Your CRM should help your team turn relationships, activity, and data into predictable revenue. Too many companies choose a platform before they really understand the process it needs to support, which leads to poor adoption, messy data, and missed growth opportunities. In this episode, we'll explore the most common CRM mistakes, what to prioritize when choosing or implementing one, and how to tell whether your CRM and revenue process are actually working. You're going to leave with a clearer picture of how to make your CRM a growth tool, not just another software expense.
Join Tim Fitzpatrick and Kristen McGarr for this week’s episode of The Rialto Marketing Podcast!
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Podcast Transcription
How to Choose a CRM That Actually Supports Growth
Tim Fitzpatrick
Your CRM should help your team turn relationships, activity, and data into predictable revenue. Too many companies choose a platform before they really understand the process it needs to support, which leads to poor adoption, messy data, and missed growth opportunities. In this episode, we'll explore the most common CRM mistakes, what to prioritize when choosing or implementing one, and how to tell whether your CRM and revenue process are actually working. You're going to leave with a clearer picture of how to make your CRM a growth tool, not just another software expense. Hi, I am Tim Fitzpatrick with Realpa Marketing, where we help companies turn client acquisition from their biggest challenge into their biggest advantage. Thank you so much for taking the time to tune in. Today, I am super excited to have Kristen McGarr from a Adroit Insights with me today. Kristen, welcome and thanks for being here.
Kristen McGarr
Excellent. Thanks so much, Tim. I'm excited to talk to you today.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yes, I'm excited to dig into it. So look, you're in Hawaii. A lot of people would love to live in Hawaii. What's happening there right now?
Kristen McGarr
You know what? We are fortunate that the blue skies are coming out here. This big storm is just past us, but yeah, it's nice sunny days here and a couple of good rainbows, thanks to that rain we just had.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Awesome. I love it. Jealous. So before we dig into CRM and what we're going to talk about today, I want to ask a few rapid fire questions to help us get to know you. Are you ready to jump in?
Kristen McGarr
Let's do it.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Okay, let's do it. When you're not working, how do you like to spend your time?
Kristen McGarr
I am either out surfing or typically coaching middle school cross country and track teams.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Okay, awesome. Now, were you a runner previously or did you just get into it because your kids do it?
Kristen McGarr
I was a runner in high school. I did not do it at all after high school for years because of injury. And then, yeah, kids started doing it, got back into it again.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Awesome. What's your hidden talent? You got me?
Kristen McGarr
Yeah, you're back.
Tim Fitzpatrick
What's your hidden talent?
Kristen McGarr
Cookies. I can turn anything into cookies. I love making them without recipes, and I'm constantly inventing new ones.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Interesting. So you just wing it?
Kristen McGarr
Just wing it, yeah. I just like, I figured out a base core recipe, and now it's just make whatever we can come up with from it.
Tim Fitzpatrick
I was going to say, it would seem to me like if you have a decent base, you can add a lot of stuff and make pretty interesting things.
Kristen McGarr
And that's why I love cookies, because you really can. If you've got a good solid core base, you can just really go from there.
Tim Fitzpatrick
I've shifted my diet quite a bit the last 6 months. And one of the things that I eat fairly regularly is chia pudding, which I never thought I would like. But I have this base recipe, and then you can just add all kinds of stuff to it. It's super simple. So it's so funny you bring that up because I've never heard anybody actually talk I don't know about them, but it's like, hey, we've got the base. Now we can just add our mixings and we're good to go. What a great talent to have. Your kids probably love that.
Kristen McGarr
Yes, I know.
Tim Fitzpatrick
What's the best piece of advice you've ever been given?
Kristen McGarr
Best piece of advice. I think it's surrounding yourself with people smarter than you. That has been an amazing one for me, just making sure that there are just people that know more than I do in life and in business.
Tim Fitzpatrick
It's a good one. I ask this question because I always want to hear what comes top of mind for people because there's so much great advice out there, but that is a really good one. What's one thing about you that surprises people?
Kristen McGarr
People don't realize. I have a master's in special education.
Tim Fitzpatrick
How did you end up doing what you're doing now?
Kristen McGarr
I actually had been working in sales and did some marketing, did tech, and it was all just very like, cutthroat, go, go, go environment. After my first daughter was born, I was just looking for ways to be around with the family more. Even before she was born, I started going into that. I was in sales and marketing, switched over to education for a while, and then went right back to the sales and marketing and tech world after a bit.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, cool. What does success mean to you?
Kristen McGarr
For me, it's really just seeing everyone else around me being really successful. I love giving back. I love just sharing ideas with people and brainstorming. So when other people are succeeding, whether it's in my personal life or in professional life, I just feel that works well for me.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Where's your happy place?
