Digital Sales Growth Jam Session

Curt Anderson  00:19

I’ll make sure I didn’t forget that. So I guess let’s get started. I’ll let people pile in. My name is Curt Anderson honor privilege to be here. So for our esteemed panel, guys, we’re going to be recording this. And again, we’ll probably have a little bit of a late crowd today. But we have great juicy content that I’m going to be handing off to you guys. You guys can share as you please, Nancy, my dear friend from custom direct Inc, in a great city of Chicago. Give a little quick introduction to yourself, would you please thank you,

Nancy O’Leary  00:44

Curt, Custom Direct, we are an agency that works with firms in the industrial sector. So manufacturers and anyone who works in supports manufacturing, and we’ve literally just helped them grow, whatever those growth goals look like, we’re there to help. We’ve had some great success. We’ve got some tremendous processes that really work that we’re gonna be talking about today. And I gotta tell you, when Kurt put this together, I’ve been looking forward to it versus that first conversation. So I just want to say congratulations to everybody that’s making the time today or if you’re gonna watch this later, because you are really using your time very, very wisely today. If there’s one thing I could slightly disagree with Curt eCommerce is not just about cart functionality. And the headline I think everyone should have in their minds is, this is a sales channel that you simply cannot ignore. And Kristina is going to be explaining an amazing alternative to true cart functionality. So congrats, everyone spending the time today. I hope you got lunch at your desk, because this is I think going to open your eyes to just some tremendous opportunities to really grow your business. Can’t wait to jump in.

Curt Anderson  01:57

Nancy and we are exactly on the same page. And just for the record some FYI, I’m gonna have a trivia question. And Nancy, if anybody gets my goofy trivia question, they know what they win my mom’s favorite book. Favorite book, stop being the best kept secret we go into like multiple it’s not just that ecommerce shopping cart. We’re going to talk about a lot of juicy things today. So and you hit something right on the head, you know, like kudos and credit. Congratulations, everybody. Like we’re here to gather you’re on. You know, you’re in a safe place. We’re here to unleash your potential man, and there’s no greater. What a great segue for my next friend, about Kristina Harrington, CEO and co founder of Gen Alpha technologies. Christina, give us a big Milwaukee shout out Will you please. Yeah.

Kristina Harrington  02:40

Well, you know, I don’t know if that I can talk Nancy and already all her expectations for the show. But I am so delighted to be here and happy that all of you are here with us as well. I am Curt’s gonna be referred to me as Christina most of my friends call me Chris but because w have to Chris’s in the room today. So Chris Harrington from Gen Alpha. Our solution is a software solution for equipment manufacturers and aftermarket organizations. You can see on my shirt it says equipped 360 That’s the name of our solution. It’s really designed to be 360 degree support for the equipment over its useful life. So we really enable manufacturers to ease the process of doing business with them in today’s digital age that comes with digital technology. So I’m looking forward to jumping into all the different aspects related to that.

Curt Anderson  03:38

Well, Christina, my dear friend, and we just got together for dinner like a month ago man and just made big, big hugs to you right now. And guys, thank you for joining us. Hey, Noah is here from big CEO from above the fray Aaron hunt, as I mentioned, a lot of the above the fray team want to segue to my friend CRISPR Andrea from my friend from Alaska. So we got some Alaska folks here coming bright and early today. Guys, do me a favor, let’s do this. Please, please, please grab your LinkedIn profile. Drop it in that chat box. If you’re not active on LinkedIn, grab your your website, we would this if we were on person, we’d be high fiving hugging and be handing out business cards. This is a great networking opportunity here today. You never know like, you know, you can make best friends, lifelong friends, business partners, collaborators. And just speaking of collaborators, this next gentleman, dude and I don’t know when he retires from like just crushing it in E commerce. He needs his own talk show because there’s nobody that’s more well spoken in Whittier. And my dear friend Christopher Carson in a great city of Portland, Oregon. Christopher Good morning, my friend. How are you?

Christopher Carson  04:41

Thanks, Carrie. You’re the best type man in the business. I really appreciate it hard to live up to that but I’ll do my best. My name is Christopher Carson. I’m based out of beautiful Portland, Oregon. No is actually in Milwaukee this morning, Chris so you guys may need to find some some happy hours. All right. So he’s out visiting the button. Folks at atm and kitchen a brewers game only is there. So I am the My official title is clo VP of Client Services for above the fray design. We are a e commerce implementation agency. So we really lead with strategy and design and have a very talented, fantastic team of technical architects, developers, really anything that you need with with regards to supporting, redesigning re platforming along the lines of E commerce, we are a team that you may turn to. We do have a special love and emphasis on manufacturers. We love the puzzles that manufacturers kind of bring to bear. You know, our team that we’ve we’ve brought together come from a lot of different backgrounds and have a real unique set of skills to bring to bear for manufacturers with very specific and complex variety of sales channels in particular. So if you’re looking to integrate, you know, an E commerce platform with some custom software that you guys use internally for your specific sales channels, ERP CRM, those are the types of puzzles that we really like to nerd out on and help you guys knock it out of the park.

