How to Overcome CRM Confusion to Grow Your Business with Jason Kramer

Struggling to find the right CRM system? In this episode, discover how to overcome CRM confusion to grow your business with CRM expert Jason Kramer, founder of Cultivize. We delve into the real challenges business owners face, from getting lost in tech jargon and aligning CRM features with business needs, to fearing investments in systems that won't scale.

Jason shares his journey from graphic design to founding a successful CRM consulting business, offering straightforward advice that cuts through the noise. We discuss the critical need to understand your business processes before selecting a CRM, how to avoid costly implementation mistakes, and the leadership mindset essential for a smooth transition.

Packed with actionable strategies and insights, this episode will guide you in choosing the right CRM software, streamlining your operations, and driving sustainable growth. If CRM complexity has you paralyzed, this conversation will empower you to make informed decisions, optimize your business, and lead with confidence.

Connect with Jason Kramer:
Visit afterthelead.com to access his valuable 14-page playbook on nurturing leads and to explore additional resources that can help you leverage your CRM effectively. Don’t miss out on connecting with him on LinkedIn for more insights and support.

Books Mentioned:

• Profit First by Mike Michalowicz
• The Pumpkin Plan by Mike Michalowicz

Ready to Finish 2024 Strong?
Don’t wait until December to address your challenges. There's a few months left in 2024, now is the time to plan for a strong finish! Book a free strategy call with Dr. William Attaway to create a plan for impactful results. 

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Jason Kramer
• 3:05 Choosing the Right CRM
• 6:33 Efficient CRM Implementation
• 10:17 Cultivize: A White Glove Service Company
• 13:28 Ongoing Support and Coaching
• 22:05 Tools for Effective Lead Nurturing
• 28:01 Collaboration between Marketing and Sales for Successful Lead Nurturing
• 33:13 Staying Ahead in the Industry and Continuous Learning

Transcript

Dr. William Attaway: 0:00

I'm excited today to have Jason Kramer on the podcast. Jason is the founder of Cultivize, a consulting firm that specializes in B2B lead nurturing strategies and technology. With 15 years of experience running a creative agency, jason identified revenue gaps in marketing and sales funnels for distributors, for service providers, for marketing agencies and manufacturers. Distributors for service providers, for marketing agencies and manufacturers. He launched Cultivize to provide customized solutions and empower businesses to connect prospect and customer data with marketing campaigns and sales team activities. When he's not strategizing in CRM, he enjoys spending time with his wife, his two kids and his two dogs in their lively New York home. Jason, I'm so glad you're here. Thanks for being on the show.

Jason Kramer: 0:48

Thanks for having me, and now that it's almost summertime, I'll add to that list of going out on the Hudson River on the boat.

Dr. William Attaway: 0:57

Oh, absolutely. I hope you're enjoying that this time of year.

Jason Kramer: 1:01

I'm trying. As long as Mother Nature doesn't throw rain on me, then I'm good. That's a good thing.

Into / Outro: 1:09

Welcome to Catalytic Leadership, the podcast designed to help leaders intentionally grow and thrive. Here is your host author and leadership and executive coach, dr William Attaway coach, Dr William Attaway.

Dr. William Attaway: 1:30

I'd love to start just with you sharing a little bit of your story with our listeners, Jason, particularly around your journey and your development as a leader. How did you get started?

Jason Kramer: 1:37

So I got started, as you know I'm sure a lot of your listeners you as well, william know about the term skillpreneur, right. So I started my getting into this whole kind of wacky world of marketing and technology as a graphic designer over almost 30 years ago now at this point, and so that journey led me to develop that skill into being a business owner, which I really knew nothing about, and so the journey for me evolved through what we all do like trial and error, learning from mistakes. And what I learned pretty quickly on is surrounding myself with people obviously and I know it's kind of cliche to say that were smart of me that had different skill techniques really helped me catapult where I am today. And specifically, I think the thing to learn about is that you have to be always thinking about how to make the experience better for your customers, but also how to make your business operationally more sustained, to be ideally operational without you. That's the ultimate goal for any entrepreneurs. How can I leave for a month and the business still runs?

Dr. William Attaway: 2:43

Yes, and that is the moving target, isn't it? Because, just when you think you got it, just when you think you got everything in place, something changes.

Jason Kramer: 2:53

It does, and I think that the one thing that I know specifically I've learned is everybody on my team we're a team of six, so we're not a huge team, but I know that they all have their different skills and they do things a little bit differently and the end result is going to be very similar, if not identical, to what I would provide if I was involved and not to say I'm not, because I am involved in just about everything we do, but the point being is that I'm never going to clone myself, right. That's impossible. I'm never going to clone myself, right. That's impossible. And for years I was trying to do that very, very specifically with different team members, and I realized over that time, like, okay, let them run with it, they'll do what they need to do, we'll get to the finish line the same way, and so I think that's an important lesson as well.

Dr. William Attaway: 3:43

You know, with Cultivize you've created a new solution to a problem that's existed for a while, but it's unique. Cultivize is not like so many of its competitors. I mean, I know and you know, I mean everybody listening probably has a CRM or, at the very minimum, sees that this is something that they need to move toward. Sure, but there's so many different options there's so many different solutions.

Jason Kramer: 4:12

Yeah, too many.

Dr. William Attaway: 4:13

How on earth do you evaluate without spending six months diving as deep as you can into each one of these?

Jason Kramer: 4:23

Well, the simple thing for those listening for really any size organization in any industry is you have to figure out first what you need. What are your problems as a business? Some common problems are managers or the owners of the business don't have eyes on what's happening operationally with marketing and sales. Other problems could be inconsistent processes. You might have a handful of salespeople. Three of them are really great, two of them not so much. Maybe it's because the tools that they're using or the experience, but there's ways to fix those things.

Jason Kramer: 4:55

It could also be a problem of data when is all of our information? And it's just kind of all over the place, right? And so first that's the first step is identifying what are the problems we have today. What are the inefficiencies with the business? What are the gaps? Right? Most commonly we see salespeople aren't following up with things. There's no visual dashboard to the pipeline, like very basic things. You could start creating that list.

Jason Kramer: 5:22

And it's not just about what you need today, william, but the other thing that's also a misstep is what do you need a few years from now? And I know it's hard to kind of project into the future. We all try to do our best, but I think the pitfall some businesses face is that they find a product, a CRM specifically, that might solve their needs today, but they don't anticipate what's going to happen a year or two. So I'll give you very quick, you know, some examples. A lot of CRMs charge based on users.

Jason Kramer: 5:52

You might have a team of, let's say, five or 10 people right now and it's like at the top of your budget to afford to put those five or 10 people into the CRM that you found would be a good fit in your mind. What happens two years from now when your team doubles in size? Now the price is prohibitive because you know maybe you can't afford and you don't have the funds to do that Right. So you have to think about the immediate need, the future need, and that's just two things and we'll talk more about it. But we have tons of tips on the Cultivize website as well as a whole free CRM assessment where you help take people through very critical questions. It's probably about 30 of them we go through to really make sure that we're helping them find the right CRM that's a fit for their business and their team.

Dr. William Attaway: 6:35

I've changed CRMs twice with my business and I can't imagine I'm that uncommon, but both times it was man. It was a heavy lift to try to move everything. It's not just one export, one import.

Jason Kramer: 6:50

No, it's certainly not. Well, it's interesting, and you may have seen it and some of the listeners have too. I'm always looking for insights from industry leaders and such, and so the Harvard Business Review, a couple of years ago, put out an article talking about the adoption of CRM and the challenges that we're talking about today, and what they identified through their research was that over 70% of businesses will fail at implementing the CRM themselves because they don't even have the technical understanding of how to do it, the strategy or bandwidth you know and it becomes an issue of, well, who on the team is going to take responsibility to do this? It might be a VP that says, hey, we're buying this product, but then they're not going to implement it, so they push it off to somebody else who has no idea what they're doing, and so a lot of times it's not uncommon you're right for a company to switch, but it's usually. It's not so much a difficult thing to do, because what we often find is that the purchase originally was for an emotional reason and it wasn't because it was the right fit. Otherwise they wouldn't be switching Right.

