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foreign hello everybody my name is Rick McCutchen I'm a Dynamics 365 MVP and I want to thank you for tuning in to digital adoption talks today there are over 300 000 business professionals with digital adoption in their job titles on LinkedIn on this show along with my co-host Yocum shermacher CEO of Click learn we will talk to some of the leading digital adoption experts in the Microsoft ecosystem and boy do we have one today this week we are thrilled to talk to Chuck Ingram CEO of Microsoft Dynamics 365 partner congruent X Chuck has over 20 years experience leading CRM practices for companies such as HP dxc tribridge and even Microsoft at congruent X their focus is always about getting CRM right so gentlemen introduce yourselves we'll start with you yeah so my name is I'm the CEO of Click learn so at click learn we do a digital adoption and train any solution that we provide for the entire Dynamic 365 community and a number of other vendors that we support in the market okay Chuck awesome I'm delighted to join I'm delighted to side mention that we are a click learn partner but at the same time you know I don't know if I'm an expert but I may be crazy because I started a firm congruent X was actually started to focus on at least partly CRM adoption you know I've worked it as Rick said I worked at some some big places and uh did a lot of CRM I'm a CRM guy that's what I what I know and um a few years ago just said man people aren't always happy with this stuff and it was even exacerbated the last couple of years and we just said that's not okay so let's look at how we can make it okay so we started congruent X it's about aligning people in technology we mostly focus on CRM and the Power Platform though so excited about this conversation and thanks for asking me to hop on okay so Chuck we're going to start off with you because you know over the last little while you know this pandemic shoved us all back into our houses right and we had these sales people that were roaming around the country right and nobody really knew what they did they just sold things and everybody kept their eye on the number right and we had a pretty good economy going so that number was pretty good so I don't think people paid a lot of attention to CRM and user adoption then all of a sudden we went to our homes right and these you know Road Warriors were now inside sales people and all of a sudden people were concerned about the data where's the data right and I think we forced a lot of people who really never use technology whether it was CRM whether it was teams whether it was you know Excel spreadsheets uh reporting tools all this stuff they needed to really catch up so talk a little bit about what you saw over that over that time well it's interesting thing from a big picture perspective I wrote this blog like it's really hard for me to focus and write and but this topic was so compelling to me that I wrote this blog two years ago it's called we're all inside sales now and then I wrote another one like a few months ago that says we're still all site inside sales now and it's it's crazy because to your point Rick um we've all been at home for the last two years and all over you know we we went from okay honey I'm gonna go to the store to everything is just available you know Tech is contextual you know we we can say and I I can't say the name of the personal digital assistance but if I say the name I can just get stuff to show up at my house so Tech is Easy Tech is fun you know it and it's awesome at home and then we go back to work and we get these giant big forms and maybe not much training on how to use them and and and it's difficult and there's implications behind that where um I think um we went from what we're missing can I uh have a little tiny bit of runway on this one absolutely so this is close to my heart what we're missing is as salespeople is the Starbucks around the corner from the office remember like let's say us three were going to a a sales call we would stop at that sales call we think about what we're gonna say we'd look up the company's information on DMB or you know something like that and we okay you're going to talk you're going to ask about this you now it's like 22 30 minute calls all day long and you go from call to call to call so there's a stat where 82 percent of customers say that reps aren't prepared for meetings um and we know it 50 of reps say we're we're not ready for meetings because we're just going from call to call to call because as you said Rick we're inside sales and the tech we're not using the tech as as easily the tech at work is not as easy to use as a tech at home it could be but it's not and I'm seeing you know it's changing the way the customers look at us too right so yeah at one end you know we used to visit them on an ongoing basis and now you don't need to come in here right you know just get on a zoom zoom or teams meeting and that'll be fine which is a big change for many organizations and the way they're set up to sell no question I I think I saw where um Gartner said that 70 percent of customers would prefer a rep free buying experience it's almost a scary stat but we better as in sales think about how we can add a whole bunch of value to our our clients right and I think we have to figure out because we don't want to lose the advantage of a professional sales team yes yes right we don't want to lose that because they can help you know pull things over the finish line but I think as organizations we've got to figure out how we embed our sales team within that buying process forget about the selling process and that's and that buying process like you said 70 percent want really frictionless online buying so how do we embed our sales team into this technology so they become useful it's we it sales is a um a channel in