Mistakes Lawyers Make When Building Out Their CRM with Rob Petrie

Watch the YouTube version of this episode HERE

Are you a law firm owner who is looking to make business operations more efficient? In this episode of the Maximum Lawyer Podcast, Jim and Tyson speak with guest Rob Petrie, an expert in Salesforce and business operations.

Rob shares the reasons why Salesforce is a great tool and when businesses, especially small and medium sized businesses should use it for operations. What makes Salesforce so unique is that it has a user centric approach, where you tell the tool what you need from it. If you need to get certain pieces of information from a website, Salesforce provides it to you.

Since law and technology are two very different things, it can be a challenge to get lawyers on board with using a tool like Salesforce. It is best to have someone act as a translator to stand in the middle and make sure the customer, such as a law firm, can understand how the tool works and can bring that social aspect to a project. Diverse teams generate the best results, so having an array of people and personalities working on a project is the best way to get something done.

Take a listen to learn more.

Jim's Hack: Have dialogue with staff because what they say may surprise you and teach you something.

Rob’s Tip: When you see inefficiencies in your work, right it down. If you notice it frustrates you over and over, think about where your priorities are and change it.

Tyson's Tip: Understanding that you have a natural tendency to believe what people say. It is good to objectively look around things when people are not telling the truth.

Episode Highlights:

• 03:32 The importance of investing in the analysis and design phase before building a CRM system
• 06:28 Common mistakes made by business owners and law firms when designing a CRM system, focusing on solving for the happy path and change management
• 08:40 The importance of data cleanup, migration, and user acceptance testing before the go-live phase, and the challenges faced during the initial launch period
• 13:26 The extensive capabilities of Salesforce as a business operations platform and the challenges of maximizing its potential
• 14:29 The common misconception about the need for integrations and the importance of simplicity in CRM system design
• 15:26 Challenges and strategies for dealing with non-technical clients and bridging the gap between technical and non-technical mindsets
• 17:25 The role of AI in Salesforce and its potential to enhance job roles 
• 21:24 The importance of tracking and addressing process inefficiencies in business operations

Connect with Rob:

• Website

Resources:

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Transcripts: Mistakes Lawyers Make When Building Out Their CRM with Rob Petrie

Tyson (00:06.414)
and I'm Tyson Mugics. What's up, Jimmy?

Jim (00:21.769)
Welcome back to the Maximum Lawyer Podcast. I'm Jim Hackie.

Jim (00:29.609)
Tyson, I'm glad we're recording today. I'm glad we're doing this episode. We have a very special guest who's gonna walk us through some issues when it comes to building out your CRM mistakes that lawyers make and all the kinds of things that you need to be thinking about if you're trying to take your firm to the next level as it relates to…

Keeping track of potential clients and in fact even building out your operations. His name is Rob Petrie. He's with Setco Partners in the Great White North Wisconsin, Minnesota Rob and I worked together this last Year all last year work building out sales for us. So sales force for us. So Rob, welcome to the show

Tyson (00:57.934)
So Rob, tell us about how you got into this business and a little bit about your journey that brings you to today.

Rob Petrie (01:15.07)
Thanks for having me guys, appreciate it.

Rob Petrie (01:25.438)
Sure, so I've been working with Salesforce my entire professional career, about 13 years. Did some in -house work for rapidly growing.

software companies for the first half of my career and then got into consulting and a selling role about seven, eight years ago, always working with Salesforce. So did a few years, kind of found a company that was willing to take a shot on me, teach me how to sell, fell in love with it. And then right around when COVID happened, took the leap and started my own firm with my partner, Tom, and we've been able to grow it ever since. So it's been a fun, fast paced journey. I've learned a lot, but,

We're up to 22 employees right now, growing pretty quickly and kind of figuring it out as we go along.

Jim (02:11.689)
When I tell people that we made the switch to Salesforce, when I talk to law firm owners, their eyes sort of get really big like this and they're like shocked. They think that Salesforce is for like McDonald's or big sales companies or big corporations. When do you think that people should start thinking about Salesforce as a realistic options as far as what stage of growth?

Rob Petrie (02:34.078)
Yeah, I mean, I'm certainly biased, given the nature of my business, but it is a very big misconception that Salesforce is not intended to be used by small, medium -sized business. I would say 75 % of the work we do is with companies with 150 employees or less. And I'm a big believer in the crawl, walk, run approach. So to your point and question, Jim.

Tyson (02:58.798)
Well, if you're used to the crawl, walk, run approach, then it must have been a nightmare working with Jim because he's the run, run, run approach and then abandon ship and choose another software.

