Hello, and good afternoon, everybody. Thanks for joining today's buddy seat webinar. We're glad you joined us today. We are here today to talk all about customer data and the importance of managing customer data within your business, and more specifically, use using a CRM to help you do that. We've got a great, group of panelists here to help have a discussion around this topic today. We hope that everybody on the on the call learns a little bit about managing your customer data and maybe gets a couple tips and tricks on how to either improve or do something different. Brief introduction of myself. My name is Benny Andres. I'm the VP of product here at Bushel. What that means is I get to help our teams build the products that our customers use. Bushel is a software company that builds software technologies for the agriculture industry. More specifically, this last summer, we released our version of a CRM, which has helped agribusinesses, utilize customer data to better manage their customers. And so we've got an invested stake in what we're talking about today as we've brought that product to market. A little bit about myself, and my background, prior to joining Bushel and prior to being in this product role, I also spent many years leading customer facing teams, and utilizing various CRMs and tooling across my experience as well. So, I've got some some knowledge and information in in how to utilize CRMs and how to manage customer data as well. So, happy to help moderate and lead this discussion, and, we'll go ahead and bring the panelists on in just a minute, but a couple housekeeping items before we do that. If you have any questions, we do want to have audience participation. So please, on the right hand side or in your navigation bar on this webinar, you should see a q and a section. Feel free to use that to add any questions. We'll be watching that throughout the webinar, and try to answer any audience questions as well. There's also a chat icon as well. If you wanna just add a comment or chat about anything, feel free to to chat as well. Outside of that, after the webinar, you will have a recording sent to all of the registered attendees, and so you'll have access to the recording. And then we'll also have, a CRM implementation guide that we'll be sending in an email as well. So we look forward to that after the webinar. Let's go ahead and bring Corey onto the stage. Corey is one of our panelists, and I'm gonna let Corey introduce himself and then also answer our first question, which, Corey, tell us a little bit about, the CRM or the tool you have in place today. Well, thanks for having me, Benny. My name is Corey Winstead. I'm the general manager, CEO of FS Grain. We are in Northern Illinois based out of Morris. We have about nineteen locations and, just under a hundred employees. And so about six and a half years ago when I started, we had just started to dive into a CRM tool and what does it mean, what does it look like, how do we use it. And so we've been down this journey for some time, and we currently use Sugar. And we have and we can talk about this further, but, basically, we've taken Sugar from the out of the box tool to where we do a lot with it from workflows to customer data. And so we are we are constantly inside that tool and have found a lot of value. Great. Thank you, Corey. Let's go ahead and bring Tess on the stage. Tess, if you could also introduce yourself and then share a little bit about the tools you're using to manage your customer data today. Yeah. My name is Tess Jarman. I work for United Quality Cooperative out of Western North Dakota. We have three elevator locations, and then we also have energy and c stores and a large retail location. Up until, a couple months ago, we were using the good old pen and paper and Teams message, emails, company meetings to get our information across. But besides that, now we are using the CRN, and we've been on that now for about two months. And, yeah, so that's kinda what we're doing now. So Thank you, Tess. Alright. And last, we'll bring up Kristen. And if Kristen, you could introduce yourself and also share, what you're using today for tools. Yeah. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. So my name is Kristen Hoffman. I am a grain marketing specialist at Maplehurst Farms. We are located in Rochelle, Illinois. We also have about twelve facilities located in Northern Illinois. Similar to tests, actually, just prior couple months ago, we also use the pen and paper, email, Teams chat to track any kind of conversations, but we have also transitioned to Bushel CRM program. Thank you, Kristen. Alright. We'll go ahead and get the conversation started. So the first thing I wanna jump into is what are some of the stories that we've seen in, maybe bad anecdotes or bad situations of trying to manage customer data in the old days, and what have we learned about that? I'm gonna toss this question to Corey first. Alright. Well, I think some, you know, some issues, I guess, we'll talk about that we had. And, again, going back to what Kristen and Tess said is that pen and paper. When you've got multiple locations, whether it be two, three, nineteen, forty, whatever it is, there's a lot of moving pieces. And to provide the right customer service, we have to make sure that customers we're responsive to our customers, that we understand what they're looking for, what they need. And if you're just writing that down on a pen and paper, information