Analysis Paralysis by Efficient App

Salesforce vs Copper When To Switch
===

[00:00:00] Andra Vomir: So today I wanna talk about the companies that are using Salesforce and it's not quite working for them. And maybe they started listening to this podcast episode to just get some ideas about what the transition would be like to another SMB tool? Obviously, our preferred tool is copper CRM, but just talking a little bit first about their pain points that they may be feeling that is causing the itch to consider switching.

[00:00:27] Alex Bass: So typically what we see when people are thinking about switching from Salesforce to something like copper or anything of the sort, even the, the thought of should we be using Salesforce that typically stems from a company that has Salesforce in place and they're not quite getting from it, what they thought they would get from it.

So the reason why a lot of companies use Salesforce is because Salesforce is one of the largest. Companies in the world. So people are like, okay, well, I've always been told that if I wanna scale the company and grow the company, I should be [00:01:00] using Salesforce. That's true. But at a certain point, when you become more of an enterprise and larger business is when you should really have these larger tools in place.

So what we're gonna be focusing more so on is the company that is a mid slash small size business or startup. And that is specifically a company that is probably doing less than a hundred million in revenue and has anywhere from say three to 250 employees, let's say. And when I also say 250 employees, I'm speaking more so to.

Number of users that are actually using, going to use the CRM. So think sales staff you may have people in product and have people that are engineers. They're likely not gonna be using the CRM. So they wouldn't be counting toward that. So if you're a product led company and say that, you know, 60% of your staff is engineers and product people you're very likely going to.

A small [00:02:00] subset that is actually using the CRM. So you're gonna have a hundred employees and only 20 people using the CRM. So that very, very, very much puts you into the camp of small business startup mid-size business in that area. And that's really who we're speaking to. So are you a company that has Salesforce in place right now, but is more in that number range of a small mid-size business?

And if so, that's who we're, we're focusing on.

[00:02:25] Andra Vomir: So, this is a quote you've said to me several times and it's nobody gets fired for implementing or using Salesforce in their business. So that's how a lot of these companies get themselves into this predicament in the first place. But then like you were saying, it might not be doing.

All the things that you imagined that it would. So can you talk about what the difference may be from somebody who's come from another company that was using Salesforce and they were super impressed. And then they came into their current company and they implemented it.

[00:02:55] Alex Bass: Yeah. So this is one of those really interesting areas where typically a [00:03:00] company that, especially if they've risen money, they're gonna feel pressure to hire the best, the greatest and the best people for the role.

So that's where you'll typically search out for a sales manager or a VP of sales that is just been killing it. Typically an enterprise business is, is often what you end up seeing. You kind of hire the best for the role and you assume, oh, well, this company has grown so large. So let's hire their sales manager or head of sales.

The problem with that is they're probably used to using something like Salesforce, and they're probably used to using something like Salesforce that has undergone a Salesforce consultancy that has spent hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars over the course of years, getting Salesforce to be what it is in their eyes.

So what we often see is. A lot of these companies may have something in place. They might have pipe drive. They might have copper, they might have something already in place. That's quote, unquote more meant for an S. and then the new sales manager comes in and they say, Hey, I've had the most success with, with Salesforce.

[00:04:00] Let's swap this out for Salesforce. That's what we need to do. And we see that that reverse thing happen as well, where they leave something that wasn't quite configured the way that it should have been to now Salesforce, because they're sold on that from the sales manager. But then what we also see is.

It typically will not perform in the way that they're expecting it to cuz that hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars, hasn't gone into building the platform out. So they're not quite getting from it, what they were used to getting from it. And then what the company does is they will get rid of that sales manager, the VPs sales, and hire a new one.

And then that new one is gonna say, Hey, you know, my prior business, we used HubSpot and then you're gonna go and switch your CRM to HubSpot. So what we end up seeing is companies will often switch their CRM. Two, three, sometimes four. Over the course of just hiring and firing new people, because they're feeling the pressure maybe from investors to grow and scale quickly, and you're putting much more faith into the sales manager and the VP of sales than you should be.

