XLR8CRM with Jennifer Thomas | E281
Customizing the worlds largest CRM for advisor success.
On today's Fintech Impact episode, Jason will talk to Jennifer Thomas, Director of Business development for XLR8. It is a well-known financial advisor CRM tool that is built over top of the Salesforce Platform. XLR8 is an overlay or custom version of Salesforce. Jennifer explains that they use all the power and strength and a wonderful thing that Salesforce offers, and then they came out-of-the-box with a fully customized version specific to the finance sector.
Episode Highlights:
01:19: Jennifer talks about the history of XLR8. How did it come to be and how does it evolve?
01:23: XLR8 Pre 2010 was an unmanaged package in Salesforce which basically means a one-time install and then content or services. The company that now owns and works with and develops and supports everything to do with XLR8 bought XLR8 and forged a partnership with Salesforce.
03.20: Within XLR8 what we are doing is providing the out-of-the-box solution that is able to be and still intended to be sort of further customized, says Jennifer.
03:49: Jennifer talks about the process engine, that they have it is a way to create some standardized templates and then reuse those templates.
05:41: Page layout of the application changes where things need to show up depending on what kind of user it is that is looking at it or what kind of record it is that you are working with.
05:50: One of the normal good pieces about Salesforce is that pliability and flexibility, and that's able to be fully taken advantage of within XLR8 as well.
07:17: Jennifer explains how they are a little bit different in the Salesforce space and that they are not a transactional relationship. They don't just sell you licenses and then sort of move on.
08:43: Jennifer explains how keep updating the system as per process and industry changes.
10:17: Jennifer shares how filling gaps is something that they work with the different educational series that they provide.
10:57: Jennifer thinks more from a relationship point of view. She doesn't think about business workflow enablement.
12:40: Sort of mathematics in your mind doesn't always go there with technology, says Jason.
15:01: Jennifer is currently at a place where her successful business basically caters to the financial advisors.
16:13: To sort of filter and disseminate information to our clients of what impacts them, what matters to them, what's important to them, what's useful to them, that is something that we have sort of taken on our shoulders, says Jennifer.
17:33: For firms in the financial services, space is being an ongoing resource from an ongoing support standpoint, having a trusted confidant that you can reach out to.
19:06: Jason shares how he has seen people throw time and effort into building something custom without realizing it was already in the data model somewhere.
21:54: Jennifer's question to clients is what problem you are trying to solve.
23:08: One of the things that often shocks advisors is the transition cost from CRM to CRM. Jennifer shares what people can expect when they are moving to any CRM.
24:17: Big data is the most valuable part of your business. It is everything, it's every note. It's everything about your clients.
28:06: The support in Salesforce is largely handled through DIY stuff on their very good learning systems.
30:31: There is some saying about lesson learned or once the lesson is better learned once you have experienced it.
3 Key Points:
Jennifer explains how the user journeys and the product itself are informed by the user's journey.
As per Jennifer a lot of firms don't always investigate the full breadth or depth of the technology they have.
Jennifer says that their focus is to make sure that they are an ongoing partner, and their clients are able to and open to and know that they can kind of come knock on their door anytime to ask questions and look for ideas.
Tweetable Quotes:
"If you are willing to invest the time and effort into the customizations of building your entire practice into Salesforce, you can spend a lot of time on a lot of money, but also get a lot of utility out of it not everyone is built for that." - Jason
"You could get into some really deep things, but there are also a ton of really some little things that can be done in the system that takes essentially time really adds time back to somebody that's doing those things manually or kind of doing those things in a repetitive way." - Jennifer
"Leveraging a best-in-class platform in a unique vertical which is a great trend and bright place to be as a good, sweet spot." - Jason
Resources Mentioned: