This episode is all about CRM systems. Have fun listening.
Further links
Introduction
Welcome to another episode of Switch on your brain first and then technology.
Today we have a topic that I am asked about quite openly and quite often, namely the topic of CRM, as it is so nicely called in new German, Customer Relationship Management System.
In other words, systems where you can manage all your customer contacts professionally, which I have already introduced myself a few times in organizations. I’m a huge fan of CRM and I’ve invited a guest today, dear ALF Ruppert and dear Alf. Ruppert is the owner, CEO and founder of iOS Experts. Please correct me. Am I making a mistake, dear Alf? We’ve known each other for a long time, that’s why we’re on first-name terms. Of course, you are on first-name terms as usual. And dear Alf Ruppert is the one who provides me with my CRM. Daylite, which I work with. But for those of you who are now thinking “Oh, here comes a Daylite advertising event.
No, it’s not meant to be that, but rather an example. On the subject of Daylite, however, I would simply like to talk to Alf about it from practice for practice What is a CRM, for whom does it make sense? Why does it make sense?
And that’s why I’m going to start with a provocative thesis. My thesis Dear Alf, it doesn’t matter which CRM you work with, the main thing is that you have one.
How do you see it?
Yes, that’s a good start. Having one is better than not having one and then it really depends. The term CRM is very, very broad and has various different focuses. It always depends on what you want to achieve with a tool. Basically, we have a lot of contact with customers who are already trying to live their CRM with the Apple address book. If you somehow realize that it’s not a CRM at all, you don’t really realize it. But then you probably notice that things are missing here and there or try to achieve something that can’t be done with it.
That’s just the lower entry point, where we also talk to people who already think a bit in CRM unconsciously. And somehow make do with it beforehand. What is the difference between an Apple or Windows contact address book and a CRM from your point of view, Alf?
is a contact address book. That’s exactly the limit, that I say I have something where I can look up a phone number. But as soon as it comes to the famous transaction data, i.e. when did I send an e-mail to whom?
What did I discuss with someone last time?
That’s where it starts, where an address book simply no longer fits. And that’s where we notice a lot of trickery. If you then look at the data of a non-CRM user when they start to work, they have often tried to rape their Outlook or Apple address book in order to accommodate certain things and only use them in areas where they don’t belong, where something else can be mapped.
And when I look at it now, when I say yes, I get the idea that it might be a good idea to link things.
What elements do you think belong in a good CRM system?
What modules should such a CRM system have?
So let’s stick to simple contact management, where it’s important for me to know the customer history. So we very often have contact with customers who might get in touch again after years or so.
And then it’s really nice to see who discussed what with whom and when. I’ve also fallen into this problem a bit myself. What we know with the advent of smartphones is that you can’t remember all your friends’ phone numbers because they’re all stored on your phone.
I don’t even know my wife’s phone number by heart. Exactly, I feel the same way. I still have my parents-in-law’s phone number, I’ve memorized it because I used to call them all the time, so I still know it by heart, and my father’s phone number, because it’s the old one from when I was a child, those are the only two phone numbers besides my own that I have in my head, not all the others.
Yes, exactly, exactly, exactly similar situations for me and it’s the same with the CRM story or when you start making contacts. You have one. In the meantime, I’ve trained myself to the point where I no longer burden myself with all these little things that are often important in everyday sales.
So maybe I remember that two years ago my counterpart talked about going on a trip around the world or sailing or playing golf or something and I have some kind of connection.
And I don’t have to go to that trouble anymore, because I have the comfort of knowing that whenever I speak to someone consciously, I always look them up beforehand and see when I last spoke to them and what I wrote down. And then I always know exactly. What I find totally brilliant, which for me is also one of the most important criteria in the selection of a CRM system, is the interface between the e-mail programs and the CRM system, because I really appreciate the fact that I simply have a bar in my e-mail system where I can say, I want to transfer the e-mail to the CRM system so that I have it, but not just now. What I also often see as a mistake is that everything is poured into the CRM and I can make very conscious decisions.
Is this email going in now, do I need it again or do I not need it? And then I’m perhaps a little more extreme than others, but I always say that what I don’t need is deleted immediately. So, and what I need again later, I put in the CRM and then I don’t have so many search results, but have the things with me.
And I think that’s a difference, because if I have an address book, I don’t have the e-mails in it again, I have to search for them separately.
I always find that so important in CRM. I don’t know what your view on the subject is. That’s one, is one. I can now briefly do a bit of advertising for the product, which is exactly – all good – that it integrates into the mail program.
In other words, I can do as you say, I can go there and selectively send emails. I think that’s absolutely fine for someone who is a lone wolf. The right strategy. If you work in a team, you have to be a bit careful again, because there are different assessments, where one person says yes, I think this is right or not, and one person is a bit more reliable and the other not.
I also like to recommend switching on the automatic system, along the lines of the one email that a certain colleague has forgotten, the important one is then completely correct. A very, very good point to say. Before I have nothing in the CRM, I’d rather have too much.
That’s absolutely right, because I’ve seen it time and time again: I introduced a CRM system in the field at Tchibo’s Cafe Service, for example, and was able to accompany the process at Coca-Cola to a certain extent as part of the iPad rollout.
And whenever we have this topic of CRM and Coca-Cola, for example, works with Salesforce, which is a different CRM system, but ultimately the basis is the same, that I say I have a system where, as a sales representative, I always expect to have all the information about the customer in it.
I always want to have all the sales, I want to have all the history, but I don’t feel like hammering all that stuff in somehow. As a sales representative, that usually means that you expect everything to be automatically transferred to the CRM by osmosis.
