Markus is the co-founder of Outfunnel with 5+ years of experience at the intersection of sales & marketing. Previously head of commercial operations at The Next Web. Currently shaping the product and driving customer success at Outfunnel – a sales-centric marketing automation tool.
Visit their website: https://outfunnel.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/outfunnel/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/outfunnelHQ/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/outfunnel
Transcript of the Conversation
RJ Martino: Welcome to the iProv Made Podcast! I’m RJ Martino, your host. Beside me is my
good friend Jordan Smith.
Jordan Smith: What’s up everybody? Hey RJ, do you like spam?
RJ Martino: No. Does anybody like spam? No.
Jordan Smith: It’s a little bit salty, but it’s fine. Oh the email spam.
RJ Martino: Oh, okay.
Jordan Smith: Yeah yeah yeah.
RJ Martino: No, no, definitely not.
Jordan Smith: Nobody does. Hey, today we’ve got Markus Leming from Out Funnel. This one’s a little bit different but I know that there’s a ton of value in it, especially for certain demographics that we’re talking to and members of our audience. Things like groups that are looking into physician referrals, dentists who are looking at trying to find a different way to reach customers for things like teeth whitening, or those retail services.
RJ Martino: Well, I think yeah, those are good examples. What we’re ultimately saying is: it is a tool used together with a CRM. A CRM is a customer relationship management software. It is just like your EHR/EMR where you can look at a given patient. Or for anyone doing referral specialist, a given primary care physician. And you get to see all the history. All their contact information. When was the last time we visited that person? When’s their birthday? So we can, you know, create a task to make sure we go and give them a call on their birthday. Things that can make an experience really special. Once they leave, you know, what was the last time we serviced that patient, or we serviced one of the physician’s patients? You know, and you move them along the buying cycle in, across each stage of the buying cycle. You can do and automate certain things. So, a physician referral.
Jordan Smith: Yeah. I know the physician groups that we’ve implemented this, you know, what RJ is talking about with the CRM and specifically using Out Funnel, which we’ll talk to our guests a lot more about. Return on investment hand over fist. And that’s the main thing that matters.
RJ Martino: Oh yeah. More money in your pocket. And the visibility. I mean, one of the hardest things about physician referral isn’t the actual job. It’s getting visibility into are they spending their time on the right things. And unfortunately they can report to you, but sometimes even when they’re reporting to you, you’re questioning what they’re doing. And they don’t want that, just as much as you don’t want that. You know, they want visibility in what they’re doing. And a CRM kind of gives that visibility. But more than anything, it all ends up with more money in your pocket, which is a what you want. You know, more productive and more profitable practice.
Jordan Smith: For sure. So without further ado, let’s hop into Markus Leming from that funnel.
RJ Martino: I’m happy to introduce our featured guest of the day and one of our favorite vendors. We’ve worked with this company for awhile. Markus Leming. Markus, how are you?
Markus Leming: Doing great. How about yourself?
RJ Martino: Doing awesome man. I’m also here with Jordan Smith. Everyone knows my famous co-host, the one who most of you got introduced to me because of.
Jordan Smith: What’s up? How is everybody? We’re really excited. So Markus is the co-founder of Out Funnel. And I know we did a really quick introduction that you guys heard just a second ago, but Markus, before we get going do you want to tell us a little bit about Out Funnel? A little bit about what your role is there?
Markus Leming: Absolutely. First of all, thanks for inviting me here and happy to be here. So, I’m one of the co-founders of Out Funnel. So I lead the product, I lead the customer success teams in Altona. And very briefly, what Out Funnel is, we’re really building a sales centric marketing automation tool that tightly integrates with CRMs like Pipe Drive and Copper. So basically you’ll be able to send out emails through our service, track them, look at website behavior, and really get that conversion in the end.
RJ Martino: That’s great stuff. And you know, for an organization like us who is effectively an agency, we utilize Out Funnel for those exact purposes. We send lots of communication. We want to be able to track when they came to the website, when we email, what emails they’re actually looking at, which links they’re clicking on. And that’s the kind of stuff we use it for. I know it expands a lot for the [inaudible 00:04:25]. You know our audience, I like to kind of lay it out because we’ve got a simple framework on how to grow a healthcare practice. And we call it kind of a simple seven-step process. Because Markus, when we first meet with healthcare organizations, they usually allow us and give us the opportunity to talk to them because they see some symptom. And almost always it is: we need new patients and we need them immediately. And we say: well that’s a symptom of a problem, let’s kind of do a deeper dive.
RJ Martino: And so step one is just recognizing that there is a symptom. There’s a problem that a healthcare organization wants to fix. The second thing we do is we say you got to do something different than you’ve been doing. Are you committed to that? We call it accountability. And I’m a big fan of Jocko who talks about extreme ownership. And I’m not sure if you’ve read his book, but we need them to commit to change. And if they aren’t, then they’re just not coachable and they’re probably not a great customer for us. If they are, if they’re coachable, then we do kind of a deep-dive triage. And we dig into do you have a corporate culture that allows success? We go through exercises on how we build corporate cultures and how we expect them to build corporate cultures.