flow gets lost. Another issue that we had is early on in FS Grain's tenure, we had a lot of turnover. And in doing so, how frustrating is it when you hear from somebody new and you're a customer and you're having conversations, with that customer, and you're asking all the same questions that the person before you that just talked maybe six months ago or a year prior? So what we tried to do was make sure that we were had the important information inside the system that we could start to, provide valuable service and continuous service to our customers. Yeah. Thanks, Corey. Kristen, do you have anything you wanna add and maybe some, anecdotes of prior experiences you had where you had issues when you didn't have, customer data all in one place? Yeah. Absolutely. I can speak to it firsthand. So when I first came on as a grain marketing specialist, I filled the position of a role from someone who was retiring from the position over sixteen years. I was given a spiral notebook with names and numbers. So there is a lot of valuable information that, you know, kind of left with him as he retired, and we had a market or a merchandiser of forty years. He just recently retired this past year and same situation. So we're very excited to be utilizing the CRM program to start tracking that historical information and save that information so that, you know, thankfully, it hasn't happened yet. But should we have any turnover or any additional retirements happen in the near future, we've got that information saved to where our onboarding can go so much smoother. Thanks, Kristen. And, Tess, I'll give you an opportunity to answer this one too. What are some stories or or things that you've had in your past, about customer data? So up until about, I would say, three years ago, I was kind of the the long term employee, you could say, where if anyone needed to know anything about a customer, you called Tess to to figure out what she knew about them. I've been here about eight years now. We finally have some people in place who've been here, and we have some tenure. And, you know, everyone's kinda got some some meat in the game now, so it's a lot better. But it was hard to always be available to answer everyone's question, to let them know what's going on. And sometimes I didn't know. You know? So now at least, with, you know, Bushel and even the communications we have in place, to be able to have notes with someone else in a different department on the energy team when they're out selling fuel they can pull up a customer information account and look and see like oh yeah they do this this and this they have propane they also have some cattle on the farm. It just makes it a lot more seamless without having the, I would say, clunkiness of having to take the time, step away, call someone. Okay. What's the back end here? You know, that type of thing. It just makes it a lot more seamless. So That's great. Thanks for sharing that. I'll add a little anecdote from my own past. In a different job and a different industry, it wasn't too long ago when we needed to assign out customer cases to our team members. We would physically print pieces of paper and put them in a filing drawer. And then when you needed to grab a new case, you went to the filing drawer and grabbed that piece of paper, and that's how you did your work. So I just think about you know, that was maybe ten, fifteen years ago that we were doing things like that. So, to hear each of you talk about pen and paper and notebooks and spirals, I definitely, can recognize where you're coming from. So, Benny, I'll add to that. When, we when I first started, one of my first days, you walk in and you see somebody's monitor two monitors, and all there are sticky notes all over it. Right? And it's all the notes of the people they need to call or contact or call back, and it's like, what is going on? And it's just it was chaos. Now it was organized chaos for that individual. They knew what to do. But if you're trying to share that information with someone else, usually, those little stickies get thrown away. So it's, it's always, it's always good to have the data inside a safe and secure place. Yep. Sticky notes are good for little reminders, but maybe not your important customer information. Yeah. Yeah. You don't wanna put trade details on a sticky note. Yeah. Exactly. Tess, I'm gonna call you out here. You had talked a little bit about this, but I jump into the next question, which is all around collaboration between team members. So how you said a little bit about your energy team, but how have you seen a CRM or a tool like this help, different business units and different team members that maybe don't regularly work with each other be collaborative around the customer? Yeah. So we have, we are located in Ross, North Dakota, partial North Dakota, and Newtown North Dakota, and then Keene, which those don't mean a whole lot to everyone, but they're about forty five minutes apart from each other. So being together every day is not really something we're able to do. So because of that, put the putting things in the CRM has made it easier for our lumber sales rep to know, oh, he's a farmer, and he's also building a shop. You know? He maybe is not as connected to the customer like we are day to day, but he is in those big projects, which is nice to see. Also, we have a lot of farmers who are expanding. They might be adding cattle. They might be, adding on to their operation and