Why CRM Fails—And What CEOs Must Do About It (Ft. Brian Gardner) | Ep. #60

Why do so many CRM systems fail even with the best tools in place? In this episode of HIRED! The Podcast, host Travis Miller sits down with Brian Gardner—founder of SalesProcess360 and author of CRM for CEO—to explore why CRM adoption often falls flat and what leadership can do to change that.

From managing resistant sales stars to turning CRM into a company-wide advantage, Brian shares practical insights that help teams move beyond data entry and into real sales strategy. If you’re leading a team, scaling a business, or just tired of your CRM underperforming, this conversation delivers what you need to hear.

Brian is a veteran of the industrial sales world, having moved from inside sales to VP of sales before founding and selling his own CRM company. Through SalesProcess360, he now coaches industrial distributors, reps, and manufacturers on aligning CRM with process, culture, and growth. He’s the author of ROI from CRM and CEO for CRM, and holds a degree in Industrial Technology from LSU.
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Transcript

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I see it all the time. Travis. Every account as these that I'm client. I'm working with has these naysayers or these laggards or these hey, I don't want to do this because I've been successful. Why do I need to do this? Every every account has. Hello and welcome to HIRED! The Podcast. Travis Miller as always. And today I have got Brian Gardner here with me. Brian is a veteran veteran veteran in the sales industry and and CRM strategy. Man's got over 25 years of experience. He's transitioned from managing sales in his family's distribution business to founding Delta's CRM platform for industrial teams. And later, he's currently running SalesProcess360, a consultancy focused on aligning CRM systems with sales processes. Also, the proud author of the brand new book CEO for CRM Your Roadmap for CRM Success, he's introducing pivotal role of CEO for CRM to ensure successful CRM adoption. Because Brian, as we all know that well, adopting a new CRM doesn't always go as smoothly as the sales team promises it will. No it doesn't, Travis. And, I guess that's, that's what I'm doing, what I'm doing, because I love doing what I'm doing, and it's, it's it's, you know, CRM stands for what customer relationship management. But I think it really stands for a couple other things. Change management. It stands for culture management. You know, culture change. There's just, you know, it's it. Anyway, we, where do you want to start? Well, let's start with how how on earth you got here. So how do you go from working as a sales manager in an industrial distribution company to being one of the preeminent evangelists for CRM and CRM adoption in industrial technology? What was the genesis of that? Yeah. Okay. I'll, I'll be short, but I'll give you a background. I mean, I'll get you up to speed on that. I, I grew up in the industrial distribution business, as you said. It was a family business. And this is a this is, this is, I always say this, so I'll just say it. I was, I tell people I was an S.O.B.. I was son of the boss. I grew up in this business and worked through all phases of family business from stocking shelves, filling filling gauges in level gauges, and pressure seal systems. We were in the process control instrumentation, valves and valve automation world and South Louisiana refineries. Pulp and paper, oil and gas, water and wastewater market and then worked in inside sales and outside sales. And I was a product product specialist and then ultimately VP of sales. But Travis Long and I believe in sales process, and I've always believed in sales process. And so now I'm a date myself. Now this is in the mid 90s. I had implemented some manual processes for doing lead management, an opportunity management project, pursue quick follow up using, you know, Excel sheets and access databases at the time. And we started using some contact management system, you know, act but I said I want to automate this whole process. And so again, look for solutions out there at CRM. Actually, CRM was not even an acronym back then. And now I'm really dating myself. The acronym three letter acronym was for Salesforce Automation. So I said I want some of that. I want to take all my manual processes and automate these with the software. So again, compressing the story, I looked for looked at around 6 or 7 different companies that had supposedly solutions. Every one of them had no idea of my business. All they wanted to do with some software and then charge me a lot to build it and not even know my business. So I said no, thank you, and ultimately developed an SFR CRM system for our family business. I, partnered with a technology guy who had a very powerful database engine, and we built we built a SFR CRM system for our business, had no intentions to go to market with it. And again, compressing the story, like, friendly competitor out of Houston, Texas. So the system that we built and again, long story short, basically dropped their investment with another company they just hired to build a CRM system and went with our no name system. Travis. That was the moment in time where I caught the bug. I, you know, I use the analogy of if you have kids, you know, when someone that you don't know comes up to you and tells you that, hey, your kids are well-behaved or they provide or they're whatever it's like, or, you know, confirming that you're maybe doing the right thing. So with with this, with this company basically dropping at the time, I think it was about a $60,000 investment in their beginning journey of an SFA CRM system. And what was this? No name system? It was kind of a confirmation for me that we might