RJ Martino: We also pull the vision out of what they’re trying to build. Because some healthcare practices want to build a giant organization, and some want to keep a small profitable. And there’s not a right or wrong answer. It is what is the vision for your organization? After we figured out what the vision is, then and only then can we actually create a strategy that hits mile marks that they’re happy with and we’re happy with.
RJ Martino: So we build strategy and tactics and after we build the strategy and tactics, we give them an accountability or a scorecard to make sure that everything’s getting done on a regular, recurring basis. We recommend they have weekly meetings to look at their numbers. To try to motivate their team to make the changes that they want to see. And lastly, and only after you’ve done all of those things, can you really engage your team. So then we help them engage the team.
RJ Martino: So thinking about where, you know, our simple seven-step framework, I think Out Funnel really fits in. And Jordan, you tell me. I think it fits in after there’s a strategy in place and you’re trying to figure out: okay, we know the vision, now what is the strategy? How are we going to keep up with things?
Jordan Smith: Yeah, no I think so too. Markus, do you have any thoughts on that?
Markus Leming: Yeah absolutely. I mean in the beginning, you know, that’s kind of how we do. So whenever we have a new client right, we always try to get on a call with them and really find out what are they actually looking to achieve. And that’s kind of, it aligns kind of what you’re doing as well. Right? So you first want to understand what is the situation. What does the client really trying to do? What are their goals, where are they with their company? And really based on that you can kind of build a story and really help them out. So it’s very similar to what we do here at Out Funnel as well.
Jordan Smith: Yeah, I mean we always talk about it, like RJ just said, it starts with the vision. And then everything needs to kind of funnel back through there. So tell me a little bit about kind of how the most successful clients that you guys, kind of how they think.
Markus Leming: Yeah, absolutely. In terms of then kind of how they operate and how they kind of, yeah. Yeah, great question. So when a client comes to us, right? I mean they are seeking to solve an issue they are having, right? Most often than not, it’s about efficiency. I mean we’re building an automation tool and we’re the solution to that. Secondly, it’s really about getting insights into what’s going on. How is the marketing performing? How is sales performing? And then this is kind of where Out Funnel can jump in. And before Out Funnel, their marketing and sales team, you know, they’re running with their own systems. The salespeople, they’re using a CRM like Pipe Drive. Marketeers, they’re using [inaudible 00:08:30] for example, but they don’t communicate, right? That’s kind of where they are at that point. And that’s what they’re really looking for. And to integrate the data on both sides. And that’s where we can kind of help them out as well. Did that answer you question?
RJ Martino: Yeah, I think it does. And you know, for our audience who is still trying to figure out where this all fits in. I’ll tell you the leading request we’re seeing is implementation of a CRM. A lot of our healthcare practices, they are referral-only based businesses. And, sorry. For a lot of our… They’re referral based only. And so they’re looking for a way to keep up with all the people and how often have we talked with them. Lots of times they’d say: give me an example, a surgeon who only gets referrals from primary care physicians. And so they’re looking for a way to put all their primary care physicians in a database and they can keep up with them. They can constantly communicate with them, that’s the CRM.
RJ Martino: The CRM of choice for us is Pipe Drive. We love it. It’s a great tool, easy to use, and end users love it. Whether you’re a CEO or you are a sales rep, you like the tool, it’s easy to use. So with Pipe Drive and a CRM, Out Funnel is the thing that takes the data that happens on email campaigns. And most people here are familiar with different email tools in particular. What are some of our options of choice? Mail Chimp is the one that we see all the time.
Jordan Smith: Yeah, Mail Chimp you see a lot. But you know, going back to where this fits in with most people. Yeah, like RJ said, groups that are looking for a way to help their physician relations group keep track of who they need to talk to. Certain, you know, kind of retail type of healthcare clients. I get a lot of dentists asking me about different things like that. How do we take our patient base that already see us and get them interested, or start to send them messages about different ancillary services that we have. Like Invisalign and teeth whitening. Optometrists and ophthalmologists and you know, selling the retail side of things. The glasses, contact lenses, that type of stuff.
Jordan Smith: So that’s where we think this really plays in nicely. And I know Markus, you guys have had some experience with that too. So tell us a little bit about how you guys help connect, because I know the big picture thing is helping connect marketing and sales. And that’s what Out Funnel is an expert in right?
Markus Leming: Absolutely. So I mean, firstly you mentioned the CRMs and really trying to implement those. I mean it’s still 2019, right? I mean at this day in time and age, I mean, you need to have a CRM. I mean that really helps to keep everything in one place. And if you don’t have it, it’s pretty hard to track what’s happening with your clients, and what’s going on. So, I mean, yeah. CRM is really the place to start. And then you know, after you have all the data in one place, that’s where you’re probably looking for a marketing tool. Something to actually communicate with the people or your clients and kind of get information out to them. So just to kind of go back on what Out Funnel does then, or kind of what we see people looking for, is really integrating two solutions.
