The CRM Shift That Helped Kaplan Increase Sales Activity 120% [Endless Customers Podcast Ep. 141]

This transcript has been generated by AI and not checked for accuracy. 

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Cheryl Parker

they're seeing information on our website that they hadn't seen before.

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Cheryl Parker

They're getting answers that they needed.

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Cheryl Parker

they're looking at us like we're,

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Cheryl Parker

a trusted voice

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Cheryl Parker

That's where we wanted to be.

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Bob Ruffolo

You're listening to the Endless Customers podcast, brought to you by the team at IMPACT. Endless Customers is the proven system to become the most known and trusted brand in your market. You want to start to learn the principles of Endless Customers and how you can implement them in your business. Pick up a copy of Endless Customers, the national bestseller.

00:00:30:20 - 00:00:52:13

Bob Ruffolo

Wherever books are sold. Ready to start implementing Endless Customers in your business? Talk to IMPACT about how our coaching program can help you implement Endless Customers to success. And if you want experience Endless Customers in person, do not miss our upcoming conference! Endless Customers live in Chicago March 30th through April 1st, 2026. Registration is now open. And now onto the show.

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Bob Ruffolo

Here's your host, Alex Winter.

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Alex Winter

Today's episode is about what happens when a growing organization realizes that alignment does not happen automatically, and that scale exposes every gap in your system. I'm joined by Cheryl Parker. She's the senior director of sales enablement at Kaplan Early Learning Company, along with Jessica Palmieri. She's Impact's director of HubSpot training. Now, as Kaplan continued to grow, their teams are working hard, but they didn't always have full visibility into what others were doing.

00:01:20:07 - 00:01:42:20

Alex Winter

Sales activities, lived in spreadsheets, customer updates required tracking down teammates. Leadership lack clear insight into performance. Everyone was moving, but not always in sync. So recognizing the need for a single source of truth, Kaplan made the decision to bring marketing, sales, and services all together into one CRM and fully commit to building a more connected and transparent system.

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Alex Winter

In this episode, we unpack how endless customers influence that shift, what it takes to drive CRM adoption at scale, and how sales enablement has transformed at Kaplan as a result. Cheryl, welcome to the show.

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Cheryl Parker

Hi, Alex.

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Alex Winter

Hi. How's it going?

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Cheryl Parker

Very well. Thanks.

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Alex Winter

Excellent. I'm so excited to be talking with you today. Thank you for taking the time.

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Cheryl Parker

Yeah. Me too. I'm excited.

00:02:05:16 - 00:02:11:16

Alex Winter

Yes, we got a lot to talk about, but first we have someone else joining us too. Jess Palmeri, welcome to the show.

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Jess Palmeri

Alex, great to be back.

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Alex Winter

Yes. Good to have you back. It's been a minute. I've missed having you on the podcast. It's been too long.

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Jess Palmeri

It has been too long. I haven't made fun of you in so many, many months, so this is long overdue.

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Jess Palmeri

We'll get it in this episode, for sure. Yeah. We'll make up for lost time. Yeah, absolutely. I have no doubt.

00:02:29:03 - 00:02:42:08

Alex Winter

I'm so excited to have you here. And we got a lot of ground to cover and a lot to talk about. But before we do, can you just paint the picture for our listeners and our viewers about your role and what you do at Kaplan, and also the history and what Kaplan is?

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Cheryl Parker

Sure. So Kaplan started off over 50 years ago as a toy store. And, the owner was very passionate about children and educating them. And we have grown into a national educational resource for, headstart daycares, schools, anybody that, is involved with children. We have over 45 sales team members across the United States. And, we are located here in Lewisville, North Carolina.

00:03:19:10 - 00:03:36:21

Cheryl Parker

So I've been with the company 30 plus years. Majority of my time in operations and moved into sales in, about four years ago. So just prior to starting my journey with, HubSpot.

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Alex Winter

Excellent. Wow. And it sounds like a national organization. 45 salespeople. It's a large company with an esteemed history. So that's really cool. And what better way to than to help kids learn and grow into adults? That's just a wonderful mission. So I'm excited to talk about the CRM and all the sales functions that you've been doing. So let's get into it.

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Alex Winter

in case people aren't sure, we're talking about HubSpot today, which I love. Jess, you are an expert in this. We were talking just before we started recording how You Are the goat when it comes to HubSpot, the Tom Brady of HubSpot here.

