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Mr. Biz Radio: Using Automation to Increase Productivity and Close More Sales

Unedited transcription of the show is included below:

(00:04):

Welcome to Mr. Biz radio, Biz. Talk for Biz owners. If you're ready to stop faking the funk and take your business onward and upward, this show is for you. And now here's Mr. Biz, Ken Wentworth.

(00:19):

All right, welcome to another episode of Mr. Biz Radio with me, Mr. Biz Ken Wentworth. And for those watching not just listening, you can see we actually have another in-studio guest. And he's actually been on the show maybe two, three times, maybe four times, something like that. It's been a while. And actually he was,

(00:37):

I think

(00:37):

He was actually part of our 100th episode, which has been years ago now. But we did a special 100th episode where we had tips from experts, a hundred tips, and we did a hundred tips in 60 minutes. And, and Jason was one of our experts who came on and shared some of that with us. But our guest this week is Mr. Jason Case. He's an entrepreneur with extensive knowledge of digital marketing. He has built several successful businesses, and he's currently working on building a cr, RM and automation software that helps small businesses and franchise systems streamline their businesses. Jason, welcome back to Mr.

(01:12):

Biz Radio. Hey, thanks Ken. Thanks for having me.

(01:14):

Yeah. So it's been a while since you've been on, and as we typically do during the first segment talking about your entrepreneur journey, I mean, we talked about a little bit in the introduction there, but walk us through some of your, your entrepreneurial journey of what's brought you to where you're at now.

(01:30):

Yeah, so I mean, I started back in 2007, 2008 when I really became into the entrepreneur spirit, starting in the printing business, believe it or not. Had a kind of background in design and I built that business internationally, shipping t-shirts and custom print items all over the world. Sold that back in 2014 and kind of started on the digital marketing path. I never really knew I'd ever fallen into that <laugh> that journey, but that's, I grew to love it building the printing business and actually had more passion for that than <laugh> printing and doing that stuff along the way. So my wife, I think, was one of the ones that encouraged me to go down the path of starting a marketing agency and helping other people grow their businesses online and, and do that. So in that process, I kind of started a C R M marketing automation software on the side, and launched that back in 2018, 2019.

(02:45):

That was originally, well, I guess it was 2018 mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and the first year was a very large beta client and helped them grow from zero to 200 and 200 plus dealerships in about 10 months 200 locations. And I mean, when we started, I was working with them, there's probably like three of us, and within a year grew to very large company board of directors and, and so forth. So the end of that year, we kind of tested the software very heavily and monitored out to the, the rest of the market. And that's kinda my full-time gig now. So.

(03:26):

Well, the interesting thing to me, Jason, especially with people who listen to the show regularly or watch the show, is that what I heard from all that was that you had a printing business and because you had a printing business, you had to learn some digital marketing, and then you learned digital marketing and you're like, Hey, this is pretty cool. I like this better than printing. So then you went into digital marketing as you're doing digital marketing, and as I recall the, the client that started using your crm, you did some digital marketing for them, correct?

(03:54):

Yeah, I was actually kind of acting as their, had a marketing and fractional C T O, if you wanna call it that at the time. So heading up their technology and marketing. But like within that like 10 month year period, they grew so fast. I mean, they brought on a COO, a CTO you know, I mean it was it super rapid growth.

(04:18):

Yeah. Well, so again, you <laugh> you were doing digital marketing type stuff, CTO type stuff for them, and you're like, wait a minute. And they're like, Hey, we need a crm. And you'd kind of been dabbling with that a little bit in the background. Tell us a little bit how you got what, you know, what caused you to, to say, I'm gonna, I'm gonna build this crm software platform. Cause that's an interesting story too.

(04:38):

Yeah, well, I guess goes all the way back to the printing days. And back then, you know, I had a CRM marketing workflow automation software back then, and it's like anything, you start using it and you wish you had this and that. Yeah. And nothing, you know, ever perfect outta the box. So I just had in the back of my head some day, you know, I would you know, kind of maybe go down that route and build my own software. Well, it just happened when I sold the business, I was like, okay, well I got a little bit of extra cash, well pit towards this and, you know, start building it on the side. And, and that's how it started. You know, and I knew the importance of having a software to automate a lot of things. And I think as much as I was drawn to the marketing side of things, I was probably equally, equally aligned with just streamlining your business, right? Like keeping things organized, automating as much of the routine processes as you could. And you know, I just, I kind of was frustrated with the flaws of some of these other systems where, you know, sometimes the automation would add more, more work than actually simplifying things. So

(06:02):

Yeah, it fixes these two things, but now you have to, you have another piece over here you need to automate cuz it messes that up. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. interesting stuff. So I should me mentioned, that's how Jason and I met back in, gosh, we, we probably met in

(06:21):

2016. 16, I was gonna say. Yeah, yeah.

