Followup CRM's Journey to 2000 Customers with Erick Vargas

From Xamo Digital, welcome to the SaaS Marketing Superstars podcast with your host, Aaron Zukowski. This is the show where we uncover proven growth strategies from CMOs and marketing leaders behind some of the fastest growing SaaS companies.

Hey, superstars. Thanks for joining us today. I'm your host, Aaron Zukowski, and today I'm chatting with Eric Vargas. Eric is the president of follow up CRM, a SaaS CRM built for construction professionals. Hey, Eric, how are you doing today?

I'm doing great.

How are you? I'm doing great. Excited to have you on the show. Awesome.

I'm excited to be here.

Thank you. So, so just to kick it off, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and about Follow up CRM.

So Follow Up CRM is a construction CRM specific to the trades to help people follow up with their leads, bids, and contacts to help them close more deals.

Okay, great. And by the by the trades, you mean, you know, home services, constructions, things like that, right?

Yeah, home services, construction services, a lot of AEC kind of companies. Architecture, engineering, and the construction industry.

Okay, great. Yep. And. And how long have you been with the company?

Five years now.

Five years. And I understand you, you weren't the founder of the company, but you've kind of taken on a pretty big leadership role. How did that come about?

Yeah, so about 10 years ago, Greg Wallach is the. The found original founder of follow up CRM, and he runs a $60 million commercial roofing company in Fort Lauderdale.

Wow.

And back in the day, he. He invented follow up 2008 right before the crash. And so he needed a way to track his leads and bids that were coming through the door. And so before he decided to kind of design follow up for his company, he actually went to a Salesforce conference that was here in Miami at the time. And he kind of dove in deep into the Salesforce system. And he realized that it would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars for him to kind of tailor it to the needs of a construction company. So rather than doing that, he just said, you know what? I'm gonna build this for myself. And then from there, we just kind of started to grow organically because out of the box, we're ready for most construction companies.

Okay, perfect. And then how did you get involved?

So I knew Greg personally in the South Florida area just through networking. And at the time, there was only one other employee at the time. And I started my career as Citrix in sales. And just through NETWorking in the Fort Lauderdale area, I met Greg. And he told me about follow up CRM and that's how it all started.

Okay, fantastic. And it sounds like at the time that you've been with the company, it's grown pretty nicely, right?

Yeah. So we now have 2000 customers all over the country. So it's pretty, it's pretty neat to see that growth.

Okay, fantastic. And my understanding is that the team's actually pretty small, right?

Yeah, we run really lean. We have about a team of 10 and you know, we're just looking kind of to keep that team small rather than have, you know, a million people at the company. And we're just looking for, you know, high quality team members to join.

Great. How big is the marketing team within that two people? And what are those roles? What do they do?

So they primarily do the way we categorize it is just outbound and inbound marketing. So a lot of, you know, support article writing, product updates for the inbound, letting our current customers know what's going on, what we're building, what we're developing and then outbound, which would be kind of trade shows, events and traveling, things like that.

Okay, and, and what, what would you, I guess attribute the, the most growth of the company? I mean, you know, 2,000 customers on, on a SaaS platform is quite a bit, you know, you're, you're not a cheap platform that I know is, you know, 50 bucks a month, nothing like that. Where's that growth come from?

So right now it's coming from word of mouth, honestly. So that's been our number one source of growth and then our partner ecosystem. So when you have a good product people in, especially in the construction industry, what we've noticed is that you know, roofing owners just share very openly with other roofing owners what they do.

Right.

And so, you know, it's a very kind of open community where they're sharing what, what is working for them. And when somebody, you know, ask how they're tracking sales, you know, follow up CRM comes up a lot. And then from our partner ecosystem, we're really kind of an integration first technology. What we want to do is really stay in our lane in the sales and business development aspect of CRM. We don't want to do project management, we don't want to do like email marketing or anything like that. What we want to do is help people follow up close deals and track their leads and their bids. So with that we integrate with kind of like the industry leading service platforms, accounting platforms and fill in the gaps that those other solutions don't provide.

And so each of those other partner platforms kind of has like a marketplace that you could be found in or just kind of cross promotion partnerships. How's that working?

Yeah, a little bit of both, depending on the company. So a lot of these major erps might have like a marketplace that people can find us or we find that webinars really work really well. And so that's a big strategy for us is doubling down on webinars.

Okay, so, so how does that webinar strategy work? What are you guys doing?

