W5 Templates is a simple, yet powerful customer relationship management tool to help a sole proprietor or large team manage their business, contacts and sales pipeline. Founder Dave Oshlag talks about the tool as a great resource to help businesses start back up from COVID-19 pandemic. Summer of 50 PGH Tech Stories is powered by Comcast!
Transcription:
Everybody, I am so glad you are participating being part of our summer of 100 Pittsburgh tech stories. This is Jonathan Kersting. And I got a brand new haircut. It's absolutely true when three months and then finally got my haircut and I'm getting used to it a little too streamlined right now, but it's keeping me aerodynamic for these great interviews that we're doing. Hanging out with Comcast making these stories happen or telling 50 of these suckers. And our good friend Dave Oshlag. Here. He's number three. You're early in on here, Dave. I'm really glad to have you hanging out with us.
Thanks, Jonathan. do appreciate the invite.
You're also contributing author to TEQ magazine. Because when it comes to all things productivity, I think of Dave Oshlag. Simple as that.
Appreciate that, thanks for taking the time today, I'm really excited to nerd out on what's happening with w five, and you're doing a little bit of a relaunch because your tool is just so helpful in this day and age, as we're trying to be very selective. We're trying to be very, very efficient about how we network and how we build contacts and build our databases and having good solid, simple, easy to use tools as part of that. And that's why it's all about so it is. And in a recent conversation I had with a professor over at Penn State, I was talking to him about what we had. And he said, you know, it's really an ideal tool from an organizational standpoint for people that are really looking to just kind of get started right away with some sort of tracking system for either clients or prospects and migrate into projects as well. But simplicity is really the key And people don't want to take the time, nor do they really have the time to learn this system. So our system is already based on the backbone of Microsoft Excel so that there's very little learning curve.
Sounds like the right tool for me simple and powerful. Because sometimes, you guys spend a ton of money for really big CRM type tools, right? And then you don't end up using play, you'll use a fraction of the capabilities. And so you're kind of like, and those extra capabilities can kind of get in the way sometimes, too. And I think what you're doing obviously seems to be streamlines that. What was your inspiration to get this thing started? You've been doing this for a little bit. I know this is this is something you've been doing for a while. What's up with that?
Yes. So the the biggest consulting practice we have, which is project marketing associates, our largest client, a number of years back was the hJ Heinz company before they ended up getting bought out. Bye bye, Berkshire Hathaway slash 3g and just move them off to to Chicago, and we saw this coming. And we wanted to start kind of expanding who we were talking to, okay. And I looked at all the programs that were out there at the time. And there's a lot of them. I mean, there's basically a program for every day of the month, practically. And none of them were simplistic enough for me, I didn't want to, you know, do run a huge social media campaign, not for our consulting business it didn't make doesn't make sense. Everything we do really is relationship based. Exactly. So for me keeping track of the conversations and keeping track of information pertinent to my clients, like the admins name, it's always a nice thing to be able to talk to somebody and remember who that person is. If he or she, you know, has family members, you know, things along that line and being able to recall in detail past conversations and information that really kind of shows that you care. You can't do that in a file folder very well, but electronic beautifully. There's no question about it. So I wanted a system that would allow me that flexibility to manage the data in a way that I thought was most personable and powerful.
Absolutely. So I think really cool since we have the video aspect to this, if you're listening to the podcast version, will describe this with immense detail. But I love the idea that we can share screens here in zoom, you're gonna give us a little tour of how Wi Fi works. So I think when you see this, it's kind of cool because you just see how simple it is.
Yeah, and for anyone on a on a podcast that they want to pop in though, the easy website is W five T dot biz, and all these all these screens are available on there under the about section, okay, which is which we're currently looking so this is an overview of the product and you see right in the news middle is the Excel tool that we developed. And it's not really quite your standard Excel tool because we put a couple of additional features, we build some really easy function buttons at the top, it looks friendlier than Excel to me, sometimes Excel freaks me out.
Well, we tried to make it user friendly, we actually got a graphic designer to kind of help us with the look and feel of it. Because we thought we user interfaces is important. So we took that to heart. Once the informations in your Excel sheet, there's a nice little Sync button. And that puts all the information securely in the cloud. From the cloud. We also have a mobile app and the mobile app will show up on either your iPhone, your Android, multiple tablets. And you're able then to actually see the same information that you see in your Excel sheet just formatted differently. So you're able to see contacts, all your information, and then all of your notes and you can edit your information mobily and then that information will sync Back to your.