Curt Anderson  06:40

I love it nerd out to nerd out we do. Chris has got to be multiple calls this afternoon. So I’ve had the honor privilege I’ve worked closely with the above the fray team and I brought in this esteemed panel of high level industrial experts because I feel like they fall in like different lanes. Okay, maybe there’s a little bit of a crossover but you know, Nancy does her jam. phenomenal job does a lot of work with IMEC. The Illinois MEP lot of our friends are from the MEPs. whatever state you’re coming from Marsha is here from Chicago. Marsha, I miss you My friend. Happy Tuesday to you saw Derek here again, like all sorts of great friends. If you guys are just joining Stan Miller. Thank you. Dara Khanna, Jared, I mentioned you Justin Kyle. Thank you guys for joining us, drop your LinkedIn drop your website great opportunity to get to know each other. But again, I’ve had the honor and privilege of working on multiple projects with Chris Christopher and the team above the fray. And Nancy, we’re gonna dive into like multiple different strategies on E commerce. But with that being said, Kristina Harrington, my Steam friends, CEO of Gen Alpha technologies, you are the queen of digital self serve. Can you please elaborate to our friends in our audience? What on Goodness gracious meet what does it mean, digital self serve, and why should they know this?

Kristina Harrington  07:52

Yeah. So digital self service really refers to the ability for customers to access information, perform tasks, and interact with a company’s products or services, through online channels, without the need for direct human assistance. Okay. So when we really think about digital self service, that’s what we’re talking about. And I was thinking this morning, I my I was watering the garden. And I was thinking about how this applies in my personal life. Because I think as we talk about the stories that are human for us, I’m a big Starbucks drinker. So I you know, that’s what’s convenient and local to me. Starbucks has an app where I can order my drink, and go pick it up. So I don’t have to go through the drive thru. I don’t have to stand in line to order my beverage. I simply order the beverage through the app, go and run in pick it up, and I’m out the door and I’ve got the coffee that I need for the day, right? I have a propane tank here on the farm. So when we bought our little slice of heaven here, eight years old. Originally, the I always had two questions for lakes gas company, and they were when can I get my gas tank full? Or can I pay my invoice right? So I had to physically call them in the past or mail my invoice but then I didn’t get the discount if I if I would do it that way. So now eight years later, they have a self serve portal where I log in and I can easily order my gas my propane tank and I can pay my invoice right there. Right. So these are very real examples. Target. Target is a great example of I love sometimes a shopping experience and I want to walk through target but there are other times where I just need to reorder some things that I don’t have the time to make a trip. I can either have it ordered and delivered to my home for ease and I never had to talk to anybody. I didn’t have to go anywhere. I just log in with my accounts. They know who I am. They know my past history, and I can easily order. And then, you know, things like processing returns today, returns can be very complicated in some businesses, especially in manufacturing, and we can jump into that. But there are a lot of things that I purchased today that I can easily return without ever talking to somebody. And this is where digital self service has really come into our own personal lives. And as we think about manufacturers and the manufacturing industry, and why this is important, it’s important because this is the way that people want to do business, not all people. But there is a growing population of people who are using digital solutions to get their work done easier. And if we can all agree that we want to create frictionless experiences for our customers, digital is a great way to do that. And I always like to tell people to think about

Curt Anderson  11:09

think Kevin is Kevin C, we might have to throw Kevin on mute.

Kristina Harrington  11:17

That’s all right. So yeah, if we think about all the different questions that come into our business, if you think about your customer service department, your technical service department, your sales team, the types of questions they get over the phone, the types of questions they get through email, through text, there’s usually a common theme of questions that come in. And you know, in our world, that when is my product going to arrive? What is some search? What product do I need? What is the price? Do you have the product in stock? How quickly can I get it? I can go through, you know, can I get a copy of my invoice? Can I pay my invoice? These are common questions and themes that come up across the businesses that we assist. And now we can do we can offer that to customers, dealers, and users of any kind through a digital channel to make it more convenient for those that want that opportunity. And that frees up time. If you if you as a manufacturer, you think about where the greatest time is spent on those teams sales, customer service, technical support, it’s in the administrative tasks associated with answering these questions. And if you can remove that from your organization and make it available online, now you freed up all this time to answer the more complex and have those people really be working on the things that are moving your business forward. So when I talk about self serve, these are the things that we’re talking about. It’s it’s relevant in our personal lives, we’re seeing the adoption of these, I think I just saw something recently. It’s something like 85% of adults in the US own a smartphone, and 96 6% of adults aged 18 to 29 on a smartphone. And that’s where people are searching and looking for information and products and services. So you want to have your, your products there digitally for them to self service and answer their own questions.

Nancy O’Leary  13:31

And if I can jump on that too, just to prove how antisocial in a sense, we’ve become building on those statistics. It’s a stunning statistic when you look generationally, so perhaps the newest folks entering the workforce, it’s over 90% of them will do all of their research online, and literally narrow down who they want to do business with, before they ever reach out. And that’s a stunning number 90% And those for folks under 26 and younger. So they’re not even going to send you an email, they’re not even going to fill out a form. They’re going to actually decide who they want to work with based on what they found online. And then they’ll reach out. So if you haven’t made your case online, you’re not even going to be in the running. And that’s absolutely the way we see things going. And for anyone that’s holding out kind of wondering, okay, Christina, that sounded really good. Think back to the very beginning when we first had FAQs, frequently asked questions, and look at how iteratively just over the last handful of years, how those have now developed into chatbots. And those were kind of simplistic at first and now they’re really sophisticated and you can get almost any question you want to answer with a chatbot. If I can jump in with a personal experience with XFINITY our local internet provider, I actually wanted to talk to somebody live. I couldn’t even I couldn’t even get through to anybody live. I had to go through the Chatbot and admit I didn’t have the answer to my question. But anyway. But the whole point is there are so many opportunities now and so many tools that can bring that prospect to that looky loo to being a prospect to actually being a customer. So much simpler now without you spending any of your time or anyone on your team spending their time. Yeah,