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Alex Winter

But I'd love to just talk about how endless customers and HubSpot pair together and what's happening beneath the surface, especially with Kaplan and Cheryl. I want to hear about your experience, too, as you reintegrating HubSpot and how it helps your endless customers journey.

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Cheryl Parker

Well, thanks. Yeah, I'm Cheryl Parker, so, sales enablement manager with Kaplan Early Learning Company. And, I've been on the sales side with Kaplan for the past, almost six years now. But have been with the company 30 plus. We'll just leave it at that because I'm not going to tell my age.

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Alex Winter

So that's incredible. 30 plus years. That's. Yeah. Wow.

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Cheryl Parker

Yeah. Incredible. Yeah. So, and my time in sales started when we did not have a CRM at all. And so our sales reps were just kind of out in the Wild West doing their thing. Okay.

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Alex Winter

Okay.

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Cheryl Parker

Yeah. So, which really brought us to HubSpot and choosing them as our, CRM of choice.

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Alex Winter

Yeah, that makes sense. So really, the Wild West before the CRM, what was what was that like? Was that difficult to navigate with? Did it feel messy, like, can you paint that picture for people who maybe have have never been without a CRM or for for people that don't know what that is?

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Cheryl Parker

Right. It was so, you know, we had no alignment between sales and marketing. Marketing was in doing their thing. Sales was out doing their thing. We had reps go rogue and create their own marketing pieces that weren't branded, you know, okay. With very little visibility as far as activities that they were doing. And we had no visibility about our customers and their journeys and where were they at and what were they doing and what were they looking at?

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Cheryl Parker

So we just really had no alignment and no visibility.

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Jess Palmeri

Yeah. And I remember from those early days, Cheryl, you know when we were starting to work together, we started to see what HubSpot could do for Kaplan as an organization. That alignments between departments was the driving force. That was our guiding light to say this is what we're going to go through this process for. This is the light at the end of the tunnel, if you will, to get, you know, sales and marketing to really align in a common system and even introducing other departments like the customer service team.

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Jess Palmeri

And I know

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Jess Palmeri

and even since then you have included other departments, because I know that HubSpot has really become that single source of truth for your organization so that you can understand that customer journey.

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Cheryl Parker

That's correct. So any department here that touches a customer directly or even indirectly is in HubSpot and using HubSpot. So we can have that total customer journey that is our single source of truth for all things customers.

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Alex Winter

That's amazing here. No. That's amazing. Yeah. And that single source of truth, that's something that if, you know, endless customers, we talk about that a lot. And the buyer's journey. Your customer journey is so important. And if you're not tracking it, how can you give them a good experience. How do you even know what their experience is like?

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Alex Winter

So that's amazing to hear that you adopted. And I'm curious, I want to go back into something you said. When was the moment where you realized like this, what we're doing previously isn't working and we need to we need to figure out how to get things tracked, how to use a CRM, like what was what was navigating that like in getting buy in from leadership?

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Alex Winter

Because investing in HubSpot or a CRM isn't necessarily, cheap. You know, it's a it's definitely an investment, not just monetarily to but getting your team involved and getting everybody everybody bought into using it.

00:07:57:22 - 00:08:28:17

Cheryl Parker

I don't know that there was one moment. I just think that because we need at a platform for our marketing team, we knew what they were on, was not working for them. And we knew and had talked about for a few years wanting to get the sales team on a CRM. So I think at that point we were out looking in, HubSpot came along, and it just had everything that we wanted.

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Cheryl Parker

It had the tools. And we really felt like it would be the right fit for us. We had a lot of seasoned reps. We wanted to make sure it was something that was easy, something that they could quickly see payback on. You know, they were like, oh, why am I having to do this after all these years of never having to do it?

00:08:53:06 - 00:09:23:11

Cheryl Parker

So we needed to make sure that they could see the benefit of using it as well, and it could meet them where they were at because they had all differing abilities. When it came to technology. So, I think just the accumulation of years of not really being able to see or forecast correctly, we were like, oh, yeah, well, we know we have ups and downs throughout the year, but like when that up was coming, who knew all of a sudden it just would slap us in the face.

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Cheryl Parker

And you know, we always felt like we were behind the eight ball on, those larger opportunities, that would pop up from time to time.