And of course it’s good to say okay, I have a certain automatic system in place sometimes, so you don’t have to think about it. And if you’re in a manageable organization, like I am with my assistant, for example, then it can make perfect sense.
I’m a big fan of saying that I reduce my search hits by simply deleting an insane amount. I’m a bit of a freak sometimes. I’m also a fan of zero inbox, where I say my inbox is empty in the evening and when I send an email that I’ve now sent it with the invitation link, for example. So, after our interview, the email is deleted because I don’t need it afterwards. It’s just things like that.
There is always a balance to be found. But exactly what you said, and for me this is one of the key decision criteria for a CRM system, which for me was also a key decision criterion to say, the integration between the e-mail system and between the CRM and not only on the desktop, but even on mobile. Because the system you have also has its own client. This means that I also have the option of connecting an e-mail when I’m on the iPhone or iPad, I have to say.
As I said, not a promotional event. So don’t get me wrong, but that was very, very important for me in the process.
What is your experience, Alf? And you have a few years of experience. Still on the subject of CRM.
What are the most important decision criteria for you?
Which CRM should I choose now?
In your opinion, what are the most important decision criteria that someone should consider when choosing their CRM?
So it’s very important, or, if you look at it from a higher level, I think, where does the program support me? CRM often has different aspects. It always depends, and it often depends on the scale. If a large company introduces it, then it may be motivated by a desire to evaluate data, to have more control in the management.
When I’m out and about in small and medium-sized companies, wherever we look after a lot of customers. That’s actually where the focus is, that’s what you should pay attention to: how does the product support me in my day-to-day work?
So what benefits can I derive from this to improve my day-to-day work?
Am very Amazon would be understood, but you go to the customer, have made conversation, then I go out and now I also have to feed the CRM, because it seems to be that I say, I go to the customer and already have, when I’m at the door, the benefit that I somehow draw information from it and and and. To make my everyday life, my working day easier.
And it’s important that the way the data comes in, as we’ve just talked about, that I’m supported by the system and have the feeling that I’m a slave to the system, that I’m being pushed into something like this. For example, I’m a total freak, right to the point.
I am approached quite often. I’m also a member of the German Speakers Association, the Association of German Speakers or German-speaking Austria. Switzerland is of course also a member. And it’s often the case that my colleagues say, “Oh, but I work with Zoho or other internet-based systems, I don’t know what it’s like for you. I’m regularly out with customers, I travel a lot by train and when I’m in other countries, South Korea or even in less exotic countries, I usually have pretty brilliant internet. And I’m always online.
In Germany, I always say welcome to new territory. I often find myself in situations where I don’t have an internet connection. And we’ve even taken it to such an extreme, for example working with Salesforce in this project at Coca-Cola.
You know better than I do, dear Alf, Salesforce is basically an online system. That means it only actually works if I have an Internet connection. Coca-Cola spent a lot of money and made Salesforce offline-capable, because they let me talk them into it and said yes, you’re right, it’s nice if I have an Internet connection, but a CRM system, that’s right, if the customer is outside and he’s there and he doesn’t have an Internet connection, be it during the conversation or before or after.
They do that two or three times, they don’t want to do that shit. Yes, then I do it at home and sign in at home.
Yes, I know.
After 6, 7, 8 conversations, what else did I discuss in the third conversation? I have no idea.
If I have a CRM system where I can just plug my iPad into the steering wheel once and then quickly hammer things in and if I don’t have a connection, screw it. The moment it has an Internet connection, it synchronizes. So that’s a very important criterion for me, except and I think that’s a difference if you have an organization where you’re only in the office, where you always have a fixed and stable Internet connection, I think then you can.
Working well with the internet-based CRM system. When you’re outside, that’s my personal experience. I’m happy when I have internet, but I often don’t.
I know how much your view on the subject is dear Alf?
Yes, I have to agree with that too. I never thought we’d get into a situation where this, Dayllite has always been available offline and that was also a big killer argument. 15, 18 years ago, when we started with it, because the expansion was even worse and it was a bit worse all over the world.
In the meantime, it is almost shameful to say that it is now a sales advantage in the German market, that we have the situation that this is an advantage, because we really still have differences there. And that is, that is a technically interesting aspect.
Many people also think that Daylite is a cloud system and many people think that cloud is always a browser. So that’s another aspect for me. There are more and more browsers, it’s getting more and more convenient, more and more beautiful. But having a real app, whether it’s on the iPad or in some other way, just brings you back to the topic of It has to be fun, it has to be quick, it has to support me and it has to be frustration-free.
This is simply easier to achieve if I have my own proper program.
Yes, usability. Exactly. So also absolutely right.
So again, as you say, when I have Internet, I also notice it myself with other services. So when I look, I like working with Padlet. Great recommendations from my colleague Bernd Braun – I can highly recommend both Bernd Braun and Padlet.
And we had a situation where we just had a Professional Member Dinner at the German Speakers Association convention and we used a padlet to collect the best ideas from our experienced colleagues, and there’s almost no internet. So now you would have been in the browser and you would have been the second winner. That’s what we did. We downloaded the app for the Mac beforehand and whenever I had an internet connection, my wife entered things in the app. I had my iPad with me. I always saw that it arrived on my iPad with a bit of a time delay, because whenever I noticed in the background that I had Internet, it distributed it accordingly. Incidentally, that’s another reason why I always say when you introduce an iPad to the field, always with a SIM card, always with a SIM card. That’s what people say. Why can I, I have WLAN, I can connect it that way.
