The Art of Change Management and CRM Adoption

Margaret (00:09)

Welcome to the Kodaris Community Show with your hosts, Tony and Margaret and the occasional friends stopping by. This is the podcast where we explore how innovation and technology is reshaping distribution and the supply chain as a whole. Discover how technology is making companies more efficient and profitable, making their customers happier, and is paving the way for our future. Join us for insights from industry experts, interviews with innovators, and actionable ideas to stay ahead In our rapidly evolving world.

Margaret (00:43)

Today, we're joined by Jeremy Ott, Director of E-commerce and Digital Marketing at Reinders. Here's our conversation.

Margaret (00:51)

We're so happy to have you here with us today. And we're going to have a really interesting conversation around how you were able to affect change management within Reinders and get your team to adopt a CRM, which is notoriously hard to get a team bought in on. So thank you for joining us today.

Jeremy Ott (01:12)

Yeah, happy to be here. Excited to talk about this. It's an exciting topic, especially for me and Reinders. So, yeah, happy to. There's a lot of things that we've done and a lot of fun things. So thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

Tony Zakula (01:27)

I want to touch on one topic first–Reinders was an early adopter of Kodaris. And Jeremy was part of that early adoption of the entire Kodaris platform. And Reinders has been a great partner of ours since, I don't know, going back three years, four years, when we were very early on.

So Jeremy and Robin and the team have been, I guess, innovators looking at newer solutions, what’s different, wanting to take some risks. And have been great partners not only innovating with us, but spreading the word about Kodaris and whatnot.

Kind of as we talk about this topic, and Jeremy can give a little background if you want, but they've been adopting pieces of Kodaris for going on three years or four years. The CRM piece that we talk about was mostly purpose-built with distributors. I don't know, going back five years now, we didn't really set out to build a CRM. We had some customers who said, ‘Hey, can you put in this piece for me? This is all I need. I don't need a Salesforce, I don't need a full blown…’

And it's evolved probably over the last three, four years to be, you know, a thousand percent. And we keep adding pieces as customers innovate with us. I think what was interesting was that Reinder's was already using several pieces of platform. I really had no exposure to this part of it. And then Jeremy explored it, worked with it a little bit.

And then today we're going to talk about that journey, kind of adopting it and working with us to add pieces he might have needed. But also, look, I tell customers change management is the difficult part–the people, not the technology. We can build something, release it, you're done. Then actually changing business process, people's habits, there's always a challenge.

You know, I think why that's...not even so much about the product today. It's about the product maybe assisting people change management and strategy for change management because we're all facing it, whether it's distributors, whether it's tech companies. Every human being who works for a company and the company is changing to adopt technology or move with the market. It's just constant though, it's constant change management.

Anyway, I'll let you…let's jump in but I just wanted to make sure the audience knew the point of reference of where we're coming from. You can add to that, Jeremy, and tell everybody how much you love me.

Jeremy Ott (04:32)

Yeah, no this that's that was great, appreciate it Tony. Yeah, we yeah, we've been been working with Tony and Kodaris, I can't believe it's been a number of years already. But honestly, it feels like we just signed with you guys and started working.

You know, we've felt like, over the last couple years, we've used a lot of different pieces of the platform and just with our integrations and the multiple sites that we're running, we've been fortunate to be able to use, I would say, trying to get into almost all the pieces of Kodaris. And the CRM piece was something of interest to me. And I found, I had a task or a goal to achieve and was looking at all the different ways to achieve that goal.

One was right in front of me, which was the Kodaris CRM and the tools that both the desktop and the app allowed us to do. So our initial goal was I needed to find a solution to allow our sales reps to enter orders on behalf of customers.

You know, it started very, very, specific where we have this time of the year where sales reps, enter early orders, these big, large early orders and the sales reps handhold them. And this is like their bread and butter. And so it was meant to be just for one specific segment of our business that does these early orders.

And so, you know, we still have a drive. We're still continuing to push customers to enter orders themselves, but also looking for, you know, this sales enablement tool, this tool to help customers. And so I started looking at the Kodaris platform. We actually had tested with a different segment of our business, getting some CSRs into the Kodaris platform, entering orders.

And I was like, hmm, this works for some CSRs. Let's see if I can get this to work for some sales reps. And then it just evolved from there. It was, it was like, what else can I do? What else can I ask Tony that I could do on the Kodaris platform? How else can we make this a full, almost like a full service platform for our sales reps? And so I, and I'm probably notorious for this of going past the initial scope and finding what else we can do.

But I saw the order entry was there and then, you know, just talking with the Kodaris team and saying, well, did you know you can look up pricing? Did you know you look up inventory? Did you know you could look up customer information? We have all this stuff pulling right from our ERP.

And I was like, no, let me take a look at that. And so I was given a deadline of, this was August, late August of 24. So I started it about three months prior to that and given this deadline of hey, we need this here in place by the end of August.

So I started investigating the platform myself with the help of my e-commerce team, looked at all these features and functionalities, and then started putting together almost like my RFP, you know, what do we need to roll this out and what can we roll out by the end of August?

And then I think we just hit the pavement where, when I looked at this for talking about the change management and how can I, how can I get the buy-in from our sales force? What is the best way to do this?

And I learned through all the years of rolling out the website, rolling out replatforms, different technology that you can't just force people to do something or you can't just tell them, do this. You need investment from people that are actually working in the field and actually doing it themselves and using the tools.

So I took the approach of, I reached out to about five different sales reps and how I selected these sales reps was one through personal relations, guys that I knew that I could talk to that would be open to beta testing for me. But then I also chose a couple guys that use our Infor CSD platform quite regularly. And so I took this approach because they use, some of these guys use CSD to pull the same information that we get from Kodaris and some guys don't have access to the ERP currently.

So finding guys that use CSD and showing them how good these tools are and how effective it is, that you have both sides to train others. You have the guys that have never used the ERP before and some guys that have. And it just, in my opinion, it would look really great to have both sides of the street come together and say, look how good this platform is.

So, sat down with them for about two months. Worked through all the different, did multiple trainings with these five reps, did multiple trainings, had them test things, try it out for me. We worked with Kodaris. We made it, made it better. And then finally, fast forward to August. We had all of our reps in for a sales meeting. I talked to the sales manager and said, ‘Hey, I need a couple hours.’

It ended up being like two and a half hours, I think three hours of this training that we did, but it wasn't like, put you to sleep training. It was hands-on, guys were in it, the whole sales team was interactive. And what I did is, I had the sales reps that were doing this beta testing for me actually lead different sections of the desktop CRM and the mobile app of the Kodaris app.

And I think moving forward, a lesson learned is that I need to do that with everything. Because the buy-in, the interactions, the actually watching the presentation was there. And it's something that was really cool to see when you step back as the guy that wants to present it, and you see that when you have other people presenting it, and you see the nods, and you see that going on their phone or desktop trying to get there already, they don't even have logins and they're trying to get there.

That's the excitement that I think was really cool and helped this change in process. Giving sales guys another new tool, a third tool, you know, they have all these tools and giving them, here's another tool. But that, I don't think that was the response and that wasn't the reaction. And it was really cool to see. You know, by the end of the demo, I think the demo took about, I don't know, maybe like an hour to get through everything, you know, the desktop and the mobile app.

By the end, everyone was like, all right, enough talking, get me in there. And we didn't leave the room until everyone was signed in and testing it out.

I checked in with the sales manager and a couple of sales reps a couple of days later. And it was just nothing but positive feedback. And then I went one step further to log into Kodaris and look at all the last logins everyone had logged in and kept logging in. And that was the best part. That was really cool to see.

Margaret (12:00)

Trust not verify, right?

Jeremy Ott (12:06)

Yes. And you know, today, just being months and months later, I just checked right before we got on the podcast here. And so now I've rolled it out to all of our outside sales force at Reinders. And we have about 85 employees inside of Kodaris now. And about 75 to 80% of them have logged in within the last week to week and a half. I mean, it's awesome.

They're constantly checking pricing availability through the app, looking up order information, and just honestly using it to help them close deals, help them be faster, get information to their customers faster.

And it's just, yeah, it's been great overall.

Tony Zakula (12:56)

Let's rewind that a little bit. I think there's several interesting points there. One, going back to the beginning, it's a common challenge that Kodaris has is there's so much in the platform, customers don't even know we have it. And so it's not uncommon for customers to come to us and say, I'm thinking about this, what do you have in the platform?

Because releasing thousands of updates a year, it's hard for customers to keep up, let alone even, know, Kodaris employees on what's changing.

Margaret (13:31)

I'll plus one that.

Jeremy Ott (13:32)

[laughs]

Tony Zakula (13:35)

So I think that's greater that, you know, that it worked…a piece worked some someplace and then you kind of built on that. But also there was, for your team, there was improvements that they felt they needed, or you felt they needed to get that adoption.

But before we dive into that, whole CRM, CRM's interesting. It's supposed to be a customer relationship, but something like 80% of CRM rollouts fail because it's, many times it comes about the sales rep's doing things so the sales managers know what they're doing, not necessarily servicing the customer better.

I think a unique difference and when people come to us and say, hey, I need a CRM. I want to see a demo of your CRM, which we never gave Jeremy a demo. He just played with it, adopted it.

Margaret (14:36)

Threw him to the wolves.

Jeremy Ott (14:37)

Yeah.

Tony Zakula (14:42)

You know, what you described as a success there at the end, tying it beginning to end. Sales reps can sell more. They can do more with their customers.

The whole idea behind everything we have tried to build in the CRM is not about…it's obviously about selling more, but it's about the human interaction of what they need to actually sell more, not collecting data that they have to go ask. Go ask your customer these five questions. I need to know this. Put this in. You know, and while summary of call notes is great, you know, some companies don't need that.

They just, ‘Hey, I was on site with the customer. They need to put in a quick order or he's going to call the branch, but he needs to know his price now because he's got to tell his purchasing manager.’ I think that's the unique thing. I'm first to tell people, hey, we're not a Salesforce. If you're looking for a Salesforce, don't come to us. That's not, but we do have something purpose-built for distributors.

And I think the only unique way I think this CRM has improved. I mean, through your journey, we also were able to improve things. But what was that feedback cycle like, I guess from, I think my reps need this to get this adoption or not? What's a little bit about that, how you came back to us?

And I know there were several iterations, where in that journey of, I'm thinking about adopting more or did you get feedback directly from your early adopters and then the field? I can't remember how many improvements we made to the mobile app for you.

Jeremy Ott (16:32)

Yeah, yeah, I think initially starting the journey, I would say I felt confident that most of it was there. That if I had to roll out that day, we could make it successful, but there were other things to really get the full adoption. And that came directly from feedback from the sales reps, from the beta testers, from the guys in the field.

And a lot of it for our guys, honestly, a lot of it was focused around what pricing information they could get at their fingertips. And so with Reinders, how we do the pricing and what sales reps can have access to, they needed to see replacement cost, average cost by warehouse, the customer specific pricing, and the inventory across all warehouses all in one view.

And the current, you know, I looked at the current functionality that Kodaris had and it was there. I just think we just wanted to get even more. We just wanted to show even more information. And so that was one of the cycles of, you know, could we have launched? Probably.

But how can we launch to get more adoption. And so we just added this big chunk to the pricing check, to the price check screen on the Kodaris screens that show all those things that I listed off. And then the feedback went from, yeah, it's good to this is amazing. This is awesome. This is what I'm looking for.

And so in looking back at it, know, delaying a couple of weeks, in my opinion, was worth it because you have a better opportunity to get more people and then you have that wow factor. That sitting in that room watching the demo and seeing, man, I can do all this and get all this. And it's both on the desktop and then the app. And so I think a lot of the stuff, Tony, that we did with you guys was, hey, how do we get it, you know, let's get it on the desktop first because that's gonna be the main bread and butter that people work on when they're at home on their laptops.

And then we continued to trickle to the app. So that was a big piece. There were some things around like the order entry. And like Tony said, I never got a demo of the order entry. Just kind of went in there and was like, all right, well, I'm going in. I know how to use CSD. I know how to enter orders. I had my e-commerce team lead help me out. She's very versed in CSD, Kristen.

And so then I had her look at it, and it's just two screens, so much easier than CSD. So that was a no-brainer to sell because it's like, guys, you know, and like I go back to my first statement, why I picked a person that was versed, a sales rep that's versed in entering orders in CSD, because I want them to see how fast and easy it is to enter in Kodaris on the fly versus the steps that you have to take sometimes in your ERP.

And so, the order entry, minimal modifications to that. And then honestly, company information, I don't think we modified at all. So a handful of iterations of, you know, back and forth things. I think honestly, it was just more training. It was just me asking questions of the Kodaris team like, all right, I think I know how to do this. How do I do this? And then we made some tweaks and, but it was very fast.