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Alex Winter

Yeah. So I, I really appreciate you saying that. And it's an interesting perspective because I think a lot of times in business and in sales, people think that when it's slow, that's when there's a problem. But sometimes when business picks up and you can't support that business or there's too much going on to support it, that's equally a problem on the other end of the spectrum.

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Alex Winter

And

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Alex Winter

being prepared and having a basis or at least a centralized place to see this coming, I'm sure helped a lot. And getting it out of these spreadsheets.

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Cheryl Parker

Yeah for sure.

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Jess Palmeri

I will say one of the things that always impressed me the most about Kaplan's journey to adopting a CRM and moving their entire organization into HubSpot is the moment in their company history when they chose to take this step. Their journey to adopt a CRM came kind of on the heels of the pandemic. And as a company that focus on educational products, and really investing in schools and investing in school technology, you'll you might know that around that time, you know, in the pandemic, there was so much publicly available funding for schools, for technology.

00:10:34:20 - 00:10:54:04

Jess Palmeri

And honestly, Kaplan was seeing some of the best sales numbers that they had ever seen in the history of their company. But even in that moment when they were winning across the board, they still had the forethought to think these good times are very temporary. Even though we are winning in this moment, the tides can turn, you know, the world can shift.

00:10:54:06 - 00:11:19:08

Jess Palmeri

And they saw that they were able to sell in this very unique environment. But they knew that if those tides turned, they might not be able to sell as effectively because they couldn't track, they couldn't see, you know, were these big opportunities right around the corner where they behind the eight ball on other opportunities. And so they had that forethought to think, okay, we're going to go to all these sales reps, 50 of them I think sterile something around there.

00:11:19:08 - 00:11:38:03

Jess Palmeri

And we're going to say, hey, even though you've been doing better than you ever have in your entire careers, we're going to ask you to change everything about how you are conducting your sales process. Yeah, that's when we're going to leave you by the hands, and we're going to try our hardest to help ease that transition and ease that adoption.

00:11:38:05 - 00:11:48:18

Jess Palmeri

But it really did take a leap of faith to know that even in this moment of success, even in this moment when everything seemed to be moving in the right direction for Kaplan.

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Cheryl Parker

It was.

00:11:49:03 - 00:12:18:08

Jess Palmeri

So essential for them to think even farther out, even, you know, more into the future, to know that as the business environment was about to get more challenging, they needed these tools and they needed this technology in place. So they needed to modernize their sales team to meet those new moments. So one of the things that I was always so impressed by with Kaplan and with Cheryl in her role is that they invest in the technology, but they also invested in Cheryl as the sales enablement.

00:12:18:08 - 00:12:27:22

Jess Palmeri

I think you're you were manager at the beginning, but I think that your senior manager or, you know, higher up at the chain these days, senior director, senior director.

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Cheryl Parker

So yes.

00:12:29:04 - 00:12:49:22

Jess Palmeri

So they they knew they needed the technology, but they also needed that human touch. They needed that accountability partner to make sure that all of these sales reps that had been living in the wild, wild West found a way to adopt this new process and really ingrain it in their organization to make all the success to come possible.

00:12:50:19 - 00:13:04:23

Alex Winter

Wow. That's incredible. It sounds like it's not just a sales initiative. I heard marketing, I heard leadership, I heard client services. So like it seems, it seems a lot larger than just one team or a few people. It's really the whole company on on board with this. Am I correct in saying that?

00:13:05:01 - 00:13:05:21

Cheryl Parker

That is correct.

00:13:06:02 - 00:13:26:11

Alex Winter

Yeah. And for you, what was it like? Cheryl managing that? Because I'm sure. Listen, you're in the Wild West. I'm sure you had some really great salespeople, some really great marketing people. But you also have to break some habits and get them to adopt this new system. What was it like for you navigating that and getting everybody bought in or getting everybody on board, as they say it?

00:13:26:13 - 00:13:54:15

Cheryl Parker

It was difficult in the beginning was hard. It was late 20, 22. And so I was like trying to learn HubSpot myself and try to teach these people who didn't want to be taught because, like, who am I to tell them how to go sell? Right? So it was difficult. So we we brought in the experts, we brought in Jess and she was our coach.

00:13:54:15 - 00:14:19:19

Cheryl Parker

And, early February of 23, she came in and did in person. Was it 2 or 3 day training with all of our sales reps and and what a difference after that? I mean, I don't think we'd be as far as long as we are if we hadn't had that, because for some that was the moment that they said, okay, well, wait a minute.