Yes, but I have to actively connect to a WLAN, then you don’t think about it. And then you don’t have the data there. And if you have a SIM card in there, we had this discussion at Coca-Cola, among others, to say yes, it costs a hundred more per device. But the sales representative doesn’t want to think about when he goes online or doesn’t go online. It has to be automated. And what I think is brilliant about Daylite, would you like to explain again how the interaction between the offline cloud service application and your browser access works? So you have all the options, what is the idea, the logic, the interaction between these components, Alf?
Yes, that’s what’s… somehow a great achievement from the manufacturer of Marketcircle, this sync that they have written. They’ve updated it a few times over the course of its lifetime and now they’ve just released a completely new version. It works in such a way that you have all your data on your computer. This means that even if I work with several people in the system, I have three users, so to speak, then I have three times their database on the computer, which also makes searches faster in the system, because I don’t go outside via my network connection, but I actually always work locally and then I make some change there, then the database detects that there is a change in the background and syncs it directly, that’s the new thing, now for a few months.
In the past, it was always an interval where you said that every five minutes it would do a synchronization in the background, and now it just goes up to the server, which is then in the cloud, and from there it is pulled down again, so to speak, to the other two users, if I now assume the three-user constellation, and so you always have your local data, so to speak, and everyone has a copy of this data, which is in the cloud, so to speak, which then has another advantage.
Let’s say I lose my device and then I can say centrally that I want to delete the data on this device again and buy a new MacBook and connect once and completely download the data again. Depending on the size, this is also a process that takes a few minutes and then I’m back on the road locally and only sync the changes. Absolutely.
And what I just said about the web browser and usability – you mentioned earlier that the usability on the MacBook is better. You notice that on the iPhone at the latest. So working with a web browser-based solution on the iPhone. Have fun.
So even on the large now 14 max Pro Schnirbelschnurz. It’s just a small display and if you have to type something, the keyboard gets in the way again. At the latest then.
So we need reading glasses now and then it gets kind of difficult. And that’s why I’m such a freak that I say I generally always need a system, no matter what it is, including notes.
So if it’s also non-customer related notes, for example anything that’s condensed notes, I work with Daylight. I work with OneNote for everything that is not customer-related notes. Because I say, for example, that I took notes from the presentations at the convention, sometimes on my iPad Mini, because on one day I was only there with the small iPad Mini and my extra keyboard.
The next day, I just happened to have my iPad 12.9 inch at hand, so I continued writing on it. Then I took a photo on my iPhone in the workshop because I find it better to take photos than with an iPad. Yes, then I quickly added the photo to the OneNozt note on the iPhone and everything synchronized. And it’s the same with Daylight, when I say I’m out and about and I make a note, it’s synchronized.
And that’s always the case, where I say I’m someone who says the others show colorful pictures. I show people how to use technology in practice and that’s simply the difference where I say, if you really. I’ve been in sales for over 33 years now and I say that what’s relevant is simply what you do when you’re really out there a lot, so it’s always different when you say you have an organization that just sits at a desk, they have a 28-inch monitor in front of them, you can now think about web solutions. And what I also like about Daylite is that there is now also a web interface.
Would you like to say three more words about when this makes sense and why you introduced it?
Yes, we have Daylite, which is actually a pretty complete package that covers many areas, from address management to projects and sales opportunities, I can do a lot in it. One of our specialties is that we don’t just sell it, we help our customers to get it up and running, but we also make extensions that we offer worldwide and as part of the Plus Package, where we have all our extensions under one roof and as part of this package we now also offer browser access to Daylite.
You have to limit that a bit. Daylite is such a great tool and has so many possibilities, of course you can’t just transfer it to the web browser, but the most important elements, such as contacts, addresses, address management, this history we talked about, the calendar, projects and tasks, we already have them in there, even in the browser.
And that’s particularly interesting because I’m completely device-independent.
In other words, I could theoretically log in somewhere when I’m on someone else’s computer and need to do something quickly or look something up while I’m on vacation. And we realize that because we are focused on Apple users, but we always have customers who have a few places where there might only be a Windows computer for whatever reason.
What is that?
Or – I’ll tell you a very popular story – you might have a secretarial service that offers a great service and this secretarial service has decided to use Windows at some point and if I now want to give them access to a database so that they can enter an appointment and update an address for me, then that’s exactly the starting point where it’s interesting to offer this via a browser.
That’s exactly how I do it, for example. I work together with a VPA. Virtual Private Assistant So if you don’t know the idea, read Timothy Ferris’ 4-hour week was one of the two life-changing books for my business, along with Head Beats Capital, and the idea that he says there are virtual private assistants who also have a different cost structure in Eastern Europe. And so I’ve had a virtual private assistant for twelve years now.
He has a higher level of education than me. Dr. Miroslav Džunda. I’m just a piddly MBA. He has a doctorate in business administration. I’ve had that for twelve years. Then I have a 30-hour fixed quota, and it cost me €9 an hour for ten or eleven years at the beginning.
It now costs me €11 an hour. If I need more, I can scale it up, I can scale it down. What it does, for example, is that I regularly send out newsletters and then these auto reply messages always come back. And many auto reply messages have a signature at the bottom. So what does it do? He takes the Auto Reply messages, goes into Daylight via the browser interface and maintains the address data of people who have registered for my newsletter, where I previously only had the email address, so he maintains the contact addresses, website, address, other telephone numbers and things like that, and that’s something I’ve organized via an assistant, and it’s brilliant. You can do that in the.
You can even click on it in the software and simply transfer it to my CRM system and distribute it via the browser interface. I think that’s really brilliant.
Incidentally, I also have a lot to say about the interface between the CRM system and the newsletter system, what are the best practices for you? Between the topic?