have built something really, really powerful. So one out, raise some money, was totally underfunded and started a CRM company, left the family business. My wife and friends thought I was totally crazy. What are you doing? You know, and I said, I just I caught the book. I can't say anything else. What I call it the bug. I believe in this so much. So again, compressing the story that that company, a CRM company, was sold about 9 or 10 years ago and now I'm strictly consulting and coaching companies in the industrial space is my primary market on helping them get value and return on investment and get the adoption curve up and position as a competitive edge. All the things that I believe in and have seen and live, in this industrial market is a lagger in this there. It's a total lagger in this. So it's extremely exciting for me where I am in my life, so to speak, to maybe give something back and, and, and, and make the industrial market maybe more, technology savvy and using tools to have a competitive edge. You know, the pharmaceutical financial services are the, you know, they're they're ahead of the curve with all this. But industrial market, I, I still believe is a lagging market. And I can maybe bring value there. What do you think that is? Because I was talking to, Ken McCann, the CEO of Worker Labs, a couple of weeks ago, and he was talking to me about how industrial technology automation lags in technology compared to so many other industries. He said there hasn't been a meaningful advancement in robotics in close to 30 years, and why on earth is that? Why do you think that is? That industrial technology, which should be at the forefront of technology, lags behind so much. Had I wish I had the right answer for it. I think it's the, the just, you know, that market is all kind of I hate to say this, but again, I think I can say because I was from it and still in it was maybe older school or let's just get out and do some basic blocking and tackling and, and we've always done it this way, you know, maybe an industrial in the industrial market there, especially the distribution, maybe, you know, family type businesses that just stay, you know, the second and third generation that have continued to do their current processes. You know, I don't know, but it truly is. I mean, so one of the things I do and I true and I love I've been doing it for about nine years now is I, I give a CRM class once a semester to Texas A&M Industrial Distribution team. The students, they're seniors that are about to graduate. And I open up my session on CRM and I ask the question, I said, what do you think I'm going to talk about today? And, you know, I get all the how to spell CRM and just stuff, you know, so and I say, well, yeah, okay. But that's not really what I'm here. And it's like, get their attention. I say my my goal here is to help you get a good job and turn this industrial market into a more, evangelist for, for technology and using technology. And I want to position CRM. So when you hit the marketplace, you're asking your the companies you're working with or that you're interviewing with. You're asking them about CRM. You're you're demanding that they have CRM and you're kind of being on the forefront of that. That's my goal. What's the questions you're, you're teaching them to ask. But there's some. So it's somebody either new to the workforce or out there currently looking for a job, can identify the companies that are going to give them the tools and the resources to have the best shot at success. Yep. So what I you know, I have a whole list. That's a great question. I have a list of those in my talk with them. I say, you know, I ask these questions. I said, you're their interviewing you, but you need to interview them. Right. And so I you know, I ask the questions. So first question is do you have a CRM system yes or no. And that tells you a lot right there. If the answer is yes, then say here's another next question. What what are you doing with CRM? How are you using. What roles in your business are using it? Is it just outside sales or is it inside sales? Is it service? Is a customer service? How are you using CRM? You know, how have you trained a team on CRM? Is it become SOP standard operating procedure in your company? You know, is there a CEO for CRM, which again, is kind of the emphasis of my of my new book. There must be a CEO for CRM, I believe, inside of a company. And so when you ask that question to a company, you'll get real, you know, hey, are they committed to CRM or is it just check the box, you know, because it is a culture change. Yeah. You you mentioned that you said, in the book without a point person responsible for the design, execution and onboarding of your implementation. It may be doomed from the start. What type of person is the best person to take on that role in an org? Yeah, no, I, I know, I mean, this is my belief and I guess I'm backing up with based on history and working with companies, it must be, you know, I list the traits or the characteristics of a good CEO for CRM. And first off, that person must be in the sales management, sales management, sphere. You know, they, they, they need to be driving the sales processes and best practices. Another, another term that you're I'm hearing a lot out there is called sales excellence manager or companies that are focusing on sales excellence, which I believe CRM is part of that. So again, it needs to be someone that sales sales mind it. It needs to be someone that has the respect, within the team. It needs to be someone that understands all the roles within the company inside sales, outside sales, customer support, service, marketing. Because you're going to have to piece the puzzle together. CRM is not just an outside sales solution, it's a team solution. You know