00:14:19:21 - 00:14:41:00

Cheryl Parker

This might be a real thing and this isn't going to be something that Kaplan says or you have to do, but then it just goes by the wayside. You know, this is here to stay. And Jess really was able to show them how it would work for them rather than them working for it and what that payback could be.

00:14:41:02 - 00:15:03:12

Cheryl Parker

And we just went from there. And her coaching, obviously, continued with myself and with our teams. We did like every two weeks or several months. And it was I just can't say enough about it because we would not be where we are at without that.

00:15:03:14 - 00:15:30:22

Jess Palmeri

Wow. I think the key there is that we had a large team to train. It wasn't just, you know, a few key, sales, reps that we had to kind of adopt these new processes. It was a wide team with all geographically dispersed with different technology, skill sets and levels and, you know, levels of adoption and, you know, different ten years within the company, you'll find often that younger reps that are newer to the business are eager to adopt new approaches because they just want to sell and they just want to win.

00:15:31:00 - 00:15:46:21

Jess Palmeri

But for folks that have been in the business for truly decades, I mean, I think Kate Kaplan still ranks as one of my most senior, sales teams that I've ever trained. You can't go to someone who's been in this business for 30 years and suddenly say, everything you've been doing is wrong. You have to change your ways.

00:15:46:23 - 00:16:11:23

Jess Palmeri

You have to approach the conversation a little more nuanced than that and say, we're not trying to change you. We're not trying to change how you work. We're trying to improve your process, make things easier. And until you can show those quick wins, those quick, ways of improving your day to day lives, you're never going to get a sales rep on board because they're just going to see it as a hindrance to what they already know can work for them.

00:16:12:01 - 00:16:37:04

Alex Winter

Yeah, that's a great point. And I think I think too, Cheryl is great to hear that coaching was instrumental for you. And we hear that time and time again. And it's having an accountability partner that can also teach you and show you these things. The it just it just makes the learning process that much faster. And you can really implement things a lot more quickly versus almost tripping over your feet and, and going through some, some troubling times because, listen, the CRM can be complex.

00:16:37:04 - 00:16:59:04

Alex Winter

It can be very difficult. But I also love that you are the dedicated sales enablement person. That's like heading up the CRM. So I'm curious, Cheryl or Jess, what made the leadership go like we need to have Cheryl in this role to really like helm this. And what was it like for you getting the team on board and having, Jess with you to to really just, like, push that, push this out throughout the whole organization?

00:16:59:06 - 00:17:26:23

Cheryl Parker

Yeah. I think that they realized, you had to have somebody that the team had to have somebody to go to to ask those questions and get answers. And, they really needed that just single point of contact and to be able to feel comfortable about going, raising their hand and saying, I didn't get that training. Can you help me a little bit more?

00:17:27:01 - 00:17:44:16

Cheryl Parker

And do a lot of one on ones. So they could see the benefit in me spending my time doing that. If they really wanted to get everybody up and running and on board and make it work throughout the whole company, it's what had to happen.

00:17:44:18 - 00:18:08:08

Cheryl Parker

I think bringing in, we use HubSearch to bring in a HubSpot admin was instrumental as well. And him and I work hand-in-hand together. And so he's very, adapt to be able to go, oh, I'll say, hey, we need it to do this. Okay. We'll make it do that. Like, here's a roadblock. How do we get around that?

00:18:08:08 - 00:18:31:19

Cheryl Parker

How do we make it easier for the sales reps? They don't. This is cumbersome for them. What can we do? And so then seeing that we were listening to them and adapting to their needs, also really helped. And if we didn't have somebody helping do that, I don't think we would have adopted the way we have.

00:18:31:21 - 00:18:35:04

Alex Winter

Yeah, no, that makes total sense. Go ahead, Jess.

00:18:35:06 - 00:19:00:21

Jess Palmeri

I'll just add there that I mean, Cheryl and I, we really built this role together because I think from our, our first interactions, we saw that, you know, this was not only a coaching and training opportunity to bring in someone from the outside in to help Kaplan adopt this tool. But the goal was long term success, and you really can't ensure long term success unless you can build a team in house that can carry that torch onward.

