Scott Stroud – “The CRM Guy” – Joins MhCRM
New home sales has been a passion for Scott Stroud since he first started in business back in 1980s. That passion led him to establish and develop an award-winning new home sales company in his hometown of Louisville, KY in the 1990s. More to the point, the science of creating and automating the processes that allowed him to outsell his peers and competitors has led him to become one of the foremost experts in new home marketing and sales processes today, and to his new role as Director of CRM Development for MhCRM, a new division supporting Manufacturedhomes.com and Modularhomes.com.
“I learned early in my sales career that the better I followed up, the more sales I made,” explains Stroud. “Before CRMs were computerized, I had used the old Rolodex files and Executive Card File systems to keep track of my tasks and leads. Still, it customers would fall through the cracks and my follow-up would falter. My first electronic CRM was the first version of ACT! On 5 ½” floppy discs. I know that dates me, but that’s how long I’ve been studying and working with these technologies.”
Stroud was an early adopter in Enterprise CRMs while he was employed as VP of Marketing & Sales for a major housing producer in the 1990s. “We were among the first to launch a CRM that we made available to all 250 of our dealers. Back then, that meant an investment of nearly $100,000 just to launch! But the benefits were immediately worth it. We were spending so much on marketing – and that not knowing where the leads were coming from, where they were going, how well they were being worked, or which ones ultimately bought. Without that data, we were wasting tons of money on marketing that we were quickly able to recoup.”
That interest only grew when Stroud left corporate life to join J. Rouleau & Associates a company specializing in marketing for the factory-built housing industry, in 2005. The first task he was given was to research CRMs and marketing programs to identify which were most suited for homebuilders and dealers. “It was a difficult task, as there were few, if any, platforms that were built with the building industry in mind. And those that did exist had such limited functionality that they were ineffective.”
Fast-forward to 2019 and little has changed. “Today, there are CRMs specific for developers and some for custom builders, but really none still standing that address the current needs of the manufactured home industry. So we built one, MhCRM” said Stroud.
According to Stroud’s priority list, a CRM must be easy to use for salespeople on the front end, powerful enough to generate actionable reporting on the backend, and most of all, automate tasks that make it easier for retailers and salespeople to do their job and close more sales. “It should be a tool that saves you time and helps you spend your time doing the right things for the right people – your buyers. If it costs you time or effort, then you’ll never use it,” he explains.
Stroud loves to talk about marketing, automation and building better sales processes. He is a popular speaker at MH events, and has deliver numerous keynote talks at MHI Congress and Expo and at several state association events. “I’ve found not only a partner, but a home here at MhCRM. It’s the project I’ve waited my whole life to become involved in.” Find out more about Scott Stroud and MhCRM at MhCRM.com.