It wasn't like, you know, hey, Kodaris team, you know, this is going to, let's take three months to do this. It was like, ‘Hey, I got this. How can we do this? I need to launch this by August.’ And so it was challenging the Kodaris team as well, I think to say, ‘Hey, uh, I got a deadline at the end of August. I need to roll this out.’ And so, you know, with that end too, we, we kind of like, I guess the iteration process was focusing on this project, but then what else can we do with Kodaris?

So like tickets just kept adding on top of it. The more things I found, and we actually switched from sending out all of our online order confirmations from our e-commerce platform throughout of Kodaris. And that, that was part of this sales rep, this rollout because we needed order confirmation emails to send out when sales reps are entering through Kodaris.

And so it wasn't just one project. It evolved into, I need to pull this project that's been on my backlog and bring it into here to make this fully successful.

Tony Zakula (21:19)

I think that's a point to dwell on just for a minute, touching on the wow factor. We talked about change, how hard it is for us to change. As a tech company, as a long-time engineer, that wow factor gets people to change their habits. It's not just another tool.

A lot of technology providers would go get something off the shelf, say we're using this product, we're rolling it out. When you work in Silicon Valley, which is where I worked for a while, and then you try to build a tech company who's going to change an industry, literally everything is about that user experience. Because the minute a user has a wow factor, they're going to say, I want to use that more.

So it's not just about, we're going to bring this tool and you're going to adopt this tool. Good change management does that, but if you bring something that's so much better, that makes your life easier, that's what tech companies build billions of dollars on. So I think it's an interesting point of, well, we could have done it, but even tech companies only get that from their early adopters from the users to understand what are those wow triggers that we can do.

Which, you know–I can promote Kodaris a little bit here–that's the secret of a lot of what we do is working with customers directly to say, ‘Well, you're trying to do this, Jeremy, what wow factor do you need to drive 90% adoption?’

Because that's huge, that makes or breaks the program, because if you got 20% adoption, you're not going to get a second chance at that very often. So when you have your champions you start with, and they say, this is really cool, this is…wow. And then you take that to a huge group and they're taking it and say, look at this cool stuff.

The same concept for tech companies building something and saying, you know, back in the expense reporting days, that used to be, I could take a picture and magically my data shows up on my expense report. That was, like, the holy grail from compiling a spreadsheet, typing it all in, submitting a spreadsheet. So I think just in the realm of change management, technology people who are supporting change management, you have to keep that in mind.

We want our workforce to change and adopt these tools, but are we just saying change because you need to? Because I’ve got the solution. Are we providing something that they're like wow, I'd love to use that? And I think I think you did it. It was something that we want to support, that we want to learn, that we want to improve as Kodaris. But it's also really neat to see, you know, our internal partners at distributors being able to deliver something like that.

Jeremy Ott (24:42)

Yeah, I think one of the interesting things is, I wasn't sure how it was going to take off, let's be honest. I was kind of like, man, I really hope this takes off. And it did. And to see age groups from early 30s to late 60s utilizing the app and utilizing the tools was very interesting.

I was not expecting that. But it was awesome, it was great. And I think that shows something. But then, you know, there's also some reps that haven't fully bought in yet. And it's that continual training, though, that continual check in and re-encouraging.

I just had a conversation with one of our top sales reps who adopted–he was one of the beta testers–yesterday and I just said, you know, ‘How's things going with Kodaris?’ And this guy, every time he talks to me, he just praises Kodaris. He's like, ‘Man, this is awesome. This is the best thing. Anyone that's not using Kodaris, let me know. I'll talk to him and I'll set them straight.’ And it's, it's really encouraging to hear that from our side–that's developing it and rolling it out and, you know, put a lot of time into it–that the tools are being used and they want to be used and they're helping.

And they're actually helping someone do their job, especially in a sales role, who's driving business to our business, to be honest. You know, I think that that piece and that continuous training. And so if there's things that I've learned too, from this process and this rollout is you can't just do one training and let it go.

And so I did an end of the year training, I keep talking about it. Every time I see a sales rep, I keep talking about it. And it's that you have to keep bringing it up because if you don't keep bringing it up, it's going to be out of sight, out of mind, potentially for some of those that haven't bought into it yet. And that's how you get the buy-in, I think is, is every event that I've gone to, every group that I've been a part of for, like, sales meetings.