need a fuel tank on-site. So it's nice for our energy sales reps who might not be able to drive forty five minutes to my office. They're able to get that figured out right that second versus a half a day of driving around in a big loop to get all the information you need to to make a a make a a good sales pitch or to talk to a customer in an informed way. Yeah. That's great. Corey or Kristen, anything you wanna add around team collaboration? Yeah. I can go ahead. So one of our biggest things is that we've got an agronomy department that we work really close with. We just recently brought on a new agronomy salesperson, and I have a lot of very similar customers that work with her as well. And I have noticed our collaboration really strengthened since we've utilized the CRM, now we're talking and asking questions of what can we do to better service this customer, what kind of things are we seeing in the fields for them, How can I better market their grain? Things like that. So I'm I'm really loving the fact that we can see each other's notes as well as collaborate and discuss a lot better. So, Benny, we're a grain only company at FS Grain. And so but the collaboration that we use that tool for is for our customer service team or our our grain buyers, our merchandisers, and our operations team. So we have all of our operation managers utilizing the CRM tool, and there's communication that flows through that that helps them understand, especially during harvest, what's coming in left with the customer, you know, just just details and information on that. We we also, we we use our CRM tool for a lot of different areas, and like I said earlier, with a lot of workflows. One of the things that we're utilizing CRM for today that has been, extremely helpful is we actually use it to do our dispatching. And so so we use our logistics department, uses that every day, and our grain buyers are scheduling trucks through a workflow through our CRM tool. So I noticed too that nobody's mentioned in here, hey. I log my customer information and I log my notes. Because really a CRM tool, if you think of it that way, it's never gonna work. But a CRM tool is something that is more collaborative and much bigger, I think, when it's, when you have complete buy in, throughout the company. And so that's looking at it from my my standpoint anyway. Yeah. So we talked about, better collaboration across business units. But, Kristen, do you have any stories of how using a CRM has changed how your business units have worked together? Has there any been anything that's been different or been improved because of that? Yeah. Absolutely. So I would say one of the things that has improved the most is when people are out of the office or sick very quickly. We're able to better pick up on where our staff has kinda left off at. So one of the biggest things that I can think of recently is that the December futures are basis roles or basis contracts. They had to be either rolled or priced out by the end of the month last month. So we had an originator that was out. We weren't quite sure where she was at originally, but then we were able to take a look at the CRM view and realize, you know, kind of where she was at with the customers. That way, we could pick up the phone and be like, hey. We know you talked to so and so recently. She's out of the office. However, this is what she said. Where are your standpoints on this right now? And we were able to kind of make the customer feel like, you know, we were also involved even though we were really weren't. Yeah. That's great. Tess, anything from your guys' team on on how teams have started to work better or differently together? Yeah. I think especially when it comes to, propane and fuel and grain, those are two things that really work hand in hand. So there's been a lot more collaboration from our energy teams and our grain originators when it comes to when you're on-site on a farmer and you make the you make a note saying, oh, I see two propane tanks or, oh, I see a however many gallon fuel tank. There's a lot more information there. And then also, their, the fuel team is able to understand a little bit more on the grain side. They're not as connected when it comes to the egg industry, so it gives them a little background, a little conversation starter when it comes to a farmer. How is harvest going? You know, that type of thing. So it seems more natural versus kind of a forced conversation or a cold call, which I don't think any of us really love to be a part of. So Yeah. This kinda ties into my next question, Tessa. I'll maybe let you kinda keep elaborating. But, specifically, as it relates to how you approach your customers, So have you changed has your team changed how they've started to approach their customers based on information you have about them within your tools? Yeah. I think we've approached it more from, a relationship standpoint versus You have a little bit more of a back back history to go off of. So it's more of a natural conversation of, what's going on, what did we talk about last time versus just going there, making the pitch, and leading. And I think egg especially is so much more of a relationship than a sale because they're gonna be continuously coming back hopefully to sell more of their grain, bring you more of their customer you know, more business to your customer base. So you wanna build a relationship and have something where they feel like they're getting something