Intro CRM Beta Release (Episode 8)

The beta release is here! Harris also shares an award that the show received from the MicroConf community, and wonders if any show listeners are on Clubhouse?

⚠️ Please note: This is an old episode of the Pipeline Meeting podcast. In August 2022, the show relaunched in a new format. For the most recent episodes, please visit the podcast page. 

Show Notes

Show Description

Pipeline Meeting is a sales podcast for founders and sales leaders. If you are looking for actionable steps to close high ticket deals, you’re in the right place. Tune in for help with things like cold outreach and qualifying inbound leads. We regularly feature guests and experts to take our business to the next level. Pipeline Meeting is hosted by Harris Kenny, the founder of Intro, a company that provides sales as a service.

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Transcript

Intro

Harris Kenny:
If you feel alone managing your business’ sales pipeline. Welcome. Consider this your invitation to join me, Harris Kenny, for a regular sales pipeline meeting, we’ll discuss finding new business and pricing, cashflow, things like getting ghosted, winning proposals, new technology, and a lot more brought to you by intro CRM.

Episode Overview

Harris Kenny: (00:40)
I’m going to dedicate this episode totally to the beta release of Intro CRM. But before I do that, there is one thing that I want to touch on, which is that this podcast was given honorable mention in micro comps, SaaS podcast awards. This was really flattering and really exciting to me because there are quite a few shows that were nominated and that won awards that I had listened to. And so to be included among them was really humbling. Just a few: Courtland Allen and the indie hackers podcast, build your SaaS with Justin Jackson and John Buda, the software social podcast, Michelle and Colleen do a great job with that. So there’s really a lot of great shows in there, but those are three in particular that I listen to. And it was great. I appreciate it.

Thanks to MicroConf

Harris Kenny: (01:27)
Thank you to MicroConf. If you’re not familiar with MicroConf, you should go to microconf.com and you can learn all about it. They’ve got great conferences, a nice Slack community, and it’s also associated with Tiny Seed who does a great job investing in bootstrapped companies. I am not currently looking to raise money, but if I were to Tiny Seed is definitely one of the places that I would look. And that is something I’ll be thinking about later this year, as I really want to focus on getting some users in and making sure the product is solving a problem for people first. So anyway, little plug for MicroConf. Thank you to all the folks who were involved with that. Again, really a privilege for me to be on there. So thank you.

Intro CRM Beta Release Out Now

Harris Kenny: (02:09)
Alright. Let’s go to the beta release of intro CRM. So I released it last week. The features had been obviously in testing and development before that, but now I’ve got more folks trying it out. The alpha had about 44 people testing it. And I learned a ton—I think the biggest thing was taking features out that didn’t need to be in there and simplifying the whole process. Now, as I’m moving to beta and it’s got the handful of features that I really like, I want to recap what they are and how it works. If you’ve signed up for intro CRM, you’re going to recognize this because you’ve probably gotten a video from me explaining these features. I’ve been sending individual videos out to every new user who signs up. I’m going to touch on what I think is going well there and what is not working, but let me get back to that in a second.

Harris Kenny: (03:05)
What makes Intro CRM special? So, it is a simple CRM for tracking your deals and forecasting your cash flow. The main problem that I’ve had myself using CRMs and helping clients, is that what we really want and need to focus on is how much money are we bringing in the door? That’s more important than anything else as your business grows. All these other features about delegating tasks and all these other things that these advanced tools like HubSpot and Salesforce do, those are great, but in the very beginning and even for most freelancers and solo entrepreneurs or small businesses, you really don’t need those features and you’re probably not going to use them. And so I’m trying to create something for folks that are running simpler operations, and really just want to keep track of how much money they are making. Really quick to add deals and really quick to forecast the value of those deals out. In fact, there are no required fields beyond the name of your deal. That’s it. You’re not going to be overwhelmed with dozens and dozens of inputs that you have to fill in. And you’re going to feel obligated to spend all this time filling out fields that don’t actually matter.

Harris Kenny: (04:15)
Last part of that is that I’ve noticed that if you’re going to adopt a tool, probably the first tool that you’re going to adopt is project management software. So I built integrations for Intro CRM out to Basecamp, Trello and Asana. So when you add a deal to Intro CRM, you can optionally have that deal pushed to your project management software. So if you’re spending like 90% of your time managing tasks, managing clients, managing work, you can have those tasks that are sales related over in your project management software, rather than having this redundant set of task lists and they’re both get out of whack and then you’re not sure which one to keep up with.