Yeah, so number one, we, everyone that we integrate with, we ask that we have two webinars a month, I'm sorry, two webinars a year, which equals like two webinars a month internally for us. And so we try to do one, you know, first six months and then the, you know, the second six months of the year. So that we're just continually, you know, getting in front of their customers, continually putting their solution in front of our customers and then, you know, attend. Like our last webinar we just had last week, we had 80 plus people on it because of the integrations that's so tightly built. The customers don't want to use anything else because people are sick of double entry. That's really why we're going after that strategy. And then what we provide is kind of so unique and really rounds out. Like for example, the partner we most recently did the webinar with is called the Estimating Edge. And what they do is estimating like, kind of like AutoCAD design for commercial roofers and you know, the trades industries and they don't provide, you know, sales functionalities when it comes to like prospecting and following up and email sequencing, things like that. So we really round out their solution. And when they've been, you know, in the market for like 20 years, I believe so when we partner with them, you know, all their customers, you know, we're kind of their number one choice.

So. Okay, that makes sense. And so on these webinars that you're doing, are you product focused? I guess, are you teaching about the product or is it coming in from the point of view of like, let us teach you about sales within the, the trades and construction and roofing and all that. But which angle do you take?

It's a little bit of both. Because what we like to do is tell a story about a customer that is able to kind of optimize and grows the, grow the business and then demonstrate also the integration as well. So we'll, we'll have like a case Study. Right. So like for example, utilizing the estimating edge, I talked about how best roofing, who uses both follow up obviously. And the estimating edge was able to kind of bid less and win more. That's kind of what, you know, the marketing tagline. And over time they are able to increase their closing ratio by 20% through tracking and estimating with our solutions together.

So. Okay, seems like a great story.

Yeah.

So, so what's your biggest challenge on the marketing side and the growth side right now?

Biggest challenge. So I guess the biggest challenge for us I think is just the state of our industry. Meaning the way I like to say is the construction industry is just entering into the 90s.

Okay.

You know, so what happened in the 90s? You know, the tech boom started, right. The Internet just started and software was, was, was growing. And so most of my customers, they come from spreadsheets or paper. So we're really transforming these construction companies from, you know, the dark ages to modern ages. And a lot of that has to do with maybe, you know, the son of a business owner kind of taking over and wanting to do things in a new way. That's where we're directing our marketing towards is, is that kind of profile. But that's probably the biggest challenge. That handoff has not completely happened just yet. Overall it should be happening in the next five to ten years or so. But you know, our target demographic, you'll see right on our website that we are built for non tech savvy construction people. And so our average user is 45 plus.

So it's about teaching old dogs new tricks and they just don't want to learn. Right.

And it's hard to, you know, convince people after doing something a certain way for 30 years that, you know, this new way is better.

Sure, totally makes sense. And the younger generation coming in, taking over those businesses has a different perspective.

Right, exactly.

Okay, makes sense. What are you looking towards next as, as the next channel for building the company and growing the community.

One thing that I think is an untapped resource for us is referrals. And I know I said word of mouth was kind of our number one source, but what I mean by referrals is most of these contractors are part of networking groups. So for example, there's many like localized or regional contractor groups of maybe the top 10 or 20 roofers in an area. That's where I think we're going to, you know, double down in the future so that, you know, when one of our customers goes to one of these groups, you know, we're able to kind of present to them. So that's probably what we're going next.

And have you tried incentivizing your customers, you know, referral programs, things like that, you know, get the commission and get paid to bring in your friends?

Yeah, we've done that. But you know, at the end of the day, it's like the carrot's not really sweet enough. Like, you know, we'll say, okay, you know, you get your first month free or you get, you know, something like that just really has never really stuck for whatever reason. So we're trying a different angle with maybe like a Traeger grill or something like more raffle based. Something that's more tangible than like a gift card or, you know, money or something like that.

So do you think there's maybe a hesitancy that, that they see most of their network as competition and don't want to share the tips or they're already within network groups that they are helping each other to grow.

So sometimes that that is the case, they don't want to share with their competitors. But usually, you know, these, these networking groups are just outside of like the service area. So they might like, for example, in South Florida, you're going to probably serve a particular county and so usually you don't have problems sharing best practices with people, you know, that are 30 minutes or an hour away.

That makes sense. Have you tried any outbound marketing? It seems like be relatively easy to identify who your target customers are. Cold email, things like that, you know, cold outbound calls. Does anything like that work for you?

