Finally an automated CRM that just works. Meet Salesflare and their CEO.

 It has to start somewhere. It has to start some time. What better place than here? What better time than now?
 You're listening to the Radcast. If it's radical, we cover it. Here's your host, Ryan Alford.
 Hey guys, welcome to the latest episode of the Radcast. It is a podcast Wednesday here for us.
 Not sure when you'll be listening, but excited to have your room quartile here from the CEO of Sales Flare.
 Good to have you on, Jerome. Yeah, nice to be here.
 Hey man, Sales Flare. I had heard of this a little bit and I didn't know where.
 And then I saw how popular you were on Product Hunt and that's when it rang a bell.
 You saw it launching a product hunt? I just saw it. I used to really be active on Product Hunt.
 Have been less active the last probably year or two, but I knew I had heard of your company.
 So that's where it rang the bell. So the number one, is it number one most popular CRM ever on Product Hunt?
 Yeah, I think so. If you type CRM at the top in Product Hunt, you're the where the first product you'll find.
 Cool man. Well, let's just start where we start with most our guests. Let's talk about your background.
 Give you a little bit about of information about you and then kind of what brought you into Sales Flare.
 Yeah, to summarize my background very shortly.
 I knew when I was 15 or 16 that I wanted to be an entrepreneur and just started building websites, selling second-hand phones and all that.
 I decided to study engineering. I started off. Well, Electro Technical Engineering ended up in biomedical. It doesn't matter.
 I never really liked the idea of having a pure engineering job. I wanted to do something with customers.
 Much like the websites I've been building and the phones I've been selling, really adding value to customers and sort of working with them.
 It's much more interesting to me than just purely creating something for the sake of creating something.
 I really like creating stuff, but only if this customer is involved.
 So I ended up doing business school and after that I actually got into marketing, a totally different thing.
 That was in healthcare initially because I was biomedical engineer, so I thought I'm in cents.
 I did that for 10 months because it was horrible, hardly limited job.
 I thought I would put a product into the market, but it seemed that I was just basically making a brochure and telling the sales team how to use it.
 And then for four years I worked in a company that sort of married my experience in farmer marketing with building websites and all my experience in digital,
 where we helped farmer companies to switch from a purely sales driven sales model to something where all the digital channels come into play.
 Because doctors now they also don't like sales people in their waiting rooms anymore, they can read stuff on the internet.
 I love it.
 So all that background led to starting sales flare, and you have a partner.
 I actually do to explain that very shortly in that job that I had like helping farmer companies, we use sales force.
 I was selling projects and partly a responsible for their delivery.
 And we use sales force. It was my very first year I thought it was going to help me be productive, follow up my leads.
 It would be like the system in which I organized myself. It turned out that it was extremely difficult.
 The only thing we would reliably do in sales force is the company's management reporting.
 This is what we're going to sell by then and keep track of these things.
 And that was very confusing to me, but I didn't really do anything with that experience until I was working together with my co-founder.
 Part of what we were talking about, we were working on a different software company.
 And we went to a big conference and we had a lot of interest for our software.
 And we tried to organize that. We tried to set up a system in which we would always know how to get into the net next lead to contact.
 Then what was the last thing we discussed with them, what's their details.
 And I knew sales force wasn't really a great fit for that.
 It looked a bit around and looked at different systems.
 And what we always noticed is that these systems failed, not because the software was not working or so.
 Or it wasn't beautiful.
 It was more of a problem with us not being able to fill them out.
 We didn't have that awesome discipline to always neatly fill out every single thing we did.
 Or every little piece of information we knew, piece of information we got from the customer.
 So it always turned out to be a mess.
 And then we figured that actually this information that we were always putting into the serums was information that was already existed in some system.
 And if we would just connect all these systems up, we would create an automated serum that automatically feeds you the information available in emails, meetings, calls, email signatures, social media, email tracking, web tracking, you know, a system that pulls that all together.
 So that as a sales person, you always know what's the latest thing without you having to keep track of it minutiously yourself.
 I love it because I love hearing that I'm not the only person that's dealt with bloated CRM systems.
 Because what I see when not having used, I don't, maybe not a dozen, but a half dozen.
 They become bloated. They try to put too much into the software.
 And then the user experience is so manual.
 And it's interesting. I feel like you, and I started to start a trial admittedly on sales flare yesterday.
 It's on my list for this afternoon.
 So I'm going to put it to put it to use. I wanted to do it before the episode.
 But you know what? I'll follow back up post episode with with how it's gone.
 So I really love the automation side of it that makes a ton of sense.
 Hey, and you mentioned the other issue. It's that we need focus on two issues. One is the automation issue.
 I mean, a lot of work. And then the other thing is that often it becomes bloated.
 And you don't know where things are anymore. And it's a lot of clicks here and there.
 And there's so much in there that you completely lose.