I always make sure to bring up, are you using this Kodaris app? If not, how can I help? And just last night, a guy that I talked to a month and a half ago who wasn't using Kodaris quite yet, I saw him place an order through the Kodaris app. And I just emailed him and said, ‘Hey, so I placed your first order. How's it going?’

He's like, ‘Man, after we had that conversation a month, month and a half ago, I've just been using it nonstop and it's great. And I appreciate you spending the time to help, you know, keep training with me.’ And so I think that's part of that, you know, that I've learned is that you have to have that continual reinforcement nonstop if you want to have something succeed.

Margaret (27:42)

Yeah, I always say repetition doesn't ruin the prayer, but I've said it so often that probably people roll their eyes at it. But I think that, a core theme is just continuous communication.

Tony Zakula (27:49)

Yeah. There's also an interesting side effect about that besides communication. You know, when you have those quarterly meetings or trainings, people know they're going to have to go and you're probably going to ask them, ‘How's it going?’ So they're like, ‘I haven't done it. I need to jump in because I got that training next week.’

Margaret (28:10)

Jeremy's gonna be on my case.

Tony Zakula (28:14)

I know and we even externally to customers when you're trying to drive adoption on a commerce platform and, you know, on another podcast, we'll probably talk about knowing your customer. But we used to go visit customers with them, sit down, ask them questions, show them tools, understand their business, how it interacts. And then we line up a 30-day check-in to say, ‘Hey, we're going to go configure a few things for you. We're just going to come back, check in, see if it's working for you.’

You'd be amazed at the amount of times customers would say, I knew you were coming, so I was working on this and I need a little help with this. But then after you visit them three, four times, they're using the tool. And it was simply that you cared, you wanted to understand if they were having issues, but they were going to have to meet you in person. And, you know, unless they were just rude and canceled, they would do something to have something to say.

So it's a very low key, non-confrontational way to say, are you doing this because you're saying: how do I help you do it? Is it working correctly? I want to make sure our product's working correctly for you. And I think that's a kind of interesting change management tool you can use to say, continuous training, continuous help, but it also kind of nudges the people to use the tool, at least to try it so they have some feedback to give.

And we all know once we do something a couple of times, then we just start doing it if it's easier, right? I know that one of the first times early on, I'm not going to tell you how many years ago that I was running a warehouse, online ordering was just coming out and it's like, I just caught it in its habit, habit, habit, walk around the warehouse with your headset on, placing the order until I needed something urgent off hours.

And I said, if you order by 6 PM, although the phone shut off at 4 PM, you can place it online and go without the next day. Well, it only took one time and then I ordered everything online.

Margaret (30:27)

Yeah, I think this is an interesting thing too, though, Tony. Like, I think the opposite of that is also true, right? If the first time you try something and it's a terrible experience, the activation energy to get somebody to do it again is much harder than even to try something for a first time, right?

And so I think that's like the interesting thread of Jeremy saying, okay, well, we could roll this out, but we're going to work on this for a couple more weeks and make sure that it's a spectacular experience. Because if somebody goes in and has a frustrating experience, they'll never try it again, you know?

Jeremy Ott (31:02)

Yeah. And you know, it's been interesting. It's been an interesting ride over the last handful of months because like Tony said, you know, I'm continuing to work with the Kodaris team, give them a feedback on the mobile app and, you know, the Kodaris team is continuing to roll out improvements and changes. But I just talked to a sales rep the other day, too about it. And I was like, ‘Yeah, sorry. It's kind of taken a little bit longer to get this feature. You know, we're working on it.’

And he was like, ‘I didn't even feel like it was a long time. I just feel like there's updates, you know, every time I go on there.’ And so it's because of the positive mindset that was set up right from the get-go. There's not this thought of, ‘This has taken so long to get this fixed or this feature launched,’ because there's such positivity around it that they don't even notice that it's been…

To me, I'm like, ‘Yeah, come on, let's go, let's get this done.’ So then it's like, oh, it's been a month that you're working on this feature. But then when it gets rolled out, it's tested and it's great. And then they don't even notice that it's been a month since they asked for that, or if it takes that long, like if it's a big thing we're doing or something. You know, they don't even notice that it takes a decent amount of time to get something pushed through. So that helps.

Real quick, one of the things that Tony said, we wanted to touch on it because we didn't mandate that these sales reps had to use this tool. I offered it and said, ‘Hey, look, I think I got something that you guys would be interested in. We have some sales reps using it. You know, let's see if it's good for you guys’.

And so nowhere yet has it been mandated that you have to use Kodaris. It's all been word of mouth. It's all been trainings and there's been questions asked to me like, ‘Do I need, am I supposed to be using this every day or can I use Infor, can I use CST still?’ And I'm like, ‘Yeah, if that's what you find, you know, comfortable to you right now,’ but I always say that you should check out Kodaris and you should try it you should see how fast it is. And here's all the things why I think you should use it. And then it's that slow adoption, but I think that's also helps to not say you have to use Kodaris.

This is the tool you're using, get in there and learn it and use it. And so I think that non-mandate but peer support and peer pressure has led to a positive experience for our sales reps.

Margaret (33:36)

Yeah, carrots not sticks,

Jeremy Ott (33:38)

Yeah, exactly.

Tony Zakula (33:40)

Yeah, I think the first experience thing and that's another change management process that IT folks, we have to keep in mind. We should log in, use it, understand what the user has to do, how many clicks it takes. It's something as a product designer that I preach to my team is, if you watch a user use it and you wouldn't want to use it, don't expect your users to use it.

There's only one way to get some…the fastest way to improve something is to make an engineer do something three times the same way. But I think, you know, testing and understanding your users, your user use case, actually learning what they have to do. Because then when they ask a question and say, ‘this doesn't work’ or ‘how do I do this?’

You have the answer or you're saying you can explain why this is easier, versus what you do today, because it's an age-old thing of, that's how we do it today. Which was interesting in your initial use case. We get that all the time. Hey, we're used to logging in as our customers and placing orders for them on the website. And for cybersecurity, for many reasons, we don't allow that.

But think about the journey of, OK, we'll support that versus…this whole CRM tool that's now on a mobile device, they get confidential information you’d never show your customer. I think it really goes back to thinking through your business and the technology and what's a big outcome you want?

The sales, the management side of me says, okay, well, it'd be great if we could measure–which we can–but now that they're all using it, can we measure, are people more productive? Are there less calls to the office? Are the sales up for reps who are heavily using it versus non-heavily using it? Not to mandate, but to also to your point, positive peer pressure and data points.

I know a year ago we had time. We struggled to track a metric every day we needed that was…really what the time people were spending in certain areas, not because they were in trouble because we need to know how to improve our workflow to engineer faster and had pretty low participation. So we put a dashboard up in an all hands meeting every single day to show who did it, who didn't. We didn't have to talk to anybody. Seven days, everybody was doing it, right? Because they didn't want to be the laggard.

Jeremy Ott (36:27)

Yeah.

Tony Zakula (36:32)

So it's interesting too, just data points and change management, positive peer pressure about, my counterparts are doing it or my counterparts are selling more or I have happier customers.

Jeremy Ott (36:46)

Yeah, I think I was in a group meeting and a recap with the sales reps and one of the guys did speak up and say, ‘Why? Like, why aren't you using it?’ And it was just kind of like, I mean, it wasn't the right time and place to have that conversation, but it was still interesting because you had a power user that has adopted and then you have some that haven't fully adopted and they're asking out their peers saying like, why? Like, why don't you want to do this? Why?

Why do you want to call the store to get that? Why do you want to send that information in? Like you can do it right then and there. And I think, you know, some more sidebar conversations happen, but you do have some of those guys that see the positivity of it and the tools to help you.

So I did reach out to some of those power users and had some great conversations with them, and pretty much the collective agreement was that they for sure have less calls. Absolutely was the word when they have less calls to branches.

That they don't have to call a store, they don't have to wait, they can do it right then and there. And they all have felt that it's caused less frustration, standing face to face with customers, because it has always been, and this is coming from them saying, ‘Well, I have to, let me get home, I'll email the store, I'll call the store, I'll get your pricing, I'll get the availability, I'll get you, put your quote together.’ And now that's changed.

That's changed to, ‘Hey, hold on, let me pull this up right here, get it to you.’ And the customers are less frustrated. And what I've heard from some of the guys is that they've been able to upsell, cross-sell, add on right there in front of their customers. I mean, one of the sales reps just told me yesterday that he was just about done with this conversation, closing a deal with a customer.