Harris Kenny: (04:57)
Now, I’ve been sending videos, explaining this to new users and maybe I’ll look up their domain or their business and tell them how I think they might be able to use it. And I’ve been doing this with a tool called Bonjoro. With clients, I really focus on focus on the leads that you have, not necessarily going out and trying to get lots of new ones. You know, if you’re pouring more leads into a leaky funnel, you’re not necessarily making the best use of your time, your resources. So, you know, I’m trying to really focus on every new lead that comes in. I think that this is working—to an extent. People are definitely opening the emails and watching the videos. I’ve gotten some good feedback, but I don’t think it’s driving the actions quite that I would like to see.

Improving User Activation and On-Boarding

Harris Kenny: (05:40)
I tried a call to action that sent people right to the app. Then I’ve tried using a SavvyCal link to let people schedule a time. And in that meeting offering to help them import their deals and get them set up. But I think that I need to focus on the in-app onboarding. Like when you log in, what are you prompted to do? I think that currently it just doesn’t invite people to start adding deals and sort of activating, getting involved, and starting to use the tool. I thought the problem was documentation initially. So I made lots of additional documentation explaining how to import and get set up. And then I thought, well, maybe people just need a little nudge. I thought, well, maybe it’s not just the nudge. Maybe they would want some help along the way. But I think that it really has to be user-driven user adoption of the tool. So that’s my focus right now.

Harris Kenny: (06:34)
And for you, as you’re managing your business, I think, you know, this is constant work with my clients. What are you doing with the leads that you have today? You can go out and add new leads, but if you are not taking advantage of the opportunities that you have right in front of you, you really need to think carefully about that. I’m working with a client right now doing account management work and we’re identifying accounts where we think they can probably up-sell and grow their business. So that is definitely my charge to you just as we’re having this little pipeline meeting, I know mostly I’m going to be talking about me and intro CRM, but that’s your homework assignment. Think about what can you do to grow your accounts or close the deals, close the leads that you’ve got coming in. That’s my focus. My action item here is I am going to think about what can I do in-app to promote, or to provoke, evoke that sort of action of adding deals and getting more involved.

Harris Kenny: (07:31)
And what can I do outside of the app? Maybe it transactional email sequences, sort of welcoming people, getting them on board. I’ve got a simple email that gets sent right away, but I think I might need to do more than that. Maybe something that gets sent out a couple of days later explaining how features work. So I’m thinking about that. If you have any advice for me, I would super appreciate that. I, you know, this is new, I’m really building something new for the first time. I’m bootstrapping it. And it’s challenging. You know, I have to be honest. It is definitely hard. I believe in the tool I’ve been getting good feedback from people I’m using it myself, but the puzzle I’m trying to solve is how do I get people to jump in and get involved more quickly recognizing that, you know, this is not supposed to be a tool that you use all the time.

Intro CRM Integrations

Harris Kenny: (08:21)
It’s designed to people that are less active with sales work. And so I’m not expecting people to log in as much as they log into Twitter, but I do want them to create an account and add deals and log in more than what I’m seeing right now from folks who are signing up. I’m thinking about that as I’m rolling ahead with this integration marketing, and I’m going to be getting listed over the next few weeks into the Basecamp, Trello and Asana app directories, I’m working on landing pages for that. The Basecamp landing page is up now. I’m going to drop a link in the show notes to that. I am in the process. I submitted the pull request to get included in the Basecamp integrations directory. So hopefully by the time you’re hearing this, or soon thereafter, you will see Intro CRM listed there.

Clubhouse and Closing

Harris Kenny: (09:09)
I am also checking out Clubhouse. So if you are on Clubhouse, let me know. I would love to connect with you there. I am still getting the hang of it. I do not understand how it works. I have not participated in any chats yet. I’ve really only got a couple of people that I’m connected with. So if you’re a Clubhouse person, if you use Clubhouse, let me know if you don’t know what Clubhouse is. It’s this sort of audio based conversation and networking app. I still kind of wrap my head around it. That’s what I’m working on. If you have advice for me on getting folks up and running faster, I would appreciate it. Thanks again to the folks at MicroComp for the honorable mention for this podcast. I’m looking to do more with it over time. So thanks for seeing the potential and, and that’s it for today.

Outro

Harris Kenny:
Thanks for listening to Pipeline Meeting. The theme music is by Neighborhood Vandal and is shared under a Creative Commons Attribution—or CC BY—license. To learn more, read the show notes, and continue the conversation, visit IntroCRM.com.