Yeah, so we're just starting to do outbound marketing, email marketing, prospecting. That's going to be hopefully a big lever here in Q4 and in 2023. And what we've done is our partners, we're looking to kind of share our lists or purchase lists. Most of the construction industry uses one of three or four accounting packages. And if you are kind of like our target, you're using one of the three major accounting packages, Sage, Viewpoint or Foundation. And so what we're trying to do is reach out to those customers. Combined, I think they have over 100,000 construction companies, one of those three platforms. So if we just say, hey, we integrate with, you know, foundation or Sage or Viewpoint, you know, that that's really how we kind of take over the construction.

Okay, makes a lot of sense. If there was one product or service out there right now that can make your life easier, what would it be? Something that may not exist yet. What can make your Life easier right now that somebody could invent or start doing for you.

So what I would say is we're trying to crack this outbound, you know, sequence nut right here. So we haven't been able to do that just yet. A lot of people don't like that, like receiving like a prospecting email or prospecting phone call. So figuring out some kind of marketing service where it's outbound as a service is something that would be really interesting to me. And because I have, I have the lists, I have the database, I just don't have the time to reach out to those people individually. And we have, you know, so much inbound that I can't necessarily designate someone to do that kind of outbound process because it can take six plus months, you know, to start to see, you know, revenue coming from outbound.

So. Got that. That makes sense. Yeah. All right, cool. That's been really helpful. Let's jump into quick lightning round a couple quick questions, couple quick answers and wrap things up.

Great.

What book would you recommend people to read? It could be a business book, it'd be a fiction book book.

So I actually, I. What would I say? So there's this book called Ready Fire Aim. I think that's probably one of the most impactful books that I've recently read and it talks about, you know, what you should be doing at different stages of the business. And one thing that was super helpful to me is that once you have one product doing well with one channel, rather than trying to go bigger and doubling down on experimenting with other marketing channels, what you should probably do is find out what other products your customers might want. And so how we have done that within follow up CRM is, you know, we have one product and we have one channel working really well. So most of our clients want us to build a proposal generator. So we're doing that as an add on product so that we can then grow the gross margin per customer internally with follow up. And then from there you can start to expand into different marketing channels because you're having a higher gross margin that you could spend more to acquire more.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. What's your favorite marketing productivity tool that you're using right now? Other than follow up?

My favorite marketing tool, so I'm probably going to say it's something called Speechify. So I don't know if it's a marketing tool, but it's, it's very much helped me. And what it does is basically just read PDFs or whatever's on the Internet. So you can think of it like as an audible for the Internet and so you can open up Speechify on any webpage and just have it read to you. So in the background during my workday, I have tons of software and marketing blogs being read to me and then you can kind of highlight it and then Also it reads PDFs, so if you ever have like an ebook, it could be read aloud. And I'm dyslexic, so it's super helpful to have something read to me and then I can just kind of double back.

That's really cool. Makes a lot of sense. It's like turning any blog post into a short podcast, essentially.

Yeah, exactly.

Perfect. Love it. Who's your favorite marketer or business leader that you're learning from these days?

Probably number one right now, he's really kind of popping off on the Internet is Alex Ramosi. He's one I'm seeing a lot out there.

Super.

Just punchy and kind of no BS and kind of puts things in a perspective where he is just sharing that, you know, most people are just not doing the right things at the right time and just simplifying a lot of the marketing mystery out there, if that makes sense.

Yeah, 100%. And is there a an online community that you're a part of right now? Any mastermind groups or any marketers or founders groups?

Yeah, I'm a part of the Dan Martell SAS Academy, which is something that's been super helpful for us. Been a part of that community for three years and I think by now they probably have 300 plus, you know, software founders and presidents a part of their group. Really great to be able to connect with just other people that are growing SaaS businesses at my level and then also be able to kind of peer into the future and what kind of other companies that are doing a little bit bigger than us are doing from marketing and product perspectives.

That's awesome. I'm a big fan of Denver Tal. Yeah. And last question is, where can our listeners go to learn more about you and follow up CRM?

Yeah, they can go to follow up CRM.com or they can go on our YouTube channel. Everything we do goes on our YouTube channel, so has been a really great marketing source for us.

Okay, fantastic. Well, Eric, thank you so much for joining us on the show. I know you shared a lot of information and a lot of knowledge and I appreciate it and listeners appreciate it. Great.

Thank you.

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