Curt Anderson  15:21

that’s fantastic, Nancy. Hey, I want to give a couple quick shout outs to folks. So my cousin Mike Anderson, we’re not cousins, but when we pretend that we are so he’s over the border from our friend Nancy in Chicago, he’s in East Chicago are actually over in Indiana with a Purdue MEP. He’s with Steel City Steel’s Michael, thank you. And how about no diet buyers here, Diane, thank you. We love you, sister. Appreciate you being here. But how about Could everybody do me a favor? Let’s give a huge congratulations there is in the house. They are just gotten married last week. God bless him. He’s with crispers team. And above the fray trap a little congratulations in the chat box there. We’re sending you tons of love my friend. And just congratulations to you and your beautiful wife and just a lifetime of happiness, and love. And we’re just thrilled for you can’t wait to talk to you, Nancy. Let’s dig right in. Let’s continue this conversation. So Christina, I love what you’re saying. Our tagline is, how do you help that ideal buyer make a buying decision on a Friday night at midnight, without having to wait for you to open up your door on Monday morning, just think about what a competitive advantage that you create the insulates it. So you do amazing work impact, we talked about the work at impact with our MEPs, you had $3.8 million of impact in 2022, you know how it’s done, share with folks a little bit of like E commerce, we will go super deep, because they’re gonna have to reach out to you and you can take it deeper, and you have a little checklist for everybody at the end, share with everybody low E commerce one on one if you would.

Nancy O’Leary  16:48

So ecommerce is the fastest growing sales channel and manufacturing today, by a word large margin. And that’s no surprise, um, for all the reasons that Christine gave in the in the tools that are available. And I’m not going to jump ahead. But for anyone that’s sitting here today, that maybe they’re joining for whatever reason, but you’re thinking, I know that our company is never going to go with full cart functionality. Just wait because Christina is going to talk to you about configurators in a little bit. And if there’s one thing that I find consistently surprises, folks, is that configurators exist. And yet, the impact that they make is as tremendous as full cart functionality. And depending on your business even bigger than that. So I don’t want to go down a rabbit hole on configurators. Because that’s going to be a fun conversation. But when it comes to e commerce, just please keep in mind that we use it as kind of a broad term, whether you’re actually purchasing, or perhaps you’re going with a configurator, which is like a sophisticated conditional logic RFQ. So So regardless, you’re making decisions, as a consumer as a potential customer, and you’re making decisions on products that you would like to purchase from the website that you’re on right now, we’ve got a tried and true process that works for us. And this isn’t, this isn’t me showing this is just explaining it to be brutally honest with you. We didn’t have this process until about four and a half years ago, where we nailed it down. And so I love to share it. And help everyone understand it’s a really straightforward approach. And we do it the exact same way each time. The websites all look different, but our process is rock solid. And Kurt really nicely mentioned the impacts, impacts are tremendous for the folks that we have the pleasure of working with. And what that process looks like for E commerce site is something that’s called an overview and pre development report that we’ve developed here custom direct. And what that does is it enables us to do a deep dive into all the the integrations, all of the existing content, and most importantly, all of those details that will be part of say a cart functionality. And keep in mind when Christina talks about configurators oftentimes that as well. But it’s the it’s a methodology of gathering all of that information. And then putting it together in a very straightforward report. Really think of it like a blueprint, just like you would have an architect put a blueprint together for for a building that you’d like built same to with your website. So this overview pre development report goes through and thoroughly assesses every key component of your website, and presents it to you before anything is built. And I want to just mention for us the way we handle it. We don’t put any design information in there. We don’t talk about colors. We don’t talk about anything like that at all. We talked about navigation, what their site map would look like. We talk about the actual content per page in terms of blacking things out so that you understand where we would recommend additional content and I think we’re all in the same boat on this. Oftentimes the biggest challenge when You’re shifting from a traditional website to e commerce is the volume of content that’s going to need to be created in order to make that a really robust ecommerce site. And not just for the products themselves. Often those other supplemental pages also need more content at it. And then last but not least, you know, there’s the schedule, there’s a budget considerations and all that kind of good stuff that we wrap up into this report. And we’ve just found it to be tremendously beneficial folks love it, they love to kind of get their heads around what the whole project scope looks like, in a very detailed fashion with a lot of research in it. But you know, Kurt, really nicely mentioned this checklist. And if there’s one other thing, I gotta admit, I’m, I’m in my mid 50s, I’ll admit it. And I love checklists, I always have, I don’t know what it is, I’m a nerd that way. If I ever got a tattoo, it would be a checklist. I don’t know what but it would be a checklist. And they don’t use that for the sound cookie that won’t happen. I just love that the methodology. And I think it’s because I just lean into, like, the organizational side of things. And so it really helps move me through a thought process. And so when it comes to this checklist, it really helps folks understand. And like Chris said, we’re gonna throw it out. If anybody wants it, you know, we’ll put the link up there, you can just reach out to me whatever. But this checklist really helps you understand the key components of building an E commerce site. First and foremost, there’s a list of the assumptions that we make as developers, here’s all the things that we’re going to assume when it has to do with like, we’re going to put things in pounds, rather than ounces. Oh, um, no, of course, unless you’ve got really tiny objects. But we’re going to talk about US dollars, we’re going to assume that you’re talking about shipping to the continental United States unless you indicate otherwise and things like that. But then we break it down into these, these really key areas, product details, shop details, payment options, and shipping options. So there’s these four kind of big buckets. And we list all of the options right there all of the details that you need to have. And it’s so helpful, because I would say, and correct me if I’m wrong, please anybody. I think the biggest challenge what holds folks back from wanting to embrace any kind of an E commerce solution is, she’s we don’t have time. Like, I’d love to do it. But I don’t know if we have time, and I don’t know what you’re going to need. But you know, what we’re swamped as it is, I’m not sure when you hand them a checklist, and you can say, Okay, this is exactly what we’re going to need. We’ve got folks that we give the checklist to when maybe we don’t hear anything for 90 days, you know, we follow up, we don’t want to badger anybody. But they’re busy pulling all that information together so that when we do meet again, we can just hit the ground running, they’ve done their due diligence, they’ve gathered all the information, and then we’re not really bothering anyone. I shouldn’t say bother, but we’re not, you know, we’re not reaching out. Oh, yeah. What about this one more thing? What about this one more thing. And to be brutally honest with you, up until about five years ago, we were you know, things would just naturally we wouldn’t think of them. But between the overview and pre developed report and now this checklist, we’re golden, we’re just hammering these websites out and they’re doing phenomenal and so you know, I suppose that’s a little embarrassing to admit, but you know, we’ve learned we learned the hard way you know, let’s get all this out at the very beginning. Let’s be very methodical with our process. We all live