Rob Petrie (03:00.894)
My response will be right away. I don't think you necessarily need to do everything right away or obsess over it right away, but I think it's a very appropriate tool when you're starting a business or when you get serious about operations to try and put it in place right away.

Rob Petrie (03:31.134)
Well, you know, that's funny to say that there's a little bit of that, but I would say Jim crawled and walked with other systems. So he came in very, very educated and very aware of the challenges of a project like this. So we like that. It's easy to work with firms that have kind of been through it before. So.

Tyson (03:32.494)
Yeah, so let's, I do want to talk about that. So let's jump right in, because you worked with Jim. Let's walk us through what the process was with Jim so that people have an idea. Because I know he's, he and I have talked about it a lot on the pod, but I'd love to hear from you, your perspective as to what process you put him through, the firm through, so that you could build out what they needed.

Rob Petrie (04:17.022)
Sure, so for a project like Jim's where we're replacing a system that's maintaining business as usual, there's a heavy amount of investment in the analysis and design phase. So it's a lot of process work, it's a lot of theoretical scenarios kind of talking through not only how are you doing it today, but I think in a perfect world.

challenging, do you need to do it that way, is there value in doing it that way? A system change like this is a really nice excuse to relook at things and rethink things and you know oftentimes you're surprised by how many opportunities there are to simplify or speed things up. So we spent I would say gym three, four months maybe in that process making sure we had a rock -solid understanding of

the workflow and the flow of data through the process before we broke ground and really started building. And the whole idea there is to not kind of build as you go to make sure we're on the same page, we're making Jim and his team aware of the decisions they need to make and the impact those decisions have on the build, the cost, how it's going to look and feel when it's rolled out. But,

Ideally, once you set the stage right, you're all on the same page. The building is the easier part. And I feel that was the case in your project, Jim, but I'd be curious to get your feedback.

Jim (05:42.185)
We had a real cast of characters sort of building us up. So Rob gave us a great Project manager named Jody Gilroy and she was fantastic at slowing us down and on our side we had Jim, Adela and Kelsey and We are all pretty much let's jump in and get going like going and I remember early on I was talking to Rob I think even before we signed the contract about You know how we currently did things and you just sort of push back and said well Why do you do it that way and why do you have to keep doing it that way? And so for us just the

process of having a fresh set of eyes and people who are project oriented because we were always like you said Tyson run run run as opposed to being methodical so slowing down and mapping it out even though to me it felt like a pain was really really helpful and I think it helped us get to where we wanted to be.

Tyson (06:18.03)
Is it my question Jimbo? I think it's your question. is it? Okay. I didn't know if it was. By the way Rob, we alternate questions. So that's how we normally do it. So, yeah.

Jim (06:39.337)
Sure. I can, yeah, I got it. So.

Rob Petrie (06:47.518)
It sounds good.

Jim (06:49.577)
So with that being said…

And looking at the mistakes that people make when they think about building their software, obviously this is one of them, not necessarily spending enough time in the design stage. And it was really unpacking our processes and figuring out how to replicate that in Salesforce. What other mistakes do you see business owners or law firms make when they want to design, quote unquote, the perfect system?

Rob Petrie (07:21.182)
Yeah, I think there's a few of them. One of the biggest mistakes we make, we encourage our clients to solve for the happy path. What that means to us is get it 90 % of the way there and don't necessarily obsess over the 10 % that may not fit into the happy path. It's amazing how that last 10 % can blow up the cost and timeline of a project and sometimes business owners get into a mode of…

Well, that's, you know, that's the whole reason we're doing it is for that 10%. They forget about the impact the 90 % is going to have. So we encourage people to solve for the happy path. I think the other thing too is just socializing it and making the team aware of not only the fact that this is happening, but why it's happening. Jim, you're firm. I've said this to you.

one of the did one of the best jobs we've ever seen and change management very early in the project. You were launching and speaking about an internal campaign to educate the team on Salesforce, explain why it was coming, but almost kind of preset the tone of, Hey, this is happening. So it's so get on board and get ready for it. sometimes we see business owners who get into it, but may not be all in. And I think your team can sense that hesitation and.

You're going to have people on every side of the spectrum involved in these projects. Detractors, people who want things to stay the same, and then people who are really excited about it. The more hesitancy people sense from leadership, the more those voices start to get elevated and louder when projects get challenging. So I think getting in front of it, socializing, educating your team as to the why, that's another big thing we encourage people to do. And when owners don't do that, I think it's a mistake.

Jim (09:12.393)
Yeah, for sure. And so.