 Like, I want to change this little thing. How does that work?
 Yeah. That's the other thing we very much focus on is keeping it, it's super easy.
 Because otherwise people also stop using the CRM.
 Yeah, oh, like me after about five days with everyone I ever tried.
 But sales force is the example of trying to be more than a CRM.
 It's like how many things can we jam into this thing without getting CRM figured out.
 But that's been.
 So talk, talk to me about some of the highs and lows of, you know,
 being an entrepreneur, developing a SaaS system in a very competitive space.
 Give us some people, give everyone some perspective on what that's been like.
 Well, the highs is always, I think every big product release we do is a high.
 Because it means we're, we've listened to customers, we've created value.
 We bring it to them and we've, we use, you can see it all.
 So that's, that's so nice about it. You see, oh, this is a new thing.
 And we always communicate back to customers.
 So then they, we ask feedback, but very often they're like, awesome.
 No, that's, that's really nice.
 Another type of high, I would say, is often closing a new deal, convincing a customer
 to get on the software. It, it happens more often, obviously, so because more of a habit
 than the big product releases.
 And on the low sides, I'd say, I mean, there's, there's, there's a lot of little things
 as an entrepreneur that have to deal with.
 But if the things that stand out is when you, I think usually when you hire the wrong person
 for a job, because it's an extremely draining process.
 First, you, at first, you see that you sort of made a mistake, probably.
 Somehow in the hiring process, you didn't see a certain thing.
 And then you try for a while to make it work, which is stressful by itself.
 Then you start thinking that probably you're not going to be able to make work.
 And then is the question, like, when am I going to fire them?
 Which is stressful?
 Yeah.
 How am I going to communicate it?
 How do I make sure that I do give them a second chance before that happens?
 Now all these kind of things, it starts weighing on you quite a lot.
 And the firing itself is even not too bad compared to everything that comes before it.
 So that's probably some of the lows.
 But it's not just about firing.
 Anytime there's a big misunderstanding or disappointment or whatever,
 it goes up probably when it comes to people.
 People management is the most difficult part of company ownership.
 Yeah.
 I mean, it certainly finances, too, and certain things.
 There's the pressure of all that.
 But it's just the dynamics of humanity and dealing with different personalities
 and having to write people in the right places.
 And like you said, making those tough decisions and managing it properly.
 Yeah.
 And in a way that everybody understands it and that emotions are carefully monitored.
 That's the most difficult part.
 How has technology changed?
 I mean, we talked about it being a crowded space.
 Have you seen impacts from this year with, you know,
 obviously being in a strange year with COVID and the health situation?
 I mean, I know that's kind of a double-park question.
 But how's the technology changed in the CRM business and any impacts COVID's had?
 No huge impacts on us.
 Because we were sort of already a very digital system focusing on digital channels.
 Like things that are integrated, are things like emailing,
 like the digital versions of that.
 We're now focused on field sales.
 I know some colleague companies that have systems for field sales.
 They had huge issues.
 Obviously, they have to pivot a lot of stuff, lost customers.
 A lot of customers having issues.
 Not so much the case for us.
 The biggest changes we've seen, I think, over the past year,
 is that a lot of things have accelerated when it comes to video conversations.
 Plugging in more digital channels.
 And I think also in the AI space,
 think somehow I've gone a quicker and quicker,
 which is partly the direction that CRMs will go in the future.
 Is that as more things become digitalized and more and more data gets incorporated,
 you can start doing a lot of intelligent things with that data
 to make sure that the computer detects certain things, certain triggers,
 or it collects more information from places,
 or it can start automating some of the communication.
 So all these things are going faster and faster.
 Interesting.
 I know you talked a little bit about this for why you started sales layer.
 What do you think, you know, be on the automation,
 but what are the differentiators, you know, for sales layer versus the others?
 I mean, give two or three of the very specific integrations or things
 that kind of go in that decision making process.
 And do you mean functionality or functionality?
 Yeah.
 Okay.
 Because our differentiators to a certain extent are on how easy to implement,
 how easy it is to use and how easy it is to fill it out and all that.
 But if you go beyond that, pure functionality,
 things that most others don't offer is one.
 We have this built-in email workflows functionality.
 If you have your trial, you see it under workflows.
 What you can do there is you can basically build triggers on top of your sales layer data
 or filter an audience out of your sales layer data.
 It can be a one-off workflow or one that keeps running.
 And it can send emails from your mailbox automatically to people in a personalized way.
 It can be one email per person or it can be a sequence of emails.
 Or even not necessarily a linear sequence, but one that ventures out with different possibilities.
 So that you can automate part of your repetitive communication that you're having.
 Let's say, for instance, when you get people on the podcast that guessed on the podcast
 that you could start emailing certain things to them before they get on or something.
 Another thing we offer that most others don't is integrate a website tracking.