I may have addresses in the newsletter system and I have addresses in my CRM system like that. How are your recommendations everywhere. It’s best if it’s connected. So that’s another extension that we’ve developed over and over again. We’ve done it with Mailchimp because they’re relatively popular and we’ve developed an approach to say I can maintain my newsletter list in my CRM and can also send people from the CRM, there are actually always people who meet offline and someone says send me a newsletter.
It’s not just always – help – offline – when something happens. So, and then of course I can also say there, I create someone and add a corresponding keyword to them. So that they are added to the newsletter list.
So I can also play them locally from my side and what’s even more interesting is that sales don’t stop or start just when I have interaction with the newsletter, so I’m sending something out now. Now people click on a certain link and we get this information back to Daylite. In other words, I can then say Give me a list of people who clicked on this specific link in the last newsletter.
Yes, totally brilliant. So you have this connection with Mailchimp. What if I now have a different newsletter system?
I think there’s another way of linking it, which is somehow Zapier … I don’t know how it’s pronounced, but I think there’s another possibility. Zapier is the all-purpose weapon, because I’d say it’s an issue that we recognized very early on, a problem that many in the digital world are still running into.
So we’ve been in there for a long time. I imagine you have too. We use lots of different tools, which makes sense. So the specialization has somehow progressed further and further. There used to be this approach, in the nineties, that everything had to run in one program and then you realized that for a few euros you could somehow have very special programs and services that do a task very well. Yes, that has the great advantage that I have lots of great tools that make my day easier. And that then has a disadvantage at some point.
But that I start to distribute data and have to, maybe I want to get it together somehow. Yes, the simplest thing is that at some point I use an email system for this and there are not interfaces between all systems everywhere and Zapier is just a product that says, and they have also reached a certain size and relevance that many people, many manufacturers of systems say, I’ll make sure that my product is Zapier-compatible and then I can build rules on this Zapier, so to speak. I always like to explain this, sometimes I have to explain what Zapier is, there is a competitor who now also wants to enter the business sector as a building block.
That’s IFTTT, that means exactly so if that happens, then please do that and they were very strong or have a big foot in the smart home area, so smart. What I want to say is, if I open the door, then turn down the heating or something.
And that’s Zapier in business. So I say, if there’s a new newsletter subscriber in my newsletter system, please talk to the CRM and tell them what their name is and add them there. I think that’s great. I also use it via Zapier, for example, or how is it pronounced correctly.
But I don’t know how to pronounce it. So I’m going to say Zapier, but I’m not sure if I’m right. So yes. So what I also have, for example, is when I have a new LinkedIn contact, then this new LinkedIn contact is automatically entered into Daylite. So these are things like you say. I also think that’s an extremely important decision criterion.
I wouldn’t actually buy a system today that doesn’t have a Zapier interface. So because, as you said, it’s already, I’ll call it the industry standard for networking, like this hub, this API, i.e. Advanced Program Interface, i.e. interface standard, that you say, “Man, that’s the central hub where you say that if a solution says I speak Zapier, then it’s almost like you can say okay with almost all solutions, if I enter something somewhere in one system, it’s entered into the other system, if I apply something, something is output.
And these things and that’s exactly what you’re saying, I don’t think anyone can manage this Swiss army knife that you say you can have one system that can do everything, you’re always with SAP and I say that’s easy, then it has such a high level of complexity and individual solutions are always better.
But before you get to Zapier, you have lots and lots of additional modules. For me, that was one of the reasons we said that. Of course, integrating your own is even better. I’ll tell you which ones I use, i.e. which ones are totally brilliant for me.
On the one hand, there’s the issue of integration with email, which we’ve already discussed. What I find brilliant is the calendar booking tool, so I can say that I have the option, if someone wants to make an appointment with me, then I can simply say book an appointment online.
I use the theme of the map module to say I have an appointment in Munich. Please show me the customers who are within a radius of 40 kilometers where I can also make an appointment. I use boards, so I have Kanban boards and can display things in a structured form.
I use the telephony integration. I also have a landline phone here. I have it mainly because when I make outgoing calls, I have a headset and then I can just click on it in Daylite and it dials the contact for me. So these are the modules that I mainly use.
I get the photos and contacts of my colleagues from LinkedIn via Xing. It’s always great, I think, to get my photos of customers via the interface. These are the modules that I use the most.
Would you perhaps like to add something about the modules from your point of view and also tell us about other modules and the basic idea behind these modules, Alf? Yes, we wanted to pick up exactly where we left off. It’s no longer the case that you can fit everything into one program, but we looked at the two perspectives and said. Where can we perhaps support our colleagues in Canada a little while they take care of our basic things, such as ensuring that the sync runs faster and that everything is stable and that the new operating systems are always all supported, and have a few things with Kanban, was a topic where we said that this is now simply the new way to work much more visually with tasks in many areas and then made a whole board variant.
We have also done very special things. There’s an area in our budget where it’s a bit about costing. I often get customers thinking, I’m just a one-man show or there are only two of us, so I don’t need anything to track my time with.
And time tracking is actually more of a waste product for us. So if I somehow make appointments with people in my calendar today, like we have an appointment today, I’m creating costs at that moment because I’m putting my time into it. And I’ll give you a very specific example where I used this. I was at Transgourmet, which is the former Rewe Food Service, I had a project that ran for over a year, where I was the external project manager for the iPad introduction at Transgourmet.
We introduced just over 400 iPads and I was responsible for the entire project management from A to Z. I was practically an external project manager and we had a deal that I would simply bill my monthly expenses, the days I worked and the hours I worked, once a month. That would have been a huge effort. That’s what I’ve done now with Time and Budget.
I simply defined appointment categories and said okay, there’s a Transgourmet appointment, Transgourmet preparation and Transgourmet follow-up category.
I then differentiated again between invoiced and not invoiced. So there are things where you say you invoice them to the customer and there are things where you say it’s a preparation and for reasons of goodwill or service. I always say over-devlivers, I didn’t invoice everything and then once a month I got a report out at the touch of a button, where I said, these were the expenses I had in total, of which I invoiced these and those and then I got them, I use Fastbill, you have other systems too.
Then I just transferred it to Fastbill once and an invoice came out and I think that’s brilliant, because I can transfer it immediately to my billing system and it generates an invoice for the customer. I look backwards in my Daylite to see how much turnover I have made with the customer and vice versa.
For example, I regularly work for the cooperative association and I have regular invoices. And I was on the phone with them the other day and I saw that all their invoices had been paid except for the penultimate one. I saw that in this link, and I said that to my contact person.
And you always pay cool, why didn’t you pay the penultimate invoice and say, yes, you, I approved it, so I gave it to the accounts department. You, it’s not my fault, I’ll check. Then it somehow got lost internally.
Three days later I had the money in my account. And that’s one of those things. I probably wouldn’t have noticed otherwise.
And these interfaces, that’s simply the thing where I say I’m a total freak, that I say it has to be done. So my incoming invoices and all these Amazon invoices, I automatically put them all in via GetMyInvoices, you probably know that you say, incoming invoices automatically out all outgoing invoices and when I look at my accounting, for example, it used to be a day then it was half a day.
Now it’s half an hour to an hour. But I’m looking at my figures and not dealing with the production of all this stuff. So that’s this whole issue, that’s the point, I’ll say, there is.
We have two areas, or if you take this time and budget as an example, that also has, if I’m on my own, I always do everything, so I’m the sales department, the accounting department, then I cover all areas and having a system that helps me as, and that’s the second aspect, for example, this time and budget extension, having a system that also shows me which activities I’ve spent how much time on, It also helps me to make better decisions, to say do I need a virtual assistant to do certain tasks for me because they take up far too much of my time and it also helps me to discipline myself a little, because people are human and always like to do what they do best and what they enjoy doing. And he will often forget a few things and if I then say, oh, I’m not doing enough distribution. And I have the opportunity to look at how much time I’ve spent on what.
I think that’s an important perspective, especially for small and micro entrepreneurs. Absolutely and precisely.
And I even tell my assistant not to calculate things manually in Excel, I can use it more productively.
So you can say that you can make an assistant like this to say hey, I want to use it as productively as possible, so and that and I always say the first step for me is always to say do I have to do it at all.
I used to do an iPad project like this for an illuminated advertising company, where we used to have the fitters fill out paper forms when they did an installation, a repair, etc. and maintenance, and then we put it on the iPad and what did we do?
The first impulse was to say, let’s take the forms we have today and put them one-to-one on the iPad. And then sometimes I’m an asshole. I said Tell me, I went through every field and said, what are you going to do with this information?
And then they looked at me and he said, “So, Heinz, do you know what we’re going to do with the field?
And then the other one said No, I don’t know about you either.
Me: ask, and if no one … You get the field.
I’ve been getting this information for 20 years, but we’ve never entered it anywhere.
Then we reduced the form from five pages to one, to the relevant ones. So that’s always an impulse for me, where I say to people, please use digitalization to say what can be removed. And when I look at Ulrik Nehammer, for example, at Coca-Cola, it was really cool.
The sales representatives, the sales consultants, thought the topic of CRM and iPad was great, right up to the point where I said after the training course: “In three months, by the way, we’ll collect your laptops.
They looked at me and said, are you crazy? Laptop? I can’t just work with an iPad.
And then Ulrik Nehammer did exactly the right thing. The CEO at the time. He said: Why do you need a laptop? And then he said yes, to fill out this Excel spreadsheet.
And then he says, “Will you sell one more crate of Coke if you fill out this Excel spreadsheet? And if there wasn’t an immediate enthusiastic yes, then he said okay, can that go away? Is this art or can it go away?
Or to say, if it has to be done, maybe the office staff can do it and you have more sales-active time. So get rid of the clutter and take the next steps. So firstly, get rid of it completely if. If not gone, can someone other than sales do it so that they have more sales-active time?
Or can it be automated by a system and can it be done by a system or can it be done by a human if not by a system?
So that’s always the issue. And first and foremost there is the realization, the realization of what I am doing and to what extent. And basically, these are all nice waste products that you can, well, if I maintain my calendar, I can actually recognize this if it is evaluated correctly and if the calendar is set up at the right time. So that’s a key issue.
And then you’ve already said that for us, too, it’s always the second, the second topic in our company is first of all to convey knowledge and then to see where we can start and where we can automate and simplify things.
And many of our extensions have emerged from this. So that I can say in an appointment that I create, with one click I have a Zoom meeting and I don’t have to change the application. So these are many, many little things. And that brings us back to what I said at the very beginning: the system has to support me on a daily basis when I have the feeling that I need it as a user.
It used to take me five clicks, I had to switch between two applications to get to the information. Then it becomes interesting. Especially for the target group, I’d say 1 to 50 companies as employees per year.
For example, I have a typical challenge that I face very often: arranging appointments. So, in addition to consulting and lectures, I have also been offering a lot of live streaming of conferences for two years now, together with my team and Emmanuel Koch.
And now, for example, we have a format in 14 days, no, next week the format. And now we have some people who are in Osnabrück at our event location, and we have some people who we connect via GoToMeeting Meeting, via Zoom, via different platforms.
Now we have to onboard them. Now we have virtual trade fair stands. We work with Expo-ip as a platform. Now we have to onboard them. So, now I’ve got it the way I want it, the setup is a bit more complex.
