The CRM Moneyball Moment

Summary

MarTech Podcast™ // Marketing + Technology = Business Growth
Episode: The CRM Moneyball Moment
Release Date: December 3, 2024
Host: Benjamin Shapiro
Guest: Val Riley, VP of Marketing and Strategy at Unbound

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Introduction

In this insightful episode of the MarTech Podcast, host Benjamin Shapiro engages with Val Riley, Vice President of Marketing and Strategy at Unbound, to delve into the strategic acquisition of Insightly and explore how businesses can unlock hidden potentials within their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems. The conversation centers around leveraging data analytics—much like the "Moneyball" approach in baseball—to drive business growth and optimize CRM utilization.

Unbound’s Acquisition of Insightly

The episode kicks off with a discussion about Unbound's recent acquisition of Insightly, a move aimed at enhancing Unbound’s capabilities in managing customer relationships and driving faster business growth. Val Riley shares insights into how this acquisition aligns with Unbound’s mission to help modern businesses build lifelong customer relationships through tailored, out-of-the-box CRM solutions.

Val Riley (01:15):
"Unbound helps modern businesses of all sizes build lifelong customer relationships and grow faster than ever before with their out-of-the-box capabilities that are tailored towards each user experience for every customer-facing role."

Understanding the CRM Moneyball Moment

The core of the episode revolves around the concept of the "CRM Moneyball Moment." Drawing parallels from the Moneyball strategy—where data analytics are used to identify undervalued players who can collectively enhance team performance—Val Riley explains how businesses can unearth similar opportunities within their CRM data.

Val Riley (03:00):
"There are Moneyball moments in everyone's CRM. You have to dig through the data to uncover it, just like they did in the movie."

Benjamin Shapiro emphasizes the importance of moving beyond traditional intuition ("gut instinct") and focusing on data-driven metrics to identify and capitalize on micro-wins that collectively contribute to significant business growth.

Benjamin Shapiro (04:47):
"Don't look for gut instinct. Look for data and KPIs and metrics that show positive performance and that when you put enough of them together, your small wins, that equals to a better performance and a better product."

The Secret Sauce: Maximizing CRM Data

Val Riley breaks down the essential "ingredients" needed to extract more value from existing CRM data. Using a real-world example, she illustrates how a company manufacturing expensive packaging equipment was able to unlock additional revenue streams by leveraging CRM data to manage their aftermarket sales.

Val Riley (05:26):
"The ingredient is quite simply a custom field, but the custom field with a little bit of automation to it. So they created this custom field. It auto populates the category of equipment based on the client. And then the rep puts the piece of equipment in this custom field."

By implementing custom fields and automation within Insightly, the company was able to continuously update their used equipment listings and automate targeted email campaigns, significantly boosting their sales of used equipment.

Toss Up: CRM Automation vs. Time Spent Working in CRM

In the "toss up" segment, Benjamin and Val debate the relative importance of CRM automation versus the time invested in manually working within the CRM. Val argues that the key lies in uncovering buried data rather than merely automating processes.

Val Riley (09:03):
"I just think it's BS that the reps aren't doing the work they are. They're putting things in there. It's just buried. It's buried in places that aren't searchable or discoverable."

Benjamin counters by highlighting the advancements in technology, such as artificial intelligence, which can aid in efficiently extracting and interpreting CRM data without the need for exhaustive manual efforts.

Benjamin Shapiro (09:38):
"You don’t have to go through and read the chicken scratches from your sales rep... we have the tools, we have the technology, we have artificial intelligence."

They both agree that a balanced approach—leveraging automation to handle data extraction and dedicating time to analyze and interpret the insights—is essential for achieving the CRM Moneyball Moment.

Conclusion

As the episode wraps up, Benjamin congratulates Val Riley on the acquisition and her promotion, appreciating her contributions to the discussion. Val invites listeners to connect with her on LinkedIn and engage with Unbound’s offerings.

Val Riley (11:46):
"Catch me on LinkedIn. I'd love to connect with all the listeners of the Martech podcast and we can learn from each other."

Benjamin emphasizes the importance of focusing on customer satisfaction as a cornerstone of business growth, encouraging listeners to subscribe to the podcast for daily insights into marketing and technology.

