know, at the colonial Home. There you have, um, a couple months ago. We’re just wondering if you hired anybody for the roof. You know, we’d love to do the project if you have hired somebody, if you don’t mind taking a one question survey and letting us know, you know why you chose somebody else, we’d appreciate that. And if you’re still interested, let me know. And so different versions of those emails went out. Lee for almost a year and a half. Okay. And they all came from the salesperson’s email address from their name. It was a plain what I call plain text email. So meaning there was no fancy graphics or anything like that. It looked like, you know, John actually sent this message to you. And wouldn’t you know that in nine months, 15 months you had people responding to this email? Yes, we do still want to go forward. We didn’t hire anybody. We’re just waiting to for the tax refund to come. Or we’re waiting for the money for the insurance or what have you. And they closed last year in 2025, $4.1 million in revenue that would have otherwise been lost from a whole sequence of different automated emails we’ve set up for them.

Lee Kantor: Now, in your experience, what percentage of businesses do that where they just take one shot and then say, oh, that didn’t work out, and then just walk away and never pursue the person again and follow up in any meaningful manner.

Jason Kramer: I don’t have the actual number, Lee, but but I’m telling you, from my experience, it’s more than 50%. I mean, the majority don’t because they’re they’re just either uncomfortable. They’re like, I don’t want to be a pest. Lee, you know, I met Lee six months ago. Like, he’s going to think I’m annoying. I don’t want to call him again. Or they just they don’t have the confidence or whatever the excuse they want to make for themselves. They don’t have the time or they don’t have a CRM. Right? They don’t have even have a spreadsheet, so they don’t even remember that they met you six months ago. Right. They’re doing so many proposals every day. They don’t even remember who you are. So without a system this things like this fall through the cracks left and right at companies across all different industries.

Lee Kantor: So how are you differentiating a CRM from like a marketing automation system?

Jason Kramer: Oh, Lee, I love that question. All right, so let me first let me back up a little bit. So for those people that are listening, the audience here, I would define a CRM because everybody’s going to have a different definition. Um, a CRM is going to have the ability to store all of your contacts, whether they be vendors, customers, prospects, even, um, other people you association might be working with and be able to define them and segment them in a specific way. It’s also going to be a place where you can store all of your company records. So you might be a business where you’re selling into other companies. You might want information not only about the contact the person, but about the company themselves. It’s also going to have a sales suite of tools. You know, I think of it as like a dashboard to track all the deals you’re working on, all the opportunities. And the fourth component is going to be email marketing. A good CRM is going to have the marketing automation built into it, right? And that’s going to be marketing automation to help the sales team, but it’s also going to help the marketing team, and whether that be an internal or external team.

Jason Kramer: And what I’m talking about is monthly newsletters. Um, what we call drip campaigns, where you might get an email every couple of weeks, every couple of months. Um, for those people in e-commerce, it might be a thank you for your order. Or hey, we noticed you bought this from us a few months ago. You might also like this other product. So marketing automation is a huge. I can’t even stress enough a huge, huge component to a successful CRM platform. So now not all of them have it, by the way. You know, like the smaller, more expensive ones don’t have that tool. So, you know, definitely you want to be at the not not the, you know, Salesforce level or the Oracle level where you’re spending, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, but certainly something that’s going to be a step up from like a Pipedrive or something like that, where it’s not going to be as sophisticated to do those sort of things.

Lee Kantor: So how do you kind of describe your ideal customer? Is it that end user who is struggling with what they have right now, or do you work through third party partners? Like what? Who is your ideal customer?

Jason Kramer: Oh, sure. So, um, the ideal perfect customer for us. And this is, you know, a little bit of a broad spectrum, but it’s a company that’s generally been in business. So we look at companies that are generally $3 million and up, um, generally 3 million to 100 million is our typical range. They’re generally going to also have, um, anywhere from five to 20 or 30 salespeople working for them. Uh, and they’re also going to be spending money on marketing. Um, one thing to point out to your audience, Lee, we’re not a marketing agency. We do not provide any leads. We don’t do lead gen. We help with lead nurturing. So once the lead knocks on your door, we invite them in and help you build that relationship to convert them into a customer. Um, so we’re looking for companies that have a steady pipeline, a company that has no leads or gets, you know, five referrals a month isn’t really a good fit for us because there’s not much we could do with that such small volume of lead flow. So it’s not like we need hundreds or thousands of leads a month or a week, but we need a company that is getting consistent leads in the door. Um, and we work with a multitude of industries. I mentioned construction. We also do a lot of work in B2B, um, professional services manufacturing, um, and a slew of other industries where, uh, that consistent again, you know, problem exists where they’re doing a lot of proposals, a lot of quotes, and they just don’t have a system to follow up.

Lee Kantor: So what is kind of the main trigger, the main kind of pain they’re feeling right before they contact you. Where are they feeling? Like, who notices it first? Is this the CFO, the CEO, the sales manager? Like, who says, hey, we got a problem. We better call Jason in this team.

Jason Kramer: It’s usually the the head of marketing or the head of sales that recognizes the problem and the reason they recognize that problem. It’s pretty simple. They don’t have any any data. They don’t have any reports. So if the owner of the company, or even if the owner themselves is saying, what do we have that’s out there in proposals right now? Um, where are they at in the process? How long did it take us to close deals last year? What was the average amount of time? Um, what was the average order value or the or the deal size? Right. Or how much does Tony have in his in his pipeline right now versus Mary? If they’re asking questions and there’s no answers, that’s the aha moment. Like oh crap. Like like what’s going on here. Like how do we not know this information. And it’s surprising Even these companies we talked to that are north of $1 million. A lot of them don’t have this data. They just don’t have it because they haven’t built these systems to be able to gather the information that’s needed. Um, so I’d say that’s the change. The other change, Lee, is when you have, you know, the what I’ll call the heroes, where you’re coming new into a role. You’re now the new head of marketing, the head of sales in an organization. You’ve been there for a few months, you start seeing what’s going on, and you’re recognizing they don’t have the proper systems and tools to allow you to do your job correctly and to succeed. And so that’s where they tend to bring in, um, other vendors, partners like cultivars to help right the ship and fix the problems that their predecessor had created.

Lee Kantor: So if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on the team, or maybe take that assessment to see where they’re at and what they need. What is the website? What’s the best way to connect?

Jason Kramer: Sure. So the best place to get to me is going to after the lead com. I’ll say it one more time after the lead com. You can connect with me there. Um on LinkedIn all the social platforms we do have the assessment there and some other, um, quick downloads that are all complimentary to your audience to help them in any part of this journey they have. So the one thing to lastly point out is we’re not just out here selling CRMs. We work with a lot of companies that already have a tool. It’s a good tool. They just don’t know how to use it. And we’ll come in and help them get better leverage out of that platform.

Lee Kantor: Well, Jason, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Jason Kramer: Thank you. Lee, appreciate the opportunity to be here.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on High Velocity Radio.