that the the that person needs to basically sell the concept. Something I promote heavily is you've got to constantly be promoting the why and the what's in it for me. And if that's not a one and done, so that there's a lot of you know what, it's not, I don't believe. And again, this isn't any knock on the role. It's just that they don't have the experience in it and can't do the things that are needed. I see a lot of companies turn over CRM because it's considered software to either the IT department or operations, and they need to be involved, I believe, but I don't believe they need to be the the, the leader, the driver or the CEO for CRM. They need to be in support role. That's just that's just my feeling on that. Travis, from what I've seen out there. So, so it needs to be somebody in sales management, sales leadership. But at least in my experience, and from what I've heard from a lot of other organizations, is that a lot of times, the absolute best salespeople in an organization have the most challenge utilizing a tool like this. So how do you handle people in your organizations like that? But also, if the best salespeople aren't your CEO for CRM, who are they? Okay, so let's let's look at this. There needs to be it needs to be a, you know, a hierarchy arrangement with this. There needs to be someone that's driving the vision for CRM and change management, sales excellence, all the things that this is involving, you know, and promoting it, the why. But then then you need to have lieutenants out there, whether you're broken up as a company by region or by territory or by industry that are kind of, you know, on the same page and in the field and in, in the trenches with the team that are promoting CRM. So, you know, if I look at successful companies that I've been involved in, that's what they have. They have the executive buy in at the CEO for CRM, at the highest level. But then they've they've formed a group of, you know, lieutenants, so to speak, that are based on territory, regions or industry that are promoting CRM and driving the why. Now you're going to have every company is going to have a bell curve of early adopters, middle of the road and lag or so they're every company is going to have that. And so you like you said, yeah, there's a lot of times I see where the best salesperson is, is not an evangelist for CRM. Or it looks at it as a four letter word. You know, they're not they don't want to use it. So those are challenges. Again, there's no easy button. I tell companies all the time there's no easy part. So what do you have to do with those individuals I believe is is nurture them along. You know, work with them, coach them as them as managers, coach them. You know, I'll go back to, I'll go back to my days in the industrial world. I had a we roll this out. I had one of our top salespeople, did not want to do CRM. And so just working with them and I remember that came up there was a huge project, a huge project at Monsanto facility in Luling, Louisiana. It was being engineered out of their corporate office in Saint Louis at the time. And I said, let's let's you CRM, I'll work with you, I'll coach you. Let's use CRM through the duration of this project. This was a nine month, a 12 month project, right in the wheelhouse of CRM. I said, let's let me work with you on this and let's just use the system. So we we would have weekly cadences on this. We would update CRM, we would strategize and how to use CRM. We document all the stuff we're doing. Long story short, Travis, the purchase order was released. You know, it was over 1st May and maybe 1.4 $1.5 million order released big order, and all we received was 25% destination credit in the beginning, because the purchasing and the engineering, they said, was out of out of our territory. We were not in our it wasn't in our territory. Long story short, we were able to go back in CRM, hit a button and reproduce the crime of all that we've done for the last 9 to 10 months, and that salesperson got another 35 or 40% commission, which on a big number was a big was a big addition. From that moment in time, that salesperson was kind of sold on this and saw the value of this from complex selling type situation. And if it's not in the system, it didn't happen. Yeah. And and but again and I just, I just had, I just had a, I just had a coaching session with the client this morning actually. And that that example came up with them was the one of their salespeople that has been using CRM. And they were able to reproduce the crime, you know, and, able to get good additional commissions. So, I mean, that's just one example. I mean, it's bigger than that, you know, and you got to find other things. But that was just one example of how took a naysayer work with them, coached them through it, use the system. And at the end of the day, it brought out you and they kind of turned their, their mindset. So how are the best people in the best companies utilizing the CRM to be most effective? Yeah, no, I think the great question, my my quick answer to that is they position it as a team solution. I tell companies all the time when I'm working with them in the beginning, or we're just talking about CRM. My comment to them is, if you're looking for this to just be a tool to log call reports, you know, or even even just do your Excel spreadsheets to, to, reproduce your Excel sheets for projects or opportunities. From the outside sales perspective, you might want to reconsider or hold off on it. It must be positioned as a team solution. Everyone needs to see the value that everyone's getting from sharing and leveraging information as a team. And so, you know, successful companies I believe, have implemented across the team the different roles inside sales, outside sales, customer service, marketing, product