00:19:00:23 - 00:19:19:16

Jess Palmeri

So when I joined the organization as a as a HubSpot trainer and coach, Cheryl, you were partially responsible for, you know, the salesman naming that piece. But I don't even think you had sales enablement in your in your title at the time. I mean, I remember being at dinner with you after one of our training sessions and I said, here's a job description.

00:19:19:16 - 00:19:52:04

Jess Palmeri

This is where you should go for it. So we built that role, and then we talked about, you know what, who else needs to be on the team to make this successful? So we worked with an outside recruiting agency hub search to find the right HubSpot administrator who could remove those technical roadblocks. And while I was coaching and training the sales team to do initial onboarding with them, we were always building a succession plan to have Cheryl take the reins at some point in the future, and that's what she has done, to make sure that I always like to say, when you work with impact and when you work with with me in

00:19:52:04 - 00:20:05:11

Jess Palmeri

particular, my goal is to get you to the point where you never need someone like me again. Maybe you want to keep coaching. Maybe you want to keep working together, maybe you want that guidance. But I never want someone to be dependent on me for their organizational success.

00:20:05:13 - 00:20:30:09

Jess Palmeri

and I think that Cheryl and the Kaplan team is the perfect embodiment of that, because we really built this roadmap so that I could come in as the outside expert, as a coach and, you know, present the initial, tool, the initial change management to the organization. But as much as we invested in the sales team, time, as much as we invested in the sales team to make sure that they were up and running in the tool, we knew that there would be sales team turnover.

00:20:30:10 - 00:20:51:21

Jess Palmeri

We knew that we would have more folks to train in the future. So we've invested just as much time in Cheryl and giving her this purpose in the organization to make sure that there was that continued growth in the long term. So the between Cheryl become becoming the sales enablement professional and hiring that internal HubSpot admin. They can truly own that Sara management in-house.

00:20:51:21 - 00:21:01:08

Jess Palmeri

And it's been the secret to their success so that every aspect of the organization can truly live in HubSpot and see it as their single source of truth.

00:21:01:10 - 00:21:25:02

Alex Winter

Well said, very well said. And that's a the beautiful part about impact and the coaching program here, and really endless customers in the system, is that we're trying to remove dependencies on an agency and remove dependencies so that you can you can learn this stuff and do it yourself. That's that's really the the powerful piece here. So, Cheryl, as you as you start to take control, you get into this role and you're it sounds like you're really adopting it.

00:21:25:02 - 00:21:41:17

Alex Winter

Well, you're starting to crush it. You're starting to get the hang of it. You have all this training from Jess. How did the reps react? Like how did your sales reps in the sales team like, yeah, I was I'm sure there's an adoption process, but like where they once it started to work and started to get traction, what was that like for you in the team?

00:21:41:19 - 00:22:09:17

Cheryl Parker

They were like, you know, once they saw it, they were amazed. So an example early on, we had, one of the sales reps had an opportunity and, for some large grant money, and there was about 13,000, potential recipients that we wanted to reach out to. And he was just like, it'll take me six months to email 13,000 people.

00:22:09:17 - 00:22:34:16

Cheryl Parker

And I'm like, no, it won't, because we have HubSpot. We've got workflows, we've got sequences. And when we told that story about getting that template out to those contacts so quickly, all the other reps were like, how many? How long did it take? They were they were just shocked that we could do it so quickly. And then they were like, I want to do that.

00:22:34:19 - 00:22:55:11

Cheryl Parker

I want to do that. So with each when as we talked about it with the whole team, they were like, hey, I want that. How do I do that? So that just helped bring them, the naysayers, the doubters, it really brought them along.

00:22:55:13 - 00:23:12:16

Alex Winter

Yeah. And that's great to hear. I and I've heard that before, there's a recurring theme, when people implement endless customers in the system and they start adopting HubSpot or whatever, CRM, the older dogs or the people that are resistant to it when they see it working for somebody else, it causes this ripple effect of like, well, wait, hold on.

00:23:12:16 - 00:23:23:13

Alex Winter

How did they do that? I want to do that. I want to have those tools I want. And that snowball effect is a beautiful thing because that's that's what leads to the rapid adoption of, of this system. So what.

00:23:23:15 - 00:23:46:13

Cheryl Parker

Exactly. And and not only that, I do have to say that because it wasn't just us adopting again, it was marketing and it was customer service. So marketing went on first, then sales, then customer service, and then other departments. But they were starting to be able to see what marketing was doing. And they had always asked, well, we never know when they send something out.