Curt Anderson  23:15

in learn Nancy that’s fantastic guys, if you’re just joining us we’ve got Nancy from custom direct Inc my dear friend Kristina Harrington CEO of Gen Alpha technology we’re going to pull in my dear buddy betting third you know like that’s usually your heavy hitter batting third. Now if you have a question I did see Justin and Justin I see you have a question about video. We’re going to come back to that and just let you guys know we do we do live streaming with the Alaska MEP. We have some dear friends from Alaska here today we have Jeff long video marketing guru and we’re doing a LinkedIn live at the Alaska MEP with Jeff Long this Thursday four o’clock Eastern 12 o’clock Alaska time you do not want to miss Jeff on but Christopher Carson let me get you on stage here my friend Dude we’re working on multiple projects and I learned so much from the entire team at the end above the fray you guys do high level a lot of Magento Adobe which is kind of the same thing you guys do big commerce some some bigger juicy or projects when you’re targeting like you know as Nancy’s described and see there’s like a solo marketer out there the entrepreneur the manufacturer that’s new to this big daunting overwhelming e commerce what I’ve really learned from you guys you love you love breaking it down in a palatable bites and buckets and phases. Christopher Carson, could you please kind of walk folks through like the E commerce strategy keys to success from your perspective?

Christopher Carson  24:33

Yeah, absolutely. I you know, I actually do have a checklist tattoo, but I can’t show it here. I’m very much the same way. I love I love the steps to really be mapped out who’s doing what when anyone from my team that’s on here has probably heard that 16 times today already from me. I think you know, it. All projects are a little bit different. But to Nancy’s point Something I love that you said is, you know, the site may be different, but our process remains the same. And that’s not always easy to do. I mean, we’ve got a lot of different types of personalities, preconceived notions about how things are going to go, the exact nature of what it is that we’re doing together is often misunderstood. So I think the first step to success, from my perspective is choosing the right partner. That’s a good fit with the people on your team leading the project, your teams will be working hand in hand, on a critical and oftentimes expensive endeavor. And so I think, you know, chemistry between those people working together on this, and developing trust is really important. Because it, it can be scary, you know, this is outside of a lot of our clients comfort zone. And so you know, having that kind of, we call our project manager leading the project to Captain right, I’ll be your captain on the flight. And so you’re really putting, you know, kind of your, your, some of your doubts and in fears in the hands of this person. So that choice, I think is, is critical. Next, I’d say, you know, recruiting support from stakeholders across your organization, I see a lot of projects that are kind of, you know, the foundation was based on a, you know, sales driving the initiative, or marketing driving the initiative. But, you know, getting campaigning even for support across the organization is critical, to really kind of filling in all of the pieces of the map that you need to understand to have a successful implementation. And ask those folks across the organization, three questions. What do we have to keep doing? What do we have to stop doing? And what do we need to start doing? That’s three nuts in certain. Number one is the one I most often see overlooked, or under emphasized, if you will, and that was, what do we have to keep doing? You know, this is the one that kind of the other to kind of drown out, keep doing sometimes. And it can lead to really unfortunate and costly misses, that don’t rear their head until the 11th hour of your project? Oh, we didn’t really think about that. And we’re missing a really mission critical piece of our business. That was not really so you know, solved for, as we were putting together our checklists, Nancy thinking. And if you’re in a project leadership position, seeking input from customer service, from sales, marketing, production operations, your dealers, your customers, I mean, there’s a lot of really important information that you can be getting from these sources. And you should and give your development partner access to those to those stakeholders as well. allowing those different perspectives to, to weigh in can really help get their buy in, in the in the long run, and almost always provides an aha moment or two. For the teams writing the requirements, drafting the designs, and prioritizing what makes it into the product roadmap, where and when. That was like a draft.

Curt Anderson  28:35

I’m like, right there everybody. How about that one? Christopher Carson, man, that was I love I jumped in the chat box, keep doing stop doing start doing, you know, when we have another number of solo marketers and even solopreneurs, crisper? So any let’s talk to the solo printers real quick. And then, you know, super short, because we’re Chris, can you see Christina? Like she’s just like, she’s chomping to talk about configurators. And I think the whole panel where we might have to geek out like the whole panel is gonna geek out but Christopher when you’re talking to like the solo marketer, the solopreneur where that maybe they don’t have that big bam, the bandwidth or the team what advice, suggestions, words of wisdom do you have for those folks?

Christopher Carson  29:13

I think there’s so many things. I think it’s all about it’s all about vision, right? And the mindset that you approach it with it’s, it’s so important to recognize that this you know, this is a constant evolution, and sometimes revolution of your business, not a one time transaction, for a product or a line of code or a piece of software, you’re really going to have to invest continually in the evolution of of that, that that business unit that you’re creating or, or or improving on and to think that it’s going to be you know, transactional in nature or one Time Event is, is not the right approach.