specialist management. You know, that's just so, so key, for success. Plus it allows you to position it as a solution to get back to the organization and to the user versus just a user inputting information. It and then another thing there was that, last thing on that, that I'm just thinking about is you can also then sell this as a solution for better customer experience. And so I ask companies to think about that, think about CRM as a way to, as a tool to provide a better customer experience. So what I mean by that is if the right hand in the left hand know what's going on inside and outside sales, let's take that dynamics right. An inside outside sales team. Inside salespeople typically touch customers multiple times more than an outside salesperson will. If inside sales are logging their critical emails and logging their critical conversations in CRM that can be shared and leveraged with the outside team. And now, when the outside person goes and makes calls, they have information that they can leverage in the eyes of the customer. Looks like, you know, they're clicking on all cylinders. I want to go back to, The laggards. You know you mentioned you've had a couple of had two coaching calls this morning. How do you get buy in from those people who have been doing things their own way. They've been wildly successful in business and company comes in and they're selling the. They need to implement this new system and they don't want to do it. They've been successful. They're making money. They're making money for themselves. They're making money for the company. Why should I change? Change is scary. How do you I'm not even asking necessarily how do you coach them? But how do you even get them to be open to coaching? Well, so let's back up. And you got to look at the situation. So we on this call this morning we talked about that with just you know the question I asked was is that. And again I'm not trying to be negative or I wasn't I don't know. The full story I said is that is that salesperson really being successful based on their them, or is it partially due to the territory that they're in? I see a lot of that. I mean, a salesperson might have inherited a lot of good territory over the years and reaping the benefits. And I again, I'm not being negative on that. But think about that. And then I asked the question, you know, we got to ask the question and try to talk with the naysayers. Are we truly getting the most wallet share that we can be getting out of the accounts? And let's analyze data. Let's take data, and then you start thinking about small projects. Or I know an area that I've worked with, with companies on this or with naysayers is let's let's understand their territory. One, let's understand where the white space is to, and let's determine whether that that those gaps can justify a focused effort to grow the business. If the answers are yes, yes, yes, and you have that lets you CRM for that and just do a couple handful of of things in CRM for in one example is have a manage their proactive opportunities. I call it their opportunities that they want to grow the business, you know, where are they going to basically strategize are a little mini business plans. You CRM for that, find a couple. When I say a handful, I'm talking maybe 2 to 3 areas that you can work with them on to maybe crack the code or advance the account, or advance the territory, or advance the product so that you're selling for wallet share on there. You got to find those little things. You got to find what motivates those people. You know, those typically those top salespeople are very competitive, right? Salespeople are very competitive. So maybe you put some metrics in place. You know, gamification I've been doing some gamification with CRM, again, not trying to put anyone down, but people like to see how they compare, you know? So create some metrics, new clients, new opportunities, new leads, new products and new accounts, you know. And where do they rank on that? Top salesperson might be at the bottom of one of those criteria and say, hey, I want to I don't want to be at the bottom of that list. You're right. There's no easy travel. I know I said there's no I, I wish I had an easy button. There's no easy. You got to find what makes that person tick, what motivates that person, you know, and find a way to leverage CRM to maybe challenge them on that. I think that's a really good point. And maybe it was a silly question to try and ask for a no. No silly questions. I you're silly questions. I see all the time. Travis every account ask these that I'm client I'm working with has these naysayers or these laggards or these hey, I don't want to do this because I've been successful. Why do I need to do this? Every every account has it. You know, another thing is, is leverage. The other members of the of the other salespeople on the team leverage them and have them continually talk about their successes. You know, earlier this week had another coach, a client with a mean, a coaching call with a client, and they were talking, I talked about sales meetings, and we kind of talked about these naysayers. And my comment was, take a couple of your your team members that are truly leveraging Sierra and put them up on stage during a sales meeting and have them give best practices and how they're using it when when it's winter, when a peer hears from another peer, I think it sticks more. And more. So then top down telling you to do something. Yes, yes. You know. So whisper in the year of your of your successful salespeople that are truly leveraging it and using it, or can talk about some good best practices or use cases of how CRM has brought value to them and have them put them on, put them on the podium at sales meetings to give an overview to the team on how they're