meaningful out of it versus just a quick one and done. Yeah. That's great. Kristen, does that relate to you, or have you have you done different approaches with how you're, connecting with your customers? Yeah. No. I agree completely with what Tess says. You know, we can build off of our relationships that our agronomy salespeople have already had by communicating with them and knowing kind of where things are at. We recently found out that one of our customers, you know, is going through a health situation, and so we were able to better communicate that. So, you know, when we get on that call with that customer, we can kind of go hit the ground running and say, oh, you know, start it off. I'm very sorry to hear you about x y z, you know, praying for you, whatnot, and just keep keep that relationship because Tess is right. Ag is relationship focused. It's not always about the sales. Yeah. That's great. So we've talked about collaboration and how we're using tools to better manage customer data. I wanna dive into some pain points in maybe even today's world, even using these tools, and specifically around pricing and quoting for your customers. So as if you're purchasing grain from them or if you're selling inputs to them, what are some of the pain points that you all are seeing, that maybe you could be utilizing a better tool or a CRM to help you with that? Is there anything, maybe, Kristen, to start with you, anything that you can think of that's a pain point today? Yeah. So one of the things that I've noticed is that customers sometimes forget about sales that they've made or offers that they've entered. So being able to go back and track and say, hey. On September fifteenth this past year, we talked about making this sale, getting it done, x y z. But I'll also kind of step in and say, now we are utilizing Bushel trade system as well, and we're connected with their app. So that disconnect doesn't happen as often now as it used to in the past, but being able to go back to our notes in our CRM, that helps significantly just as much. Corey, how about the team at FS Grain? Any pain points you're seeing currently? Yeah. I mean, there's always some kind of pain point. Right? But I I guess ours from, it's always good to have information. We and, again, full disclosure, Benny, as you know, but we're not utilizing the CRM tool that Bushel has or Bushel Trade, so we use a different platform. But I think the key is is seamless flow of information. So if those offers are out there, they're easily accessible, from anybody who who, may answer or pick up that phone. Right? And so I think these tools allow that transparency within the company. So you're not putting your customer on hold or saying, hey. I don't know what that is and asking questions. You just pull up their account information, and it's all right there. And, if that ties and is seamless, which is what we have, I think our early on pain point was we were missing a lot of opportunities and having errors because a customer might call in, wanna place a trade. There was it took a while to get into the merchandising desk, or when the merchandising desk got it, they didn't execute on it right away. And then by the time you get back to the customer, there isn't the fill that they expected or even the grain buyer expected. So that lag, you know, there's opportunity loss in there, whether it be for the grain company or the farmer, either one. And so, so the the tools that we're talking about today allow for that information flow and that transparency across the company. Yeah. That's great. Tess, I'm gonna ask you the same question. Pain points that you're seeing even today and you what you're quoting, your pricing, or your interactions you're having with your customers. Yeah. I would say I I apologize. I know my my video is all glitchy. But, I would say one of the pain points we're seeing is we have hired on some new salespeople, which is great, but they're not necessarily from our area. And I know farmers, they love to feel that relationship that it's someone local, it's someone that they've known, they maybe know their grandpa or their dad or, you know, there's some sort of relationship built there. So having something like this has helped because, a pain point we've had in the past is there's been no connection. You know, I always say you're gonna go talk to a farmer nine times, and it's gonna be that tenth time where you finally get a sale. But the first nine times, you're gonna talk about their dog, their wife, their grandkids, and where they go in the winter. You know? So it's that tenth time you finally get a sale. So to be able to have something to start off with on your on your first conversation with the farmer, it's not so formal, not so cold, has really helped because that has been one of our pain points in the past. So Yeah. That's great. I love that ten times, to to get the sale. That's a good little nugget. Shifting a little bit, I I heard Corey mentioned this at the top, and I think it's been kinda strong throughout some of the responses you've given. But, let's talk about staff turnover and how customer data and where you're managing your customer data can be so important for when you have a staff member leave that maybe had everything in their head, and and now they're gone, and now you have to bring somebody new on. So, Corey, I'd like to start with you on this one. Can you talk a little bit about how you manage, you know, bringing on a new