Now I don’t want the appointments to be blocked, but now I want them to book onboarding appointments on exactly Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday on three days this week. But it has to be in such a way that they have the opportunity to book these appointments.
If one of the five co-hosts and the 20 speakers has booked such a slot, it may no longer be available for anyone else.
This does not work with Doodle and the dates are blocked for everyone else who is not in this pool. They are not allowed to add appointments.
However, all other customers and the speakers may only make appointments on these three days.
Map that manually. So you used to need two secretaries or two assistants. Or assistants. Or assistants.
Sorry if I’m not always 100% clean on the subject of gender. I am the father of a daughter.
I am very sensitive about this topic. If it really is disrespect, it’s unintentional. So that’s such an issue. For me, for example, that’s a killer in any CRM and I think you have extremely good integration in, I don’t think it’s called Acuity Scheduling anymore, or would you like to say something about that?
Because I think the name or the company has changed. Yes, they were bought by Square as a kind of platform that helps you build an online presence.
Yes, a logical step for me, but also to take a provider of appointment management with me. They still appear under both brand names, so it doesn’t matter. Even if I’m a Square customer now, I’ve basically already integrated Activity.
But that also means that Activity no longer works, but it still works with our interfaces and Activity itself. I’d have to see for myself whether you can still buy it directly from them and I’ll have to see for myself, but I think it’s just brilliant.
So I wouldn’t have any chance of doing it any other way. And the great thing is that I used to write onboarding emails manually, I set them up once and then the onboarding email is sent immediately, followed by a reminder, then the corresponding links are sent the day before or an hour before.
It says, “What camera should they use? Make sure that you don’t have a window behind you, that you have the camera at eye level if possible and whatnot.
All things that would otherwise be written manually. All there. However, this is also a functionality that I have not yet used in Daylite.
Maybe you could say something about that. You also have the option of setting up certain workflows and communication that you always have when preparing proof of seminars, for example. I think that’s also a great strength of your system, which I’m ashamed to admit I don’t use yet.
Yes, you can, you’ve mentioned two things: the whole template issue, as you’ve now described from Activity, which you then use in your appointment booking process. That also exists in Daylite. So that is perhaps another important criterion to answer the initial question. What is important in CRM? Also to automate such recurring activities as far as possible and letter templates, e-mail templates are part of it.
So I can click on someone and say I’ll send you the template, an email based on template XY, and then it’s personalized. And I can possibly add an additional sentence, but I know that I have a properly written email that someone has spell-checked, that I can send quickly on the go and that has all the information.
And then it goes a bit further, then we talk about workflow management and Daylite also has an ingenious story in there and I can recommend that to everyone, regardless of whether we are talking about Daylite or not, that is also an important criterion is to look at does a system support me there?
We do this in Daylite by saying I can build up a workflow, a fixed, so-called pipeline. Where I have different phases, such as seminar preparation, seminar execution, seminar post-processing, now I’ve done something very simple.
You can assign tasks in this pipeline and also assign a time or temporal significance to them. For example, I could now say that the seminar preparation must always be completed three days before the seminar itself because I have thought about it myself.
And from this, the system then generates a checklist for me when I want to enter the various phases, based on the blueprint I have created myself, and tells me that you have to do this by then and then you have to do that.
I can also get things like participant confirmations. For example, if I say that they will receive my confirmation of participation afterwards and things like that, I can also do this via your system.
Yes, yes, of course. And the nice thing now is that we have reached a very important point.
After all, know-how is in people’s heads. And if you somehow want to grow as a company, one of the most important tasks is to share this know-how that I have in my head in an intelligent way with my future employees.
And you can do that by using wokrflows like this, by saying that I’m going to write down what needs to be done by when as a task. And then I have a reminder for myself and maybe I won’t forget the little things.
We have customers who go so far as to make a checklist for their presentation kit. That’s great. I also use it myself. I mean, it’s always like that, with IT systems you usually only use 3% of the functionality.
I think I use more than 3% of Daylite’s range of functions. But I am also far from 100%, although I have booked the full package there with you. So I’m not using everything yet.
One topic that I don’t use yet, for example, is the topic of forms. Would you like to say something about it?
Because I think you also have good integration there. Yes, so forms are a little all-purpose weapon in the system, so I can say – everyone has – many people have the need to store certain types of information in a CRM.
And this is also important for every CRM. So if I choose one, I should make sure that it can do something like this, that I can also name individual information. So in the past we talked about extra fields or something like that, where I can then say that I should give the child names and these forms, that is, in Daylite forms and I can create a set of extra additional fields that I can name in any way, there is really my terminology in it and can manage data within deDaylite.
And I can also link these forms to website forms. In other words. I think Wofoo is this system that you work with. Wofoo is a system that allows even a non-developer to, first of all, the focus of this system is that I, as a non-developer, am able to build a website form myself. That I can then say very specifically, I have an event next week and I want to ask about certain things that have just occurred to me. Then I can drag and drop a form together with this Wofoo service, where I can either just take the link or, if I have a more advanced content management system on my website, I can simply copy the code into it at the touch of a button and then it is integrated into my website and you can fill out this form, which then becomes an email.
Hmmm. But if you have our integration with Wofoo, then it doesn’t become an email, but the form is stored in Daylite and attached to the customer’s data record and I can even make sure that a bit of magic happens by just setting it up and saying, if this is a customer who doesn’t yet exist in Daylite, then please create it right away and so I can outsource my data collection a bit and can involve the customer, take them into the work, into the obligation. So I really have to take a bit of ashes on my head, which is perhaps a bit reassuring for the viewers, because many people always say that Jekel does everything perfectly and can do everything. I can never do that.
