As a CMAC (Certified Marketing Automation Coach) / ICC (Infusionsoft Certified Consultant) since the Fall of 2008 I have gotten to know the good people at Infusionsoft and I like them.
While I have had some frustration with some features (or lack thereof) the staff has treated me like gold and, no, I don’t think it’s because I’m a CMAC. (I’m not some world-renowned super marketer. Just a former Air Force football player with 6 kids building my own sales and marketing consulting gig in the bowels of SoCal with a passion for sales and marketing training/consulting.)
I am also certified as a trainer with Salesforce.com and I have used SFDC since 2004 with various high tech companies.
With that experience I have no qualms recommending Infusionsoft to small business owners over SFDC. SFDC was meant for large enterprises. SFDC sucks when it comes to helping small businesses market and sell and grow.
I will stipulate that I approach using Infusionsoft from a sales and marketing standpoint vs. a programmer, which I am not.
Infusionsoft has been great for my small business clients that are looking to:
- embed web forms.
- build a database.
- tag that database for future, relevant correspondence.
- communicate with that database regularly with good, relevant content.
- codify and quantify their unique selling propositions to ensure their messaging is delivered to 100% of prospects 100% of the time.
- track open rates with HTML emails and trackable links embedded in the emails.
- process credit cards (ecommerce) for both one time orders and subscriptions via order forms and/or a shopping cart.
- offer an upsell at the time of checkout.
- store and share notes and files/documents with small teams.
- grow.
I’m glad Infusionsoft lowered the $5,000 setup fee. It’s now $2,000 and that gives you a dedicated person (like me) to help you get started with up to 6 hours of private assistance. Try getting that from some of the other guys.
Infusionsoft, when installed and used properly like Gregg LaPore described above, is PERFECT for the one-office dentist, Realtor®, mortgage broker, promotional items company, IT VAR, restaurant owner, etc with 1 – 25 employees and thinks marketing is putting a wrap on their car and their picture on their business card and expect the phone to ring.
I’ve been selling and/or training since 1995 and I can tell you that Infusionsoft and Dan Kennedy made me stretch to fully comprehend and begin to master the art of marketing through persuasive copywriting, consistent follow up and upsells.
Did Infusionsoft sell a little more than they could handle? Probably. (How many small businesses [or former small businesses] wished they had that problem?)
Did it cause some pain for some users? Obviously.
Are some of their sales people a little pushy and cheesy? Yes (but none of them have been through my sales training courses!)
Do any of the sales people possess the power of telekinesis or Jedi Mind Tricks that forced people to buy? Not that I know of.
Do the support staff blow people off? Apparently, but they’ve never done it to me nor any of my clients and I don’t have ESP, telekinesis or Obi Wan’s powers.
Are the support staff inexperienced? I noticed an influx of rookies 6-8 months ago but that seems to have tapered off and the folks I’ve spoken with since then have been fine if not superb.
Is Infusionsoft a better solution for the small businesses I listed above compared to hobbling together Outlook, Excel, 1ShoppingCart, aWeber and ConstantContact and Salesforce.com? Without a doubt.
If you’re a 90 person company with 650 SKUs and you’re growing 50% a year and you’re adding 5 products a month…Infusionsoft may not be right for you…but they admit it.
If you don’t have a list, you’re just starting out online, you’ve never created a webform and you’ve never even used the “Categories” feature in Outlook to segment your contacts, might you be better off with a ConstantContact account for $19 or $29/mo? Probably. But how big do you want to be and how quickly? If the answer is “BIG” and “fast” then it may be worth it for you to start out with Infusionsoft.
If you’re a 10 person company with two sales people and you, the owner, are involved in sales and and you’re doing manual, duplicate entry and sales and leads are falling off the table then Infusionsoft can be a life-saver.
But if you’ve never written a follow-up sequence or exported contacts as CSV files or tagged/categorized contacts, and you can’t explain your own company’s USP and you can’t rattle off in your sleep 3 COMPELLING reasons why I should buy from YOU then you’d be well-advised to take the $5,000 you just saved on the Infusionsoft setup fee and retain someone to help you set all of this up for you FROM DAY ONE!
Why?
Because sales and marketing are:
A) Not the same.
B) Not as easy as it looks.
C) Friggin’ IMPOSSIBLE to master in a timely fashion for the typical “E-Myth” technician that thinks “I can shimmy a door better than my jerk of a boss” and goes out on his own to open his own contracting business only to have his ass, kidneys, liver, lungs, nostrils, knee caps and esophagus handed to him a mere 6 months later after he’s run out of fancy business cards and relatives he can beg business off of.
If you try to duct tape your marketing and bootstrap any platform, in 4 months you’ll be out $800 to $3,000 in consulting in fees, $8-$20,000 in lost opportunity costs, and 80 hours of software-induced frustration and you’ll be posting on here your love for Infusionsoft rather than Infusionsoft is awful or Infusionsoft sucks.
Remember, Life’s too short for follow up calls.
Good Selling,
~Wes
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
Throw down some graffiti below along with your thoughts, comments, experiences and suggestions. 
Wes Schaeffer is founder and owner of “The Sales Whisperer®,” the best dang sales training, social media marketing, copy writing and Infusionsoft Small Business CRM consultant this side of the Mason Dixon Line. He has traveled the world serving his country, selling high tech gizmos and gadgets and training business owners, entrepreneurs and professional sales people how to sell more, faster, at higher margin, with less stress and more fun. He even has a “Double Your Sales in 12 Months” guarantee. Contact him here today to start doubling your sales by tomorrow. When you’re done you can subscribe to his podcast on iTunes here.