Nancy O’Leary  30:04

Christopher, I love that really quick if I can stay iterative. So maybe that’s the second tip to write ever get that checklist and then the word iterative, especially with solopreneurs that we work with and entrepreneurs, we really talk about iteratively. You know, we don’t have to whatever the old expression is about eating the whole elephant at once, or gross, but you know, just think about that, you know, where do you want to get where do you want to go, ultimately, and let’s start just talking iteratively, let’s take this first step. And then here’s maybe a next step might look alike, but we all know, things change, company’s finances, change, leadership changes. And so if you get too far ahead of your skis, you know, you’re gonna fall over. And so we found just using the word iterative is really helpful, it, it kind of keeps everyone on the right frame of mind, you know, we’re not there to soak or to gobble up an entire budget, you know, we’re there to iteratively get them moving in the right direction. Well, that’s

Kristina Harrington  31:03

that too. You know, this is a continuous journey, anybody, whether you’re a solopreneur, you’re a large organization, you’re a billion plus organization, wherever you are, it’s never going to be perfect. As much as we really want it to be, it’s just not the truth is, you’re going to start and have a vision for how you want to start. And then please have some goals, you need to have some specific goals you’re trying to achieve when you start, because that’s going to help you know directionally Are you headed where you thought you were going to be an ask things do change, you can modify and that’s where your iterative is going to come in. And what I always like to say about digital, is that there are there’s so much data that becomes available to you and your business that you don’t have if you’re not using these tools that can help you refine your approach anyway. So where are you may start, you know, your customers, your dealers aren’t gonna drive where you, you keep moving based on their behavior and how they’re using your solution. And maybe just one more thing that I want to make sure before we jump to configurators, is that these tools are not just a place to sell. This is a place for information. Remember, customers are having a relationship with you online. And it’s a place they go for information, all kinds of information. So sometimes when we talk about conversions on a website, and ultimately, you want to drive more sales, as Nancy mentioned, this is the this is a sales channel, but people aren’t going to do more than buy from you in this channel. And we really need to be thinking about that. So when you think take that iterative approach, and you have some goals, sometimes it’s just releasing the burden of things that are coming to your business that you can’t get to in a timely fashion. And if you made that available through a logged in area or something or even available publicly on your website, so people can access that information. It relieves some of the pressure and you can start working on other things. So you have to find your the pressure points in your business, use these tools to relieve some of that. And that’s how you just keep iteratively getting better as well. Wow. Okay,

Curt Anderson  33:31

man, is this fire or what guys have a okay chatbox please put your questions in the chat box if you just join us or even if you did before do it after drop your LinkedIn. Please do yourself a favor Thank Me Later connect with my friend nancial Leary connect with Kristina Harrington and connect with Christopher Carson. Because you these guys are just fire and let’s look at this. All right, Chris Harrington. We’re going to dig into configurators Mike Henderson from Mt. Solar just joined the crowd. If you guys a month ago, he came on our live show and they did a they’re a solar panel manufacturer in a great state of Montana. They’ve created their own configurator where it’s a 3d rendering, you can create your own solar panel, Mike Henderson, if you want to drop your website into the chat box, I would absolutely love that. I actually have a post going out on Thursday with a little clip of Mike Henderson and the CEO Travis of doing a deep dive on that. configurator so guys, we’re going to dig into configurators Kristina Harrington what on God’s green earth is a configurator Can you please walk everybody through and I’m gonna hit the whole panel. Nancy, I know you’re you’re just smiling ear to ear. Christina kick us off as our leadoff hitter. Then I’m gonna hit the whole panel on what is a configurator?

Kristina Harrington  34:43

Let’s go there. Yeah, sure. So configurators I really think about them as interactive tools that are available typically online that enable customers to choose specific options and attribute attributes According to their specific preferences, and requirements, right, so, these selected options and attributes typically build a bill of materials that will later be manufactured and shipped to customers. So typically they are used in a more complex, non standard product situation. So let’s give some examples of configurators. Because I know these will make sense to everybody, a whole goods configurator think about a custom bicycle configurator, which lets customers customize their bicycles by selecting the frame type, the gear ratio, the handlebar style, and color options, so it becomes a very personalized bicycle for that person according to their need. In our world, configurators are used a lot for product upfit. So if you think about a commercial vehicle, up fit configurator it enables customers to upfit commercial vehicles like vans or trucks with specific accessories, shelving racks and additional features based on their business needs. Or if we think about a configurator, another upfit type configurator in the equipment industry, which would allow customers to customize construction equipment such as excavators, excavators or bulldozers, dozers with attachments, buckets and other accessories for various applications. They can use they can be used by custom manufacturers, they can be used in parts for parts kidding. So if you think about building a kit that would go along with a piece of equipment. Right now we have a manufacturer who is building a configurator for their springs, the size of these springs are very large, they have different diameters according to where the spring is being used. And they have different applications. So the questions narrow down what’s required, and they can order specifically what they need. So when we talk configurators, there’s many different places we can go. But that’s really what I’m defining here, Kurt.

Curt Anderson  37:12

All right, perfect. Nancy, once you pick up right where Chris left off, and again, like you’re big on WordPress, if I’m not mistaken. So Chris is with Jen Alpha technologies. That’s a SASS tool is amazing, incredible, powerful tool. I have as matter of fact, Chris, I think I’m going to drag you we did a great little trial run. Back in December, we had our winter hats on, if you guys saw my LinkedIn profile today, we had a great little post from there. Nancy talk, talk to the folks about your perspective on configurators, RFQs. Let’s go there.