(06:24):

One of his business partners and I had met him at a networking, local networking event came in and met with Jason and him, and then it's funny how it all happened. And then I ended up becoming one of Jason's clients and you know, was working with him with all that stuff. And so, like I said, he's been on the show several times. And then I've seen the, the evolution of his processes as he is going through this whole, you know, sort of journey and using and developing the crm system, which I also am a customer and use and have used for,a few years now. Uso let's talk about that a little bit. So, thepulsespot.com is the website you can go to check out more about this CRM system we're talking about, but he's being way too humble because he developed this and he's a tinkerer, and so he develops it and then he'll have a client that comes on and they go, oh man, this kind of stinks because we wish it would do this. And Jason says, oh, we'll fix that. Uhow many times has that happened since you've had the, you started Paul,

(07:24):

Eh, quite a bit, but I, I'll say I was probably more flexible in the first year, obviously with the big client than I am now. Yeah. Just because I had the vision mm-hmm. <Affirmative> that we go, you know, the end vision kind of in mind. And obviously you pivot a little bit along the way, but, but at the same time, I try not to steer way off path mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, because, you know, that's not really going to achieve, you know, your end goal of and throwing you off tracks. Sure. So, so I'm a little bit more you know hold my ground a little bit more on that now, but yeah, we do, as long as it's like aligns with our, our, all of our customer base, then I absolutely will consider it. And we, we customize things

(08:12):

Too that Yeah. And I didn't mean, what I meant by that was you're, you've constantly been optimizing it over the last few years and you've probably gotten to a point now where you're like, I'm pretty comfortable with this thing. You know, you've developed some things and some different integrations. Yeah. and so you're pretty comfortable

(08:26):

With it. Yeah. Oh yeah. A hundred percent. I mean, yep. And we've learned a lot over the years working with everything from one person, you know, businesses all the way up to a hundred million dollar plus businesses. Yeah. So it's a wide array of businesses, but learned a lot over those years of, you know, what each type of business needs and each of these different industries and based on the size and how we can help them, you know, and that's, I think, where the real reward comes in of like taking somebody that might have used another CRM system in the past, but you know, how systemized things for them in the future.

(09:05):

So yeah. We're gonna hit a break here. We'll come back talking with Jason Case, thepulsespot.com.

(09:15):

If you would like to reach hundreds of thousands of business owners every week, Mr. Biz radio can help . Our show airs globally seven days a week for more than 25 hours across several internet radio stations, plus 20 plus podcast platforms. Also video exposure on the new exclusive Mr. Biz network streaming channel, which gets blasted to 100 plus streaming platforms and the Mr. Biz YouTube channel and our 350,000 social media followers multiple times every week. Join Mr. Biz nation as an advertiser by emailing us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

(09:54):

Are you ready to automate your business? Automation is the key to scaling a business and building wealth. It's also one of the most difficult things for a small business owner to do on their own. If you're looking for help with automation, Pulse Technology CRM can help. We have an exclusive offer for Mr. Biz nation. We will build everything for free, even if it's a sophisticated funnel, visit thepulsespot.com/MrBiz for this exclusive offer.

(10:23):

Got a question for Mr. Biz. You want answered on air, email it to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Now once again, here's Mr. Biz.

(10:34):

All right, welcome back to the show. It is time, as always, at the top of the second segment for the Mr. Biz tip of the week. I actually got this it's not a direct quote, but I got this idea from Jesse Itzler. Those of you guys who listen regularly, watch regularly know I admire him a lot, actually just got some time with him some one-on-one time with him recently at a, at an event down in Florida. But it made a lot of sense to me. So a lot of times, you know, you set goals and you go you know, gosh, I'm gonna do X, Y, and Z. And you go through a day and you just have a crappy day, you don't get done. I'm gonna make 10 phone calls a day, let's say. And you go through a day and you don't make any phone calls, you just have a really bad day, really crappy day.

(11:14):

And the next thing you know, you're like, oh, crap, I totally missed my goal. And his whole thing is establish a weekly goal approach. So in that scenario, if you're gonna make 10 calls per business day, you're gonna make 50 a week. If Monday comes and goes, you make zero. Well, okay, don't worry about it. You got four days to make 50 calls. So now you make, you know, 12 ish per day, and you can still reach your goal on a weekly basis. Don't, don't sweat missing out on Monday. It's okay. Take more of a weekly approach. Don't fault yourself if you fall short on a particular day. Just, you know, use the other five or six or four however many days. It depends to reestablish that goal on what I need to do to get there and, and increase your volume for those days and still get to that goal and think of it more of on a weekly basis.