First of all, my motto is first switch on the brain, then the technology. That’s the most important thing. So you don’t have to do every little thing just because it’s technically possible. The second step is to simply use the technology and not do everything at once. Hey, even as a professional, I don’t use everything, for example. A typical requirement is that I give a lot of in-house seminars for field staff, for example, who are given iPads and where the field staff say that everything is self-explanatory. And if I then say, okay, let’s open this presentation here next to the email and pull it over so that you can quickly send it to the CRM and your customer … Yes, uhh … You can’t open two apps next to each other … That’s what I say, some things are self-explanatory, but not everything.
So when I look, I always ask in advance, what do you want, what questions do you have?
And I do this via Microsoft Forms, for example. I have Microsoft 365 and Forms is included, which is pretty cool. But it’s always separate from the CRM. That means I have my Forms evaluation and I have my CRM. If I then have to somehow bring it back together, then I have manual work again and that’s why that’s one of the things I still have on my to-do list, that I’m going to switch to Wofoo again in this integration and, as I said, please don’t misunderstand, it’s not an advertising event. One of the reasons why I decided to work with you was. It’s just for me. So it’s also important to me personally that I ideally know the owners, the managing directors, the decision-makers.
So that’s why, as you can see. Alf and I have known each other for a while and I like to work with people I know, people I like, people I trust. And if I ever have a problem, I don’t always call Alf straight away.
So it’s not the hotline, but when it comes to basic issues, for example if I were to call Salesforce in the USA. I say, what does it matter if a squirrel scratches it?
So when I call Alf, I get someone on the line straight away. But what – he’s not alone, he has a support team and I simply have great support, where I have everything from – I now have a call to a flat rate, where I can say at any time, man, I still need support – that’s also important, that if things get crunchy or something, that I then ideally have people in my time zone, ideally in my language, in my cultural area, who understand what I’m doing, because I’ve also experienced that if you have American-language services, yes, then you can’t reach the hotline in the morning if you have an urgent problem, because they don’t wake up until 3:00 in the afternoon or even worse, maybe not until six o’clock if they’re on the west coast.
So against this background, it’s another important criterion. Would you like to say something more about your support philosophy, Alf?
Yes, we have, we have so education is always exactly the second point is also very important, I can only support what you just said, I can also recommend it to each of them, is to choose a system where I can get along at the beginning, introduce it bit by bit, so first replace the address book and the calendar but it should also have potential at the end.
And that brings us to the point that CRM is not a one-off purchase, like the washing machine that I put in the basement and then I put it in and it works for the next 20 years. Instead, the requirements change again and again when you do something.
And so it’s important that the system you choose is flexible and can withstand this. Of course, as you’ve just said, Thorsten, it’s also important that you have someone who is there for you, and we have two concepts. On the one hand, we try to offer a relatively large amount of free support for small users. So we have a very, very large help center with instruction videos where you can first say yourself, I want to take a look for myself, and then we also offer business coaching, that’s what we call it.
And this business coaching has two components. The first is access to our AkAcademy, a large e-learning portal that now contains almost 40 hours of training material. So I can do a bit of self-learning. And we combine that with a certain number of hours. There are various packages where I can then say that I can reach someone here directly on an ad hoc basis and call them to ask questions.
Yes, and I think that’s also important, regardless of the provider, that you have the option of saying that there’s already enough material on the site, there’s enough material where I have FAQs, the Frequently Asked Questions, where I say I can look it up myself.
Personally, for example, I’m a flat-rate person, so I’ve booked a premium service, which means that if I have a problem, I can simply call and have someone who can help me quickly at that moment, and that’s important, because every system is sometimes like that, that it either has a system where it sometimes grinds.
My experience is that the problem is usually behind the computer. For me at least, it’s usually the incompetent use error I make when I’ve spoken to my Daylite colleagues. But that also helps and what Alf just said is very, very important, ideally just don’t want too much at once, but simply introduce the whole thing gradually and then optimize it step by step.
This is also a question that may be relevant for one or the other. There are also legal requirements in terms of legally compliant archiving and documentation of customer information.
Would you like to say three more sentences about that?
Before we start with a classic GDPR. So it’s always an important issue to comply with the legal requirements. We always have a lot to do with that because people always think oh, that’s North America’s USA, that’s bah. It is, but Canada and Canada is the country that has the most similar legal situation to the EU, so to speak.
Of course, if you ask 20 lawyers, you get 25 opinions. But the reason the consensus, the big consensus says it’s absolutely fine, even without a data processing agreement, which Marketcircle still offers on top of that on my advice.
That’s an important story. Legal certainty and therefore GDPR compliance in terms of this and document storage is a completely different issue.
There are document management systems that can also be connected to it. We also have interfaces to Dropbox and so on, where you can also create legal certainty on the storage side.
But that’s especially important when you’re in accounting and document management, where Daylite is a bit out of the picture. Yes, and I think it’s just totally brilliant that, even though I. As I said at the beginning, some of my customers have been working with me for ten years or so. Then I just have the offers that I made them x years ago.
I just have it in my CRM system. And that’s because I can just say I want to send an email with or without an attachment to Daylite. And I think that’s totally brilliant.
I always have it available on all my systems and don’t have to search back and forth between millions of emails. Incidentally, I am so consistent that when I have transferred an email to Daylite, I delete it from my email system. This is because I say that I have it in my CRM system, i.e. I have stored the physical copy, so I remove it.
As always, there are different ways to reach your goal. That’s always the case in this area.
So there are also different CRM systems. Personally, as I said, I have chosen
I decided in favor of Daylite for the reasons discussed today and hopefully found it very important for you that if Daylite is the right system for you, then I can highly recommend Daylite with the team of Alf and his entire team and if the whole thing is not the right system for you, then hopefully you have still got an idea of what important criteria are that you can say where I can start accordingly, when which system suits me.