Nancy O’Leary  37:42

So thanks so much. So totally man, like, you know, not even two thumbs up. It’s like all 10 fingers and 10 toes the whole bit, absolutely. The only thing I’ll add is we’re where we dig in a little bit differently, is working with folks who have systems. So for instance, we’re working with a lubrication company, they they have three parts to their business. One is the actual lubrication, in other words, the cleanup equipment. And then the other is the actual machinery that performs automated lubrication. So things that would need to go down more or less like in a simplistic form like a conveyor belt, and would need to be lubricated. Those are very complex systems, there’s more than 10 levels of decisions that need to be made in the configurator that we’ve built for them. And it varies from the type of roller to the roller size, both top and bottom. It has to do with where the solenoids are put, it has to do with where the lubrication is coming from the size of the container, it has to do with the type of power and where those power sources are located. There’s just a whole series of decisions that need to be made. And it’s it’s a game changer for this company. Because previously, you can imagine how a sales conversation would go, someone would reach out, they’d fill out a relatively static RFQ form. And you know, naturally, there’s a whole lot of questions that weren’t even asked because they’re just kind of answering some dropdowns and some radio buttons and maybe a textbox. And then you need to have a call and you need to have this whole conversation and get through all the nitty gritty. But as Christina so beautifully explained at the beginning, man, we’re not we’re not there anymore, we you know, we’re moving toward people want to get all that research done. And that’s what configurators do. They have this beautiful ability to put all the questions that you would ask somebody on the phone or through a whole series of emails into one concise conditional logic type RFQ for folks that are maybe thinking that way and it’s beautiful. It’s truly something to behold but the impacts are incredible. And that’s not to say that it has to be an either or whether it’s a configurator or you have a cart on your website. In fact, most of the time you have both for those for those cars complex systems that you can’t just do a one and done, click, I want one of these four of these and maybe add that on. Now there’s more decisions that need to be made this work configurators no pun intended, they do heavy heavy lifting. And they they take that sales prospect into almost the very end of the prospecting phase, imagine the credibility that you now have with their prospect, because you’ve got something that addresses all the questions that they didn’t even know they had, and that they should be asking. And what now when somebody reaches back out to them, they’ve got answers. I mean, you’re you’re you’re jump starting that conversation or jumping ahead. You know, my gosh, weeks, probably more than anything. So that’s, that’s my two cents on it.

Curt Anderson  40:40

Perfect. All right, fantastic. And what I did is I dropped a couple links in the chat box, we did the interview with my dear friend, Mike at Mt. Mt. Solar, and you can take a look at their configurator I jumped to interview with Chris that we did, she took us through a wonderful trial run on her configurator Christopher Carson, I’m going to come to you one second. What I’m going to do is somebody dropped me a note like, Hey, can you show me examples? So I don’t know if anybody on our panel? Because we have a lot of solopreneurs on here. I’m going to share a screen super quick. And hey, Chris, how would that look? You know, it’s only five months at Christmas today, guys, I don’t want anybody stressed out as much as I am. You know, you got five months of Christmas. But there’s Christina and I celebrate a little Christmas. But let me I’m going to show you a super quick configurator. This is in this again for our solar printers. The team above the fray, they do really sophisticated configurators Chris does a wonderful job, Nancy, you and I need to geek out further. But I just want to show you just it doesn’t matter. The product is just the theory and the concept of how simple this is. So my friend Don Alaska, Andrew in Alaska, if you’re a solopreneur and you’re like, hey, wait a minute, you know, this is a little daunting, overwhelming. Let me just show you how simple this can be. Okay, this is a dear client of ours, they manufacture these little goofy things called brown strats. I’m going to run through this super quick. All right, doesn’t matter what the product is. And it’s almost like just making a t shirt. So they make these little things called Ground straps. Everything that draws a current needs to be grounded. Why? Because otherwise, you’d look like me, Nancy O’Leary, it’s not good. You’d be a little electrified, right? So if you want to ground strap, hey, do I want leaded or unleaded? Let’s go let it I want a half inch. Let’s go like maybe nine inches. Let’s hit Next. How about what size stuttering Do you want? Let’s get a number eight. Let’s get to number 10. I hit I hit next. Hey, wait a minute, I’m confused. Here’s a little video right here if I’m confused, because we want them to make that buying decision on a Friday night at midnight before waiting for you to open up your door. And Monday morning. I hit next again, i Hey, this is the orientation that I want. So I hit this button I hit next. Hey, wait a minute. They’re building my little product over here to the right. And the recipe is over here to the right. So I can go along with them. Do I want heat shrink? I’m going to say no, I don’t need any he trained. How many do I want I want 100 I hit next guys, I just created my own ground strap. It literally took that fast. I don’t want another one I put in my information. And I am done. It took less than 60 seconds. And what it’s done it gives this company this huge competitive advantage they get leads from like Boeing, Lockheed Martin major Fortune 500 companies. And this is a small manufacturer 3040 employees. Very, this has been a total total complete game changer home run for this company, Christopher Carson, my friend, please talk to us a little bit about RFQs configurators from the above the free perspective.

