We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Andrei Petrik. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Andrei below.

Alright, Andrei thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

The idea behind my company is quite simple. A CRM that bends to fit your business, rather than your business bending to fit the CRM, a simple-to-install browser extension, and a realistic price tag that small businesses can actually afford to grow. Why not?

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m a complete coding nerd. Self-confessed and absolutely shameless. I have been since I was young. I wrote my first line of code when I was just 11 years old. Since then, I coded my way through school, through university making mobile games, and then travelling around Europe and the US for work, onboarding enterprise-size CRM systems to large companies. Coding, coding, coding, always and forever.

I loved travelling. I saw things I wouldn’t have got to see otherwise. I was living the dream!

But there was always one thing that bothered me. I just couldn’t understand why I was having to do it. Why was I, a guy from the other side of the world, trudging over here to help them implement a system that they would barely ever use? Why was it $300 per user, per month to use the system? And why, oh why were these companies trying to bend their whole business processes to fit the CRM system, rather than bending the CRM to fit their existing business processes? It was complicated.

The point of CRM is to simplify things.

Out of this frustration, NetHunt CRM was born – a CRM system that exactly fits a business’ existing processes.

It’s a CRM for sales and marketing departments. It integrates with Gmail, LinkedIn, and other popular sales tools. I’m particularly proud of the powerful automation sequence feature, allowing CRM users to fully automate their customer journey. With our platform, they can capture leads from different channels, distribute those leads to managers, warm them up, and set tasks, reminders, and notifications. The sales funnel takes care of itself, proving how far SaaS technology can take our sales processes.

Any thoughts, advice, or strategies you can share for fostering brand loyalty?

We put everything on Customer Success and hit the jackpot.

There is no trick to it, nor shortcuts you can take. We need consistency, persistence, and a shared team ethos and understanding.

As a bootstrapped company with no side investments, we had to be extremely selective about how we spent our money. The nature of our business means we need to emphasise high-quality customer relationships. We needed our team to advocate for our business and be voices for our customers; somebody who was going to mediate between customers and the product team. We identified the need for a Customer Success model, so we implemented it.

Customer support is focussed on providing support for when a problem arises. A customer reaches out with a challenge or question for which they need a solution and receives it. Okay, good. We move on until the next time that customer comes to us with a problem. With customer support, we only ever interact with customers when they’re upset or angry and that is not a good basis for a relationship.

Customer Success brings positive energy. It builds long-term relationships with customers. Instead of simply reacting to their problems, we anticipate them in the first place. We make sure they never happen to begin with. We don’t need customer support – it’s unsustainable! Customer success is.

As a subscription-based SaaS company, we can only be successful if our customers are first. We implemented customer success in 2017, and now we have 10 talented, approachable success managers. We never looked back.

We are also very responsive and open to clients’ feedback and requests. We can easily squeeze in the roadmap some of the requested features by our customers and implement them within a few days. It ensures our product meets market demand and increases loyalty of our customers.

One of the values of NetHunt CRM is ‘Total Transparency’ – it’s confirmed by our actions and behaviour. We always paint the full picture to the customers and partners. We’re always honest and direct. We never overpromise about the features we are going to implement and always tell potential customers if our solution does not fit them.

All our actions are aimed at building long-lasting relationships.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

I stick to a few very basic principles in work that are very, very helpful for managing a team. Firstly I advocate management, not control.

The difference between control and management is bigger than it seems. I manage because it reduces my own stress; my obligations and responsibilities are reduced. I don’t need to monitor every exact task my team does; I don’t need to read every word my copywriter writes or listen to every call my Success Team takes. I need to trust them and I need to be aware of the implementation of their responsibilities. That’s all.

When you delegate tasks and give employees the opportunity to reach their own conclusions, you multiply the quantity of ideas in your business. More ideas means the more chance you have of finding the right formula. The right formula means results.

Still, we shouldn’t just sit back completely. We need to lead by example. My team is a reflection of me. I dream about a team of proactive workers who are passionate about their job, constantly improving themselves, and striving forwards.

So, I act like that myself.

You can’t develop other people if you can’t develop yourself.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://nethunt.com/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreipetrik/

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