staff member, onboarding them, and and managing through staff turnover as as it relates to customer relationship data? Yeah. I mean, we're experiencing that right now. We just had a, an employee retire from FS Grain, and so now we've gotta backfill all of those years of knowledge and information and connections. And so one of the things we do when it's a situation like that, you know, we will have, somebody will go and sit with them, talk to them about the customers. We'll go over what's inside our CRM tool, what that looks like, ask questions. We print off lists and reports from that, and then it allows the the the smooth transition. In the interim, we have someone that's a that's a backup that's continuing to contact that person while we're trying to find that replacement. But the nice thing is is when that replacement comes in, they have the information in front of them, just like what Kristen and Tess are talking about. Right? The the the the the information on family and and, you know, dog's names and all the things that matter to people because it's not just business. It's a relationship that really matters. And so it gives them a little bit of an edge, to understand, okay. I know what this person is important to this person. Now a lot of times you still ask, you know, you know, you're I mean, you're still asking those questions, but it's a little easier when you have some of the answers. We understand size of operation and a lot of what they do and the historical data. So we've done we've had our tool for six years. So we had we're starting to really get an understanding of what our customers are expecting and what they do on, you know, a year over year basis. And and, that has been helpful, for new hires to come in, especially ones and I'll add, especially ones that are just coming in just out of school. This might be a new job for them, you know, not the ones that have been experienced in the industry for a while, but a tool like this really gives somebody a a a leg up, I think, when they're trying to, maintain that seamlessness of the relationship. Yeah. That's great, Corey. Tess, do you wanna add anything on on staff turnover, how you've managed through, just changing stuff? Yeah. We've we've had our our fair share of that the last few years. We finally you know, we're we're on the on the good now. I will say at that point, we didn't have a CRM and my goal was to have something at that point. So the best we got was a chat system. Right? So we went to teams, had that we were at least able to communicate. Going through that many people, I I spent a lot of days, just talking to reassuring customers that the salesperson is a good salesperson there. They have your best interest in mind. And then at the same time talking to the the salesman on that side to give them the history, tell them what that farmer does, what they need, what they usually expect, and how to talk to a farmer. Every farmer you talk to differently. So not having something like this in place really hurt us because, it took us an extra maybe two days to get back to that farmer with the correct information. Whereas before, if we would have what we have now, it would give you a quick twenty minute skim looking through their notes to see what you've discussed. You have a pretty good idea at least to go into that first conversation. Yeah. That's great. We've got a couple questions in the chat. I'm gonna grab one of them off the top here. One of them says, have you found resistance from long term staff, in changing their processes, and what have you done to help with that? So this would be someone that's been here for a while, and maybe you're trying to bring up a new tool. Corey, I'll go oh, go ahead, Tess. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. No. That's fine. So, yeah, we definitely have some long term staff or, you know, sometimes there's just different skill levels when it comes to technology that everyone has and what they're willing to sit sit in front of a computer and do. So one of the things I tell our sales staff is the program is only gonna be as good as information that is submitted in it. So if you have very little information in it, it's not gonna be a school you're gonna grasp for. So, really, the part that I found is most important is those first ninety days when you're entering in all the data. The part that's maybe a little bit more muddy because you're adding in a lot of the nitty gritty that you won't have to add in consistently just at the beginning you will. So that's the hard part. But once you have all that data in there, you are gonna wanna reach for it. So, again, like I said, it's only as good as the data you put into it. And if you really emphasize that and make it a requirement. I know no one loves requirements at work, but it's required to be used. It's required to enter in every week, get a report, you know, something to show that they're consistently doing it. No one loves a micromanager, but in the same sense to make sure it's being implemented, I think it's important. Corey, go ahead. You said you had something here too. Yeah. Tess, I think you're right on. It's the garbage in, garbage out kind of situation where, but we had a lot of resistance early on as well. And one of the things that we found was trying to, get our our our team to understand the value of the tool and how it can help them. And once you start having some early wins and successes, and just like Tessa, once that information