And a customer said, ‘Hey, you know, I was thinking about ordering this from you guys, but I'm not sure. Can you get me pricing on this?’ And he pulled it up right then and there, did the calculations, you know, made the right change to the price of the product. And he was able to add on X amount of, of sale to his sale. Where I asked him, ‘So do you think you would have closed that sale if you would have had to say, let me go home, call the store, send you an email a couple hours later?’

He said, ‘Probably not. because that customer is going to think on it. That customer is going to say, eh, I don't know.’ And so they all kind of collectively said, you're giving that, you're making that customer make a decision right there in front of your face. And one way I was like, people don't want to say no to you, which I mean, I think that's a human, that's a natural habit.

And so if you can give them that information right there in seconds, not minutes, I think it can help most sales, or potentially help a lot of sales close. And also, like I said, upsell or add on. And so just that tool right there in front of them, they do think that, at least these guys think that it's been able to help service their customers at a higher level. And that was really great to hear.

Tony Zakula (40:03)

That's awesome. The point I'll pull out of there is is that speed does matter in sales. I know that we've had customers who use our quote automation and when it went from two hours to five minutes. They know that the customer just said I'm just taking your numbers. Somebody may be a little better, but I don't have to wait hours.

That's pretty awesome to hear this. Figure, they're standing in front of them and because of speed, the customer is not going to shop around, the customer is not going to go look at things because they don't want to say no, but because I get the answer now and it's done, I can move on. So you're actually providing value to the customer, not even just making a sale because now they can go on with their work. They don't have to shop, they don't have to wait.

I think that's interesting about B2B–probably B2C doesn't matter as much–but in B2B, your customers are running businesses. The faster they can move through their process, the easier their life is. So that's cool.

The other thing that you mentioned early on, and I kind of remembered as you were talking, was the email notifications, or there's other notifications of, not only going to customers, but sales reps many times want to know when their customer places an order, which we support, whether it's, you know, let's say they call in the branch or they place it online.

Something you don't think about CRM, but if you're true CRM, the sales reps getting alerts and understanding what their customer is ordering when in real time. Lots of times I know sales reps will check the order, make sure the customer is ordering what they want. Because as value added sales reps, you're helping that customer choose the best products. Be the product consultant, right? It's the value add that the sales reps provide in distribution. We know that.

Different than, we're going to send marketing emails or I got to record what my customer is interested in. If I help that customer choose correctly, we know that also there's a service level there of, “I didn't get the wrong part. Now I got to send it back. Now got to do this. Now I got to wait, my job’s behind, my installs are behind.’ Even little things like that, and mapping that out is…I think it's amazing how much little things can make a difference over and sales and service levels, and all those things…

Margaret (42:35)

And in change management.

Tony Zakula (42:43)

Yeah, outside the traditional reference point of, you know, CRM and sales discussions.

Jeremy Ott (42:46)

Yeah, I think that the order confirmations is, you know, he asked the question of like, why, I'm always being asked–and it's good–I always ask myself too. It's like, why does a sales rep need to see that confirmation so fast? And I understand both sides of the street. But from the sales side, just everything that I've heard, it's like, it's because they want to see that, they want to understand and they want to help.

They want to help that customer make sure, like you said, make sure that they're ordering the right product quickly before the order gets processed, or before we transfer in some wrong product, and things like that. Especially with our online store. And a lot of customers adopting that. It's a comfort level, I think.

I would be in the same position if I was a sales rep, where I would want to understand like, ‘Okay, I just talked to that customer on the phone and he just verified some stuff. Did he actually place an order?’ Before having to wait till like your reporting software updates at nighttime or, you don't have access to CSD.

And so now these guys that are very, let’s just say, anal about their reviewing orders–not only can they get the order confirmation right away from Kodaris but they can also log into Kodaris, see what they're ordering, check the statuses, and just really be on top of some of those critical orders for some of those critical customers.

Because now a sales rep can log into Kodaris, see the orders, the order numbers, see the status, and have better conversations with store personnel. And the conversation is faster. Because now they can say, ‘Alright, I have a question about this order. It's in the X stage. What's going on with it?’ And so instead of saying, ‘Well, I think customer placed this order at this time. Can you find it? And then what's the status of it?’