using CRM. And let it let the naysayers and everyone hear, hear that from you. Can you think of anybody that you turned around? I mean, I know you told the one story about the guy who was able to prove the amount of work. He didn't get additional commissions, but can you think of anyone who was doing extremely well, was hesitant. And then once they saw the light, they were able to do do better work for their companies, help their customers out even more. Yeah. Okay. So I think what comes to mind is not an individual. What comes to mind is a company, a total company that they kind of did. A so there was a company, in Houston, there were Valve Valve Automation Company and this was prior to just prior to really CRM or just getting started with CRM, I call it they were quoting machine. They were quoting everything that they could quote. They were not an order getting machine. They were quoting machine. They had reached a point with their with their bandwidth of their people that they were just they were out of bandwidth. They were quoting and spending all our time quoting and not strategizing and not trying to close business. And so they were a long story short. Company, you know, was like, okay, why do we need the CRM? We're busy enough. Don't add another thing to my plate right now. Right. Well, if we can add something to your plate that can make you more efficient and maybe relieve some bandwidth or open up some bandwidth for you, is that a good thing? So again, long story short, we put in place CRM. We went we we implemented a process for go no go simple logo quick no go no go for quoting. You know and we and we documented that we remove the feels like that's another phrase I use in CRM is let's remove the feels like CRM can help remove the remove the feel, you know, feels like we're going to get this feels like we're doing well. Feels like we know who the decision makers are. You can put processes in place for that. But in this case, the go no go. We put in place some simple questions. Are we on the approved vendors list? Do we have a champion. You know that we're quoting that's going to support us when we're not in the room. You know do we know who? Do we have a connection at purchasing that down or not. So we list about five questions. Right. And based on those question, answering those questions determine whether we quoted it or not. So at the end of the day, we started quoting. They started quoting less but winning more. They increased their sales and their sales team and then sign outside. Sales team became, I think, really stepped back and said, okay, wait, this this is not a bad thing here because we're taking and leveraging data. We're leveraging processes. We're communicating as a team, and we're taking rifle shots at where we need to be spending our time. So it took a whole company that was a naysayer at the time saying, we're too busy for CRM. Don't add another thing to my plate, and we turn that around. And who was the champion there? Who was the person. That was into it? Was it was the the VP of sales. Shelly White. Farrow controls Shelly white. I, she was great. She was on board. She was she saw the big picture. And, her and I still this was this goes back. This goes back 30 years ago, maybe 25 for sure. Okay. I still are in touch with each other. We still communicate. We still. Yeah, we're it's, you know, it's not just a business relationship. We became personal friends, and, you know, it was it was great. So what's next, Brian? You know, we've come a long way from Excel spreadsheets and SFA's to now. The amount of tools and technology I like. The, when you said that CRM, it's a marathon, not a sprint, but when the technology is moving so fast now in so many things and new things and new tools and add ons and enhancements are coming at lightning speed. If you're trying to run at marathon pace, how can you even keep up with everything that is that is happening? Well, first off, you need my opinion. You need to step back and get, you know, ask yourself the question, do I want to keep up with the Joneses, so to speak? You know, and it's not always, you know, you know, this thing, keeping up with the Joneses, with all your personal stuff and buying the boats and this and that. I mean, sometimes you just can't keep up with the Joneses. So you've got to do a self analysis as a company and as a CEO for CRM is driving these. The vision here of, hey, do I want to keep up with the Joneses or what should I focus on? That's the bigger question. What should I focus on? Take. You know, I believe CRM is a marathon, not a sprint. And what I say they're continuing that is I believe CRM is is should be done in phases. Okay. And you're not going to leverage all of CRM capability, especially at the speed of light of change that's happening right. We'll talk about AI in a second. But so you do this in phases. So start with some basic blocking and tackling, you know, and then once you've once you finish that. So example typical example of phase one, which is probably what you're asking is typical things like let's get a standard contact database one source and the truth contacts. That might sound remedial, but it's, it's you know, that's that's a win in itself, you know, okay, let's get our arms around the opportunities that we're that we're pursuing and really understanding our forecasts for leading indicators. Let's get a let's get a handle on our quick follow up processes. Let's get a handle on our some key accounts and growth accounts and start doing a little whitespace analysis by our products or services. So we know where to spend our time. If we just do those 3 or 4 things, you're ahead of the curve. Most companies are, especially in this industrial space. Once you've accomplished that, then you look at what's the next, you know, what do they say? How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time? Or are you big steak one bite at a time, right? You know, you do this in phases. That's that that's what I mean by marathon. It's it's not a you're not going to run a marathon in the sprint the whole time, right? You know, and so you got to pick, pick what you want to focus on. You know, the big buzzword, obviously the shiny new tool is I and I'm and I want to be very, very clear. I'm, I know enough about AI to make me dangerous, but I am nowhere near an expert on AI. I'm terrible to learn. In fact, I'm going to an AI conference, next month, to get just get more acclimated about this. But here's what I do believe. I believe, and again, I'm speaking from the industrial market side. Right. That's the world I live in. I believe most companies in the industrial space are not ready for AI. Why? Because their data is not clean. Their taxonomies are not clean. They're hierarchies. They're industry associations with data. And so the things they want to use AI for their it's not clean AI. So come is all the time. Let's get our house and order. Let's get our house in order before we tackle this new shiny new toy called AI, you know? And that takes time. That's not easy. There's no easy button for that. You know, I work with a I worked with a client. We rolled it out in December of last year. We spent about six months preparing and building the system. Just to give you an idea, they went from, don't show me exactly this. It was maybe 28,000, 30,000 accounts in their system, an ERP, that they wanted to migrate to CRM. And before we did that, before we hit integrate, you know, before we hit download, we said, let's let's look at this. Are they by sites? What's the taxonomy? Do we have the industry codes? Do we have their Nissar codes and all that stuff is all this organized right. No, we had to go clean house. We had to get our house in order. We got it down to 2800 accounts that are real accounts that CRM needed to play with. Yeah. You know, what was all the dirty data? How do you. Ship to multiple ship twos, multiple build twos, duplicate accounts? Because no one checked. It wasn't duplicate checker. They didn't they didn't get down to sites within CRM. You need to have it down to sites meaning shell, Norco, shell guys, Marshall, mobile shell Houston not just shell with all the different ship tools because your transactions that are going to happen in CRM are down at the site level. What you're doing at Shell Houston is different than shell Norco or Shell Baton Rouge or Shell new Jersey, or Shell Chicago. So those that what are you hoping to find out about artificial intelligence and sales enablement? Yeah, I just want to understand how companies are using it. I want to hear some stories on here. Best practices I want to confirm my thoughts on having your house in order and having clean data and your taxonomies and your hierarchies, your product and manufactured taxonomies and all that stuff that I think needs to be in order that I work with companies on. And we spend a lot of time in the beginning of implementation to clean, clean house, so to speak, or get our house. In order for that, I want to confirm that, I'm going to I'm going there as a sponge. I'm going there as a sponge. I want to be able to take what I learned back to, to the clients that I've been working with that are maybe ready for it. Now that their house is in order, and they've got some runtime under their belt and they're ready for phase two or phase three. Have you seen anyone doing anything particularly interesting with it yet? No, I know I don't. You know, there's things like okay, automated automated follow up. So after seven days, you know, we'll write some automation to follow up using Salesforce Agent Force. You know I've had some talks about that with clients that they can do some automation automated of things, you know. But, you know, I just mean those are all high level. I personally and I again I want to be very clear, I personally have not implemented or been involved in any AI related, you know, successes or stories with, with CRM. Got it. Because again, I do believe and go back to your original one of our original conversations, the industrial market is a lagger. I think they're a lagger with this as well. Well, there's it's great transition here. So what can companies do to get ahead of the curve, especially when it comes to having the right people on board? What's the the companies that are trying to implement this strategy or implement that? They've they've gotten the bug. How what's the best hiring process to identify people that are going to help them continue on this journey? Well, that's a great. So again, I go back to my my what I what do I kind of, talk to the students, the seniors at Texas A&M, the distribution. You you know, you need to interview the company. You need to let them know that you're, you know, what CRM is about. You need to let them know that you understand about sales processes and how it's important to, you know, all the things that CRM brings to the table. So I guess what I would say for companies who are hiring or expanding, make sure you you bring on people, the new people you bring on are on the bus or for CRM, you know, they they they all want it. Maybe they have more experience, with it. Maybe they're if they're not, if they're a new person coming out of college or some out of some technical institute or whatever lease that they understand what CRM is about. You know, the nice thing about those, those employees is there no, there's no bad habits. You know, they just they just you need to make sure they they believe in that or they another thing I look for is, I would look for if I'm in the management position today, hiring salespeople, how do they adapt the change, you know, are they do they just do a tailspin when when something changes? I mean, the world is changing. Everything is changing. Okay. I might tell you they need to change the way that they do their expense track. Oh my gosh, they go into a tailspin. Are they going to take it with stride and say, okay, I get it, let's move on. You know, so you look for characteristics about how do they handle change. Because again, back to what I said earlier, I believe CRM not only stands for customer relationship, it's changed for change management. It's changing behaviors. It's changing the management style both as a management as individuals. Well, you talk to a lot of companies out there. And I'm curious, Brian, what do you see? What are you hearing from your customers about the direction of the industry, industrial manufacturing, industrial tech? Where are we headed over the next six, 12, 24 months? Yeah, I mean, I don't think there's any. I haven't heard of any. It's you know, I think people were waiting for this past election and okay, it's going to open up some markets in this and that. I think, you know, I've gone through some of the association meetings. I had the economist talk and they at their comment that I've heard is and again I'm this is not I'm, this is not me. This is why I'm here. Say that, you know, things in the industrial market are going to look good for probably the next 4 or 5 years, but 2030 might not, you know, and again, okay, well, what's that mean? You know, as I or this scare tactic, I don't know. But the the near term future here is pretty bright. You know, it's, I see more and more companies acquisitions. I mean, my gosh, you know, the big it keep getting bigger, right? So, I've been working with a lot of clients that, you know, I started with one of their with a company, and now, they brought me in because a company bought them and has 34 other companies, you know, so I see that trend, obviously. I mean, that's not a an moment, but you see a, I see a trend in this industrial space about the companies buying other smaller distribution or service companies and putting them into their portfolio. Now with that, it's going to cause a challenge. And again, I was involved with a company who did that about two, two and a half, three years ago. That was like crazy buying companies. The question there is now creating the standards across all the companies. Okay. And if you don't in my opinion if you don't have a common CRM platform and you got people doing things differently and you haven't created the best practices in the standards and the expectations, it's going to make that acquisition, more difficult to kind of fallen in line with the company culture, you know, because now you got multiple company cultures that you're trying to build into one. So that comes back to having standard handling, the standard operating procedures, you know, leveraging leveraging CRM for standards across the board and training to the whole team on those standards and best practices. Well, Brian, I appreciate it. There's a lot of work for a lot of companies to be done. I probably shouldn't say this on air, but ours included. You give me some really good ideas. So, Brian, who are the best people that should be reaching out to you? And what should they be reaching out to you about? And how can they get Ahold of you? Yeah, the, I'm on LinkedIn. You can go to sales process three 6.com and see our team and what we're about. And there's obviously ways to get Ahold of us. You know, I guess what we believe here, well, we believe our secret sauce is and what we're passionate about as a team. And again, we're not huge. There's four of us on the team, but they're all from the industrial marketplace. They've all been involved in CRM and they're on the serum boss, so to speak. Right. They call it the book. You know, is that our seat? I feel our secret sauce is it's not just about CRM. It's about business processes and business practices. And so all of us on our team have been involved in running a sales organization in some form or fashion in the industrial market. So we understand that side of the business, and we feel we understand how CRM needs to be wired and what the value of CRM is. So we believe those to those to not, you know, our background in both understanding the the the industrial market from the sales pursuit side and then understanding CRM, how they need to be married. I think that's that's what I think our value is. So who you know, I'd love to talk with companies or individuals who want to talk more about CRM. You know, if you call me, reach out to me and just have a ten minute, 15 minute call with me. And, you know, I tell companies all the time, if you're not ready for CRM, you I'll be the first to tell you, okay? And I don't want to be involved with with a non success I'll be positive you know non success and CRM is not it's not for everyone. So if you have a check some of the boxes are ready for based on what I've seen in the marketplace I'll be the first to tell you that. And so maybe they can use me as a, as kind of a, go no go, just like that quote. No go. You know, go. No go for CRM. You know, I don't know. I, you know, where I was, I said I was where I am in my stage of, of life, so to speak, are working life. I'm enjoying the heck out of what I'm doing. And if I can bring some value to the industry real marketplace and make them not a lagger with this, that's that's where my goal is right now. And, you know, that's that's what that's what keeps gets me up in the morning and gets me excited. Let's keep on going. Brian, congratulations on the new book CEO for CRM available on Amazon. It has been a pleasure. Thank you. As always to Noah Cuff our producer. This has been HIRED! The Podcast. Talk to you again soon. All right. Thank you.