We definitely wanted to get buy -in with the team. It wasn't particularly hard because we were having some pains with the software that we had. So we definitely sort of pushed that pain point and highlighted those issues that people were having. Let's talk about the time period after the design is done, or after the research is done and the investigation phase, you're switching to design and then that launch period. Because you and I have talked about other situations you've had, and I know you had one client who kept putting off.

off their launch and can we talk about the importance of version one ideation and what are the things you tell Klein?

Rob Petrie (09:55.134)
I think I caught the end of the question, just the importance of the launch in Go Live. The Go Live phase and getting ready for Go Live, it happens in kind of a couple of phases. So there's the data cleanup and the data migration. So eventually the foundation's built. You gotta get the data in. And then there's UAT testing. So.

We are very big believers and proponents of thorough testing. I always tell people, we want you to break the system. I'd rather you break it now than break it when your team is live and trying to go about their day jobs with it. But preparing for Go Live is something we as a firm are still trying to get better at. Go Lives are hard because people are gonna wake up one day and everything they're used to doing is changing. So.

I think one thing that made the hacking group unique with Adela, with Kelsey, with yourself Jim, you're very technical. So you were involved in the build. You took ownership of certain components of the build. You understood the ins and outs of the system. Not every business has those resources available or those skill sets available. So for our typical client, we're encouraging them as much as they can to sit down and spend time in the system.

before the Go Live. If things don't make sense, you know, we always say if you have a question, everyone else is going to have the same one. Make sure it makes sense. Make sure it's obvious how it's supposed to work. Break it. Find the bugs so that when we get into training, Go Live is as smooth as possible. And then I always say expect, you know, the first couple of weeks are going to be hard. It starts up here. It's impossible to get rid of every bug. Think of every scenario.

But if you can kind of press through those first two to three weeks, it really starts to kind of level out. People get used to it and they start to ideally see the benefits of the change. So those first two weeks are tough. They're always tough, but getting to kind of that third, four week with your head still held high is important.

Tyson (11:41.87)
So Rob, about a year ago, I read the book, A World Without Email by Cal Newport, amazing book. And I'm curious about design principles, because there's a lot of things with that book where you want everything in one place, right? You don't want to go looking for it. You want it to be right there whenever you need it, is some of the concept ideas. So I wonder how much of that you're guiding the customer through the process, and how much of it they're telling you what they want.

Because I'm sure there's a lot of ideas that you get from customers where they want certain things and you're kind of thinking, no, you probably don't want that and here's why. So can you talk about that aspect of things?

Rob Petrie (12:43.518)
Yeah, my business analysts are gonna watch this and kind of laugh at the idea of me speaking about design principles. I'll admit that that is not necessarily what I spend all day doing. I think some of the core themes though is we try to take a user story based approach. So for your typical client that isn't a database expert, don't focus on how it's gonna look and the technology of it, focus on what you want it to do. So.

I need this tool to show me this data when I log in to a page and look at hacking immigration law firm. I want to see these six pieces of information. Great. Don't worry about the how or don't worry about the technology aspect of it. Focus on the want. And ultimately it's our job to marry the business needs and business requirements then to the actual deployment. Salesforce is an intimidating tool if you've never seen it before.

We spend a lot of time turning things off, getting rid of things, trying to clean it up so that you're not seeing 10 things when you only need access to two things. So that's another thing. These tools are so powerful. They do so many things, but for your typical 25 employee small business, you only need 20, 30 % of the tool if it's your first go around with the CRM. So less is more for shares. Simplicity is important.

And then again, just trying to focus on in the design phase, you don't have to worry about how. We'll figure out the how, you tell us what you need, and we'll figure out the best way to do it.

Jim (14:23.561)
One of the things that drew us to Salesforce was the ability to build out the operations piece that is not just the CRM handling and leads. Talk about the power of Salesforce and sort of why you thought it was a good solution for us.

Rob Petrie (14:39.102)
Yeah, Salesforce is almost like inappropriately named now. It obviously made sense when the company started, but it's a business operations platform and there's not just your CRM. There's a full suite of 15 to 20 different tools and modules. I run my entire business on Salesforce with the exception of we use QuickBooks to push out invoices. It's a platform, so.

That's both a blessing and a curse. I think it's a blessing because we have a lot of small businesses that are aware of what it costs. They think it can do one thing and we're able to say, we can actually build more on it and you're paying for the tool already, so you might as well maximize it. But it's also a curse because the question with Salesforce is not, can we do it? 99 % of the time, the answer is yes.