Cuz the foundation [00:05:00] of the CRM what's more important is that the team is actually using it. And what's less important is the actual tool that is put in place. And that's where we kind of come all the way back to say using sales. Over to copper. And what that is is copper is a lot easier to configure and get working to that level that you needed to be working versus Salesforce.

You can spend 20, 40, $50,000 getting copper to be this amazing machine that is just doing so much in automating the process. Whereas Salesforce to do the exact same thing is going to cost hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars to do so, you really need to set up your team and the sales.

For success. And if there's a sales manager that's used to using Salesforce, they absolutely can use copper. They just need to be shown that they need to use that. They need a little bit of pressure from upper management to say, Nope, this is the tool that we've decided. This is the tool that we're investing in.

And we're going to use this. A sales manager is going to focus more on what they're comfortable with, but a [00:06:00] CRM is a CRM and we guarantee you that you can get more outta something like copper for a lower budget than you do with something like Salesforce.

[00:06:07] Andra Vomir: So say the listener is agreeing with you and they're saying, great Salesforce, isn't working and we're open to switching to something like copper, but it's pretty overwhelming.

Right? So I guess what, if they needed some reassurance that copper can do what they needed to do and what that journey of working with someone like us would look like, can you speak to that?

[00:06:28] Alex Bass: So in working with someone like us, typically, what we're gonna end up doing is. Have your team come in with their pain points and the problems.

So if you're, if you already had Salesforce in place, you also very likely had enterprise software in place in other areas of the business. So let's take, for example, Pardot or Marketo alongside Salesforce. That's essentially the bread and butter for email outreach marketing purposes, and then the CRM connection [00:07:00] point.

So what we often see is someone that is using sales. Wants to maybe try something different, like a copper pipe drive hub. , they will also have all these other tools in place that were really built for outreaching and, and connecting to millions of users. So you use Marketo to have segmentation, maybe from your web app or your website for millions of customers to do tailored emails.

Depending on that. Whereas what we're speaking to for small mid-size businesses, what's more important is having more of a personal touch along the way. So the tools that are built for SMBs are actually these great tools that are more focused on personalization. They're great at the one to one, one to 10, one to 101 to even say 5,000, they're not good at the one to millions.

That's a different order of magnitude. And that is actually an enterprise need. So it's very likely that you and your team already has a lot of enterprise software in place, because that's what you're told to use with [00:08:00] Salesforce. And they're not wrong. Whoever implemented that, that is absolutely what you should do.

The problem is you are building for what you wanted to be versus what you were in the moment. So you really need to have say 500 a thousand employees and talking about hundreds of people using the CRM before something like Salesforce makes sense. And often you're probably gonna be the a hundred million or more mark of revenue before that actually starts making sense.

So

[00:08:26] Andra Vomir: you spoke earlier about it potentially costing. 30 40 grand and even more with working with someone like us to set up copper and their processes. So just putting myself in the listener's shoes here, they might be thinking I'm paying whatever it is. $50 a month per seat on copper. Don't quote me on that.

And now, now I'm looking at spending about 40 grand to work with you guys to set it up. There's obviously there could be some hesitation there.

[00:08:54] Alex Bass: So this is one of those areas too, that I, I think if you're coming from Salesforce, [00:09:00] this might connect with you a bit more because you probably already have spent tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars on implementing it.

If you've gone, the process that Salesforce expects you to go through. So just to, to explain Salesforce is one of the largest companies in the world. But in terms of revenue, again, don't quote me on this as, just as true as speaking, but we're talking about billions of dollars of revenue is what's coming through the actual license cost of say Salesforce.

Whereas tens of billions of dollars of revenue is what the consultants, the Salesforce partners, service businesses are making from actually implementing Salesforce. So there's a larger market out there for. The partners in the software implementers of Salesforce than there is actually in the software.

So you should be spending 10 to a hundred times more on actually getting it set up right than you should be on the actual software itself. That is literally just what exists in the Salesforce ecosystem. People [00:10:00] don't really view it that way though. When you start talking about copper and these other tools, cuz they're sold as, oh, it's a very simple, easy to use solution, but what the whole point of a CRM is, is it's kind of a blank slate.