Kristen McGarr
I'm living in it. Honestly, I mean, I live here on Maui. This is it.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Now, did you surf before you moved there?
Kristen McGarr
No, no. When we moved here, we were here for 2 days before my cousin took us out on the surfboard, and I haven't looked back since.
Tim Fitzpatrick
It's like you were hooked.
Kristen McGarr
Absolutely.
Tim Fitzpatrick
That's great. What qualities do you value in the people you spend time with?
Kristen McGarr
Definitely just openness, communication, right? People that just are easy to talk to, want to talk, always just really candid. That's very important for me.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Tell us a little bit more about what you're doing at Adroit Insights.
Kristen McGarr
We have quite a few things going on here. Because I'm a Chief Revenue Officer, really focusing on revenue strategy for clients, but I have this technology background, I love creating solutions. So our team here is just really looking for putting together solutions to process and people challenges that exist that could be hindering revenue growth. And that's really at the core of what we do. We leverage technology to back that up. A lot of times that is in the shape of a CRM, but we do this with AI and any other technology that's out there that makes sense in order to really fuel your revenue.
The Most Common Mistakes Companies Make When Choosing or Implementing a CRM
Tim Fitzpatrick
Well, let's dig into CRM because it's a tough one for a lot of people. What are the most common mistakes that you see companies make when they're choosing or they're implementing a CRM? What happens?
Kristen McGarr
Yeah. So a lot of times, these demos that you see with CRM companies, they have a tendency to be not what comes to you off the shelf. They have all of these great features and all of these great buildouts in them. They're made to believe that they're ready to go, but that's not what you get when you get your off the shelf version. That's been a highly configured, lots of hours of engineering spent into getting that really set up and ready to go that way. So people are purchasing the material, not the reality of what's there. And that I have seen can get very frustrating for people. And then the other part of it is purchasing a tool that's just not the right fit. Just because it was one designed for your industry or because it was supposedly easy to use does not mean that it's going to be the right fit and meet your needs. So not evaluating truly what you need and why you want a CRM before diving into the one can become a big challenge.
Tim Fitzpatrick
So it seems like before you look at CRMs, you need to have an idea of what's the plan? What are we hoping to get out of this? Do you say that's accurate?
Kristen McGarr
That really, really Yeah. I mean, sometimes people want it because, hey, the board has been knocking down on our door and they want to see numbers, and we need to be able to produce them easily. Other times, it's just that our sales team is working on in eight different places, and there's just between spreadsheets and Post-it notes, there's not consistency. We're not able to forecast or see any reliable results. So it's really just understanding why, who is it benefiting? And then who's really going to be the users in it?
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. In marketing growth, I always talk about strategy before tactics. It's so easy just to jump in and, whoa, we need to have a CRM. Let's just pick it.
Kristen McGarr
Yes.
Tim Fitzpatrick
But that's just not a great way to go. I would also guess, and love to hear your thoughts on this, but with tools like CRMs, there are so many features and so many things you can do when in reality, most people are probably fine with 10% of features that they actually need and use every single day.
Kristen McGarr
And you are correct on that 10%. I mean, if we're lucky, we see someone using 50% of their features of their CRM, but on a daily basis, that 10 to 20% is it. And you brought up marketing side of it. There are some businesses that are doing a ton with their marketing and need a CRM that has a really robust features on that. There's others who are just not there, and they don't plan to be there in the next 45 years, right? So building something that's a very marketing-heavy CRM, you are going to use only a small portion of it. But to buy one that's only sales-focused, that doesn't have a marketing aspect when you're in growth mode, doesn't make sense either, because you're going to be self-limiting.
Tim Fitzpatrick
With any marketing tools, I get asked, Well, which one should I use? And my advice to people is always, Well, the one that you understand how to use, right? The one that's simple. Because if it's not simple, you're not going to use it. And especially with CRM, if it's not simple and you're not using it, it's only as good as the data you're putting into it.
Kristen McGarr
Well, when we think about this as CRM, it's customer relationship management. When we're thinking about what does that look like, a lot of times people are thinking about it as lead generation software. It's not lead generation software. It can be leveraged for your leads and working through them, but It's really thinking about what's important for you to know when you're thinking about your customers and how you're working that. What data are you putting in consistently? And don't put 50 fields in your CRM when you only really care about 10. Put 10. There's a much more likelihood that the team is going to actually fill out all 10 fields if you only put 10, then if you have 50, you don't even care about the results of 40 of them.