Markus Leming: So when a marketeer sends out an email through Mail Chimp for example. Then the same people would love to know how those people engage with the newsletters or with the emails. And that’s where Out Funnel comes in. So we basically take the data from Mail Chimp and synchronize that over to Pipe Drive. So we show who opened or clicked on an email and we also show you which pages they visited. So what that enables to sales team to do is really get an insight into what’s going on with the content. And they can easily separate the hot leads from the cold leads. So there’s also something that we do called lead scoring where we take all of this data and put it into a single score. So it’s even easier than kind of looking through all the opens and clicks one by one.
Jordan Smith: Yeah.
Markus Leming: And instead of just looking at a single score.
RJ Martino: I think that’s huge and kind of worth repeating. You know what I just heard is Out Funnel is the tool that’s looking at all the activity. Whether it’s email, time on site, any of those things. And it’s helping pop the people. Let’s say it’s a physician referral, let’s use that example again. It’s a primary care physician. They’ve clicked on 14 emails over and over and are consuming your information about how to refer a patient. You know, a traditional person… Just common sense says: hey, that guy’s interested in something. So Out Funnel is doing the automation that’s scoring those leads and putting them, let’s say on top of the stack for your physician referral specialists.
Markus Leming: Yeah, exactly. So we’re basically, essentially qualifying those leads for you. So let’s say you have a thousand people in your database. Obviously you don’t have time to focus on all of them. But you’d still like to keep all of them in the loop. And then, you know, you send them newsletters, et cetera, but you’d probably only want to really reach out again personally for the people who really engage with your information. And then you can easily find those people. So instead of going through a thousand people, you really focused on 100 or 50 that are really hot leads.
Jordan Smith: That’s awesome. I know that there’s people listening to this right now saying: yeah, I’ve had a CRM and it doesn’t work for us. Well, a lot of the time it’s because it’s junk in, junk out. You know, either the list is bad or more often than not, it’s just that they’re not doing anything with it. You know, they’re [crosstalk 00:14:33] in the office that isn’t utilizing it, not because they’re being negligent. It’s just they don’t know the best way. Because sometimes you open that thing up and there is 2000 people in there. Well I don’t even know where to start with this. So let me just spend some time organizing it and refreshing my email. But so that’s great that you offer that.
Markus Leming: Yeah, I mean the first step you can make is really implement the CRM. But I mean that’s where the work, it doesn’t stop there. So essentially you know, you need to keep using it. You need to keep inserting information into the CRM and really keeping an eye on the fact that everyone works the same way in the CRM. And once you kind of have the basic processes in place, that’s where the CRM power or the magic really comes into play. Because you can really see data flowing together. You can see reporting. And then with Out Funnel, you know, you get that additional reporting from your email side as well and web tracking. And then, you know, if you’ve been using it for a couple of months or a couple of years already, you can really go back and see this works, this didn’t work. We should really focus more on these newsletters or we should not do these newsletters at all anymore. As an example, right?
Jordan Smith: Yeah, absolutely.
RJ Martino: You know, I think when we’re consulting with clients who have implemented ERP or I’m sorry, or a CRM. Or are talking to people about implementing a CRM, they fall into two camps. Either A, they love it and they don’t know how they worked without it, and that’s the camp we’re in. Or B, they say: oh, we hate it. It just doesn’t work. That can’t be really, it’s a poor implementation, you know? And that can be repaired. That can be fixed.
RJ Martino: If you look at the group A though, who says you can’t live without it, those people then fall into two buckets as well for me. And one is: can’t live without it, love it, all the data’s in there that you need. The other camp is: love it, but all the data that I need is not in the CRM. And that’s, to me, that’s who Out Funnel really fits in with. You like a CRM, you’ve implemented it, it’s successful, but you’re not getting all of the data you want into the CRM. Things like phone calls and meetings we put in there. Our sales people are great at entering that data, but for some reason we can’t see email communication. I mean that’s exactly where we were when we implemented it. Is that right?
Jordan Smith: Yeah, for sure. So Markus, tell me a little bit about…
Jordan Smith: Yeah, for sure. So Markus, tell me a little bit about the types of customers that you like working with. For those listeners out there, is it essential that they already have a CRM in place like Pipe Drive or Copper? Or are those people that don’t have that, are they still good folks for you guys to talk to? Talk us through kind of your ideal customer.
Markus Leming: Yeah, absolutely. Great question. So currently where we are with Out Funnel is you really need to have a CRM. So you either need to be using Pipe Drive or Copper because that’s where cut that out and that really taps into as well. So we look at your database and really help to kind of manage that. But if you don’t have a CRM yet, it’s pretty easy to get started with Pipe Drive or Copper. And in the future, so hopefully in the next half year or so, you will actually be able to use Out Funnel without a CRM as well.