It's really a CRM is a CRM is a CRM. They're all the same. You have people, companies opportunities, leads, and they're all the same kind. General entities in a way, but how you can configure them, what custom fields you use when, what stages, what process you're implementing into the CRM. That's where all the heavy lifting goes into.

That's where a lot of the money goes into actually getting it now down. Right. So if I just gave you Salesforce, if I gave you copper and didn't give any guidance of how to set it up, you're going to run into the same problems. Actually getting it set up properly is, is the, is. Actual need when you're implementing CRM.

[00:10:50] Andra Vomir: So we get this a lot. What would you say to the person that's like, look, I'm pretty technical and how hard can it be? Yeah, I log into copper and I, I can see where I [00:11:00] can add fields. I can see where I can create a pipeline and they have that resistance to the idea of working with someone like us.

[00:11:07] Alex Bass: I would probably say that you are not quite at the place of working with.

A partner or consultant, because you should really be feeling pain at the time of wanting to work with someone, you should be feeling that we are growing. We have a need of, you know, a hundred leads coming in every couple weeks or a month. And we're just trying to get more out of what we already have going on, or there's people on the team that are doing the same thing over and over.

So. Admin or accounting, for example, they're sending out 10 invoices a week and they're manually doing that. There's so much to be had from automating these different parts of the process. And there should be actual pain that people are feeling within the company before it makes sense to actually be implementing or working with a partner.

[00:11:56] Andra Vomir: I think you touched on something really important there, because we are not [00:12:00] just talking about configuring copper, but we're also talking about building automation and integrations into your business. Can you just throw out some examples of some common ones that we've built for other companies?

[00:12:11] Alex Bass: Yeah. So take, for example, if you have a lot of leads coming in, it's important to have the form on your website or wherever these leads are coming through to automatically sync into the CRM. So for example, say that you have a hundred leads coming into the CRM. We also see companies that just have that send over via email, and then someone has to manually go in and follow up with the email and they're like, oh, well, this person's warm.

So now let's now add them to the CRM or there's this manual process around that. If you have anywhere near. Even 10 leads coming in a week that should automatically be added to the CRM and they should be brought through a lead qualification process in the CRM. Then when you get into say the admin accounting side of things, and you're sending out invoices often, if you're at a certain scale where you're sending a lot of invoices out, there's some repeatability to the products and service [00:13:00] offerings say that you're selling courses or you're selling a product, there should be something that should automatically send that invoice out.

An opportunity hits a certain stage in the process. There's, there's countless other systems that are being used, maybe project management. If you're more of a custom company and every new customer turns into a large product, you actually, or project, you actually need to have an area where you can manage that project.

But. You should automatically have that project created at the time that it makes sense for the project to be created.

[00:13:28] Andra Vomir: So what we're speaking to here is not only just configuring a CRM, we're also talking about the time that it's going to save your team from, for example, sending out 10 manual emails every single time.

So with implementing integration and automation, You also have like a shiny assistant built into your processes, would you say that's true?

[00:13:48] Alex Bass: Yeah. And I think a lot of this is actually just forgetting to do some of the basic things. So one of the beautiful things is if someone writes you on your website, having that, then trigger a very personalized [00:14:00] email.

Again, not talking about. Pardot and Marketo that have the unsubscribe link in the bottom or feeling very UN personalized. You should have it feel like a sales rep automatically reaches out to you, cuz you filled out on the website, someone filling out a form should trigger the next step of the process and that should often be automated.

And that is what allows you to scale and that stuff doesn't get to happen until unless you invest the time into doing it.

[00:14:25] Andra Vomir: so someone may be listening and they're like, okay, great, Alex, Andre, I get you. I have this mess, which is Salesforce. Some of my team is using it. I want to switch to something like copper, what do they have to have ready for us to help them?

And for them to make that initial outreach.

[00:14:43] Alex Bass: So, this is the beautiful thing. All you really need to have is the pain points and problems. And what we would essentially do is dive into those pain points and problems and, and have some level of like a priority phased approach to them. So where can we [00:15:00] have the biggest wins?