Benjamin Shapiro (13:58):
"My advice is to just focus on keeping your customers happy."

Key Takeaways

• Data-Driven Decisions: Emphasize the use of data analytics to identify undervalued opportunities within CRM systems, akin to the Moneyball strategy in sports.
• Custom Fields and Automation: Implementing tailored CRM fields and automation can unlock hidden revenue streams and enhance sales processes.
• Balanced Approach: Combine automation tools with strategic analysis to efficiently extract and leverage CRM data for business growth.
• Continuous Learning: Engage with industry experts and leverage podcast resources to stay updated on marketing and technology trends.

Notable Quotes

• Val Riley (03:00):
  "There are Moneyball moments in everyone's CRM. You have to dig through the data to uncover it, just like they did in the movie."

• Benjamin Shapiro (04:47):
  "Don't look for gut instinct. Look for data and KPIs and metrics that show positive performance..."

• Val Riley (05:26):
  "They created this custom field. It auto populates the category of equipment based on the client."

• Benjamin Shapiro (09:38):
  "We have the tools, we have the technology, we have artificial intelligence."

Further Resources

• Connect with Val Riley: LinkedIn Profile
• Unbound Website: unbound.com
• Val’s Podcast "Closing Time": Available on YouTube and major podcast platforms.

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Transcript

[Benjamin Shapiro]

The Martech Podcast is a proud member of the iHear Everything Podcast Network. Looking to launch or scale your podcast, iHear everything delivers podcast production, growth and monetization solutions that transform your words into profit. Ready to give your brand a voice? Then visit iheareverything.com.

[Unknown Speaker]

From advertising to software as a service to data across all of our programs and clients, we've seen a 55 to 65% open rate.

[Val Riley]

Getting brands authentically integrated into content performs better than TV advertising.

[Unknown Speaker]

Typical lifespan of an article is about 24 to 36 hours. If we're reaching out to the right person with the right message and a clear call to action, then it's just a matter of timing.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

Welcome to the Martech Podcast, a member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. In this podcast you'll hear the stories of world class marketers that use technology to drive business results and achieve career success. Here's a host of the Martech Podcast. Benjamin Shapiro.

Welcome to the Martech Podcast. I'm your host Benjamin Shapiro and today we're going to discuss CRM acquisitions from Martech. Joining us is Val Riley, who is the VP of Marketing and Strategy at Unbound, which helps modern businesses of all sizes build lifelong customer relationships and grow faster than ever before with their of the box capabilities that are tailored towards each user experiences for every customer facing role. And today Val and I are going to discuss a couple different topics, but we're going to start off talking about Unbound's acquisition of Insightly.

[Unknown Speaker]

But before we get to today's interview, I want to tell you about what I'm listening to. Ever wanted to sit down to a candid conversation with marketing leaders from the world's biggest brands? The Current podcast is your chance. On the current podcast you'll find exclusive interviews with the experts and trendsetters who are on the front lines of digital advertising and they always leave the ad tech jargon at the door. So subscribe to the [e-mail] or anywhere you get your podcasts today.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

All right, I want to move on to our second topic which we're calling Finding the Moneyball Moment. So Val, now that we're turning the page, you've been working at a CRM company for a long time and now have a broader focus. Not just CRM but more entire customer lifecycle Working at Unbounce. Let's do this. I want you to explain what the CRM Money Mall moment is. Let's do. We're both baseball fans here and it's Moneyball. So I think the obvious thing to do is explain what a CRM Moneyball moment is. Like. I was a sad Oakland A's fan.

[Val Riley]

I'm a college sports fan, so I'm just going to go from college baseball.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

But I think what we should do, actually, to start this off for anybody who's not a sports fan or has had their head under the pillow for a long time, the Oakland A's owner decided to move the team to Vegas, even though nobody in Vegas wants them for money. And now all of a sudden, Oakland has no sports team, even though it's a Bay Area sports team that's been around forever, long history, and everybody's sad. Sorry, Val, go ahead. There's your context.

[Val Riley]

All right, so the concept of the book Moneyball, and there was a subsequent movie, and even if you're not a sports fan, if you're a Brad Pitt fan, you probably saw it. But the concept is that there is stuff that's being overlooked that has a great deal of potential. In the movie, it's baseball players. They don't have the glory, they don't have the following, but they're solid performers. Solid enough. In fact, if you put them together, they end up winning. But it takes someone who understands data to uncover it. And that's how Jonah Hill gets to be a hero. So super interesting.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

Not in real life, although I'm sure Jonah Hill is very popular in real life.

[Val Riley]

So what I'm contending is that there are Moneyball moments in everyone's CRM. You have to dig through the data to uncover it, just like they did in the movie. I mean, the knock on sales people, Ben, is always like, they don't update the CRM. And honestly, I'm just calling BS on that. They do. I've worked with well over 100 sales reps in my career, and 95% of them are doing the work they do it. They're just really victims of CRMs that don't collect data and organize data in a meaningful way. So that activity can feel very pointless. The software is bad. Maybe the implementation is bad, maybe the onboarding was bad. But if it's done right, there are Moneyball moments in there.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

Yeah, I always think of the Moneyball moment as. I'll use baseball as the example.

[Unknown Speaker]

Don't look for home run hitters.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

Don't look for gut instinct. Look for data and KPIs and metrics that show positive performance and that when you put enough of them together, your small wins, that equals to a better performance and a better product. So Essentially, look for people that get on base. Somebody that walks a lot, walks as good as a hit. If you're not a baseball fan, look for the micro win. So let's move on. I want to go on into something that we call secret sauce. Give me the ingredients that are what you need to put together to get more out of your existing CRM data.

[Val Riley]

I think it's best described with an example because the ingredients aren't sexy, but the example kind of makes it a little sexy. So we have a customer in Indiana that manufactures equipment, big machines, big pieces of equipment for packaging and processing really expensive stuff. And people like you and me probably don't realize this, but there's an aftermarket for those machines. So let's say a business buys some custom equipment. Maybe you're a bakery and you want to be able to twirl your dough, or you're a packaging company and you want to be able to package, equip, package stuff fast or whatever. But then you upgrade to a larger size or you need more capacity. Right. So you go and you order a new piece of equipment, but you want to liquidate the piece of equipment you already have. Right. You don't need that anymore, but you spend a lot of money on it. Why not? Right. So the sales reps who were called in to sell new equipment, they're collecting data that the customer had on the equipment they're looking to liquidate. Why not? They can get commission on it. So it's just in the notes though, and it's getting lost. So a few transactions happened where everybody made a lot of money on used equipment. And then that was a Moneyball moment. How can we get more from the used equipment business? That's what this customer asked. So it should be easy to do this in any CRM. It happens to be really easy to do it in insightly. So you asked for the ingredient. The ingredient is quite simply a custom field, but the custom field with a little bit of automation to it. So they created this custom field. It auto populates the category of equipment based on the client. And then they put the rep puts the piece of equipment in this custom field. So right now the system every day pushes information about used equipment for sale to a live webpage, all because of that custom field and that auto populated category. So every day this company has updated information about used equipment for sale on their site just based on a custom field and an automation. Further, they set up some email automations that go to people who have interest in that category. So they're pushing Emails saying, hey, newly listed this week, here's what equipment we have in packaging, here's what equipment we have in bakery, whatever, whatever your industry is. And so that used equipment page is updated. They're pushing emails now. They're selling used equipment like crazy just because the data was in the system, but it just wasn't being read and organized in any sort of way that made sense.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

All right, so if I'm putting my recipe together, here's what I'm hearing from you. You start with a data lake. That's your flower. And you put in your egg custom field, your binding agents, and then you need some water as well. Your search format, some way to sort of get that data into the right place or to be visualized. And then you lastly, you need some extra flavor. You need the ability to extract that data, your automation, and push it forward. Somehow it makes it seem like I'm either making bread or noodles. But that basic ingredient of get the data, build a custom field to extract it, make sure that it can be searched for, and then have a way to automate that into something that can be customer facing is really how you create your CRM Moneyball moment. So I want to move on to one more segment that we call toss up. Tell me which one is more important, CRM automation or time spent working in your CRM? If you're looking for that Moneyball moment, are you just digging through the weeds or should you be focusing on process to try to unearth the things that are already there?

[Val Riley]

Gosh, there's so much that's in there. You just need to unearth what's already in there. Again, I just think it's BS that the reps aren't doing the work they are. They're putting things in there. It's just buried. It's buried in places that aren't searchable or discoverable. So if every sales director who could hear my voice just spent time going over the win loss notes of their last 20 or 30 deals, I guarantee they would come out with a Moneyball moment. I guarantee it. It's in there. It's just not in a way that is conducive to the fast pace that sales leaders work at.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

I have good news. This is easier than it's ever been. You don't have to go through and read the chicken scratches from your sales rep as they are getting ready to pour themselves a bourbon after the end of a long week. You don't have to try to interpret and understand. We have the tools, we have the technology, we have artificial intelligence. You know, I think about this. For me, you know, in our sales process, understanding what happened, I don't even write my own notes anymore. I have a note taker that does it. And then I can use the note taker and ask to scan through all the meetings and tell me what are the insights that I should be looking for. You can make it so much easier than it used to be. It's not manual processes anymore. So to me, I think the answer is a little bit of both. You should be spending time understanding what's happening and what are the notes and what are the nuances that are being put into your CRM. But it doesn't mean you have to do it manually. So I actually think it's a little bit of automation to extract the data in the format that you want first, and then you can spend more time figuring out what's in there and where the gold is mixed in with the dirt.

[Val Riley]

I would agree. I would say that there is probably a little bit of nuance. And when AI summarizes something for me, I love it, I really do. But there's still a part of me that's like, let me just double check. Let me just double check that it didn't miss anything. That's super nuanced because AI doesn't have the eye that the sales director does. So I'll agree with you. It's a little bit of both.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

It's a little bit of a chicken or the egg. You gotta have the good data. You have to spend your time going through it. And if it's too much data, you have to figure out some automations to try to comb through all of it. But at the end of the day, if you want that CRM Moneyball moment, you have to have the signal, right? You have to have a hypothesis. It's a scientific approach to understanding what is not always a scientific process. And I think that's really what it comes down to.

[Val Riley]

I would agree.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

All right, Val, congratulations on the acquisition, the promotion, you've got a great podcast. Being our guest is wonderful. We're very grateful to have you here. It's been wonderful having you as our guest.

[Val Riley]

Absolutely. Catch me on LinkedIn. I'd love to connect with all the listeners of the Martech podcast and we can learn from each other.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

All right, and that wraps up this episode of the Martech podcast. Thanks to Val Riley, the VP of Marketing at Insightly, now part of Unbounce. If you'd like to connect with Val, you can find a link to her LinkedIn profile in our Show Notes, you can visit unbounce.com or you can find her podcast Val. It's called Closing Time. Am I right?

[Val Riley]

It is loosely based on that 90s hit by the band Semisonic. So yeah, Closing Time. Catch us on YouTube.

[Unknown Speaker]

All right, a special thanks to the Current Podcast for sponsoring today's interview. If you're looking for candid conversations with marketing leaders from the world's biggest brands, then give the Current Podcast a listen. On the Current podcast you'll find exclusive interviews with experts and trendsetters who are on the front lines of digital advertising, and they always leave the ad tech jargon at the door. So subscribe to the [e-mail] or anywhere you get your podcasts today.

[Benjamin Shapiro]

Just one more link in our Show Notes I'd like to tell you about. If you didn't have a chance to take notes while you were listening to this podcast, head over to martechpod.com we've got summaries of all of our episodes and contact information for our guests. You can subscribe to our weekly newsletter, you can apply to be a guest speaker on the MarTech podcast, and of course you can reach out on social media. Our handle is martechpod, pretty much everywhere. You can catch me on LinkedIn. My handle is benjschaf b e n J S H A P and if you haven't subscribed yet and you want a daily stream of marketing and technology knowledge in your podcast feed, we're going to publish an episode every day this year, so hit the subscribe button in your podcast app and we'll be back in your feed tomorrow morning. All right, that's it for today, but until next time, my advice is to just focus on keeping your customers happy.

Thanks for listening to the MarTech podcast and I hear everything. Production Looking to launch or scale a podcast like this one for your brand? Then visit iheareverything.com.