Jason Kramer: 7:55

So it's really again going back to well, why did you buy this product in the first place. And now, what are you missing from that product or not using? First place, and now, what are you missing from that product or not using? And the other thing too I'll just quickly add is that so many of these systems, including the ones we use, have so many different features and not that we sell on features, but you can kind of get caught up in that, so you might be paying for something that's got you know 50 different tools in its toolbox for lack of a better way of saying it and you're using maybe five or 10 of those. Right, we see that all the time, companies have these really elaborate CRMs and they're barely using the functionality of the platform.

Dr. William Attaway: 10:05

So how do you navigate that? I mean, I agree with what you're saying. I think so often the change is made out of emotion. Right, it's a little bit of that shiny object, right? Hey, if I just move to this, that will solve all these problems. If I just jump into that, then I won't have to deal with whatever anymore. Yeah, but the reality is executing right and building it out. That is not a small task. And if no one owns it but the owner, well, you've got a problem. It is a problem.

Jason Kramer: 10:38

How do?

Dr. William Attaway: 10:38

you help people navigate that.

Jason Kramer: 10:39

Well, the great thing about our and you mentioned early on why we're different I think it's a good time to talk a little bit more about that we are a complete done for you white glove service company, right. So we are a consultancy at the foremost. Yes, we sell technology, but we are not the developers, we're not the coders that built the technology we sell right. So with that comes my acclimate for marketing experience. Even though we don't do inbound marketing we don't really provide marketing strategy we can help understand what they're doing from a marketing perspective inbound, to make sure that plugs into the CRM. The other thing we do that's a little bit unique is that we spend at least a couple of hours, william, with the leaders in the organization that we're bringing on as a new client to really understand their business.

Jason Kramer: 11:27

What are the fundamental small steps to acquire a client? After you make the first phone call? Is there a discovery call? Is there a proposal? Is there a quote?

Jason Kramer: 11:36

Breaking down the little details of all their processes. It seems so simple but it's often overlooked. And once we break down those steps, we start recognizing where the gaps are and where we can help, maybe automate some of those things, and so with that our clients are typically and really this is going to be maybe shocking for you and the clients or I should say the clients, but the audience, I should say to know that we get clients set up typically in three to six weeks with the CRM, which is really unheard of in the industry. But because we've been doing this so long and it's all we do, our process is so dialed in so long and it's all we do. Our process is so dialed in as long as we get the information we need from the clients, we're up and running and we provide the training to the team. And this is all great, right, and it sounds great perhaps, but the real pivotal piece that makes us stand out, william, out of all of that is that we stay on with the client as, like you, as coaching right. So we stay on as a coach, as a consultant, as a partner with them, and every single month, sometimes even weekly or biweekly, we'll meet with the marketing team and the sales teams and the owners to help push the needle right, evaluate what we've done, because we're doing what we think is going to work, but until we put it into practice, we don't know how it's going to actually fit into the business. So we might have to make some adjustments.

Jason Kramer: 12:55

And that has been a huge differentiator, because we didn't always do that In the beginning. We would set things up and say, okay, we'll check in with you every once in a while and do your thing. And we realized after doing that for a little while that doesn't work, because a lot of businesses can't keep themselves accountable if they don't know what to look for and where the issues might lie. So having that outside perspective with the Cultivize team really helps us zero in to see okay, why hasn't the salesperson logged in in a couple of weeks? What issues are they having? How can we help them? It's not about criticizing. It's about really making everybody comfortable and making sure that they're getting the most out of that investment in deciding to work with us.

Dr. William Attaway: 13:38

It sounds, Jason, like you position yourself as a growth partner more than just a solution provider.

Jason Kramer: 13:45

It's all about growth. It's all about the next conversation, and that's why we have these monthly calls, because what we often see working with these clients and mostly of our clients are B2B, but we do have more than a handful in the direct-to-consumer market. They may not be doing things right now. So, for example, I might talk to a client today and say, hey, we've never done trade shows before. We're going to start doing trade shows next quarter. What can we do and how can we implement that effort into the CRM to do, maybe, pre-invites to the trade show, trade show follow-ups, automated follow-ups, all these different things. How to have a QR code at the booth so they scan the QR code and their data goes right into the CRM, right, all these little things we can start talking about with them. So, yes, it is very much about growth and about leveraging the CRM to help make things more efficient.

