How Aculabs earned over $3 million in less than two years with Kommo

Interview with Steven Penalver, Director of Business Development at Aculabs Inc.

Aculabs Inc., a family—owned and operated clinical laboratory that provides laboratory tests for a niche community, has been in business for 48 years. The healthcare organization has been using Kommo since 2018.

“Our client base is predominantly skilled nursing facilities, correctional facilities, assisted living rehabs, and any place that doesn’t have their own in-house laboratory,” says Steven Penalver, the Director of Business Development at Aculabs.

Aculabs is located in a township of New Jersey and has regional laboratories. The organization is licensed in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware.

“Our mission is to provide our clients with the most accurate testing results and the most reliable services. Most of our clients are elderly patients, over 50 or 60, and they’re living in these facilities,” explains Steven, continuing, “So the doctors, who are treating these patients must get quick and accurate testing so they can make the most educated decision for the well-being of the residents.”

Although Steven says there are many benefits of working with big-name platforms such as Salesforce, which has been acknowledged as a leading CRM for healthcare, he explains, “I found it to be very time-consuming. It wasn’t very easy to maneuver around and get around.”

Steven says, “I went out and started looking at several different CRMs. I tried a couple of them and found your product.” During the Kommo free trial period, he highlights, “I was treated like a regular customer, not a trial account, and I appreciated that. Kommo allowed me to really see if this was the right product for me.”

Aculabs thrives without advertising, “It’s the word of mouth and reputation,” says Steven. For this reason, Steven imports his leads into the CRM either through Google Sheets or manually. “For the most part, it’s a combination of spreadsheets and manual entry,” he says.

In Steven’s pipeline, each client is tagged accordingly. “I use tags because then I can filter down further in my emails. I have different leads, and I separate them because I want to ensure that I’m not sending all of them the same kind of email,” explains Steven.

Steven illustrates an example of one such tag, ‘organization’: “I’m able to type in the search ‘organization,’ and only those clients would pop up to give me a targeted view.” Once the lead contacts Steven, they automatically ge pushed into the “Contacted” stage. “From ‘Contacted,’ I either evaluate them or they evaluate me, and they either go to a ‘Follow up’ or not,” Steven explains. If the lead, for instance, doesn’t go to the “Follow-up” stage, it gets pushed back to “Not interested — check back in 90 days.” Steven says this is a reminder to reach out to his lost leads in 90 days. “If the lead is interested, I put them in the pipeline: ‘interested 30%’, ‘negotiated 60%’, and the next stage is ‘impending start day for the contract 90%’, and from there, they go over to ‘Win’”.

Also, Steven points out customization: “Another thing that I like about Kommo is that when you win a lead, you add a Tag, and when you lose a lead, you add a Tag. You can set it up how you want—it’s very customizable.”

Mailchimp is an email platform that helps you connect with your potential and existing customers and grow your business.

Steven shares his email marketing strategy: He sends out newsletters quarterly with an email blast sent once a month to different clients, saying, “Hey, here we are. This is what we can do. I'd like to meet with you and talk to you about your lab services.” “So when we do our annual conferences, Director of Nursing show, Administrators show, a Healthcare show, I would use Mailchimp to say, ‘Hey, come see us at our booth.’ That has helped because people have come to the booth and brought their email.’

Although there are many healthcare CRM solutions, Kommo proved to be the perfect fit for Aculabs. The healthcare organization was able to benefit from Kommo right away. Steven says that Aculabs has earned over 3 million dollars in less than 2 years with Kommo. Most importantly, he explains: “I think what we normally find with CRMs or any software is that it doesn’t customize to the business that you work in. It works for 80% of the businesses out there, but if you’re one of those 20% that is not the mainstream type of business, then the software doesn’t work with you. Your software is very customizable. We’re able to change many things.”

✅Kommo is a pioneering Messenger-Based Sales CRM software that helps businesses achieve more sales and create long-lasting customer relationships. It is a tool that enables companies to reach better results and increase their profits.