RJ Martino: Oh, very cool.
Markus Leming: So let’s say if you’re just looking for a marketing tool, you can just create an account with Out Funnel and start sending emails right away. So one thing that I didn’t mention before is that … So we talked about using Out Funnel as an integration partner between Pipe Drive, I mentioned, but you can actually send emails directly from Out Funnel as well. It’s not a replacement of Mainstream completely as Mainstream is really great for those newsletter type of emails. Where Out Funnel excels in terms of email marketing is really those personal emails, personal followup campaigns, sequences, automatic campaigns that trigger based on a certain condition.
Markus Leming: So let’s say you have an open deal and then you move the deal from one stage to another and you’d like to trigger that a new email. So that’s where kind of Out Funnel helps us all with email marketing or with a native email marketing approach. And we see a lot of our customers actually using both at the same time, so they use Mainstream for gross newsletters and they use our own tool for those more simple looking at email campaigns that have a personalized touch to it.
Jordan Smith: Absolutely. That’s the camp that iProv is, the agency is. We use Mainstream for the more newsletters that hit everybody, but we use Out Funnel for specific messages depending on where that individual is in the buying process.
RJ Martino: And when we’re consulting, most of the time the practices don’t want to send general email to everybody because they don’t see-
Jordan Smith: Exactly.
RJ Martino: … a lot of value in that. The emails that they want going out are things like confirmation of an appointment, after they leave a thank you email that says, “Thank you, please review us.” They’re personalized to the person based off of where they are in that buying cycle, whether they’re just potential patients or patients who are about to come in, patients that are in, or patients that have just walked out the door. And so Mail Chimp actually providing that email feature is very powerful. And that’s how we’re utilizing it now, Jordan?
Jordan Smith: Yeah, so that’s how we’re using Out Funnel. So we’re getting kind of deep in it so, Markus, if you don’t mind take a step back and talk to us procedurally how you would recommend somebody from a best practice perspective to get the most out of Out Funnel. Because we talked about moving people along stages and I know that’s more of a Pipe Drive thing, but kind of tell us what some best practices are for those out there listening if they were to be interested in using Out Funnel.
Markus Leming: Yeah, absolutely. So just as a disclaimer, [inaudible 00:20:41] really comes down to kind of what you’re trying to do with the system, right?
Jordan Smith: Yep.
Markus Leming: But just to kind of give you some examples … so I think a good example is actually what we do with our tool ourselves. So we really practice what we preach so all of the emails, everything that that goes out from our side goes out through Out Funnel. So when you start a new trial with us, you’ll actually enter our pipeline and then we’ll move you between different stages and based on which stage you are in, you will receive a different type of messaging. And at one point when we really see that you’re healthy, we pick it up manually and really start giving that personal touch as well. But you could easily also separate, let’s say, prospects and clients and then based on those two different segments, you want to send them different types of messaging. And then with Out Funnel you can easily … or, sorry, with Pipe Drive actually, you can easily set up some filters where you separate those two groups and then send the appropriate message.
Markus Leming: Another example is really action-based the stuff. So let’s say that you already implemented Out Funnel and you’re getting information and data back on who opened and who click and then you really see that take. This newsletter that I sent out last week, let’s say it was a white paper that you sent out, you saw that 50 people clicked. So probably you’d want to actually automate a follow up to all the other people who didn’t click. So that’s pretty easily achievable as well with Out Funnel. And you can set up, again, another filter and send out a followup campaign to everyone who didn’t click. So you can really be on top of kind of the whole approach in this whole funnel and drive results with that.
Jordan Smith: Yeah, that’s great. And I know it seems kind of big brotherish to some of our listeners out there, but I’m telling you no one who opened an email, who clicked on a link, who and when they went to the website from a link that you had, that type of stuff is powerful.
Markus Leming: Absolutely, and you can be open about this as well. I don’t think people really mind that as long as you’re transparent about this. With our automated campaigns as well, we don’t hide the fact that we’ve actually automated this and we use it to our advantage. So we really say that, “Hey, this is an automatic email and you could create a similar email for your own onboarding campaign that triggers automatically based on an action that your client or prospect has made or taken.” So the more transparent I think you are with it, the better it is for you
Jordan Smith: Yeah.
RJ Martino: A lot of our physician owners, the first thing they always want to know about is kind of bottom line. Can you talk about your pricing model, how you guys are looking at it?
Markus Leming: Absolutely. So we have a pretty straight forward pricing. So as you know, most email marketing tools, they charge you per contact. So let’s say you have 20,000 contacts in your database, they charge you for every contact that you have there, even if you’re not emailing them all. Let’s say you only email a small segment of these, so we think it’s pretty unfair actually. So we’ve kind of turned this around and we actually charge you based on the number of emails you send out per month. So basically the engagements that actually happened. So you kind of have 100,000 contacts in your database, but if you only communicate with 15,000 of those, that’s what you’ll get charged at, which we think is actually more fair in the long term.