Jason Kramer: 14:34

And one other thing I want to point out, too, is that CRMs are often looked at as technology, but a lot of times you can really look at it as another one or two full-time employees, and what I mean by that is that think about all the paper pushing. We talked earlier about people using Google Sheets and spreadsheets and writing things on paper and moving data from one system to another system. If you add up all that human capital time to do all that work, we can automate that and we're not eliminating a position we're freeing up existing team members to focus on. Really, maybe what you hired them to do is to sell and make phone calls and to have conversations, go on meetings and not do all this busy paperwork that we could potentially streamline for the client.

Dr. William Attaway: 15:20

I think that's a fantastic framing, because I think there's so many different components to running a business, to operating a business, and it's so easy to begin to silo and think I've got to have somebody to do that, I've got somebody to do that.

Dr. William Attaway: 15:35

But there are ways to leverage your CRM that will, that will leverage your headcount in a positive way, and I love that you're talking about it that way. You know, when I look at this and I think about the components of my business, right, I think about the different pieces and how automation has helped me to maximize the hours that I and my team spend doing what we do and has eliminated the need for increasing head count is exactly what you're describing, right, but that's an intentional process done for you, white glove. That's unusual. That's not something that I hear very much at all in the CRM world. When you, when you stepped into that direction, did you? Did you have? You have any concern or fear? Hey, I don't know if this is going to scale. I don't know if this is something where we can deliver the level of service we want to to more and more people.

Jason Kramer: 16:36

Well, the reality is that we're and I don't mean to sound pretentious or anything like that no. We're very picky about the type of businesses we work with. Right, because for a business to succeed with us a few things we look for, just so the listeners know we look for companies that are investing in marketing to some level. It doesn't mean it's a Google ad, it doesn't mean it's a Facebook ad, but they're doing something to invest and lead gen on a consistent basis, more than just waiting for the next referral to come in.

Jason Kramer: 17:07

The second component is they have to have at least a couple of salespeople full time. We find that if you don't have a dedicated salesperson because you and I both know selling isn't just about sending out emails and hoping someone's going to call or reply. It's about social selling, it's about getting on the phone, it's about meeting people, it's about all these other factors. Selling it's about getting on the phone, it's about meeting people, it's about all these other factors. And the third component is there has to be an understanding from leadership or maybe, depending on the business size, the owner that hey, we do have a problem and we need to address it.

Jason Kramer: 17:37

If those three things aren't there and exist, then it's very difficult, right, for us to kind of bring success to the client. Um, and you know you talk about scale. You know it's really not difficult when you have this fluid momentum, you know, and you start the journey in the conversation with the client. The other reason I went to this model, william, and just for the listeners to understand what the current model is today is you'll buy software, crm, any software, it doesn't matter. You'll buy software from a software provider, whoever it is. Then, if needed, you'll hire a consultant to help you with that software.

Jason Kramer: 18:19

Then, if you need tech support, you're going to yet another department right to help you with questions you have. And so what happens is that the original person that sold you the software, the people that are helping you figure out how to do it and implement it, and then the ongoing team that's going to help answer questions, are not the same people and they haven't been involved in those prior conversations. And so what you find happens is that there's a disconnect with trying to again solve those problems, reach those goals, because you know support might be telling you something that the implementer didn't do and should have done, right, so when you have the exact same team helping with all three of those major components, it makes a huge difference in terms of the build out, but also the results you're going to see from the implementation.

Dr. William Attaway: 19:10

I think that's wise and I love that you're thinking and encouraging your clients to think beyond today and this year, and I think that forward thinking is something that a lot of people don't lean into as much as they could. You mentioned a second ago the importance of lead generation. Thinking is something that a lot of people don't lean into as much as they could. You mentioned a second ago the importance of lead generation and I wanted to dive in there with you for just a minute, because you talk about differences between lead generation and lead nurturing activities and there's some discussion around this in the field, but I don't know that there's as clear a distinction as there should be. Can you dive into that for just a minute and how that really affects the bottom line?