(11:57):

So I thought that was pretty powerful. It keeps you from beating yourself up and saying, oh my gosh. And really getting discouraged keeps you kinda on pace with, with with your goals and everything. So that is the Mr. Biz tip of the week. And again, this week we're talking to Mr. Jason Case find out more about the CRM system. We're talking about Pulse at thepulsespot.com. That's thepulsespot.com. So Jason, I guess let's talk a little bit more about Pulse. So Pulse not only works for, you know, you had mentioned at the end of last segment, you know, I'm, I, I limited employees, I got contractors, et cetera. I'm a pretty small operation myself, and then I've been using, it works for me. You've got franchises you work with. This is pretty, pretty operationally broad based you know, application.

(12:43):

Yeah, yeah. I mean, when we first got started with the, the first business, it was a dealership model. So similar to a franchise model mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And that's kind of how we got down that path. So we do have a, a module that we can enable for a franchise type systems that have multiple locations, and they want to kind of control all their locations to be able to easily share like assets such as like pre-built automations with them, pre-built email campaigns. Also see all the data from those franchises to help them, you know, perform better and, and analyze that in real time, where a lot of franchise systems just don't have that. So we've involved that over the years quite a bit. And recently we were getting, I guess not, we were getting in other businesses that weren't a actual franchise, but multi-location business.

(13:41):

And actually just recently towards the end of the last year not even a multi-location business, they were a software business that sold software to business coaches. And each of those business coaches were on that. So they're independent businesses themselves and they wanted to use the same model. So we have actually customized that quite a bit over the years and have recently been able to, to customize it. So it's like a quick of a button a business can sign up and adjust those settings within their admin account to be whatever wording they want to use mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. So it's not franchise specific. It can be, you know, whatever their model of their business is, but still be able to use that multi-location approach or multi account approach to be able to share like pre-built workflows and assets with, with these different accounts.

(14:38):

And it's, it's worked out really well for us. It's a, it's a great business model on our end because once you win one of those accounts, you know, they bring on, you know, different subscriptions underneath them. But it's win-win for everybody because, you know, for, for those types of businesses, for franchise businesses or, or businesses like the one I just described, it's very easy for them. Like once they're up and running to bring on these new accounts. Sure. You know, it's click of a button. Well, actually not even a click of a button, everything's loaded in when, when that account signed.

(15:11):

Yeah. You know, I, leads me, I should have mentioned, so we're gonna talk in the next segment we're gonna dive a little bit more into that. We're gonna talk about using automation to increase productivity using digital marketing to close more sales employ, or not employee retention, it could be for that too, as what as well. But customer retention, things like that. We're gonna dive into that next segment. But the interesting part to me, think about if you have in the, so I've obviously seen demos of the, the, the multi-location version of Pulse. And what's interesting to me as a numbers nerd is being able to see, you know, I'm even thinking about I know someone we know here locally that used to own five or six different restaurants around town mm-hmm. <Affirmative> being able to see those real time statistics and say, gosh, what's working in Westerville? Why is it working so well in Westerville? Why is the GNA location not going as well? And being able to share why it's working well in Westerville with gahan, like really quick. Yeah. Not a month later, not six weeks later.

(16:10):

Well, I can actually tell you <laugh> how important it is. One of the accounts that we were working with, we got realtime reporting set up in their business and they were using Excel sheets before. I mean, everybody's similar or familiar with that process. Yeah. It's just very time consuming. Sure. Manually entering that data all the time. And then if you enter that data wrong, it throws your reports off, as you know. Of course. Yeah. Huge. where when you set that up in a CRM system, and you can keep that process automated, as long as it's set up right, then there's no, no foul up, right? Sure. Keep that data is updating real time. We set that up for an account and once it was set up, we saw a fall like where they thought their best performing ad campaigns were, actually they're worst.

(17:05):

And we presented it to the COO once we got everything set up and they're like, no, those numbers can't be right <laugh>. And I'm like, I'm positive double checked those numbers if those are okay. So we went through everything, double checked it with the COO o she was blown away and <laugh>, she put it by a note. So the next morning I followed up with her see what they wanted to do with things and, and how that meeting went with the CEO. And she's like we fired that <laugh> marketing agency. It saved them $10,000 a month. And they were able to allocate that $10,000 to their better performing marketing channels. What, which they understood right? Once they had that data. I mean, it made a huge difference. And having that stuff updated in real time where you don't have to manually input data or miss it, because a lot of times you just don't have the time to do that, so then your reporting falls back.