that process to support that digital buying process as you said I uh you can if the folks who aren't listening you can probably see there's a couple guitars back here and I I got a whole bunch of them and and I I tend to buy things either in person or through I want to say the name but one of these online buying things where you get to talk to a person so if I have questions I can talk to the person but I can do my research myself and I think things may head that way where we have a seller who has a whole bunch of contacts and a bunch of expertise that can help the customer buy versus ask this tricky question and kind of the the old way that things worked do you want to add anything about you know even your personal experiences with buying now as opposed to buying even 24 months yeah I mean I think that the transition has been going on before covet actually but but I think that the transitions definitely being involved by covet the idea that the last person that you want to talk to especially in the beginning of your buying process where you're actually vetting out whether is this a fit for me is a salesperson right you you just you don't you would rather have a help desk at the other end to be honest right that can't answer any questions because you're not there yet yeah and and the idea is I think 80 80 to 90 percent of our clients we can see that they are they're vetting out they're much much better prepared than they used to they're not coming into the room and say what what are you selling it seems kind of interesting could you take me to Through The Grand Tour that's not happening anymore they're really well prepared when they enter the room so sales has taken on a different task and I really like what you said talk about the the pressure that we're apply to to the Salesforce today because we used to have those car rides right you remember them we used to actually go in cars at a point in time and we we had that car right between places right between our sales destinations and what did we use that for no we called up the other guy who was also on the road maybe that we were meeting up together and we discussed that next client and we prepared right we prepared for that meeting now I think that we're pushing the sales organization way way way too hard instead of driving the effectiveness and then I think that we have it I mean there's a perversion in the sense we're picking up we want to pick up more data and we're saying look you're the front line you need to pick up the data points we're constantly asking those sales guys now get the data get the data right now now there's a new form here right because I have seven other data points and at some point they're saying look what am I here for am I am I the data collection Specialist or do you want me to actually sell something and that's the permanent change that we're bringing in there so that I think that in from from my perspective when it comes to sales people that's a permanent user adoption Channel because they're just hammered on with changes permanently we ask them to do more we want to get more to know more about our customers as we are preparing for that next trip right no question so and another thing that I think pops up here too is the skill set right and that skill set the ability for our sales people to use technology reflect on their professionalism and I'll give you an example I got a friend I do business with a lot and every time he's the one who has trouble getting on the team's meeting he's the one who you know you know can't find the file we sent them all those types of things and this guy is brilliant but you know when he's getting on these meetings with the customers and I'm introducing them and he's lost it just doesn't look like he's brilliant oh man yeah I could I could and I think yeah go ahead sorry and I and I think all this change in the buying is going to reflect on what a sales organization looks like in the future and who we're going to recruit 100 I I'll uh if it's okay I'll peel back our covers a little bit we're we're uh you know just a couple year old firm and we actually I don't know how smart we are but we read a lot and we we we don't lose we we try to learn so one thing we we figured out is it feels like that this this linear sales process like we used to have these sales meetings at these bigger companies I worked at and okay well this we're in this stage so you this thing should have happened and you now you get to this stage and it goes backwards it's because somebody who wasn't involved grabs a piece of content from this place so I know I think Gartner's articulated is there's these buying jobs so what we do is yeah we still have it in CRM the the you know our stages the way we think of them but we have a sales leader and that person is accompanied by uh uh our sales and marketing operations person who is constantly supporting that person with con content and sometimes we provide it to them so through smart links on LinkedIn and and we also have a solution that has these little digital sales rooms so based on where the the person are they thinking about the problem they have are they thinking about um solutions that are out there are they building up their requirements are they trying to pick the right partner we have different stacks of content that we provide and and she's brilliant her name is Tasha and she supports our our sales leader his name is tap I picked them both because the names go together so so and they're they're like dream teams and you know that it's like he's wonderful with what we would call being a modern seller and she supports that from uh um a digital perspective with content and things like that and so I think there's probably some version of that that we'll see a lot more of where there's the content that drives a value that comes at the right time in the sales process and