RJ Martino: Yeah, I think it sounds a lot like … I think most of our audience is familiar with the pay per click, which you only get charged if you click on it. People love that, you’re only getting charged if you’re actually utilizing the service.
Jordan Smith: It’s very cool. And free guys out there, we’ll plug it a couple of times, but Out Funnel.com if you go to the site, they’re really transparent as far as their pricing models and everything’s out there. So we always talk about having a vision first, then making sure that ownership of the organization actually takes ownership of the issues, right? And now we’re talking about this triaging, let’s move into kind of the progress tracking. Do you guys have benchmarks? Are there things that you suggest? If there’s listeners out there who are using it or using a different tool set, what are some of the things that you give them as kind of key performance indicators to see if their emails are working, if they should switch toolsets, if they should tweak things here or there?
Markus Leming: Yeah, great question. So we’re pretty active in helping our clients succeed. So if you are a client with us as well, you’re using our tool, first thing we’ll always do is reach out to you. We’ll look at your account on our dashboard as well to see how everything is performing, basically which actions you’ve taken, if you’ve sent out any emails, what is the open rate, what is the click rate. And then we’ll really put some time into it as well and personally kind of reach out and talk about this and say that, “Hey, we see that your open rate is only 15% here’s some tips and tricks, and best practices how you can actually increase it.” Or another use cases where someone a big bounce rate. So there’s a lot of things that you can actually do to reduce bounce rate and then we’ll work together with you and, and help you actually achieve that. And in terms of kind of benchmarks, we don’t really share it publicly like that, but it’s more really on a case per case basis and really personally looking at that each account, each active user and really trying to help them succeed and really making the most out of the tool.
Jordan Smith: Very cool. Well, as far as kind of practical type of advice that somebody could go out and start implementing right away, whether they’re generic or more specific, you guys are the expert in email and automation, what are some practical things that people could step out of this and start utilizing immediately? Whether it’s from a messaging standpoint or from email, are there … I don’t want to say tips and tricks, but is there some guidance that you can give folks on that?
Markus Leming: I think the number one thing is don’t spam. It sounds pretty simple, but there’s a lot of spam out there in the world. And that’s actually one of our kind of sacred values internally as well that we’re trying to help to reduce the spam that is out there. So only send content to people that, first of all, expect to you receive content from you and really send relevant content. So before you hit that send button, actually think about it, “Hey, is this the type of email that I’d like to read?” If you’re just spamming people and sending marketing emails, that doesn’t really work these days anymore. So you really need to think about, “Okay, what’s the value that my client or prospect is really getting out of it?” I think that’s kind of the number one and the biggest thing that can help your business grow as well, really send relevant content to people. And once you get that right, everything else would fall into place.
Jordan Smith: Very cool. I like that. There’s tons of stuff about length of emails and how to open it up, but I think that’s one of the best kind of pieces of advice I’ve gotten is only send relevant stuff to people who are expecting your email or that actually need what you’re offering.
Markus Leming: Exactly. The length of the email and kind of the image to text ratio, all of these things vary. And there’s millions of different subject lines that you can use and there’s a lot of different blog content articles about this online as well, but [inaudible 00:28:31] you know what is best for your audience. So it’s kind of hard to go by an example that is, for example, from another industry or who doesn’t really know the background or the situation you are in. They don’t know your business, right? So you really need to think about it yourself.
Jordan Smith: Well and I’ll tell you, Markus was a little bit … he’s not going brag on himself, but I will as a client of theirs. Anytime we’ve had questions or needed that practical, or tactical or even big picture strategic advice, a lot of the times these guys are asking us questions before we even reach out and ask them questions. So customer service wise, you guys are killing it.
Markus Leming: Thanks for that. Happy to hear.
RJ Martino: I know our audience just because I am built like them, we spend so much time with them. One of the things they’re screaming at the audio for is what does it cost and we kind of linked in, but I want to hit on something that they’ve got a free trial that’s really easy. So it starts at free just to try it. The first entry right now at time of recording is 19 bucks a month, and even their expensive plan that they market, it’s 125. So it’s a very inexpensive product for what it’s doing and Pipe Drive is an inexpensive product as well. The second thing that they’re thinking is, “Okay, I’m happy to write that check, but this sounds very technical. You’re saying words like automation and AI, all of that stuff is scary.” Can you talk about actually implementation of this? Is this a technical team that has to be sat down? Is it a two week implementation project?
Markus Leming: Absolutely not. So if you have your CRM set up and given that you kind of have your eggs in order in the CRM, you can get started within two minutes. Integrate your Pipe Drive or Copper account and you’re off to sending emails. So there’s no kind of complicated import or export you have to do. You can just start writing an email, send it out and and see the results coming back in immediately. And all the information is syncing back to your CRM.