And the other thing to keep in mind is we really need you to be open minded about the software. Needs to be used. So say that you're using Salesforce. You're also very likely using enterprise software alongside it. As we've mentioned quite a few times, par Marketo DocuSign, things like that. There's a chance that we would highly recommend switching to something that is built more for SMBs.

And, and, and again, every time I say, and B I, I mean, 250 employees or less, so this can scale quite large for these tools that we're talking about. And. It's likely that we're gonna have to rip everything out in order to get the type of integration that we would want. So if you come to us and say, Hey, here's the solutions that we wanna have.

We wanted to able to do this, this and this. And we wanna use this software and do this. That's not the right conversation that we should be having. We should just be speaking to the pain points that you're having and do a root cause analysis. You know, how do we go deeper on this? Why [00:16:00] is this important?

And then we can actually find the types of software that we need at any given point in time to actually implement. So we really need to lead the process and really extract as much from you as we possibly can. And. We just need to essentially take all that information, take all of the knowledge that we've learned over decades of time and all of these companies that we work with and say, cool.

Well, I think you should be using copper and Dialpad or copper and air call or there's there's, there's different software that does the same thing, but we would recommend it differently depending on what is most important to you specifically.

[00:16:35] Andra Vomir: So just to summarize that no solutions are required. You don't need to think through anything else other than your pain points and come with an open mind.

I think our favorite types of companies that we've worked with are when the business owner, the person that we're working with says to us, you guys know what we're trying to do, so just help us get there. so I think that wraps up all the questions that I had about switching over from [00:17:00] Salesforce or the journey to switch over from Salesforce to copper.

Is there any final thoughts that you wanna add or any words of reassurance that you would wanna give anybody who is in that, you know, overwhelming middle ground?

[00:17:11] Alex Bass: So I would just say that if you are feeling like Salesforce or HubSpot, or even if you have copper implemented right now, if you're just feeling like it's not doing quite what you.

That's normal. That is actually completely normal. It's difficult because a lot of the software is sold as just put it into place and it will work. That's ideally what they would want, but there's a reason why Salesforce consultancy is a tens of billions of dollars per year industry. Setting it up, right.

Actually taking the time and investing the time into figuring out what your unique processes are. Mapping them to the software, training, the team, documenting the processes. And being very thoughtful about the complementary software that you're integrating in with it. Like this is something that takes time.

This is something that takes months. This is something that, that iterates over the course of [00:18:00] years. So don't expect to get that out of the box. And also don't expect to just have someone internally on the team, say, for example, you have an operations person. Don't just expect that they're gonna know what to do, or put it on their plate to say, Hey, you go and figure out what software we should be using.

That's that's not the role. That is not something that is. Had easily, we have that information because we've actually worked with hundreds of companies and we've seen how different pieces of software work together. We've tried integrating software that shouldn't be integrated together and, and seeing if it's even feasible, if it's possible, if it makes sense to sometimes we'll bend and do that, if it's so deeply integrated in other areas or systems or training, but we there's just so much to, to be known.

Like if, if you're using Salesforce, you're probably using Zendesk. Should any SMB be using Zen? Absolutely not. There's better tools that are more personalized that will give a better team and external experience. Typically, Zendesk, you go to that when you start hitting API limits, because you have, you know, a [00:19:00] thousand new customer support tickets coming in every minute.

Like that's the area when you start looking at Zendesk and that is something that most companies should never even have to experience. So there's just a lot. That is, is so much more context versus just saying, Hey, what are the best help desks? It's probably gonna say zenes, but that's not true. Talk to anyone that is used Zendesk, any customer success manager or customer success person at any company.

They're going to say that they hate Zendesk. There's a reason for it. So why are you implementing that into your small business? When there's better tools that are more enjoyable to use that will actually give your customers a better experience?

[00:19:36] Andra Vomir: cool. I think that wraps it up. This was really insightful and really helpful and hope you got something from it.

[00:19:42] Alex Bass: Cool. Thanks for listening.

Bye now.