There’s always something to howl about.

What’s the End Goal To be?

I’ve been migrating all of my data to Infusionsoft  lately.   A little at a time.  Easy does it.  One list, suck it in, de dupe it, and on with the next.  Tag it.   Infusionsoft is powerful stuff.  A good tool.  I hate the counterintuitive interface.  I hate the fact that you can’t ‘tag’ people at account creation without saving.  I hate the fact that the Usability Team was likely ignored.  And I hate their customer service, which is of the same ethos as big boiler room refi shops from 2004.   That’s all I’m gonna say.  There are things to hate about it, just like there are things to hate about ACT!, Heap, and whatever CRM Mark Green whips out.

But, all that aside, Infusionsoft does a lot right.  It combines an auto-responder, some analytics, a project manager and a goal tracker in the same spot.  It tells you what to do, step by step.   And you can set up smart workflows for different things.  Right now, I’m underusing it.

What it taught me was a fundamental weakness in my business.  Before I can sell, before I can scale, I have to create a coherent, robust & predictable customer experience.  Meaning this: when I send people to a web page, or offer, Infusionsoft strongly suggests I know what happens next.  And in my nascent business, selling blogs and social media propagation, I don’t know what happens next.   I haven’t engineered a good enough customer experience to throw a bunch of customers at it.  Yet.  I’m tons closer today than I was yesterday, and this weekend was “what I want to happen time.”

But there’s the rub: most CRMs fill a leaking bucket.  You throw some autoresponders and newsletters at people, and yeah, they’ll perform.  The efficiency loss is never addressed:  what happens when you make a sale.

And the other one: most people, especially D’s hate to be scripted.  They hate to feel like they’re on some assembly line that they do not control.   I lose time, personally, not in my ability to sell and market but because I have so many points that need to be improved.  I don’t have the entitlementality that other automation junkies have–I want to honor the customer first.  I want them to feel comfotable in every way.  Broadcasting to a list on a CRM is a fool’s errand unless you can efficiently and honorably deliver the goods.

Infusionsoft helps.  By its nature of thinking of things in action sequences, I learned what I want my customer intake to be.  What pages I have to build.  What things I have to do. I’m almost there.

What I’ll bet is this:  you do things that are like reinventing the wheel all the time.  I’ll betcha anything that you are filling a leaking bucket, and WHAT HAPPENS once you get the deal is where your business suffers.  It is with mine.  When I was an unabashed rake, I didn’t honor my customers.  Because they were fungible.  Replacable.  All the work I did generating leads was worthless because they didn’t turn into lifelong customers.  I was on my way to that path with my new business.

Then I decided to be the best, by making sure that my customer experience was coherent.  My take on a good customer experience is a few things:

  • Instant deliverables.  (Can be applied to Real Estate if you, say write a manifesto like Greg did on the divorced commisison…a mortgage dude can do a walkthrough of the process).  If your web guy instantly sent you a list of current best practices, would you dig?  Yes, you would.
  • Stellar communication: (you always know what happens next, and when it’s gonna happen.)
  • Keep your promises.
  • Ruthlessly Grade yourself and future plan for things that slowed the process.
  • Solicit Customer feedback & future plan for things that can upgrade the experience.

I did it as a lender and it made a profound difference in the ‘where’s my deal,’ calls, and thus my life.  When I automatically emailed all my deals in progress each day, even when there was nothing to report, people trusted me more, they felt connected and they referred their friends.

All the lead generation in the world isn’t gonna help if your bucket has no bottom and a bunch of holes in the sides.  And having a good customer experience is easy.  It’s not enough to outshine the 99% of your competition that is on a failure path.  You have to be the best possible experience, worship at the church of skinned cats, and subordinate your ego to what is actually happening.

And that, friends, is a big damn blue ocean.  But that’s what the OODA loop is all about.