Here at 27 Volt Labs we’ve been working hard to create CRM software for both users and managers (What is CRM?). We’ve had positive feedback; enough to think we’re doing a good thing. We’ve also had negative feedback, and we’ve used that to improve the product. Overall, things are looking good. So, what’s the problem?

It’s just not fast enough. We found two main issues slowing adoption. To start, it turns out that CRM tools are often very highly integrated with other existing systems within the company. Prospective clients always come with a list of requirements as long as their arm. We have to support all of their current software and hardware, which is resource-intensive for a small bootstrapped company like ours. Secondly, we’ve discovered that large enterprises move even more slowly than expected. Clients come to us to discuss an integration that might happen two years down the road.

So, what can we do about it? The very question my partner and I asked ourselves. What can we provide that all companies need, that they’re willing to pay for, and that can be produced and consumed in the short term? Preferably something that utilizes our current technology and gives us incentive to improve upon it. Also, if you could have the answer to me before dinner that’d be great, mmmk?

Improbable, right? Very much. Yet we found it. All companies need customers, and we’ve spent months practicing sales. We know how to get the right people to listen. We use our own CRM tool to hook you up with the people you want to meet. In doing so, we’ve now removed the integration requirements as barriers to entry and changed our offering from the “expense” of a CRM to the profit of additional customers.

We call our new lead generation service “Carburetor” and it’s been an immediate success. What started as an experiment in unscalability quickly reached the limits. It’s obvious that people are interested in lead generation, and we’ve seen results with our methods. Now it’s time to automate them.

To that end, we’re happy to announce that we have a new developer joining our team. Francesco Belladonna is our second dedicated developer and his addition brings our team up to five. Our CEO Collin Stewart, myself Preston St. Pierre as CTO, our designer Allegra Scrugham, and our salesperson Jerry Situ make up the other four. Can I have a moment to be a little proud of what we’ve accomplished? Hell, it’s my blog. I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished :)

Now that I’ve fulfilled my promise about an update I’ll veer back to the original problem. I have this blog which I told myself I’d keep updated, yet I haven’t been. I think I bit off a bit more than I could chew with the plan to write one blog post every week. Either that or I need to lower my standards and make them shorter. I think I’ll do a combination of both. Once a month I shall write a “feature length” article on a particular topic designed to help inform readers. Other times, at my whim, I will write spontaneous blog posts of shorter duration with a bit less purpose to them. Hopefully this new schedule will be easier to meet with the ever-growing business demands.