is in there, once they can go to something, one place, have all the information they need, and they start to see the value, there's definitely a a buy in. Oh, that did help me with my customer. Oh, that did work. That information was there when I wanted it. There are growing pains with anything, but these tools are worth it. And, again, I said it kinda at the beginning, but I think every time somebody hears CRM, it almost becomes a bad word within an organization because you immediately think, okay. Well, big brother's watching Now everything I do, they're gonna watch what I do, and that's the farthest from the truth. I will I will be honest. At my level, where I'm at at FS Green, I do not go in and look at CRM and see what everybody has put in there because the tool is really used for them. Right? And and for the team to to continue to access for our customers, our data for our of our customers. So, but the once they started to see some wins and buy ins and we started getting more traction. And then, Tess, to your point too, you made the comment about having a report. Well, when we started adding workflows into our system, into our CRM system, it forced people to start using it every day because they thought, oh, jeez. Okay. Well, if if I have a grain buyer that's buying grain and now I'm a settlement person, well, now I wanna know what that is. That information is in the tool, and now all of a sudden, there it got it got sticky. Right? It created a reason for people to go into it other than just entering, hey. I talked to Kristen today, period. You know? There there's no value in that other than checking a box. So, the value is is what they put in it and and how we utilize it as a company, and it's it's gotta be more than just checking a box. Yeah. And I'll maybe, Kristen, frame this question a little different for you as maybe a a broader user of a CRM right now. Mhmm. How did you handle kinda taking on the new tool? Was there anything you had to do to change your processes when you were taking it on? So it's funny you say that. When I first started, you know, like I mentioned earlier, I got that notepad paper type thing. I made that all electronic immediately. I need to be able to filter and search. I'm an Excel user. So I just I went into an Excel, created names, dates, notes. On the other tab, there was phone numbers and accounting processes and splits and anything like that that I needed to make my time valuable so that I knew what I was doing when, you know, that my second harvest came around or third harvest or whatnot. So when I switched to a CRM program, my process practically stayed the same almost, except, you know, I had to take all that information and move it. But I, you know, I still I'll be I'll be honest. I'm I still handwrite my notes. When I'm on the phone with the customer, I've got my pad and paper and pen, and I'm I'm writing down what they're telling me. But at the end of the day, I take fifteen, twenty minutes, whatever I might need, to go into the CRM and log it immediately afterwards because that's almost like my double check of, okay. Yep. I got this done. Let's type it. Let's get it in. I'm good to go onto the next step. So for me, the process moving into a CRM was very, very simple. I had no issues at all whatsoever. I really like that. Talking from a guy who has the gray hair on the call. I was gonna pull up my notebook because I still use a pen and notebook every day all day long, but I'm a firm believer in technology. My notebook is propping up my computer for the camera, so I can't show you that. But, I totally agree. Hand right. There it is. So it doesn't mean that it has to go away. It just means you're transitioning. And so I think that's a that's a that's well said, Kristen. Absolutely. Agree completely. I love the use of a notepad to prop the computer. That's what I choose. That's awesome. Got a little old school in me too. What can I say? Mhmm. Yeah. Corey, you mentioned, workflows and and, getting broader broader adoption and usage across your staff by introducing workflows within the CRM. And I'll say that from Bushel perspective, you know, we utilize the CRM internally as well. And when we started in introducing, like, our quoting process within the tool and other processes that require you have to go in here to do an action for your customer, that gets people in there, and then they have to be in the tool using it every every day. And then they start to see the value of being in there and and documenting the notes and understanding your customer data. So I'll totally, you know, plus one on the introducing workflows that bring people into a tool like that. So okay. I wanna grab one more out of the, audience q and a. We have, we have used a CRM in the past where you did not own your customer data and could not extract it. Can you expand on who owns that long term? And I don't know if this is a question for Bushel or more for, the folks on the call. I'll take a stab at this from Bushel's perspective, and then maybe, Corey, if you have anything you wanna add. But, our stance with our customers is that they own their data. So, there isn't anything that, you know, that that we would retain or or keep from our customers' data, and we would respect that they would want that if they were to leave us or or need to leave us. So that's kind of bushel stance. Corey, have you had experience in any of the tools you've chose to use in the past? So repeat that question