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What To Prioritize When Choosing or Implementing a CRM
Tim Fitzpatrick
So keep it simple. So let's say I'm a business owner, right? I know that I need to start leveraging the CRM system. What do I look for, right, to make sure that it's actually going to support growth.
Kristen McGarr
So like you said, there's so many CRMs out there. So how do you start to differentiate? And I look at a couple of things that I find that stand out the most on when it comes to CRM. One is the analytics. What are you looking at from a reporting perspective? Do you have some pretty intense reporting requirements? Are you working with your CFO and they need to see certain information and numbers on that? What's really your end goal there? Because analytics and what can be is a pretty big differentiator in a lot of CRMs. Another one would be integrations. So what other software are you using that you want to connect with? Are you looking for something that's a little bit more all in one because the same people that are doing sales are also doing customer support and maybe some operations work because your team is still small? You don't want them to be a three separate piece of software. You'd really rather them be in one. So do you need that? Or do you have other software that you're really dedicated to and you're committed to for Ops or for marketing that you want to then integrate with your CRM. So we look at it from that side. So these are two of the biggest differentiators that you'll find. And I'd say the third one is just, it's what you said, the simplicity, the flexibility. It might come with 50 fields out of the box. Can I eliminate 30 of them? Does the system allow me the ability to delete a bunch of those or move them around on the screen so that what's important to me is just what's visible first instead the excess? If I can streamline and clean up that system, that is a really critical component to adoption.
Tim Fitzpatrick
What about pricing structure? I know some of the more popular systems out there have premium versions where you can start. But then as you start to add all these other components, all of a sudden it's like, oh, my God, I'm paying how much per seat per month, and this is now costing me whatever, $1,000, $2,000, $3,000 a month for my CRM. How do you think about that when you work with clients?
Kristen McGarr
Yeah. So when we're evaluating this, we're looking at not only where you are today, but a lot of companies have a vision for where they want to be in 3 years, 5 years, 10 years. We're looking at that and we're pricing out the CRM accordingly. A lot of times you will find that CRM costs go up faster than your revenue has gone up. So they're not really on this same plane. So that can be a challenge. And so what we look at is the idea, if you say, Hey, we're planning on growing. We're planning on adding another three or four people, or we know that today we're not looking at automating this functionality, but in 2 years we will, we're going to price for that and let you know what that looks like and see if that makes sense and find software that's not just the right fit for today, but will work down the line. I'm not going to put you in a system that's way over complicated and is completely unnecessary for where you are today just because you may grow in the next 5 years. But we also want to select software that's not going to be self-limiting, that you're not going to feel like, wow, it's been 2 years, and now all of a sudden I have to switch CRM systems again now that my team is comfortable and fully involved because we run into a limitation. So between prices and features, we're always evaluating all that just to determine. But just because there are companies out there charging $150, $250 per user license does not mean that that's what you have to go with. But you also don't have to go $20. There's generally a happy medium. But I have seen a lot of people in systems that are $35 a month per user that has absolutely every feature and everything that they need in it. So don't think that you have to spend hundreds a month in order to get a system that's going to work for you. There are really great affordable tools out there still.
Tim Fitzpatrick
So what I'm hearing you say so far is when we're looking at CRM, one, we need to have a strategy and a plan. Why are we doing this and what do we hope to accomplish? When we're evaluating CRMs, we need to look at what types of analytics we can get out of it. Are we going to get the data out that we need so we can make informed decisions. We need to look at integrations. What other integrations do we need that CRM to integrate with the rest of our business? Those are three big things that I've heard you touch on. Have I missed anything?
Kristen McGarr
The only other thing I would say that's missing in there is really that automation piece. Most systems that you would even be worth considering right now can automate basic. But a lot of times people want to do, especially with marketing, I see this happen a lot, when you're doing automation training. I'm starting here and I'm putting someone through this particular journey. But then because of an action they've taken, I want them to split out and maybe enter a new journey. If that's a vision that you or your marketer have, you want to make sure that your software can support that because that's an area where you typically can run into some limitations. You're not able to take separate paths based upon the way people are interacting. And if you're looking to really gain efficiency for your sales team and how they're engaging and communicating, being able to leverage journeys like that is a great way to do it.
How to Tell Whether Your CRM and Revenue Process Are Actually Working
Tim Fitzpatrick
So how can we tell when our CRM and our revenue process are working well when they're not? What are the things we're looking for?