00:23:46:13 - 00:24:07:18

Cheryl Parker

They were starting to see that. So when customers asked them about the email they got for marketing, they could actually talk to them about it because they had seen it too. They knew it was going out or when the customer came to them after speaking with customer service, they could talk intelligently about what that problem was. Why did that customer went to customer service?

00:24:07:18 - 00:24:33:09

Cheryl Parker

So we started to see that collaboration and that has just snowballed. Which is really what we wanted. You know, we wanted to get those silos down. We didn't want each department being siloed in is just we're leaps and bounds now. I don't think we're 100% where we where we need to be because we're always changing. We're ever changing.

00:24:33:09 - 00:24:56:00

Cheryl Parker

You know, you throw AI in here, a AI in there, and we know that's kind of a way we need to start moving. And you know, so it's always going to be evolving. But we kind of do what we do today. Like we did four years ago. We would never go back right.

00:24:56:02 - 00:25:13:19

Alex Winter

And that's also why coaching and training is important, because you all are very busy doing your day to day. So to try to keep up with emerging tech and AI and different tools, that it can be daunting. So to have a partner that can help you see those things, remove some of those roadblocks and get you there, that's that's invaluable, I would assume.

00:25:13:19 - 00:25:33:09

Alex Winter

So can we talk a little bit about and this is my I'm very curious about this. How did this affect sales conversations in terms of I don't know if maybe you could paint the picture of some results as far as like people that you've closed or more of clients coming in or just better, better or close rates. I'm not sure I want to put words in your mouth, but like, can you just tell people a little bit about the success you've had?

00:25:33:09 - 00:25:36:19

Alex Winter

Because it's been pretty substantial and impressive?

00:25:36:21 - 00:26:06:23

Cheryl Parker

Yeah. You know, I think because we are have a lot more content on our website. So it's something else. It it has improved our website. You know, they enlist customers and they ask you answer. And that is all being followed. And so customers can can find those answers on our website. So it it is speeding up those sales processes.

00:26:07:01 - 00:26:36:08

Cheryl Parker

Our reps are seeing what customers are looking at and what they're interested in, which is speeding up that sales process. And again, I think just the collaboration, in-house now, because we can all get into HubSpot, we're all talking more. We're not just having that marketing meeting over here and sales meeting over here. We're kind of meeting together and I, I had an opportunity, a sales rep did.

00:26:36:08 - 00:27:04:17

Cheryl Parker

He came to me and he was just like, we're in the middle of busy season warehouses behind everybody is go. And he's like, I have a $6 million opportunity. I don't know that we can handle it. What do you think? I was like, of course we can. We'll find a way, you know? And so like, I never would have been able to say that confidently, I think, before, but I was like, we can do this.

00:27:04:20 - 00:27:10:19

Cheryl Parker

We've, we've we will come together, we will all work together and we can make it happen. And we did.

00:27:10:23 - 00:27:44:13

Jess Palmeri

it's the clarity, these different departments collaborating together that made that $6 million opportunity happen because Cheryl, you had one sales rep that, you know, had this big fish and one that he wanted or she wanted to reel in, but you have to have the confidence that, you know, that warehouse can deliver on those promises that the sales rep is issuing and that the customer service team can ensure that those wonderful toys for that, you know, that new, location for the new school or that, you know, the remodeled school can actually get there on time for

00:27:44:13 - 00:27:59:23

Jess Palmeri

the new launch? You have to, you know, make promises as a salesperson and say, you know, you're building this wonderful new center to change the lives of children, and you have to make sure that you can deliver on those promises. And it can be daunting as a sales rep because, yeah, sure, you can sell it, but you have to be able to deliver.

00:28:00:01 - 00:28:18:16

Jess Palmeri

And being able to see clearly within one tool, within one system, how each department is going to play a part in closing that $6 million deal and having the confidence to sell that opportunity and know that it could be fulfilled, I think that's really the success that we can see when all departments and all people play in the same sandbox and make things happen.

00:28:18:16 - 00:28:19:16

Jess Palmeri

Yeah.

00:28:19:18 - 00:28:21:11

Cheryl Parker

Exactly. Yeah.