 So things like these emails that you send to the workflows,
 but actually every single email you send either true sales were,
 or true your Gmail with the sidebar next to it or output with the sidebar next to it.
 All these emails are tracked with a little pixel to see whether people open it.
 And also the links are extra tracked, so when people click, you can see it.
 But linked up to that as well, there is website tracking.
 And when anyone clicks on the link in an email,
 it will identify that person as being the one who sees that email.
 And then when that person before or after went to the website,
 that will be visualized in your Salesforce timeline.
 And you can follow the whole history of websites,
 page visits, and how long and all that, and when in the timeline automatically.
 And then maybe a third one, which sounds a bit more abstract, perhaps,
 but is very handy.
 Is that in Salesforce you can filter in a very easy way across entities.
 And what that means in more simple terms is that when you're, for instance, filtering companies.
 As the things you filter on, it's not just the things that are on company level.
 You can also say, show me all the companies that are linked to opportunities in a specific pipeline.
 And that have contacts that have a phone number, for instance.
 So it's the filtering goes across all the data instead of just that little silo data.
 I love it.
 A lot of key features there.
 I was kind of like mentally paying attention to things that we need.
 A few notes.
 What's it like?
 You know, I know you talked about highs and lows specifically,
 but are you, are you, do you enjoy being an entrepreneur?
 I mean, is it like, you know, do you see yourself building other software or other doing other things?
 I don't see myself doing anything else honestly.
 I remember my wife told me at some point, is to say like,
 well, you're so much happier now.
 And that doesn't mean that every day is an extremely happy one.
 But at least there is this.
 If you compare in general, like when I when I was just doing a job quote unquote for someone else.
 I would have a completely different outlook on things.
 Much less of a feeling of.
 First of all, responsibility.
 Secondly, personal growth.
 Impact.
 Yeah, it just feels completely different to be an entrepreneur versus being an employee.
 And I'm sometimes wondering what I will do this forever.
 Or at some point I might switch more to teaching.
 Although teaching is such a weird place nowadays with all the coaches and stuff.
 That I don't know how I would make it work in such a way that it feels good to be, I know, not to say it.
 Yeah, everyone's a coach nowadays.
 It's like there, but in the US suddenly everyone's coaching something.
 Yeah, so I'm wondering whether I want to be in that space or not.
 Maybe that whole coach thing is a father at some point.
 Teaching will become a more normal thing.
 What is sales failure proud of the accomplishment?
 Is it that? I mean, what is your proudest accomplishment?
 Oh, that's a very good question.
 Professionally, I guess.
 What's your answer?
 What's the makeup?
 We talked a little bit pre-episode.
 Your customer base.
 Across the world.
 Like, what's the percentages in countries?
 And it's worldwide platform, right?
 Yeah.
 It's probably 40% in North America.
 40% in Europe.
 Of which.
 One fourth or so or even more is the UK.
 And after that, it's, it's Belgium or Reveased.
 Actually, specifically, Flanders, where the part that speaks Dutch.
 And the Netherlands are very popular as well as Germany, Poland and some other countries.
 And then 20% is rest of the world, of which a big part is Australia again.
 It's mainly because our marketing is in English or software is in English and all that.
 It appeals more to English-speaking countries and to other language-speaking countries.
 So we kind of close out here.
 What's the future hold for you and Salesforce?
 We talked about where you might go.
 But for Salesforce, where do you see the platform going in the next five, ten years?
 I mean, seems like you're just growing and leaning into the AI aspect.
 And everything is happening.
 That's definitely sort of where it's going.
 We'll start pulling in more data and make sure that things become more and more automated.
 The email workflows that I'll talk about that I talked about.
 We call it workflows and not sequences or anything because we think it's going to be more than just then emails.
 And it's not only purely sequential.
 So that's something we'll develop.
 But then it's very hard to imagine every single thing, sort of where we will add things.
 What it will always be about is trying to make the sales process as automated as possible.
 Especially when it comes to things that don't need humans per se.
 If you know what I mean.
 So adding all this data collection, suggestions, automations that help sales people do a better job.
 So they can build relationships at scale, which is what serum in the end is for.
 You can build a few relationships without using a system.
 But as soon as you have a few tens of relationships going, you need to organize it somehow.
 And we're building a system that enables that.
 Love it, man.
 We'll really appreciate your time here on the Radcast during and wish you all the best success.
 And I'll shoot you some feedback when we get into our trial.
 Please do.
 You can shoot it to me on LinkedIn or you can send it on the support chat or on email.
 Awesome.
 Thanks so much, man.
 We'll talk again soon.
 Thank you.
 Have a good day.
 See you.
 And hey, here's the best news of all.
 If you want to work with me directly, you want to get your business kicking ass.
 And if you want radical or myself involved, you can text me directly at 864.
 729-3680.
 Don't wait another minute.
 Let's get your business going.
 864-729-3680.
 We'll see you next time.