Kristen McGarr
So this is why one of the things I said earlier on was analytics and how important this is. One of the things that we love to set up in a CRM, you've got your data. It's like, how's my company doing? How's the business? How many leads do we have? That information. But you can also create a dashboard that's based upon your CRM health. And this, I find, is something that's often missed, but it's such a critical piece, where you're looking at, well, I should never have an opportunity in my system with a past due close date. It's impossible. If the date is past, I can't close it then. So to keep your system healthy, you should always have that in the future. I love building dashboards that are designed to be blank. If it's blank, your system is healthy. If everything is zero, if it says there are zero opportunities with a past due close date, There are zero opportunities without a next activity. If you are building out those KPIs, those key performance indicators that are leading you towards your revenue success, you're going to know that there's an alignment. If you are seeing your revenue number and it's not where you want it to be, that's a lagging indicator. That's after the fact. It's already too late. We need to look at those numbers that are leading us to that success.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Okay, cool. So are there specific types of CRM systems that you typically work with? Are there CRM systems that you like based on where various businesses are? Sure. I don't want to put you on the spot, but I'd love to just hear your thoughts because I'm sure people are wondering like, oh, what should I use?
Kristen McGarr
What should I pick? Yeah. It's one of the number one questions I get. What's your favorite software? And it does vary a bit. I mean, I have a couple of them that we spend more time in than others, but it varies quite a bit based upon what people need. For example, if you are going to be marketing heavy and you have the ability to have a slightly higher investment in your software, HubSpot is a really great tool. It has the ability to just manage marketing very well. Off the shelf, it comes with a lot of features that you need. It has a more complex configuration, though, when it comes to some of the automations and aspects like that because it can do so much. So you've got to weigh a bit of that out. Another one that we really love is ZOHO. The reason why it's one of my tops is because it is great for entry level. You can really clean up, just basically toggle switches on and off. You're like, I don't need this. I don't need the quoting and invoicing feature right now. I'm going to toggle those off. So my screen is a lot cleaner and I don't see all that. But in the future, if I now want to have quoting be part of my system, I can just toggle that back on again without an added cost. So it's the ability to add more features without more expense is one of the things I really, really love about that software. Then there's other tools that are amazing for solopreneurs. Pipedrive is a great tool for a solopreneur, but you can outgrow it very quickly. Typically, I find by the time a company is hitting 2 to 3 million, they've outgrown that software. Or even once they've started expanding their sales team beyond just the founder, they're going to need more.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Interesting. The other thing I will say for people watching or listening, if you're going down the HubSpot path, you need to engage Kristen early because there's too many people that I talk to who tried to implement themselves, and then it ends up being a mess, and they end up having to bring somebody like you in to fix it and clean it up. So get Kristen involved early in that process. Anything else that we haven't touched on with CRM that you see come up a lot that's important for us to discuss?
Kristen McGarr
Yeah. So you touched on it a little bit with that early on piece, right? It's just making sure you're making the right decisions from the beginning. We do come in a lot to clean up messes, and it can be more expensive than just starting from scratch sometimes. But one of the biggest things that I see in that is don't over engineer. Just because your system is capable of something doesn't mean you should do it. I see so many people go, oh, we're going to automate all of this stuff and look at how efficient it is. And you click this button and then all of this stuff happens. What typically occurs is people are so afraid to do anything in the system because they don't know what automation actions are going to happen next that they just don't use it, or they'll click one button and three subsequent actions happen that they weren't expecting, and then they start to fear the system, and then they go back to their spreadsheets. So make your system be as close as possible to what the team is currently using. You can add more features, create a phased approach to it over time, but just don't do it too much right up front.
Tim Fitzpatrick
With marketing growth, I always say, Keep it simple. It's so easy to overcomplicate. The other thing I see, too, and certainly with AI, this has become even worse, I think, where people just want to automate everything. And I am of the opinion that, and I'd love to go down this path if you want to go down it, they try to automate too much within the sales process. And it's like, yes, you should have a sales process, but it is not linear. It is a relationship with somebody, and you can't expect somebody to go through step one through 10 in the exact order in the exact same time. And your CRM needs to accommodate that. It should remind you when you need to follow up, but you can't automate every touch in the process and do it effectively because people know it. If you try to automate They're going to know it, they're going to know it. And they're like, Dude, these people don't give a crap about me.