Daylite is a system that is also used for the Mac. This means that if you have a mixed team, you can still work via the browser interface.
So where you say you can do that in mixed teams. If you don’t have any Macs at all, then it’s either a question of buying Macs for it if necessary.
So, for example, I recently equipped my assistant with a Mac, at some point, because I said that the productivity advantage simply makes sense that I might also equip part of the organization with Macs, but I also believe that the general criteria for such a system have hopefully become clear to say what are important selection criteria?
Because, as you know, I always say switch on the brain first, then the technology. That’s always important with this stuff and then use the systems that suit you. Because there is no such thing as the perfect CRM system, I think you’ll agree, but there is a CRM system that suits you.
And when I look at Coca-Cola now, it was important that you say they have a fat SAP system in the background.
You also need Salesforce integration in other areas. This might not have been the right system for that. So, for me, Salesforce would be complete overkill.
And if I calculate all the functionalities that are included with all the modules in systems like Salesforce, for example, then I’m quickly up to ten times the cost that I have with Daylite. My experience is that if you take the basic version and only have 100 contacts in it, then it’s always affordable.
I now have 40,000 contacts in my Daylite because I’ve been self-employed for twelve years now. Then it quickly becomes 3 to 4 figures a month with other CRM systems.
So you always have to look if you only have 50 contacts, but you sell power plants to them, then it’s a different question than if you have a lot of contacts as a speaker, like I do, where there are simply a larger number of contacts. So I think for whom, perhaps in conclusion, is your system best suited from your point of view? So it’s marketed by the manufacturer.
From the company Marketcircle they say from 1 to 50 users. We also have a few customers who are already well over 100 and who use it successfully. But the focus is really, let’s say, small. When I say small, that’s what I mean. We also have many single-user customers, up to 10 or 20, which is the size of most of our customers.
And if you think about who it is particularly suitable for. It’s certainly particularly interesting for people who work in the service sector and in the service environment. If I have a production company today, then I’m in exactly the same position as you said. Then I might also want some figures from the production system to suddenly become important for me in CRM.
So it might not be a good fit. Which doesn’t mean that we don’t have manufacturing companies. Yes. I can only recommend that you always choose a CRM.
Take a look to see if you can also find information about other customers from the manufacturer. The famous reference section. Are other people in my industry also in good hands there and happy? And CRM is a process, it’s not something I look at and that’s it. It’s an ongoing process.
Make sure that the system you choose is flexible, i.e. that you can somehow solve requirements that you may not have today in the future. And you’ve said something very important.
I always find that a bit unfair, or, or not a charming way to do sales and marketing. Many, many suggest that you can get CRM for €10 a month and also offer something, in a very slimmed-down version with the trick.
Dear customer, if you already have the data in there and then really have a few more data, then it will be really expensive.
Yes, it’s the same with newsletter systems, so I currently work with KlickTipp, for example, because I started with Mailchimp back then. Back then it was still list-based, not tag-based, so you were more flexible there.
Mailchimp can now do this too, but it didn’t used to be the case and I recently had a discussion with a colleague about Active Campaign.
So, if I simply calculate this through my contacts and with my functionalities, then I was quickly at five times the monthly costs that I have now with my current system and there are others where this fits perfectly.
So it always depends on the business model. It depends on that. And I don’t even think the limitation is the size. I think your system can definitely be scaled up for larger organizations, because I alone have 40,000 contacts in it and it’s laughing its head off.
So the amount of data doesn’t matter at all. I don’t think that’s the issue. I think it’s more the question of fit that is relevant.
So I also believe – I work a lot in medium-sized companies, where I also believe that your system can sometimes be much more suitable for much larger organizations than another one.
So, and as I said, this is not meant to be a promotional event, but just to say, because I’m often asked, even among colleagues, for those who see this interview in the GSA group, sorry to be so formal with you here, but dear Alf and I, we’ve both been young a bit longer. So I’m 54, how old are you Alf?
52 The junior here next to me. That means we’re still a bit irritated when a youngster we don’t yet know calls us by our first name.
And our customers are often also managing directors, board members and entrepreneurs, who we tend to address as “surname”.
So that’s why we tend to use first names in our customer communication. But we also mean everyone who may be looking at this from the private sector and from the GSA association.
With this in mind, dear Alf, there is something else you would like to pass on to the audience.
Yes, so if the topic has now aroused your interest, simply book a non-binding appointment with us. That’s not the point, we’ll talk to you even if you’re not planning to buy Daylite at all, but always somehow right now, even if you’re addressing the target group, the GSA members.
We already have a few customers there. Just ask a few questions and even if there is no specific intention to buy.
Just book a free appointment with us. It’s great that you still do this weekly call, that you can somehow.
It used to be like this. We have webcasts that you can register for, and we even run several per week, where you can have the product demonstrated to you for various topics if you really say you’re interested in the product.
My offer was a bit more far-reaching than that. Even if someone generally says, I would like to see me first, the topic is interesting for me, regardless of whether he ends up with us or not, I am happy to be available.
Great, once under Daylite and once under iOSxperts with X written, just like iOS X and an ert.
Exactly, that’s sometimes a bit confusing. Marketcircle is the manufacturer in Canada – is that right?
And now?
Those who then really localized the whole thing here wonderfully and. have clearly expanded it.
So we make the system awesome again.
With this in mind, I would like to thank you very much for your time, dear Alf.
I hope for you, for you there was one or two impulses, because you know and you know: first switch on your brain, then technology and then simply use technology.
And good luck with that. Bye bye.
All the best.
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