RJ Martino: Choosing the right CRM or email provider is really important. And I think the reason why we chose Pipe Drive and even Mail Chimp and even Out Funnel is the openness, the willingness of their APIs to work together and get the best information in there. So I think it’s very important that you choose the correct toolsets whenever you get to there. The other thing that I think is going to be more difficult that I know the audience is screaming at is, they’re doing email campaigns right now, whether they’re doing it themselves, literally they’re doing it, they’ve got a teammate doing it or they’ve got a vendor doing it for them and the one thing that gets reported are open rates and click through rates. What’s a good open rate? What’s a good click through rate?
Markus Leming: So sorry to give you so blurry answers. It all depends on the industry you’re in, right? And the type of messaging or kind of who you are basically sending emails to, so whether it’s a cold lead or a really a hot lead. But what we see or kind of what I mainly regard as a good open rate is really around 40, 50% because if you really a nail your subject line and you’re really sending to people who expect to hear from you, you should get a high open rate. If you’re sending really cold leads who’ve never heard from you before, you’ll probably get like five, maybe six, seven, 10%, which can be regarded good in certain places or industries. In terms of click rates, again, it all comes down to the content. If you’ve got somewhere around 15 to 20% rate, amazing. That’s what you really want. One in every five people clicks, that would be great. But again, it all comes down to the content. What are you offering people, why would they need to kick on on your campaigns?
Jordan Smith: Yeah. Well, you guys are offering the toolset, you’re offering the technical expertise that you guys have. I know from a practice or an organization’s perspective, one of the most important things, same as the CRM, is getting your team engaged and getting them bought in on the toolset and the proper processes. Tell me what team members, and I know it differs depending on the type of business, but what team members are typically critical for the toolset to be successful? Is it the sales managers and an office manager? Tell me which team members you guys are typically kind of engaging.
Markus Leming: Yeah, good question. So we usually talk with the marketeers. So mid level is usually okay. Our target market is really small to medium sized businesses so there’s not a lot of hierarchy. So usually just in the middle of a market year, and the same for the salespeople. So somewhere in kind of mid-management or sometimes the CEO might even step in and say that, “Hey, I really need to find a new tool to make my sales and marketing teams communicate with each other.” And then they’ll step in and actually do the implementation and then we’ll help the marketing and sales team to get on board as well. But typically, yeah, marketing sales is kind of the way to go.
Jordan Smith: How do you guys … your …
Jordan Smith: How do you guys, your most successful clients. Do you know and no’s an okay answer, but do you know how they are actively engaging their team to get buy in from them? Are there any calls that you guys do? Any constellations, any welcome packets? How are they kind of, what are your best clients doing to make sure that their team is actually going to utilize the great tool set that you guys offer?
Markus Leming: Yeah, absolutely. So I mean I think, so our tool is, like you mentioned before, it is pretty inexpensive and it’s a software tool. So we’ve really tried to first of all build it out as a self service tool. But at the same time we kind of offer support where needed. And I think it’s kind of… We usually look at it from multiple angles or the customers also look at it from multiple angles. So number one, if we are able to get that one person who is the decision maker or really the person who is looking at the tool and implementing it, if we are able to get their buy in and if we’re really able to train them well, they will be able to also train their team. There’s the tool itself, I mean it’s not that difficult to set up.
Markus Leming: Obviously, I mean if you go into very much details and technical stuff, you know you can go as crazy as you’d like to. But in general, I mean most people, it’s an overkill for most people. But they usually do some training for their own team and really show the tools and how they work together. And the great thing about Out Funnel is that as soon as you actually make the connection, we’ll already start shrinking information to Pipe Drive. So the sales people, the sales reps, will actually see the information flowing in immediately and it’s pretty straightforward. So they’ll see opens or clicks and it just didn’t plain numbers there in their Pipe Drive. But besides that, I mean we have a pretty extensive FAQs as well in blog articles, so we really have put a lot of effort then and are putting a lot of effort into trying to educate the end user, right? And really helping them succeed and walking through things and how to set things up.
Jordan Smith: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Now also you guys live chat and email support for a couple of the plans and then the most expensive plan, I know that there’s a phone support included too and Markus is all the way in Estonia. Those guys are doing some great stuff over there, but we’ve never had any problem reaching them whenever we needed to reach them. So
RJ Martino: Yeah. [crosstalk 00:36:41] Interesting. Estonia, is that home for you? Have you been there? How did you get up there?
Markus Leming: Yeah, born and raised here. So I’ve been living here, well not all of my life, so I’ve lived abroad as well in Australia and in the Netherlands and in the Caribbean for quite some time, but back home now. Good place to start a tech venture.
Speaker 1 : Mm-hmm (affirmative)
Jordan Smith: Wow. Other tech companies around there?