Is there enough ROI to justify the time, energy, cost, effort in doing that? So that's where it gets hard because especially as a seller, like sometimes I feel weird. People ask, can I do this? Can I do this? Can I do this? Am I, yes, yes, it can. It can. And sometimes you just want to say no to build trust so you don't come off as the yes man and the sales process. But Salesforce can handle almost anything. The question is,

Tyson (15:47.63)
What are some things that people think that they really, really need, but they really, really don't need them? Have you ever thought about that?

Rob Petrie (16:01.406)
Is it worth whatever it's going to cost to build it there? So blessing and curse.

Rob Petrie (16:14.014)
Yeah, a lot of it's very common for people to ask for integrations to other systems. And Salesforce is fully capable of pushing and pulling data to and from other systems. I think it's an ask because it sounds cool and people think they need it, but then you always follow it up with, well, what do you need it for? And when you can get people to have a dialogue about it, sometimes people are asking us to build expensive integrations for something they do.

one to two times a week and it takes them five minutes to do. So I think integration to other systems, we do a lot of integration work. It's high value work when there's a need for it, but challenging the, how many times a day are you doing this? How long does it take? Is it really going to save you enough time to, you know, justify building the integration? That's a big one.

Jim (17:10.025)
Let's talk about dealing with two types of people. Design engineers, people that are building sales force and lawyers. They're two very different, generally two very different sort of mindsets and approaches. Or just even business owners. Like how does your team handle dealing with non -technical people and bringing them together to build something cool?

Rob Petrie (17:38.43)
Jim, can you finish your question? Sorry, I lost you. You cut out.

Jim (17:42.281)
Yeah, so when you have those sort of two different types of people, business owners or law firm owners and engineers, project managers, how do you get them to talk to each other to build something cool?

Rob Petrie (17:53.246)
Yeah, it's hard and I think it's harder because I love all types of people and enjoy talking to all different personality types and there's a little bit of when we get out of the sales process, now you're meeting the team you're paying for and the team you're gonna build a partnership with. The first thing I try to do is assess personalities and sometimes I'll just come out and say, you know, assuming everyone is equally as capable.

What do you want personality type in a consultant? What's important to you there? I think a big part of it is having solid project managers and business analysts on the front end of the project. Naturally, those types of people are social, they're warm, they're inviting, they're almost salespeople in and of themselves. But then our developers on the flip side of that, the traditional developer is stereotypically introverted.

You know, they're not the client facing resources. So trying to put a translator in the middle of them. And ultimately we'll get to the point where everyone knows everyone and it's comfortable and we can get them on a call. But for those first several weeks, kind of having that point person translate what the team at Hacking is saying to us and then turn it around and translate it into the information our more technical teams need, I think is a big, big part of what we do.

Tyson (19:02.574)
Jim, do we have enough time to keep going? Okay, just wanna make sure.

All right. So I, one of the things like we're in the middle of a build out ourselves, right? We're, we're on the back end of it. we're at the implementation phase of it. And one of my major concerns is how AI might disrupt everything that we're doing. So, like, I guess, what are your thoughts towards AI and how can we, how can we prepare to implement those things into our systems? I'm assuming the Salesforce has some sort of plan to implement,

AI into the system. So walk us through that a little bit.

Rob Petrie (20:03.55)
Yeah, so like all tech companies, Salesforce is pretty much all in on AI right now and the marketing materials out there and they're talking about it constantly. They have released this year their first version of like generative AI features. And we as partners are trying to kind of catch up to it. So internally at Secco, we're on the tail end of what we called an AI cohort.

our director of enablement Beverly put together a 12 -week program to try and figure out exactly the question you just asked kind of what is it? How does it work? Where's the value for our clients today? Where do they expect it to go? I am eagerly awaiting the results of that cohort what I can say now is the the What when Chad GPT was released and everybody heard about it and everybody started playing it around I feel like that was the first time I

the general population got a taste of what AI could do. Now that it's been a year plus with the tool out, I think we all see the cracks in it and some of the weaknesses of it, but you can apply that concept when you put something into chat GPT and you look and you're like, my gosh, that response is 95 % of the way I would write it or what I wanted to know. Salesforce is trying to find those parts of your.

process not to get rid of the human beings but to get them doing higher value things. So if you're going to send a customer support email that you don't just want to be, hey, thanks for reaching out. Your case is closed at this time. Bye, see you later. But hey, thanks for reaching out to us. Here's a summary of what happened, the resolution path. Salesforce would like to get it to a point where you click a button and 95 % of that email is written. So you can go back to resolving complex customer issues. So.

I don't see it as scary as some people think, but I'm also in tech, so I think it's kind of cool. But it's not in its current state a job killer. I think it's intended to be a job enhancer.

Tyson (22:04.814)
I was agreeing with you. Yeah, I think that's a good way to end it. So, all right, Rob, yeah. Say it again, Jim, you're cutting out.

Jim (22:16.713)
I think that's good. You're on mute, Tyson.

Tyson (22:19.63)
I'm gonna start to wrap and here we go. All right, Rob, so we are gonna start to wrap things up before I do. I'm gonna give you a chance. If people wanna reach out to you and potentially work with you or just ask you questions, how do they get in touch with you?

Jim (22:28.137)
That's where we're cutting it a whole loop and then we can get to the tip or hack. Sorry.

Tyson (22:44.974)
Love it. Very good. All right. So if for everyone that is interested in getting more information with Maxim Lawyer, go to Max, search Maxim Lawyer on Facebook and you join us in the big group. If you want to join us at one of our quarterly masterminds, go to maxlawguild .com. We would love to see you there. And while you're listening to the rest of this episode, if you don't mind stopping for a moment and giving us a five -star review, we would greatly appreciate it. Jimmy, what is your hack of the week?

Rob Petrie (22:52.478)
Yeah, either connect with me on LinkedIn or shoot me an email at rpetrie at setgopartners .com, like ready set go partners .com.

Jim (23:33.449)
I don't know exactly how to define this hack, but we have brought back our intake team morning meetings. We just offer 15 minutes about what's going on with the software or intake or any issues. Like today we did just some training on how to handle objections. When you listen to the team talking about their jobs, you will hear things that surprise you. Even if you think you have it all dialed in, even if you think everybody's doing things the same way. If you listen to what they say,

you'll hear things that might surprise you. So I had an intake specialist talk to me about how it slipped out of her mouth the other day. She's supposed to be sitting at her computer, but she said, yeah, I sort of like getting the slack before I get a transfer because if I'm in the kitchen or something, then I can run to the computer. I was like, what? And my eyes went like this. So just having that dialogue, there's lots of value to the dialogue, but one of the things is that people might just surprise you. You might be able to fix things.

Tyson (24:08.718)
Yeah, that's a good point. I just like getting those little tidbits from employees too. So that's good stuff. All right, Rob, we always ask our guests to give a tip, a hack. It could be a book, it could be a podcast, could be a quote, you name it. So what you got for us?

Rob Petrie (24:46.686)
Yeah, so I as a business owner and like I said, I run my entire business on Salesforce.

People are always surprised to hear me say I have a laundry list of improvements I wish we could make to our Salesforce org and to me it's just a question of what do we want our team working on our systems our clients so my hack of the week is to kind of do what I do when you notice inefficiencies in your process in your system just write them down I have a notepad right next to me and I'll go this takes forever and I'll move on and when it comes back the next week and I do

it again I start doing tally marks. So I try to keep a running list of all of the inefficiencies I see in my business but more importantly how frequently am I frustrated about them and when you start to get those high tally things you start socializing it does anyone else see this issue and you start to see where the priorities really are so keep a keep a list on your desk and hit it with the tally every time it comes up in real life.

Tyson (25:30.83)
that that's really good I may use that awesome all right for my tip it's I've been reading this book it's called spy the lie it's by some former CIA officers and it's really cool and so the offers are Philip Houston Michael Floyd and then Susan Carson arrow Carson Sarrow but there's something that was at the near the beginning of the book saying the second chapter where they they talk about and like it

This is like the baseline, but like if you can get past this, like you can be much better at spying lies. And it's understanding that you have a natural tendency as a human to believe what another person's saying. Like you will go out of your way to believe what that person's saying, even if logically none of it makes sense. Just because out of comfort, comfort alone, you'll go out of your way to believe the person. And so…

This is really helpful for me when it comes to things like depositions and in court, but like, who knows talking to employees, talking to vendors, negotiating a new purchase, car purchase, like things like that, where you can, you can, you just have that basic understanding. You can kind of set your comfort aside to objectively look at everything else around it. So it's a really good tool. So I recommend it, but the book is amazing, is really good. I wouldn't say it's amazing. It's a really good book to pick up on things like that. But.

I highly recommend it. Rob, thank you so much for coming on. Really appreciate it. I know that Jim's been saying a lot of good things about you and is really excited to use their new platform. So thanks so much for coming on and sharing a little bit.

Tyson (27:10.574)
You bet. All right. See you gents. Have a great day. Thanks, Rob.

Rob Petrie (27:28.126)
I appreciate it guys, thanks for having me.

Jim (27:29.865)
See you buddy.

Jim (27:34.761)
Good job, Rob. See you, man.

Rob Petrie (27:35.87)
Thanks Jim, appreciate you.