Jason Kramer: 19:52

Absolutely, and it's really quite simple. So lead gen is developing a new lead, driving traffic to a website, driving traffic to a phone call, getting somebody to download a piece of content, to fill out a form, what have you and there's all different ways to do that. We talked before about trade shows. That's lead gen going there and meeting new people. What companies often fail to do and, by the way, a lot of businesses are investing tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars into lead gen but what they fail to do is to nurture those leads.

Jason Kramer: 20:25

So the people that don't say hey, William, this sounds awesome, I want to buy today, let's go, and you're closing deals within hours and not days and not months and years. There's a lot of people that aren't ready to buy, but that doesn't mean that they don't want to buy from you. It's not that they're not interested, it's just not the right time. And so what we focus on is purely the lead nurturing. So think of it as a line kind of in the sand, Right, and actually even a better example would be a door right to a house, open it and start to walk through.

Jason Kramer: 21:06

My company invites them in, sits them on the couch, gets to know them, builds a rapport, builds a relationship and brings them on the tour of the house to show them all the wonderful things. Marketing agencies and lead gen teams don't do that piece. They just get the person to the front door and hopefully they open it. And so, without that lead nurturing, what often we see is that the people you spent a lot of money and time to acquire as a lead will most likely buy from your competitor because you got in front of them at the critical moment when they decide, yes, hey, william, let's go forward.

Jason Kramer: 21:38

And, by the way, that may not be you reaching out or me reaching out to somebody, and that's why it's important to have a CRM that can track website activity and can alert the sales team. Hey, william's been sort of dormant, but he's just came back to the website. By the way, he didn't fill out a form, but because we're tracking his activity, we see he came to the website, was looking at this particular service or product. You, as the salesperson, probably should call William today, because there's obviously some signal that he's back and he's interested in something, and so that's fundamentally important. And I will say to any business out there and this is kind of a bold thing to say, william, but if you're spending money, a significant amount of money, on lead gen and you're not doing the lead nurturing, you're really leaving a lot of money on the table.

Dr. William Attaway: 22:23

So what are some tools that you can use to nurture leads once you have them in your system?

Jason Kramer: 22:30

So there's a few things and they're all very kind of siloed in the sense that there's specific methods to do this right. So, as I mentioned before, it's not just about sending emails and blasting people and putting them on a newsletter. Email is one component, but email has to be personalized, it has to be written, from a human right. We don't want to rely on AI just kind of write all of our messaging, even though it's really easy to do these days. So email is one piece, right. And determining what the cadence, the follow-up, should be Typically what we tell clients is that if you have, let's say, a one-year long sales cycle, you want to be following up at least a minimum of once a month with that person. So a lot of it's factors on what are you selling, how expensive is the service of the product, what is the buying process. It's a few different factors. Nothing complicated to figure out, but email is certainly one component. Nothing complicated to figure out, but email is certainly one component. Since 85% of our business is B2B. We love LinkedIn as a tool, right? So having the salespeople reach out on LinkedIn, send an invite, connect, maybe they follow the page of the person, they comment that they like something or they share something with them on LinkedIn, again, trying to build rapport. The one thing I love about LinkedIn is that most people that have LinkedIn not everybody, of course has the app on their phone. So if you message them or do something, they're going to get a notification that you were kind of interacting, versus email to kind of get buried.

Jason Kramer: 23:56

And then the third component is the phone. I know a lot of salespeople that might be listening are intimidated to pick up the phone or like oh, I don't want to call, it's a Monday, I don't want to bother somebody, I don't want to call on a Friday and whatever other reason. But there's also a large percentage of salespeople that love to be on the phone and really enjoy that. And I would say, picking up the phone and you try somebody, you leave a voicemail message, you have an email template ready to go.

Jason Kramer: 24:22

Hey, william, I just sent you an email about XYZ, right? So, for example, I'll give one to help framework this. We know that and I'll just say you know, use one of them. I'll use the initials HS. Everybody can figure out what CRM we're talking about. A lot of people we're talking to have that platform right and they may or may not be using all of its features, so I'll have different emails. Hey, we noticed you installed this. We have tools to know when they installed it. We know that you installed this about six months ago, a year ago. These are some of the things you should be seeing as milestones already with the platform.