Markus Leming: Heaps. Where do I start? Well I mean Pipe Drive is from here. Skype was actually built here in Estonia, as well and I actually started the success story of Estonia as kind of a [inaudible 00:37:21] in Europe and in the world, but also kind of companies like TransferWise. Not sure if that’s popular in the U.S. or not but, and some others as well. So obviously, I mean we’re a pretty small nation. We’re only 1.3 million people, so compared to U.S., we are minuscule, but kind of per capita startups and kind of tech startups that we have here is really kind of, about the average in Europe.
Jordan Smith: Very cool.
RJ Martino: Well I’m excited. Our very last section, we call it the final round. And we want to ask you some very specific questions because every business, whether it’s a tech startup like Out Funnel, a organization like iProv or you’re starting and running in healthcare practice, everybody wants systematic, predictable, repeatable results and repeatable revenue and repeatable profit. So in this last, it’s kind of part of the interview, I want to ask you if you can kind of break down any recipes for success or any real ingredients that helped you along the way as your building Out Funnel. So first question, if there was a magic reset button as it relates to starting your business, what systems would you go back and put into place sooner rather than later and why?
Markus Leming: That’s an interesting question. I’m not sure if I would actually reset anything at this point. I mean, we’re still a pretty young business and things have been going well at the moment. And hopefully they will continue to do so. I wouldn’t even say that I wouldn’t reset anything at the moment.
RJ Martino: Yeah. I think…
Markus Leming: I’m pretty happy how things are going.
RJ Martino: I think for me what’s interesting about that question is that we didn’t adopt a real CRM for a long time. I wish we would’ve done it day one because it was just such a big effort. It was, I know who I need to call. It was just me and Jordan and we trust each other completely, so I didn’t need the visibility in what was going on, but I wish we would’ve done it, so I wish we had done it day one. The other thing I wish is that we just would have started a lot earlier. Started 20, 50 years ago. Okay. [crosstalk 00:39:39] Okay, Jordan, you got one?
Jordan Smith: Yeah. What’s one strategy or recipe that if a business owners and their teams could really consistently apply every day, what would you recommend? What’s worked for you guys? Is it team meetings? Is it culture building, what are, what’s kind of, if a business owner came to you and said, Markus, you guys are killing it. You have done some great things. What’s one of the things, what’s one of the big recipes of success for you guys?
Markus Leming: That’s a very good question. There’s a lot of different things to kind of note here. I think what has really worked for us is discipline. So we’ve been lucky enough to have a really great team kind of building the product as well with good past experience and kind of the discipline that some of the team members as well have brought to the kind of, to the structure, to the product, to how we build things, how we do meetings. That has really helped to get everyone on the same light, on the same level and really to set the expectations and really to kind of keep the ball moving forward, right? To make a small step every day and really go further. So we really need to kind of make it dense and really the way to do that is to be disciplined.
Markus Leming: So I guess that’s one thing what has really worked for us as well as is provide honest feedback. So instead of kind of feed keeping feedback to yourself and bringing it up, I don’t know, once a quarter or on a monthly basis, we tried to give honest feedback as soon as possible so that people can learn and kind of go forward and really, be successful in the end. So I mean for us we’re all in the same team. I mean I know that there’s a lot of teams out there that are working remote, so that’s always complicated things.
Markus Leming: But a third thing, if I’d have to sit, if I’d have to point something out, this is also set your values. So what are you really believing in as a team? Cause in the end, I mean culture is what builds your company and kind of cultural is what you make your new hires based on. And culture is what drives it forward. So kind of setting those values, setting the expectation and expectations is paramount.
Jordan Smith: Yeah. That’s awesome. RJ talks about all the time that you hire and you fire, not for big things, but a lot of small things. But one of the big things that we always talk about our core values, so I love that.
RJ Martino: Yeah, you’re speaking our language. That’s what we’re always talking to healthcare. The other thing that you talked about that I think is worth repeating is just that honest feedback and everybody says, Oh yeah, I’d much rather you be honest with me often than let it build up and blow up on me a year from now over something that I thought was normal behavior. I always come in 15 minutes late, but I stay 15 minutes longer. It was never an issue. No one ever said anything. I wish you would have told me earlier. What you have to realize is everybody wants that, but it doesn’t change how uncomfortable it is. It is going to be hard for them to hear the problems. It’s going to be hard for you to tell them the problem, but both of you want that. But the [crosstalk 00:43:10] 100% does not go away.
Markus Leming: 100% agree. I think, I mean earlier in the call as well, you mentioned the [inaudible 00:43:16] and the book Extreme Ownership. So funny enough, I just finished reading that a couple of days ago and I think over there as well he mentioned that, what was it, that giving honest feedback really kind of, really helps to get the people forward and kind of drive success in the long run. So that’s key.
Jordan Smith: Absolutely. Well, we’ve talked about a couple things, I’ve just, a couple more questions left, but we’ve talked about what’s worked in the past and fast forward a year in the future. What do you think Out Funnel looks like? I know you mentioned that there’s some things coming up that we talked before we started the podcast, so whatever you’re comfortable with sharing, where do you kind of see Out Funnel in 2021, 2022, what’s the future hold for you guys?
Markus Leming: Yeah, so as a tech startup, you never know what happens in a year from now. But in general, I mean we’re, our aim is to keep growing both from a customer perspective and from a team perspective. So hoping that we can hire another development team to really speed up the shipping features, shipping as well. And, and really in the long run build Out Funnel into a fully fledged marketing automation tool that really helps companies to grow and really not only fills a void in terms of marketing, but really does it by helping and educating the customers at the same time.
Markus Leming: And that kind of comes back to the fact that all that there’s a lot of marketing tools out there and it’s just software, but what is it, what is the value underneath it that we’re really trying to, that we’re really preaching, right? What is the, what is the story that we’re trying to tell? So our stories we’re trying to build, bring together two different silos, sales and marketing and at the same time we’re really preaching that spam less and you know, really change the behavior and change the way you actually do marketing. And that’s kind of a story that we are trying to tell.
Jordan Smith: Very cool.
RJ Martino: Well Markus, I can’t tell you how much we appreciate your time. I have really enjoyed my experience with Out Funnel and you guys are doing something special in those, so keep that up. We’ll put links to everything that we can about your organization, but you know in a closing word, do you have any other closing statements before we can let you go free for the day?
Markus Leming: I just like to thank you for inviting me here and doing this podcast. It’s been amazing. Great chatting with you and keep up the good work.
Jordan Smith: Yeah, well you guys too. We appreciate it. For those listeners out there, what are the best ways, if they’ve got questions for you guys, what’s the best way for them to reach you? We’ve mentioned the website a couple times, but other ways that folks can reach out to Out Funnel, to you personally. If they’ve got any questions, talk about how they get in contact with you.
Markus Leming: Feel free to get in contact with me directly, markus@OutFunnel.com. I respond to every single email that lands in my inbox, given that it’s not spam. But, I try to be as responsive as possible and really kind of learn as much from our customers and really help people at the same time to really succeed in their marketing sales and really get their business going.
Jordan Smith: Well that’s awesome. I know iProv can speak for us. We’re big fans. I know anybody else that is interested in some of the stuff we’ve been talking about, if you just give it a shot, like RJ said, a no risk trial for two weeks. I know that you guys will be big fans also and if you have additional questions, reach out to Markus, markus@OutFunnel.com. Markus Leming. Thank you so much.
Markus Leming: Thank you RJ. Thank you Jordan. It’s been a pleasure.
RJ Martino: That was Markus with Out Funnel. Jordan, what do you think?
Jordan Smith: Tons of good information. They’re a great group, like we said before in a couple of times during, we’re a client, we love it. It’s invaluable in what we do and for the clients that we work with on the marketing side, it’s, I know that they would also say it’s an invaluable tool.
RJ Martino: Well, and I think the thing we’re getting more requests for than ever before is CRM in the healthcare business. Across the board, we’re seeing more and more of that, and there are other competitors. We talked about Pipe Drive, Health Grades has a CRM that gets good reviews. There’s lots of other ones, but we’re seeing more and more of that and the people who have implemented correctly, they’ll tell you, I can’t live without it. It’s making me more money. Those are the bottom line of business decisions. I mean, it’s the same thing that he talked about towards the end. It’s doing something with discipline and developing a process for it. So if you guys have any more questions or you want to look into Out Funnel, again, it’s Out Funnel.com, it’s pretty straightforward. If you’ve got questions for Markus, he’s really generous and I know I’ve asked him a ton of questions before and he’s right about same day responses no matter what. It’s markus@OutFunnel.com. I would encourage you, if you guys have questions, reach to him directly.
RJ Martino: If you go to the show notes page, you’ll have links to everything, whether it’s to Markus to some of the tools that we talked about. Check it out. If we can help at all, obviously reach out to us. One of the things you can do to help us is please share this with someone that’s thinking about a CRM in the healthcare space. A healthcare provider that has a CRM and has talked about all the information’s not in there, just a healthcare provider that you know. Anyone who you think would get value out of this, please share it with them. Like our page, subscribe. We’re on all of the podcast stuff.
Jordan Smith: Yeah, like, review, comment. If you’ve got suggestions on things or topics you would like to hear about, let us know about that, also. Or even if you know specific people that you think would be good for this podcast. We’re always looking for new guests, so we’re doing this for you guys, so you let us know what direction we’ll go in and we’ll happily go in that direction.
RJ Martino: True. All right, Jordan, thanks for your time too. I know your time’s valuable and audience let us know if you need anything.
Jordan Smith: Thanks everybody.