Christopher Carson  43:21

Absolutely. I mean, nothing gets ATF more excited than configurators. Our co founder Aaron hunt, has really put some great work in on some kind of off the shelf foundation for configurators. And we’ve had the opportunity to build some really cool ones, our developers get excited about it, our technical architects get excited about it and get excited about it. You know, if you have a a line of products that are made to order, you know, this is like taking that sales channel and transforming it from a two lane road to a you know, eight lane, interstate highway. I mean, it really is opening things up for your customers and you know, the the way that you can can design those and make those visually appealing is also really exciting for users as well. So, you know, I think whenever we see an opportunity to work with someone on a configurator we get we get giddy and you know, maybe get a little bit ahead of ourselves even because it is it’s kind of the funnest part of the business right now. Yeah,

Curt Anderson  44:25

that’s fantastic. And again, guys, if you have any questions whatsoever, please connect with the folks but drop it in the chat box. We’re gonna hit questions as we go along. Justin, just to comment a lot like the book they asked you answer. Hey, our dear friend, Nicole Donnelly, who’s won on a wonderful family vacation. I think she’s in Yellowstone today, possibly. And she just interviewed the gentleman, Marcus Sheridan who wrote the book they ask you answer, so if you want to check it out, go to Nicole’s website. Check out this wonderful podcast that she did with Marcus Sheridan. In one of our tag lines. You guys come to our live live streams on Mondays and Fridays or any of our jam sessions. We have a little tagline that we love to use. It’s how to out teach the competition. How do you dedicate yourselves to out teaching the competition? Chris, Tina Harrington, let’s go there, my friend. Let’s talk a little bit about how can we help out teach the competition, you know, you’ve really stepped up your game you and I met through COVID. We’ve been deer besties ever since. And let’s talk a little bit about how teaching the competition is so important to tie in with your E commerce and digital marketing, digital sales growth strategy.

Kristina Harrington  45:29

Yeah, I think, you know, in today’s day and age, we move people, when we educate them in something that is new and meaningful to them, that’s going to help them grow. I know, when people helped me grow, because I’ve learned something new, or I have a new awareness. You know, I’m eternally grateful it is those moments that really helped me to expand. And I think, as leaders in this space, our goal is to help people be successful with these tools, no matter again, the size of the organization. So what happens and the reason why all of us from different organizations can be on the same panel together as because we are advocates for the adoption of these tools. Because we know this is the future. So when we talk about our teaching, we’re really educating and making people aware of where business is headed, and how manufacturers can get there get themselves there. iteratively, not, you know, chewing off everything all at once. Taking that I always like to say use the Pareto principle and use that 8020 Rule can really come in, integrate, you know, service here, and, you know, Gen Alpha technologies, we’ve put a lot of time and effort into content that supports everyone in this space. And so if you went to our resources section, we’ve, we’ve just released an article about how to write a business case for getting digital commerce or E commerce into your business. Because we are consistently asked to help companies write that business case, right. So the only way we can help manufacturers achieve these goals, and ultimately use these tools is if we help them along the way. And I think that’s what we’re all here doing. I do also believe that the customers, the manufacturers who adopt these tools, will end up educating better their customers, their dealers, their support network on how to use their tools better, it actually makes everyone better in the process. So if you’re struggling out there to hire and get the next generation of employees, onto your staff, or your customers are, these tools are necessary, because there won’t be time to train all the people that are going to have to come into the organizations and how quickly they are. So utilize digital solutions to help with that training, visuals, product definitions, descriptions, bills of materials, all of this advances. None of this stuff was in place digitally when I started. And I had to go sit next to an engineer and ask questions. We don’t all have that luxury today. Nor should we have to because there are different tools available. So hopefully I answered your question there. Kurt. You

Curt Anderson  48:42

did. That was fantastic. And again, follow Christina. She does an amazing job. She has a podcast Whitney Houston, I saw you jumped on it. She’s working with Laurie Harvey now. So your partner in crime on your podcast. So you know, follow Christina on LinkedIn, follow her podcast, she interviews amazing, incredible, wonderful guests. She is purely dedicated to helping out teach the competition and just making you better with your clients with your customers. And with your goals. Nancy O’Leary, my dear friend, we’re coming into time we just write and then we have another meeting like right after this. Well, guys, we’re gonna wrap up at the top of the hour. Any more questions drop into chat box, but Nancy, take us home. How about two minutes or less? Roi?

Nancy O’Leary  49:20

Roi, man?

Curt Anderson  49:22

So how can folks look at ROI from your ecommerce strategy?

Nancy O’Leary  49:25

So I’m going to actually, I’m going to give you an iterative example. I’ll give you two really quick, but this one just happened last week. So this is someone that we’ve worked with, and they provide tri calcium phosphate. Now you can all look up what it is later. But basically, it’s in everything. And it’s domestically sourced right here in Illinois. And so there’s a lot of overseas competition. But here in the United States, there’s only three or four companies that even provide it and so this company is very proud of their made in the USA roots and really lean into But, and this is the perfect case in point of an iterative process. Here’s someone that two years ago knew that their HTML site was very old, the information wasn’t accurate, and it really wasn’t working for them. But they didn’t have the budget or the time to really dig into a complete rebuild. So we came in, and we literally shifted up, you know, we cleaned it up, we improve the navigation, you know, we follow that methodology, make sure the navigation makes sense, because then a lot of goofy navigation makes sure that the content makes sense on each page. And they saw such a jump in their engagement, and in their sales from that, that it wrote its own business case, they came back a year later and said, Okay, now we’re ready for the website. And we said, Okay, so let’s start talking about a little bit about what that looks like, based on our process, again, that overview and pre development report that they use them as their business case, they took the report and said, Here, this is what it’s going to cost. This is how long it’s gonna take, here’s all the integrations they need, that we need to incorporate, because the next phase will now be a configurator. So we launched their website last week, we are now going to be working on their configurator. But just from building this new website, the amount of traffic that they got, because it’s fully SEO optimized. And HTML is great. But there’s just so much more you can do on WordPress. So they’re not spending a dime on ads on anything else. This is a website and I’m going to I’m going across the Great Divide and tell you it was less than $20,000. So let’s talk ROI. Do you want to know what the bomb was he dropped on us, this is going to make an impact of $4 million on their inventory. 4 million from this website. I’m like, I could go home now. You can go,