00:28:21:13 - 00:28:42:07

Alex Winter

Yeah. Breaking down the silos is so important. And I hear that all the time where marketing is doing something over here and sales is doing something over there, and they're not talking to each other. And it it really causes some problems and it can cause gaps. Just to your point where the salesperson sells something and they're all excited, but then they don't realize that they can't fulfill it because fulfillment or manufacturing or whatever's happening can't, can't take those orders.

00:28:42:07 - 00:28:51:23

Alex Winter

So they break those silos down and have that clear communication gets everybody on the same page, and then you can deliver a better end result to your clients. And that's that's what matters. That's what it's all about.

00:28:52:01 - 00:29:02:09

Cheryl Parker

Right. And so we're not disappointing them like we used to. Right. And glad to say they're a repeat customer. They've already reached out this year again. All right.

00:29:02:11 - 00:29:04:18

Jess Palmeri

Excellent. Love to hear that.

00:29:04:19 - 00:29:20:13

Alex Winter

All right, so I'm curious, can you, for our listeners and our viewers out there, can you just give them a sense generally of before the CRM and implementing everything that we just talked about and after how that's affected sales, bottom line or just some numbers to give people a sense of the success that you've achieved?

00:29:20:15 - 00:29:22:18

Cheryl Parker

Yeah, sure. Our sales I.

00:29:22:18 - 00:29:29:03

Cheryl Parker

Tivity numbers are up 120% year over year. Wow. Which, yeah, is incredible.

00:29:29:05 - 00:29:31:11

Alex Winter

That's unbelievable. Wow.

00:29:31:13 - 00:29:49:20

Cheryl Parker

And the key thing is, before we were working in spreadsheets. So you wouldn't even be able to track sales activity. And now that we can see that adoption, it's like it's like a snowball effect. Could started small. Built year over year. I mean, 120%, especially in so many years. And, it's fantastic to see just continued adoption across the board.

00:29:49:22 - 00:30:18:13

Cheryl Parker

some of the newer reps coming in. So training time for the older reps. You know, when we were first launching was long. Newer reps. I mean within several weeks. Most of them are excited to be using HubSpot as a tool. Some of them had HubSpot experience, but they've all have said that we're more ingrained with it.

00:30:18:14 - 00:30:25:18

Cheryl Parker

We go more deep with it as a company. And, they they love it. They just love using it.

00:30:25:22 - 00:30:27:11

Alex Winter

That's great. That's great to hear.

00:30:27:13 - 00:30:44:07

Jess Palmeri

when we first started working together, Cheryl, I remember there was there were moments of frustration early on because we did have a lot of seasoned veterans. But, you know, we're taken time to adopt. They were resisting. And we really tried to focus on, you know, the sales team that we have today will change over time.

00:30:44:13 - 00:31:02:20

Jess Palmeri

and even if you meet with a lot of resistance up front and you see folks that are unwilling to adopt the process, eventually there will be turnover, there will be new people, new lifeblood in the organization. And that next hire, that next sales rep that walks in the door will never know a different process or a different approach.

00:31:02:22 - 00:31:22:16

Jess Palmeri

And I think I remember telling you that that that next training round, it's gonna be so much easier every single year. It's going to get easier. So I'm so happy to hear that as we continue this adoption process now, every new sales rep that walks in the door, they're just handed that, you know, that login information they send go look and HubSpot and they just do it because that's the way things are done in Kaplan.

00:31:22:16 - 00:31:40:18

Alex Winter

Now that yeah, it's it's the playbook. They come in. Here's the playbook. This is how we roll. Learn it. Get to know it. And there you go. You're off to the races. That's that's a really wonderful thing. Yeah. So I'm curious because, Cheryl, I've seen you at events before, and you bring some of your team to the events as well.

00:31:40:22 - 00:31:48:09

Alex Winter

Can we just talk a little bit about why you come to the events for endless customers Live and, why it's important for you and for your team?

00:31:48:11 - 00:32:20:09

Cheryl Parker

Because I learn something every time I come. And I haven't missed one. I did one to that illness, but, I've been to everyone since since starting this journey. And, I hope to continue to come to everyone for as long as I can. Again, I we always bring something back. I learn something new. I see something differently than what I did before, and and, I'm always excited to bring it back and try to get it implemented here.