Yeah. And I think the fact that it is usable on a smartphone is just so awesome because at the end of the day, that's how we're all doing business these days. So it seems like come on, doesn't get any simpler than that.
It really doesn't. And so just just, you know, dive down just one level deeper on on each of these, I can get the right here we go. So the dashboard looks a little bit like this. And it's a series of rows and columns with headers, and a number of these headers, you can define yourself. It's color coded. So green is something that's due today yellow is it's due tomorrow, and red means I missed the due date. And that's as simple as a guy and the last comment notes are always present everything on the dashboard with the exception the notes is editable directly from there. So you don't have to go terribly far.
I've never seen anything simpler when it comes to having something that that's like a like a serum. I mean, like Lily, she's right here in front of you. Yeah, just columns. columns and rows to fill out and there's like what, like 10? Or so going across the top? And
yeah, I mean, there are there are a total of 27. But you can you can define how many you want to see, this is a simple view to act to, to see all the history of notes, you simply double click on anything in that particular clients row and there's an entire history. That is what the dashboard looks like the settings page. To get it set up is one stop shopping we put all the information is a little hard to read. But everything in the dotted boxes is what can be customized and even customized so much, right? So you can build it right towards your exact needs. So it becomes your own personal tool, which I think when once you customize it, it means you're gonna use the heck out right?
That's the idea and we have plenty of examples and we work with clients to help them we have a lot of experience and we can kind of zero in and the things that we think will be most It's useful, but they're always free to change it on the fly. From from here, today use a typical customer of yours is there a sweet spot for folks that are using Wi Fi,
small to medium sized business leaders is is who we target. We've had the most success with folks in a business to business role that can be owners of cleaning companies, it can be owners in the company is and we even had business unit leaders of Fortune 500 companies who say, Gee, I want to manage this. And actually I've got one that's kicking off one now actually for worldwide projects. Okay. So their customers are internal. And they're keeping track of all of those and all that notes are going in there. And they're sharing it and then they're actually using it to read with their manager.
So are they actually using this like side by side with the room CRM that that's running other aspects of their business?
So it's not uncommon.
Yeah. You ever worried right?
Yeah, exactly. There, there is an existing official system. And they may not like that. So then they go to something that's a little bit easier for them. And and that's where our tool comes in.
I see no, that's, that's really, really cool. And so basically, I mean, it's like a trial version, people can kind of check it out at first to see if they like it or not before they commit, like, how do people kind of engage you to say, I'm interested in this? And
yeah, so the easiest, easiest way to do this, again, this is out on our website. There's a free, free trial demo button, right? So you just click on that, populate it with your contact information. And I or one of my associates will get ahold of you to schedule a free 30 or 60 minute depending on how you want to put forth Yeah, setup session and the free trial templates are yours to keep and work with. And so yeah, we have full versions. They're all the features that are in the regular version are included in the demo, all we do is we just limit the demo to 1010 contacts, I say to start, and then we'll open.
And if people liked it, we can, we can easily flip that over to a full version. So you won't lose anything, don't have spent hours putting in, I think putting that first 10. And we'll take it like five minutes. Because it's pretty quick and easy. Yeah, it actually is, it doesn't take long. And if you've got something, it's interesting, a lot of clients already are tracking projects in Excel, or Word documents. So you can do a lot of cutting and pasting to get started. And it makes a simple, so absolutely. So let's talk about how this is a tool. I feel like right now, people are kind of the retooling, they've had some downtime, and they know the guy can really start ramping up, you know, as we hope to get into a post COVID world or just a COVID world or we're doing business with all that kind of weirdness around us and the importance of having these types of tools. So when you're out there networking We got to be really precise these days, it we got to make sure that we're being efficient. I think this is the perfect tool that someone's is using it just to manage like a vast network of leads and things like that this way, then you can really capture, like, all the different people that you're meeting as you go along the way. And he's building yourself a database.