Curt Anderson  51:45

hey, you know what, you might be able to retire Nancy over here. And so

Nancy O’Leary  51:49

we’re not even to the Configurator yet. So I bring this up. Because this is the perfect example of someone who said this is where I am. And this is where I want to go. And that first conversation that we had, I said, Okay, we go with this idea of Do you want to go deep? Or do you want to go wide when you want to grow your business? Do you want more of the same customers? Or do you want to kind of jump outside of your target audience and get somebody new? And he goes, I want to go deep? And he said, We are the best provider of this in this country. And there’s no reason why everyone’s not buying from us. And I was like, okay, that’s some kind of like a big thing. But I got Okay, fine. And man, we’re getting there. And I mean, at this point, now, they are just trying like mad to hire. I mean, they need more people. Every time we talk. He’s like, Okay, you got out and get more people and gotta help me get more people like, okay, okay. But I mean, so for anyone that’s considering they’re really not sure that they’re ready, just get going that Getting started is always the hardest part, get started. And if it needs to be in your mind, kind of small or not exactly what you thought, lean into professionals, whoever it is that you work with, and say, you know, what, how can we go about this? iteratively? How can I just get started, because I know ultimately, this was where I want to be, because there’s, we all will have so many incredible examples to give. We’ve got a solopreneur that we started working with through IMEC, four years ago, that man is genuinely an engineering genius. And we launched his configurator form six months ago. And he immediately landed, I think it was I don’t know $350,000 worth of work almost immediately. And it’s a very, I mean, it’s it’s a very straightforward configuring your your he has this brushless motor technology that he invented that he holds a patent on, and he’s got heavy hitters that are coming after him now that want to use this technology. He’s got a nice looking website. It’s got all the information there. You can totally geek out on what it is. And he’s got the configurator and that’s what selling it for folks is they can go in and make the selections on the wattage and I offhand I forget what all the other choices are. But there’s only like five choices that you got to make. And boom, literally 30 days after launch. He’s got this huge, huge Pio.

Curt Anderson  53:57

Well, congratulations. So hey, how about a big round of applause for Nancy O’Leary and the team at Custom direct. And you know, what I love to say is my friend Nancy Leary. My friend Kristina Harrington, my friend Chris Carson, you know what they are? They are dream supporters. Man, I’ve never met an entrepreneur that wasn’t a dreamer. So I’ve been doing this for a long time. And when you tie when you everybody needs a Sherpa, we can’t do this alone. And when you can align yourselves with people that have been there trust like Chris, Chris and Nancy. It makes your dreams come true. Christopher Carson my friend two minutes or less, take us home my brother let’s talk a little ROI. Let’s just take just kick us off on his Tuesday. Wonderful day. Will you please

Christopher Carson  54:41

Sure. Yeah. You know, I think you know, I to let’s go back to checklists for my tattoo.

Curt Anderson  54:50

The can we see?

Christopher Carson  54:53

It’s about I think it’s about beginning with the end in mind. You know, which which has already been set here. It’s a great call out the So what is it that you’re measuring, I think is is is what’s really important. And so if you’re looking to automate manual processes and you know free up people’s time to focus on innovation rather than caretaking, that can be tough to measure. So trying to define exactly what success looks like there is really important, the most obvious one being, you know, revenue, return on investment. So there’s a lot of different ways that you can define success. But I think you know, you know, go out, talk to your customers, talk to your dealers, talk to your salespeople. You know, talk to the folks that are making the products for you. And find out how you can make their lives easier and you know, make that your dream and measure your results. Love it. All right,

Curt Anderson  55:46

guys, I’m, we’re coming. We got like two minutes left, Chris Harrison, Chris Harrington, any last words of wisdom you want to anything, we got one minute left, anything you want to share?

Kristina Harrington  55:55

Get started. I continue to say that or if you’re already doing it, keep going. You know, it’s not you’re not done when you launch it. This is just like, we all pay attention to sales. And it’s something we work on over and over again every year. And we have a strategy and we have things that we’re trying to achieve that is this space as well. So you want to get started or keep going.

Curt Anderson  56:20

Get started. Keep going guys let’s wrap up. I see my friend Jay Gary Andrew up in Alaska, Diane Marsha herring. Happy Tuesday, guys. Justin Mike Thayer, my cousin Mike Anderson, John Buck Gleaner, from New Jersey, guys, you know what, we have four times five, we have five time zones represented today. So again, I want to as a matter of fact, I know, Chris, Christopher Carson, I think some of your team might be here. So we might have more time zones, covered than just the five for the United States, if I’m not mistaken. But I want to thank each and every single one of you. I commend you. I applaud you as manufacturers, as entrepreneurs, you are truly the heroes and backbone of our economy. For us on stage here, and it is always an honor. We never take this for granted as a privilege being part of your entrepreneurial journey. God bless you guys. Please reach out with our friends here on LinkedIn. Check out their websites and contact your local MVP. Your MVP can do magic Nancy, you know, firsthand. MEPS can do magic for our manufacturers. My name is Curt Anderson. I love each and every single one of you and all of you guys know that dearly. So round of applause for our esteemed panel. So thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule. Christopher Carson on the West Coast. Kristina Harrington and Milwaukee, Nancy hanging out in Chicago. God bless you guys. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We will see you at the next jam session. I will have this on recording. I’ll send it out to you guys. And I wish you guys an amazing, incredible week. We’ll see you soon. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. See you guys. Thank you.

57:51

Thank you. Big Love.

Curt Anderson  57:54

Big Love, Christina. Big Love to everybody. Thank you. Thank you