(18:01):

So yeah, I mean, so it's, it, it works super well for a single, you know, entity business obviously, but especially in a multi-location. And again, I'm just thinking to myself like seeing the dashboard and knowing what it looks like and being able to put whatever you want on the dashboard, you customize the dashboard, the things that really moved the needle for you, whatever your role was in the, in the organization, and being able to see those things very quickly. I mean, think about that guys. 10 grand of relocating, $10,000 of marketing spend. And if you're getting, you know, whatever, one and a half, two, three times return on that, think about the impact that has on sales just by figuring that out quickly and not crapping through money over three, four months. I mean, it's super powerful. We're gonna hit a break here, guys.

(18:47):

Again, we're gonna come back. Jason's gonna give us you here all his, his expertise in these areas with different types of businesses, especially now working with Pulse and all the different types of industries he's working with. He's getting even more experience with this stuff. But we're gonna talk about how to use automation to increase productivity use sales and marketing automation to close more sales and then using increasing customer retention by using a crm. And I know that sounds obvious, but man, there's a lot of super powerful ways that are very similar to what we just talked about. So come back after the break on Mr. Biz Radio.

(19:21):

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(19:52):

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(20:22):

Check out all three of Mr. Business best-selling books at mrbizbooks.com. Now, once again, here's Mr. Biz.

(20:32):

Alright, welcome back to the show. And I should mention again, you can find out more about Pulse, the CRM system we've been talking about thepulsespot.com about check that out. Anyone who's paying attention and doesn't skip through the commercials, may, may have noticed between the first and second segments. There's actually a Pulse commercial that runs on Mr. Biz radio <laugh>. You guys have probably heard it before. It was funny, Jason boy hasn't heard of the spot for a while, and during the break he was like, ah, I need to update that a little bit and we need to fresh up a little bit. So interesting having Jason being on this side of things, you know hearing it in real time. So, so Jason, talk to us a little bit about how can use automation to the, some of the things I mentioned, especially with increasing productivity and things like that.

(21:18):

Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, the last scenario I just explained about reporting, you know, obviously that's a bigger company, you know, spending a lot of money on advertising, but you can use that for small businesses as well. Like one scenario I was just meeting with a client last week that just came on and they were setting up their KPIs to track, you know, how many meetings were booked per week right. To, to meet their KPIs and how many meetings, you know, actually lead to close business, you know, and, and we have a, a unique reporting module where you can set up custom formulas similar to Excel, but you're using the data inside of your CRM system or you've even bringing in outside data and makes it update real time. So, you know, you don't have to be a big business to leverage that, that real time reporting scenario.

(22:16):

It's just understanding your goals, right? Like you were talking about earlier, right? Like how many, you know, calls I need to make this week mm-hmm. <Affirmative> well that's great, but you also need to attribute that to how it's working to acquire customers. Sure. Right? Yeah. And being able to look at each of your strategies or channels that you're doing and how it's performing and, and yeah. So our system obviously automates that process once you get that set up and, and helps out. But there's a lot of other scenarios too from I'm thinking like one of the, the easiest things that a lot of businesses just don't implement is feedback referral campaigns. Mm-Hmm. And it's such an essential one, and it's probably one of the easiest things to grow your business if you have a, a group of customers or you're established business putting automation in that process.

(23:12):

So we have like a pre-book campaign that we can pin in place and, you know, you can just cu customize wording however you want, but the way it essentially works is, you know, once you're done with a job or if you're a, you know, service-based business, maybe after you've done business with them after a few months, you trigger this and it sends back a feedback request. And then based on the feedback that you get from that person, we use automation and decision condition logic to send them down the path, right? Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. So if they leave positive feedback and say they would recommend you, that automatically dumps them into a campaign and then asks them for a Google review or and then introduces them to a referral campaign, right? And incentivizes free referrals completely automated where if you're trying to do this stuff manually, you're just not gonna do it, right?

(24:04):

I mean, if you ask any business how, like they say majority of business comes in from word of mouth and you ask them, well great, how are you doing that? Right? Listen, say, well, it just happens, right? But if you put processes and automation behind that, that's like a easy strategy to increase your annual annual revenue if you're established business. And then obviously if for some reason you get negative feedback, you don't send them down that route, you send them down another route, which would create a task for whoever is working with that person to follow up with them, see if you can mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, you know, make things right. Things do happen sometimes and then if you grow things slip through the crack, but that makes sure that you're catching that stuff, try to make it right and, you know helps.