for me. I apologize. I think I I missed it. Yeah. They've had experience in the past where they did not own the customer data and could not extract it. And can you expand on who owns the data? Yeah. Yeah. We we have not so with our partner, we made sure in our agreements that we own that data. It's our customer data. It it flows through our ERP system, and it's it's it's ours. So when you're when you're and I I know I mean, Benny, you spoke for for, a bushel, but I'm I mean, make sure that that data stays yours in the agreement when you're signing that. That's that's important. It it's the it's customer it's the customer's data, but it's ours, and we're the ones as companies responsible for their data when we when we're communicating with them. Yep. Yep. Test But I've had no problems not keeping our data. I'll say it that way. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah. And I've seen that too where you just have to ask for it if you're gonna leave a platform. Hey. I'm leaving, and I need an ex export of my data. So it might not be as clean and pretty as it was in the system, but you should be able to get it as my my stance here. So Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You'll just have to redo all the work to get it into that pretty format again. That's the problem. Yep. Tess or Kristen, anything you wanna add on this one? I think I'm good. Okay. Okay. One more question from the audience. I actually already asked that one. How are you tracking productivity or ROI improvements, from new technology investments, and how did you get justification for those? Yeah. I I'll I'll try it, Benny. So, you you know, looking at a tool, one of the things that we were able to do, in in full disclosure, when I started, we had twenty three, we had twenty three employees that were that were entering contracts and, basically, we call them our CSRs. You know, and they were they were settling bushels. They were entering contracts. All of that was, none of that was automated. And so, through retirements and attrition and and just other things, we now do that same work for more volume with four CSRs. So we've we've we've been able to utilize and see the value, in investing in this technology, because really what what I've started to say, and I I think I said this when I was on stage a couple years ago at the at the the conference in North Dakota or in Fargo, but, you know, it's not because you're trying to do something to replace people. It's really what you're trying to do. It's a people business. It's a relationship business that we're in. But the problem is is it you know, we don't have a ton of people beating down the doors in these ag companies to do some of the jobs that we're we're wanting to do or that we need people to do. So we have to replace that with technology, and that is and so we're trying to be on the forefront of that. The last few years has like, you mentioned it when you said, you know, you had turnover, and now you're kind of at a good spot. Well, our whole industry saw that turnover, and without the technology platforms in place that we had, it would have been it would not we would not have been able to provide the customer service that our customers expect from us. So, how do we do that? I will put the cost, and I will try to find, you know, are we saving money? Are we finding efficiencies? A lot of it is through efficiencies. And and then, you know, what can we do, over time? Can we eliminate the need for a certain role, or can we merge roles? And so those are tough discussions to have. But I wanna say, and I will make it very clear, we're not use a lot utilizing or adding technology to remove, you know, to try to eliminate positions. We're trying to make us more efficient as a company. And then through attrition, we can decide if we need to do anything from there. I don't know if that answered it. But Yeah. I think that's great. Tess, anything you you can add from an ROI perspective on tooling like this? Yeah. Kind of expanding what he said about not removing roles, but I feel like roles have become so much more complex. What a customer expects someone to know when you're in front of them is so much more than what they expected even ten years ago. So to be able to stand in front of someone and you're talking grain, but all of a sudden they're gonna talk about a propane tank and you can maybe pull something up. And me, I have no idea on energy, but at least I have something, maybe a buzzword or something that they've discussed in the past that I can go off of just puts what you have to say to that customer, puts so much more weight in it. And it's hard to measure that ROI, like you said, with the efficiencies and things like that. But there's there's so many unmeasurable things that I think come from something like this. I would say our communication on our sales team is leaps and bounds ahead of where we were two years ago. Really no way to measure that. We're, you know, great sales two years ago, great sales today, but the communication that we have within our team and someone who I see maybe once a month every six weeks, I feel like I talk to them way more. And just that camaraderie even in the in between when we talk on the phone and things like that is so much different. It feels like we're all a part of one team when we're hours away from each other sometimes. So So I I'll add because your comments made me think. One of the things that we have said about this tool is, that we utilize is we become less transactional with the customer and more ingrained in our relationship with that customer. You know, the the transactional things are become easy. Right? It's like, oh, I'll call you back, and two hours later, you're calling them back because you found what they were looking for. Now you know it. So now while you're answering that, you have a more, hey. Let's talk more about your business and what your needs are, and you can explore that, and and improve that relationship. Yeah. I like that. This maybe spins into my my next question. Kristen, maybe for you specifically as you've dove into using a CRM, how have you seen that improve your customer service to your customers? Yeah. Absolutely. Our customer service, I feel like, truly has expanded since we've taken on the CRM. You know, similar to what Corey and Tess have discussed, we're able to pick up on those customer conversations, stay in tune with, you know, pick if another another originator is out of the office and we're helping their customer, we're able to pick up where they left off and know a little bit more without seeming like we're hours away and we're in the same office. So it's it's so much easier to provide the best customer service possible or use buzzwords from our agronomy department, if they work in that aspect as well. So it's it has grown, and I expect it to continue to grow as we continue to use Bushel CRM program. You know, we're we're three months in. What's it gonna look like when we're three years in? I'm I don't know, but I'm excited to see it. That's great. Tess, do you wanna add anything on customer service? Yeah. I mean, I think customer service is so important. I think, what we can add to I mean, like I said, it's it's a relationship. So I think anything we can make to do make that a deeper relationship and more meaningful, I think, is huge. I think customers really look for that. They can go anywhere and sell their grade now. I don't know where it is where you guys live, Corey and Kristen, but there's elevators, I mean, every twenty to forty five minutes. Right? So it's all about what else you can bring to the table. So I think having a deeper relationship, just a more more of a conversation versus a sales pitch is just huge when it comes comes to customer service. So Kristen and I have elevators miles apart from each other. Yep. So Okay. So we're getting close to the end of our time here. I wanna just do a quick reminder to the audience. If you have questions that you wanna get in real quick, go ahead and add them to our q and a, on the right hand side, and we'll try to grab those before we go. But maybe, as we're waiting for some questions to pop in, rapid fire, we'll go around the horn here. Let's do, a word of advice for the audience here on, customer relationship management and CRM tools, whether it be implementing or using or whatever you wanna add. So, Corey, not to put you on the spot, but let's have you go first. Just a word of advice. I would say it's tough to implement, but worth the implementation. So don't let the hard days outweigh the long term, success that the tool can have. Yeah. Love that. Tess, how about you? Yeah. I mean, kind of the same thing. I mean, it's just like I said earlier, those first ninety days, the data you put in is really gonna gonna make it what it what it needs to be. I think utilizing it to the best of its ability and reaching out to your sales rep or whoever you have, whatever CRM you have, to reach out to them to make sure you're utilizing all parts of it that you can. Even if you just start we started with one part of our team using it before we rolled it out to everyone. So that way we had some, quote, unquote, experts that people could ask their questions to. But all of that, the first ninety days, I think that's that's crucial. So Great. Kristen? Yeah. Technology is a tool, and it's here to stay. It's certainly not going anywhere anytime soon, so we might as well utilize it while we have it. Being able to filter and just quickly search information, it's fantastic to be able to utilize. So I dig in, dig deep, dig hard because it's it's worth it. I love that. I'll maybe add my own little anecdote. Tess kinda said this too, but I think if you find a champion on your team that really understands the value or has been able to dig in and see the value in the work that they're doing, and then they have influence across the rest of the team. That I I think has worked in the past as well, getting that champion to be really bought in and then help bring that across the rest of the team. Okay. I don't see any other questions in the q and a. So I think at this point, I'm gonna wrap us up. It was a great discussion. I'm so glad and thankful for our panelists who joined us today. So thank you for joining us. A couple of things on your way out. If you wanna stay and watch, we've got about a minute and thirteen second video about our CRM that you're welcome to stay on and watch after we leave the the chat here. If you attended, you will get an email with the recording of the webinar. So if you wanna go back and watch and see anything we talked about, you'll have that. And then we also are going to share, Bushel built a CRM implementation guide for agriculture. So we've got some goodies in there. Feel free to download that in the email as well. So you'll see those come, right after the webinar today. Thanks again for everybody for joining, and have a great day.