Jason Kramer: 24:59

Are your sales team and marketing team seeing these results? If not, let us know. Maybe we can help and then I'll see if they open that email, if they go to the website, and then a couple of days later I'll be calling and following up. Hey, william, I sent you an email a couple of days ago. You know, I saw you check some things out, want to see what questions you had, so I could personally introduce myself and answer those questions.

Jason Kramer: 25:19

Right, short emails, not trying to sell all the amazing things we do with CRM or other things. It's really about. We've identified you might have a potential problem and we believe we might be able to help solve that problem, but we're not going to know until we talk, and that's what we're trying to achieve is getting on the phone, having that conversation. So those are the three fundamental things. If you have social, if it's B2B, that's a great tool.

Jason Kramer: 25:46

Phone call, email and then the other thing I'll just add to that is you might be saying well, if you're listening, who's going to write all this content? Right? What should I say on LinkedIn? So we always recommend for the sales team or the sales leader to be working with the marketing team so that the language can be coexistingexisting. Right, because if the marketing team is spending a lot of time positioning the business, um, the tone, the voice of the business, that should carry through to what the sales team is saying, right? Um, same vernacular, same, all those styles, um, again, you wanted to be in the salesperson's voice, of course, but that's the thing. Also a misstep too, where listeners today could, and even marketing agencies that might, be listening too. Are you sharing that information with the sales leaders of the organizations you're helping drive leads? Are you sharing all that content with them so they understand what it is you're saying about the business, but how you're saying it?

Dr. William Attaway: 26:41

You know I love the integration of that. So often I watch companies silo and what's going on? Marketing doesn't touch or talk. They don't talk to what's going on in sales and both of them are really independent of what's going on from the owner just does their thing and builds their area and there's not that integration. But I think to have a business with integrity means that all the pieces are working together and that they all sound the same and I love that you talk about that and how your CRM solution can help to be a solution to this problem.

Jason Kramer: 27:21

Yeah, and the other piece too, beyond just the content, which I think is another important factor is that and there's lots of CRMs that can do this and the sales are like, hey, you're giving us garbage. If you gave us better leads we'd be able to close them, and so it's like this battle back and forth. But the reality is that if you're not tracking the origin of that lead they came from this trade show, they came from this specific Google ad, from Facebook, wherever they came from direct mail, there's all these different things. We have clients that do multiple different streams of marketing channels. Point being, we need to push that information back to the marketing team to say, out of 52 leads, we had 10 opportunities, we won two and we lost eight. Okay, so maybe, even though we had like a high number of leads, maybe they're not qualified, Maybe they're not the right type of leads, right? How do we fix that? How do we get better quality leads? Or we come to the conclusion guess what? That marketing channel really isn't a good fit for us, right? We thought Facebook or whatever was going to be.

Jason Kramer: 28:34

Great is generally leads, but it's not the type of people we want or need to sell to, and so that's you know, and I always look at it as like the stock market right or an investment, William. So in my eyes, if I'm investing you know, even $1,000 a month in marketing, I want to see ROI. I want to receive a return on that investment. I want to know that new sales that I brought in were over $1,000. Because if they weren't, then I'm really losing money on that investment. It's not generating any additional income, and so I always think of it as why would I give money to my financial advisor to keep investing if my reports always showed a negative return? I probably wouldn't do that Wisely so.

Jason Kramer: 29:20

Right, right, but a lot of like to your point. Businesses don't see it that way, right? They're like oh, marketing is important and while my competitors are doing marketing, I'm going to allocate two percent of my revenue, whatever it is to, you know, to to marketing, and I'm just going to do it. And because that's what I need to do. And so you keep spending this money often where you don't evaluate that return on investment and the struggle there. I'll just add, because I know we have a lot of agencies listening Agencies are like oh, it sounds great, jason, but we're busy running our agency.

Jason Kramer: 29:55

We're building websites, doing lead gen, doing all these things to drive traffic to the client's website. We don't have time to get involved with CRM or understand how to do all the things you're talking about, and that's where we fit in. So we white label everything we're talking about today to agencies. So we bring our entire team into an agency and the agency hey look, we got this, like you said, this new shiny object, right, this new part of our team that can help with the CRM can help nurture the leads and it's really a win-win in two ways. One, the agency now has a more sticky client because the client is going to start seeing better results with the lead gen Okay, and they're going to be connected into that idea that it's not just about lead gen, it's about nurturing leads. It also generates an additional revenue stream because we do a rev share with the agencies we work with. So now they're making some additional revenue, really doing almost zero work because we're doing all the work, and then it makes the client happy, which is the most important thing, because now the client can have an organized way to see things.

Jason Kramer: 31:00

So, really quick story, just the other day we got a new referral from a pool company that does in-ground pools, spas, hot tubs, all that stuff, and they're doing basically what we talked about struggling to know what the marketing team is doing that they're paying a lot of money to and they know they're doing work and they're generating leads, but they can't manage it. Everything they get is in a spreadsheet. There's no follow-up, right. How do we follow up? How do we keep track of things? So this is going to be a big, pivotal change for them. They've been in business for, you know, nearly like 20 years, right, and so imagine now, all of a sudden, having insights and understanding of what is working, what isn't working and making things more efficient that is so practical, and I know the folks who are listening are just leaning into this and saying, okay, I can see how that could benefit what we're doing ago.

Dr. William Attaway: 32:00

You're continually learning, you're continually leveling up and three years, five years from now, cultivice is going to need you to lead at a different level. Yet how do you stay on top of your game? How do you level up with the new skills that your team and your company are going to need you to have?

Jason Kramer: 32:19

Yeah, so I mean, it's a few things. Obviously, it's evaluating the market and what's happening in the marketplace. We talked briefly about AI today, so that's a common question. I asked a lot on these types of podcasts and even just from clients, and how should I be using it? Should I be using this tool, staying abreast with technology? I, for one, do a lot of experimentation with technology, so I'll try tools myself you know out for the company and give them a run and see how they work.

Dr. William Attaway: 32:51

Nice.

Jason Kramer: 32:51

You know and see if it makes sense, and if I'm frustrated by it, then certainly one of our clients would be frustrated by it, right, that's true.

Jason Kramer: 32:59

So, you know that goes without saying. So those are two huge factors. And then the other piece is really just seeing the evolution. I think what we're going to see in the next five, 10 years certainly is going to be a lot more different software out there. Ai is going to be huge in terms of creating content. I don't think it's going to really be a huge point about, like, let's say, crm as a general.

Jason Kramer: 33:26

But even now with LinkedIn you know, for those listeners and you may have seen it on LinkedIn too, william there's new AI on LinkedIn. You know, over the last, you know several months, where you know you're reaching out to somebody, they're giving a suggestion of what to write or they're able to prompt different things in there. So I think those tools will be helpful. Hopefully it encourages people to be more conversational on these platforms. But at the end of the day, it really comes down to understanding that software and technology and I say this all the time does not solve any problem. It really doesn't. You have to have the problem solved by a human that understands what the problem is and is that the right technology or multiple pieces of technology are needed to solve that problem. And so just a really quick example of that would be hey, like I want to do some social media right, and you know I want to get my word out there and create content. Well, there's a gazillion different content tools that can develop content right and put content out there and publish it and automate it and all these things.

Jason Kramer: 34:27

But what's the strategy, right? How are you going to use those tools to get to that goal? And what is the goal and how do you measure that goal? Is it just more likes? Is it more downloads? Is it more comments? And so you have to have these pieces in place and I think that's what is always going to be the sticky point, william, for as technology grows, is that the fundamental goals and needs and process still need to be there. The tool is just maybe a quicker way to get there, right, so right, I mean, we start off with horse and buggy, we went to cars and now we're in electric cars. Right, we still went from point to A. It's just a different way of getting from point A.

Dr. William Attaway: 35:03

I like that, as you continue to learn, as you continue to grow and develop, is there a book that has made a big difference in your journey, jason, that you would recommend to everybody listening that, if they haven't read this, this was a game changer for you?

Jason Kramer: 35:25

I think in terms of operationally for business, there's been certainly a lot of books. I've read A couple that come to mind. The first one is Profit First. You know that book okay.

Jason Kramer: 35:34

So for those that listen, it's all about how to really kind of like silo your bank accounts for the business and how to put money away before you even spend any money, and that was like a huge pivotal thing. I've been following that process and that was like a huge pivotal thing. I've been following that process and my bank was like why do you need seven checking accounts for your business? I'm like there's a method, Don't worry about it.

Into / Outro: 35:54

I'm not crazy, that's right.

Jason Kramer: 35:58

And so I still have that today and that's been really helpful. Another one was the I believe it was the pumpkin patch, was it? It was called um, and basically it's the idea of, like you know, the, the farmers in the world that grow these like giant, huge pumpkins that you see like every year for halloween, perhaps, depending on where you live, right? Um, like that's not just done by like accident, right, there's like a methodical plan and like process involved to get those pumpkins to be giant. They don't have like some magical seed, and so the idea behind that book was about you know, how do you put the process into place for your business to create that like you know magical thing, right, that people want to see and they want to be. You know they want to touch and they want to feel and experience, and so those are the two ones that kind of come to mind.

Jason Kramer: 36:49

But, yeah, I've written, you know, not written, but read you know a ton of business books and I will encourage people to read them. And I will say this not every book is perfect, you know, like books that you and I might love, someone else doesn't love. But you know, there's the good thing is there's so many out there and a lot of those business books are relatively short. I mean you can read them in a week or two, so it's not like a long novel.

Dr. William Attaway: 37:14

That would take you a long time. Jason, this has been fascinating and I'm so grateful that you have shared so freely from what you've learned so far and how you help businesses and business owners, including in the agency world, to do what we do better. I know people are going to want to stay connected to you and continue to learn from you. What is the best way for them to do that?

Jason Kramer: 37:37

So I appreciate you asking that and again I just want to say, before we end, really generally, thank you for the conversation. I really had a great time. Before we end really generally, thank you for the conversation. I really had a great time, Great questions.

Jason Kramer: 37:48

I think a lot of the listeners I know would grab a lot of little details out of this to help them. The easiest way, since you asked and thank you for asking, is to go to aftertheleadcom. Aftertheleadcom just sounds like it sounds. My LinkedIn connection is there to connect with me on LinkedIn Happy to connect. There's a download on there for a playbook I wrote. It's a 14 page playbook on how to nurture leads, so it goes through step by step how to leverage your CRM. I don't want to say regardless of what CRM, but it will work for most CRMs to leverage the, as we call them. The plays in that playbook on how to use that technology to nurture the leads that you're spending a lot of time and money to generate, and there's some other information there too and resources that I think your listeners would find valuable. That play along with the topics we talked about today.

Dr. William Attaway: 38:38

Brilliant, Jason. Thank you again. I've so enjoyed this conversation and I look forward to seeing what's next for you.

Jason Kramer: 38:46

Sounds good. Thanks, william, take care.

Dr. William Attaway: 38:51

Thanks for joining me for this episode today. As we wrap up, I'd love for you to do two things. First, subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode, and if you find value here, I'd love it if you would rate it and review it. That really does make a difference in helping other people to discover this podcast. Second, if you don't have a copy of my newest book, Catalytic Leadership, I'd love to put a copy in your hands. If you go to catalyticleadershipbookcom, you can get a copy for free. Just pay the shipping so I can get it to you and we'll get one right out.

Dr. William Attaway: 39:28

My goal is to put this into the hands of as many leaders as possible. This book captures principles that I've learned in 20 plus years of coaching leaders in the entrepreneurial space, in business, government, nonprofits, education and the local church. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn to keep up with what I'm currently learning and thinking about. And if you're ready to take a next step with a coach to help you intentionally grow and thrive as a leader, I'd be honored to help you. Just go to catalyticleadershipnet to book a call with me. Stay tuned for our next episode next week. Until then, as always, leaders choose to be catalytic.

Into / Outro: 40:11

Thanks for listening to Catalytic Leadership with Dr William Attaway. Be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss the next episode. Want more? Go to catalyticleadershipnet.