(24:49):

Well, so two things I'll mention. So I, this statistics, I think about four years old now, so it's probably a little different. But one thing that people overlook so often, and it touches on what Jason just mentioned, 62% for a small business, small and medium sized business, 62% of new revenue comes from existing customers. That's in the form of them getting a, you getting a deeper wallet share with them, but also referrals. And if you don't have a system in place to do that, and especially automated, like he's talking about, this is completely automated, it's, it's no touch. So you're, you're tapping into that additional 62% with almost no effort whatsoever. And then customer retention, you know, if you, in, in that scenario where it's automated and it automatically goes when someone's ticked and says, I'm not happy with it, this sucked and whatever. And so you obviously you don't wanna refer, but you can, you can rectify that situation possibly and it gives you that feedback until, unless if you don't have that in place, someone's and then they don't, you don't, you don't follow up with them and then you don't find out until they cancel and they go, we're done and you're makes

(25:52):

<Crosstalk> and they're like, forget it, it's too late. I've already got a new

(25:54):

One. Right. Makes the customer feel like you care. We've actually taken that a step further over the last year or so with a few of our clients with handwritten cards. So there's a number of companies out there mm-hmm. <Affirmative> that use robots to actually write the cards with ink pins. So I'm sure like a lot of people are familiar with like send out cards or companies like that, but you can tell they're printed cards like mm-hmm. <Affirmative> it came actually through a press in which printed these actually use a ink pin to write the cards, but we can completely automate that process. So we put steps in the automation of referral campaigns. So if a referral leads to close business, that automatically triggers automation to send an email out, but then automatically triggers a API call to send out this handwritten card <laugh> where crazy, you know, it's personalized too cuz we're sending that data from the crm mm-hmm.

(26:50):

Personalizing that card thanking them for the referral to sa Sue or whoever. Yeah. And it blows people, right? I mean that's like how you can really personalize things with automation and making things authentic. It, it's great. And you can also take that a step further, not just with referral campaigns, but also with like maybe sending out handwritten card to your top 100 clients every year. You know, just thanking them for their business and how much you appreciate them and stuff like that because it actually looks <laugh> like you wrote the card. Sure. Once they know my handwriting, then <laugh> no, I didn't do it. Yeah.

(27:30):

Well, but, and I think that the powerful piece of that is, you know, I talk about this all the time, is you just gotta be, well hopefully you're a lot, but even to win business, to keep business, you gotta be a little better than everybody else. You gotta be a little better in your competition to attract the best employees. You have to be a little better as an employer, as to become an employer of choice, as an example in this case to be, to keep business if you're in a highly competitive business. I mean, how many people send out handwritten cards? Yeah. But when you get them, how do you feel? Right? I'm not a big warm and fuzzy kind of guy or whatever, but yeah, I think that's kind of cool because no one else does it. It's that little extra thing that kind of pushes you over

(28:10):

The, makes you feel appreciated.

(28:11):

Yeah, for sure. A hundred percent. Because again, people don't do it, you know, if anything you get an automated email or something like that. Right, right. Getting that is like that extra step that just takes things you know, that much further. Good stuff. Again, the thepulsespot.com. So Jason, we're running outta time here, but I gotta, I gotta, I got a kind of a personal question, not super personal, but if you were gonna be deserted on a desert island, what is one thing that you would take with you? Not family. Not my wife. Not my my son. Not, ah, man. What's one thing that you would like have to take with you?

(28:48):

Deserted island. Caught me off guard.

(28:50):

<Laugh>. That's the beauty of it, man. <Laugh>

(28:54):

Water, <laugh>.

(28:55):

There you go. See practical. This guy's, he's a problem to solver, man, there you, I mean that's a good point. That question is interesting because to me at least it is because a lot of people were like, oh, I'd take, you know, I take a radio so I can listen to music. I'm like, well, you're in the middle of the ocean, maybe you can't even get a signal like that might not work. And well, I take my cell phone. Well, you're only good until your battery dies, right? There's no place to charge it, you know? Right. But you have a very practical answer. <Laugh> again, we've been talking this week with Jason Case, go out to thepulsespot.com. Jason, thanks so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate

(29:29):

It. You're welcome. Thanks for having me.

(29:30):

Yeah. Awesome. Awesome guys. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Have a great week. And don't forget, as always, Cash Flow is King

(29:40):

To become part of Mr. Biz nation, follow him on all social media platforms or never miss a show by going to mrbizradio.com. If you prefer free video content, visit the Mr. Biz YouTube channel or check out his streaming channel, which is available on 100 plus streaming platforms at mrbiznetwork.com.