Kristen McGarr
And that's a big distinction between sales and marketing, right? Is that sales should still create that human connection. Now, it depends on your business, right? If you are selling thousands and thousands of widgets and you want to automate that process, go right ahead. But if you're a service-based business, you are building connections. You're building a relationship, and relationships are not linear. There are ebbs and flows, it's going to go all over the place, and you need to be able to make that personal connection. That said, you can really create efficiency with it. One of the things I tell people to do, you can put your email templates in your CRM, and they don't have to be 100% can, that you're just going to automatically send out that way. But if you went and just took the last very personal email that you sent to someone in your sales process, whatever step you were in in it, and then you dropped that in as a can message, highlight those couple of words that were a little bit like talking about their dog or asking them about where they live. And you highlight those blocks, and just so that the next time you grab those template, just go change those couple of words or sentences in there. It still comes across. It's very personal. You wrote it personally to one individual, and now just altering it. Sometimes salespeople just struggle to get started. So having that template there, you just drop the template in and you use that as a starting point, that just made you so much more efficient. And you don't need to go full-blown automation and have it automatically just pull all that data from the fields automatically into the CRM, into that email. It's unnecessary to go that far for most companies early on.
Tim Fitzpatrick
You know, with... This may vary by system, and if it does, tell me. But with our CRM, we're putting a lot of data about a particular contact. We're tracking that information the different interactions. Most CRMs, you can put all of that data in the CRM itself, right? Or attach it to the contact or attach it to a task with the contact. But you could also... Sometimes I find that that can get pretty messy depending on how much interaction you have with the contact. Do you like to have that live in the CRM itself? Or sometimes is it better to have that live in a document or something like that that you're linking to within the CRM and everything is tracked in that one doc? Does that make sense?
Kristen McGarr
It does. And that's a really great question. And I think it talks a little bit more about everything else that you're doing around this. So a lot of times, when you are taking notes, if you are sitting there and you're in a 45 minute long meeting and you're doing discovery as part of your sales process, and they are just giving you all this information that you're then going to need to be able to leverage in order to quote them or in order to be able to bring in someone from your engineering side or another team to be able to do it. A lot of times, as thorough as you can be, being that thorough is a really good idea in a separate document, and you can attach it or have a hyperlink, a URL link to it to include that in there. But a lot of what we recommend people do nowadays is actually connecting with AI to be able to leverage information in multiple places. Let's say you have Fathom or Read AI that's recording, right? And in addition, you're typing in notes or you even took them, you still like to handwrite them, which I do sometimes. You take a picture of that and import it. And then you also have some basic key information in the CRM. You can combine all of those together and ask AI, Hey, I want you to look I get this folder in my work drive file, my Google Drive file. And then I want you to look at the Fathom recording and look at this picture I took of my notes and look at the CRM. Now combine all that together and tell me what the next step is. So Leveraging all of the places, it's less about where you put it each time. It's more about being consistent. If you know I'm always storing the notes in a named file in my drive, awesome. If you know that I should always be able to go to my CRM and find it, that's great, too. But just be consistent.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, I love that. And that's where you can... Leveraging all that data, right? It's like if I'm leveraging my CRM to remind me that I need to I touch a prospect, when that comes up, then if I'm combining sources and leveraging AI, then it's like, Hey, it's been 5 months since I last touched this prospect. Based on all the data you have on this prospect, what are your thoughts on the next step?
Kristen McGarr
Absolutely.
Conclusion
Tim Fitzpatrick
Right? Yeah, I love it. This has been a fantastic conversation Kristen. Any last minute thoughts, words of wisdom you want to leave us with? And then where can people learn more about you?
Kristen McGarr
For sure. Yeah. So I would say adoption is something that's really critical. If you are a solo user of it, just building your own consistent process. But if you've got a team of multiple salespeople, multiple users that are going to be in here, put a process in place and make it consistent and ask for help early on. Don't be afraid to reach out to someone and ask for help. I do free sessions for clients and for prospects even all the time just to be able to answer a couple of questions because I don't want to see somebody struggling through this. But the more you can have that consistency and have everyone on the team doing the same thing, the more success you're going to see. And so, yeah, if anybody ever needs anything, we post a lot of content on LinkedIn. We've got our website with our info, and We've got a YouTube page that's just got a lot of 2-3 minute long videos that just teach you how to do different stuff in a CRM that's going to make your life a lot easier.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Awesome. We will make sure that these links show up in the show notes, but If you want to connect with Kristen and her team, go to adroitinsights.com, and you can also connect with her over on LinkedIn as well. So we'll make sure that those get in there so you can connect. Kristen, thank you so much. I appreciate your time. It's been great chatting with you. Those of you that are watching, listening, appreciate you, and thank you for tuning in. Again, I am Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialto Marketing. If you feel like you are stuck in that marketing maze, you're not sure what's working, what to focus on next, take our free marketing engine scorecard over at marketingenginescorecard.com. In less than 2 minutes, we'll help you evaluate the nine areas of what we call the Supercharged Marketing Engine, so you can get clear direction on exactly what to fix first. Till next time. Take care.