Yeah, that's exactly what you're doing. And actually, there was an article in the Wall Street Journal this morning, entitled The new area, a new era of networking. And it talks about building relationships, and keeping things simple. And not going too deep in terms of who you talk to. So it's really quality of contact over quantity of contact. And our tool lends itself really well to that in terms of the level of detail that you can keep track of for each person that you're talking to. And that that's how you'll build a longer lasting relationship with with these folks. Very cool.
So what are some other key productivity tools that you think are out there that people should be taking advantage of, I noticed one of the articles here Right for the for the GQ Magazine, you always find some interesting things that are kind of happening out there. It's like you're the most like I think like organized like on the ball kind of guy because you have all the tips and tricks and I'm like on the unlike the inverse of you, Dave or I just like, write things down on paper and use them. There's a lot of people that do that. So you're really in good company.
There's a lot of tools. It's interesting, because the tools that used to be really popular, were those that had a lot to do with when you would do trade shows, and conventions and now that that whole model is changing. And it used to be programs that would allow you if you're displaying, for example, to have people text to you. So you could then capture their emails and their numbers and get back to them after the fact. Right? Um, honestly, I think in terms of productivity, I mean, it It's obviously, you know, it's stating the obvious but you know, zoom or Microsoft Teams or GoToMeeting any any of the tools that allow us to do literally what we're doing. Yeah. is absolutely a must have.
Because without it you can't you have no no sense of, of personal connection really. And so all the video conferencing tools are right at the very, very top of the list today. It's blew my mind how like, like, literally, I think back in like, beginning of March, I was asked to join a zoom call. And this is before everything was locked down. I was like, What the hell is this zoom crap all about? Like, really? Like, oh, like, and then Little did I know. weeks later, my whole life would be based on zoom. So you're absolutely right. I never realized how important it was to be able to look at somebody through a computer screen and go, that's really my only point of contact. Now. I'm actually feeling pretty good about that.
I'd much prefer sitting across the table drinking a cup of coffee, but that's not gonna happen anytime soon.
Exactly. And I'm looking forward to those days when they come back. So I knew they will be at the end of the day. Like, I just think it's cool that there's like you saw a need in the market. You address it with w five templates, a cool little solution. And I just really can't encourage people enough to give it a demo, try it out and see if it works. Because I mean, it'll get you organized. Was that?
Yeah. And the other point of difference. And this kind of goes back to one of the conversations I was having with my, my marketing colleague, professor at upenn. The difference that we have, versus a lot of the others is that we're going to work with you and we're going to stick with you. Yeah, to help you through that process. It's a little daunting, if you've never set up any type of a system.
We're gonna help you through it step by step. I mean, that's just the way you guys are. It's not your instruction manual, right? Well
we're also going to stick with you During the process and beyond, like we're not we don't go away. I mean, it's very important to us to make sure that you know that we're your resource. And we do these type of meeting all the time where we can screen share, and we can troubleshoot. My basic motto is, if you spent more than five minutes trying to figure something out, you don't need to call, okay. It's all built in. And people and that's a really good model, right? So some people like what I know I can figure it out. And then if you can't, you wasted enough time, right? Your time is more valuable.
I like this help five minutes. If not, give me a call and make sure you get it done in five minutes. And we end and we do that.
That's exactly what we do.
That is a bootleg spirit that I love so much. That's why you've always been one of my favorite people. Dave, it's always been a joy hanging out with you and watching you build w five templates, that's for sure. Well, we do think that there there should be a number of people that are looking to either you know, relaunch their own business or you know, they There may be people that are starting totally new businesses because what they had before doesn't exist.
Exactly right. So if folks need a place to start, give us a call. We're happy to work with you just to get you up and running. If you like it, you know, you'll know it pretty quickly. If it doesn't fit your style. You'll also know that, but we think simpler is better. And the price point is not going to be a problem for folks. We've made it affordable. So business owners can make it I can get it all the way around. Dave, you are the best can't thank you enough for being part of number three of our 50 Pittsburgh summer of Pittsburgh tech stories we're doing that with Comcast couldn't do without them. It's a love telling these stories. There's so many different angles and what's happening here in Pittsburgh and only those cool angles, Dave that's for sure. Thanks for hanging out with me.
Jonathan. Thanks for having me. Take care.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai