How Bajillion Agency Uses Automated Tasks to Get Things Done

Founded by world-class business coaches, the Kansas-based Bajillion Agency is a full-service marketing agency that specializes in memorable brand development, smart systems, and tracking your return on investment.

They are primarily a marketing company, but they also focus on business systems, videos and business coaching.

Since the launch over a year ago, Bajillion Agency has grown its team by 20% every quarter, and has tripled its client base. We interviewed Bajillion business systems consultant Jarrod Guth, who helps companies understand the value of efficient software and to find solutions that help organize and automate their daily tasks.

Why They Chose Copper

“I'm kind of a Google nerd," says Guth. Having read up on Google's material design and its design language, once he joined Bajillion Agency he moved the company into Google Apps environment — which led the company to Copper and its seamless integration with Google Apps for Work.

“When I came on board, they were using Infusionsoft and things were not very automated," says Guth. The company had also been using Soffront, another CRM service that did not meet their expectation for usability.

Meanwhile, with Copper, the work has been seamless. “There are things I'm able to program with it that I couldn't with other CRMs."

Guth, who had previously used Salesforce, said he was very pleased with the Copper UI/UX.

“With CRM apps, I look for usability and adaptability," Guth says. “Getting started with Copper was awesome — the process was so easy. In the past I'd been constantly on the phone with the vendors, but with Copper, everything was laid out so simple."

While legacy systems took up to two weeks to get up and running, Guth says implementing Copper took less than a day.

“We are now 100 percent cloud-based. Our owner was very happy with the move into the cloud," says Guth.

Bajillion Agency now offers business-systems consulting services to its clients, so they can use cloud-based CRM to improve their project, pipeline and data management. “My job is to identify inefficiencies, and improve them as far as technology is concerned," Guth adds.

Maximized Team Visibility

When it comes to managing the agency, Guth and his team use Copper to keep track of their clients and associated activities such as emails, phone calls, and notes. As everyone in the team has the access to those records, it makes it easy for anyone to pick up where the last team member left off. Prior to implementing Copper, Guth says, “We had issues where we would call a client assuming we had previously reached out to them, and it turns out they'd never been contacted. Copper eliminates that and definitely gives us a level of detail we'd never had before."

Guth points to the company's lead salesperson and how he uses the tool as an example of how the team uses Copper for better collaboration and streamlining.

“Copper makes it easy to see what step each client is at, and with good design and simplicity, we can focus on where they need to go next."

"When he starts his day, the first thing he does is to look at his leads in different pipeline stages and identify who he needs to call. For instance, he'd move clients he'd closed onto the final stage so I can take care of billing," he explains. “Copper makes it easy to see what step each client is at, and with good design and simplicity, we can focus on where they need to go next."

Automated Tasks

Guth and his team are big fans of Copper's automated tasks, which allow them to trigger automatic reminders based on certain actions. “We no longer need to constantly remind each other to follow up with clients," he says.

As a part of its main business activities, Bajillion Agency runs business coaching services, and its sales process includes getting clients into complementary coaching sessions and events. The firm's 13-step business process is at the company's core — each step of which has been set up as a pipeline stage in Copper.

The beginning phase involves marketing activities that get leads into the pipeline, and the end phase includes signing a contract and sending invoices.

Each stage has an automated task setup, Guth explains — so once employees move an opportunity into another stage, Copper automatically creates a task and sends out reminder emails.

The company's first-impressions manager has a canned response in Gmail that she can send out to all the clients whom she receives the automated reminders to follow up with. Once the follow up emails are sent, she moves those opportunities into the next stage in the pipeline, which sends another automated message to a salesperson to follow up with a call within a day.

The ability to automatically assign tasks when an opportunity is moved from one stage to another helps eliminate potential confusion for team members, each one of whom is responsible for looking at different stages. “Copper has helped them stay on top of the process and move the client along quickly and correctly," Guth says.

Currently Guth is in the process of getting his team set up with advanced automated workflows by separating pipelines for marketing leads and sales. Once it's set up, the marketing team will know exactly what they need to do to guide those leads through the pipeline, with a more targeted approach to lead generation.

Final Thoughts

Another one of Guth's favorite features is the email tracking function, which allows users to see when and by whom their emails have been opened. “It's fun to walk into the office and ask my colleagues why they haven't replied to my email, since I know they opened it. Hey, you have to have fun at work too," Guth laughs.

They are also heavy users of the Copper mobile apps. “I use it to make sure that things are getting done, so I don't need to be on the computer the whole day. For our salespeople when they go to events, they can take sales notes on the go."

Guth says Copper's automated features and organizational tools have saved the company at least a couple of hours a week. "Contacts are setup in such a way that I never have to clean data like I was doing with some of the other CRMs in the past," Guth says.

Copper has helped Bajillion Agency maintain clean data, collaborate more efficiently and automate their workflows. Guth is a Copper advocate and has joined the Copper Partnership Program, so he can help more companies improve their efficiency.