then there's that still that really professional sales person and sales team that can augment that and and because you as you guys said earlier the we get less time with the client and and I I think I read where the winning partner in a Enterprise deal gets about five percent uh face time with a client or or call time with a client and we need to send some timely content and some timely case studies timely emails to them and so it it it's much different now so we we have to leverage the technology so much differently and and think about not 360 degree view 24 7 but context and insights I actually think the term 360 degree view is not relevant most of the time now controversy alert [Laughter] this is so if we if we start to think about what you're talking about here Chuck and it's really I think we have to you know go back to the training aspect of it we have to retrain sales organizations to understand that the buying process has changed and in my business I find a lot of companies are still working on a buying process from you know 1995. yes they think this is how a customer buys and instead of understanding the customer looks does due diligence does their research then shortlist then comes back right so if I talk to somebody at a trade show and they like me and they like the product and it's going really well then they go quiet for three or four months it's not because they're not interested it's because they're doing due diligence on me and my competition so as a sales professional I need to understand how to use content to go out there and keep them interested and keep me in the race right and not just drop off and say I don't know they're not getting back to me yeah absolutely ghosting is not always ghosting as usual and I I really think that uh now we are supporting our sales funnel is supporting the last Last Mile of the journey really but before that that's like 800 kilometers that we didn't map down but we spent our entire days thinking about how do we map that final one mile right in the journey which is when the client is actually reaching out to sales and going through the fun and suddenly someone is saying look this is happening extremely fast not really I mean it's it's been a really long journey you weren't a part of it right you're just seeing the funnel at the very end and I think that is that is something that you need to transition to I'd like to get back to Rick to what you said because I think that there's an opportunity in making sure that we support the user adoption especially for for the sort of not so tech savvy uh sales people I mean there's an enormous skill set that we are leaving out of the picture and we need we need a way to enable those guys into delivering a new context because the new kind context is that Tech is going to be a part of being a successful salesperson if you're not no question if you don't understand technology and you don't care really then you're never gonna make it right because you don't have that support that will make you effective your colleagues will just achieve 10 times more than you are and and I think that there's a there's a challenge in the way that we adopt uh the users into that technology and how we support them in the constant Journey it's not about ripping them out the the daily jobs for an hour and saying look this is what we're giving you right now of training and then you can go back and do your job it's not working for them they're not they're not tech savvy they're not they're not grown up with technology like teenagers today are right they are from a different generation but they have an extremely uh an extreme ability to close the deals right and they know yes they have that nose feeling right about the tears and I think we can definitely tap into that I don't think that the user adoption it just needs to be constant so it's more about driving the performance inside the application then it's about providing training packages and constantly say look you need to train so drive the performance inside the the applications they're working help them get that support and then I think they're they're fine they'll be fine 100 you know um can I tell a quick story about like I think joking what you just said is so spot on it we we have a uh now a client we we had a call a call one day from uh somebody wanted a CRM resource and we don't say resource we say people but yeah that's what they that's what Decline and we had a yeah we we went to uh to visit the client and they had had a a big project and you know some big partner had done done some work with them and um all nameless um although the client is uh you know case study now so that it was a happy ending for this the story that to your point that the the project green on time finished all that stuff and then they went on to the next big thing and the client okay and you you break down what's the client trying to do this client is in the construction business and they call on lumber yards and they don't need a big giant form to do that and we looked at what are the person trying to do to support the business goal where are they getting caught up well where they're getting caught up in and where they win or lose is in that lumber yard so they basically need to win the yard so we took the big form and figured out the few things that they need to be successful in the yard and put it in a actually for in our case it's just a power app but it doesn't have to be and next thing you know they're they're super duper happy they're showing it at their sales convention and you know they're on the right track so as you said this has to be an ongoing thing where we constantly tweak even if we maybe goofed up and did the big form at the beginning just thinking about the course Corrections going back to the people who own the business goals who own the business tools and who use the business tools and don't forget about those folks and you can you can always get back on track and I think those are all excellent points Chuck so here's the question what's the responsibility of the Microsoft partner here because this has always got me working on projects is it was sort of like I'm going to put the technology in then I'm going to get the hell out of Dodge the gunfight's over right that's not the way we need to think anymore what's the responsibility of the partner around user adoption or a digital adoption yeah you want me to start sure okay um well eight I think Ray Wong does a really really good job of explaining the the people who are closest to the client will win even if like I'll probably never develop a CRM product I just take what Microsoft makes and we can use click learn and other tools to help the client get what they need make it easy make it a net positive for their day so we went from you know for 20 years I was thinking like you said Rick about the project to thinking about the client and if you take that Focus that's first step so change of focus you know don't you know you I I I've seen the I used to ride motorcycles I do not anymore but if you look at the ground you'll fall down when you're turning but if you look look back at where you want to go you'll you'll go where that place so it's change your focus from the project to the client second step is is as we said think about the people and what they do want to do so you have to kind of think about this journey that the client's going to have and third is we're not technical age there's tools that can help us one is you can ask the client what's working and you should two and and that might meet a little different engagement model we do a subscription but you know people can just stay connected you don't have to do a subscription but you can have tools that listen if you've ever written in you know these cars that have the self driving it kind of goes back and forth like that and you can see it's looking at the road there's course Corrections there's no course correction in a big project it's you're done and you know you pointed the car at downtown Atlanta and you're just hoping it's gonna arrive so I think the partner has to think about that Journey think about those ultimate goals the client wants and be prepared to make course Corrections both by talking to the client and having tools that can kind of listen to what's working and what's not working as well and think about how that how to help the client stay on track for those goals so Chuck just on that subscription model and I talked to you about this before now if they entered they're paying you on a monthly basis to not only support the CRM but to get it running right yes so you know you've got some skin in the game here yeah so there's there's a training element of what what we would do to help the client adopt the technology and there's also um almost like a managed Services element to help keep the lights on and and make sure that it's running fast and so forth for the client but then there's also a little bit of an advisory piece where we're helping the client think about what to how to best use the technology because what's the analogy about Microsoft Excel most of us use 10 of the features well if you if those 10 percent can make you millions of dollars that's okay but we need to get those 10 percent of the features right okay all right thanks so guys any any closing remarks about digital adoption in sales professionals over to you but you know I think that we're just starting the journey uh basically for the sales Professionals in terms of of driving towards customer success in in instead of driving towards delivery right event based uh uh sort of uh both on on how we are getting our revenue streams I mean when this event first then basically the revenue comes in and we are done and we can get out and the idea I think that that which I like that what you said Chuck that that we are now driven much much more more by the success of our clients that means you know there's no it's not about getting out the door really fast it's about staying in the room until your clients are successful that sort of idea that will definitely not only evolve but also be the only one that will win in the long in the long game I think okay Chuck any closing remarks from you absolutely um Yocum you said it 100 right that in my opinion that it's it's we're just starting this journey we don't even like just think back three years ago we would I did would never like I was using Amazon but I would go on the website now it's search for stuff and you know now it things are so different this I go to take my dog for a walk and the watch says hey are you going for a walk do you want to track that what if your CRM eventually or your your tech tech stack whatever we want to call it say hey hey uh Rick looks like you're walking into to see a client ABC you want to see the the last three things that happened did you know that they were um in acquisition talks that that's just the tip of the iceberg if we can do that at home 100 we can do that at work and we we kind of have to because we've all heard the stuff about people you know there's a huge pushback with employees they they want to work at a place where they they feel connected and they feel like people care about them so if how are you showing a team member that you care about them by giving them a seven and a half foot long form that looks like it belongs in the highway department or in a tax income tax form or something like that it that's it like that stuff adds up so to your point we're just starting this journey to to making Tech at work and especially for sellers feel like uh Tech at home and and it we we will get CRM right that way okay uh thank you Joachim thank you Chuck for joining us today on digital adoption talks absolutely bye for now