00:32:20:11 - 00:32:42:21

Alex Winter

That's great to hear. I love seeing you at the events. And you're right, there's a lot of takeaways. I always come out of the events going like, oh my gosh, we have so much to do. And so many great, great takeaways to implement and things to happen here. All right. Next question for you. For people out there watching and listening and for organizations that are trying to scale and do complex things with potentially a CRM.

00:32:42:23 - 00:32:51:03

Alex Winter

What would you say them and like, why is it so important to have a single source of truth? Obviously it's work for you, but what would you say to somebody who doesn't know that they should have a single source of truth?

00:32:51:05 - 00:33:12:20

Cheryl Parker

I think I would tell them, don't wait. Just do it. Because once you do it and adopt it, you'll never go back. It gives you so much information. It's almost information overload. At first, I was just like, look, I can see this. I can see this. Oh, my gosh, what are we going to do with this information?

00:33:12:22 - 00:33:17:23

Cheryl Parker

Because now I know it's here. So,

00:33:18:01 - 00:33:47:23

Cheryl Parker

It's so helpful to have it. And it also, I think we see a shift in our customers in a way that they're seeing information on our website that they hadn't seen before. They're getting answers that they needed. And they're looking at us with a different lens because they're looking at us like we're, a trusted voice in their space, which was always important to us.

00:33:48:01 - 00:33:57:08

Cheryl Parker

That's where we wanted to be. We wanted to be the most trusted voice in this space, and we're getting there because of it.

00:33:57:10 - 00:34:21:03

Alex Winter

That's wonderful. That's wonderful to hear. And that's the goal of the endless customer system, is to become the most known and trusted voice in your space. And you certainly have done that at Kaplan. So, I mean, hats off to you and the team and all the hard work that you put in. Jess, how about for you? Closing thoughts on why coaching has been so important and why the endless customer system can work not just for an amazing company like Kaplan, but for all of our viewers and listeners out there.

00:34:21:05 - 00:34:53:03

Jessica Palmeri

I think the secret to endless customers and, you know, the success of our coaching program really comes back to we want you to do the work yourselves. And I'm a stickler for making sure that my clients, my customers, really understand that I'm I am their trainer. I am their coach, but I am also the person that's going to put them through bootcamp to make sure that they can be as successful as Cheryl here, because I, I never, you know, led Cheryl down the easiest path.

00:34:53:03 - 00:35:20:08

Jessica Palmeri

But it was it was hard work 100% of the time. But I, I, I wanted to make sure that by the end of this process, if she really committed to and this customers, if she really committed to learning HubSpot and using that as a tool to help further her and this customer's journey so that marketing and sales could use content seamlessly together to close more business and win more customers with endless customers, if you will.

00:35:20:10 - 00:35:39:09

Jessica Palmeri

That if we committed to that vision, if we committed to that journey, that they could eventually carry the torch forward and do it themselves internally. And Kaplan's a great example of an organization that's been able to do that. Yes. They come back to our conferences every year to learn new things and get new ideas and spark new visions of where to go next.

00:35:39:11 - 00:35:57:02

Jessica Palmeri

But they are owning everything in-house. And I think that that is the secret of this type of coaching and training program. You come for the coaching and training. You come to get someone to kick kick your butt and make sure that you do the right things, but you stay because there's a community of other people that also want that type of motivational coaching.

00:35:57:04 - 00:36:12:18

Jessica Palmeri

And then eventually it becomes about learning from that community so that you can continue to push yourself to do more within the the technology and the tools that you have or the system that you're adopting to ensure that your business is always successful.

00:36:12:20 - 00:36:18:02

Alex Winter

Well said. Very well said, Jess. Thank you for taking the time and for being on the show today. It's been great having you here.

00:36:18:04 - 00:36:27:06

Alex Winter

Yeah. And Cheryl, also, thank you so much for being on the show, and thank you for sharing your story with not just your personal and professional journey, but the Kaplan story as well means a lot.

00:36:27:08 - 00:36:28:10

Cheryl Parker

Thanks for having me.

00:36:28:12 - 00:36:31:22

Alex Winter

Absolutely. We'll have to have you back on and hopefully we'll see you at the next event.

00:36:32:00 - 00:36:32:18

Cheryl Parker

I'll be there.

00:36:32:18 - 00:36:40:05

Alex Winter

All right. Awesome. Well, if everybody there watching and listening this has been a great episode of Endless Customers. I'm your host, Alex Winter. We will catch you on the next episode.