There's education on the sales rep side that helps the store personnel, which is a backbone of the business, getting the product out the door to the customer. It helps the conversations. then that 15 minute conversation with possibly a customer at the counter now has turned into a couple minute conversation and everyone is back to work.

I think it also does help that CRM has helped from the store level as well. And so I think that's just something good to touch on. It's affecting all pieces of the business and not just the sales piece of it.

Tony Zakula (45:20)

Yeah, it's, well, it goes back to how we built the CRM, right? It's the business driving it, operations driving it, the pain points of customers like, you know, Reinders and other folks explaining their operations and working with us to craft a product. I mean, all that just almost gives me goosebumps when I think about what else can we automate or make faster, right?

You know, and at the end of the day if you're an executive and you're thinking about those things. Honestly, you're thinking okay, so I need less store personnel. I have a sales rep, but now I need less store personnel to support them. I could have more people shipping, or putting together orders, servicing customers.

We can do more sales at a higher volume with less people–which is what this is all about–but not let our service levels drop. Tying all those operational pieces together with the software everybody's using. I think that’s a theme of ours this year, one customer success platform, one ERP, because what you're describing, more and more of our customers are starting to see and drive towards that.

You can have Salesforce CRM, it's not gonna do what you just described. There’s delayed integrations, there's data, there's all these different things. A tightly coupled platform with your ERP makes a huge difference in real time. And I think those are just side effects that turn into real dollars. And the more people adopt, the more you save.

So going back, tying it all the way back to–hey, we're going to do this. We're not going to force adoption, but good change management, better technology, ripples across the business. And then of course, also probably has a ripple effect on when you bring the next tool and you say, we're going to add this piece for you. If you were going say, ‘Oh, well, the last time it was great. So, what is this piece?’ Really interesting.

Jeremy Ott (47:37)

Yeah. I think that that is what I'm looking forward to now is continuing this relationship with the sales reps and keeping the positivity high so when we are ready to roll out that next feature or, you know, Kodaris comes out with another enhancement, that it's just an easy buy-in and that people are excited and, you know, I think the excitement is there.

And every time I talk to certain reps and say, ‘All right, you know, we just added this piece to the mobile app’. It's like, ‘Alright, cool. I'm on there. I'm checking it out.’ A lot of it too, I think is about momentum and then change management. It's keeping the momentum, not letting off the gas, even though, I think all of us on the call, we're all super busy and we all have 60 million things going on. It's just keeping in the back of your mind that this type of project is something that you might not have time to keep the momentum going every day or even every week, but at least like on a three to four week basis, you just do check-ins and you just keep the momentum going. You keep the encouragement going.

And yeah, I think that's, that's what I've learned. And that's, that's been, probably, part of the success of this is that, one I'm passionate about it. So I'm high energized when I talk about it, and see the benefits. And so if you have someone that can learn the tool, drive the tool, be energized.

I think for any product, any technology, you need someone, you need teams or someone internally that can help deliver an excitement, and then that excitement it's like a virus. It just keeps going across everyone else. So that's what I've learned and that's kind of my takeaway from this.

Margaret (49:26)

I think there's, too, going back to our previous episode with Munawar. Is that there's this thread of trust and building trust in all of this, right? And so even in change management, you have to, if you're promising that this technology is a better way, it has to actually be a better way or else it's not gonna happen.

And that increase in trust, of fulfilling that promise: this is a better way to work, you're going to be faster, you're going to make more money, you're going to have all of the business outcomes that we want. Then helps the next time that you're going to ask for them to be willing to trust you that there's another better way in the future.

Tony Zakula (50:08)

Last point wrapping up, I'll just say: passion is contagious. It means you believe in it, you've used it. I think folks can take a page out of that book because, if you're just going through your job and you're not passionate about it, you're not supporting it, then why would you expect anybody else to? Right?

And so, you know, I think that's critical, and that’s great. So super relevant point, and change management as well.

Margaret (50:41)

Gotta be the cheerleader.

Jeremy Ott (50:43)

Yeah, yes.

Margaret (50:47)

Awesome. Well, Jeremy, thank you so much. I think this was really helpful for folks to think about as they're introducing any new technology into their business.

Jeremy Ott (50:55)

Yeah, thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it. I love talking about it, obviously, and I get excited talking about it. So yeah, thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it.

Margaret (51:08)

Thank you for joining us this week on the Kodaris Community Show.

We'll see you back next time.