How Hero Time increased leads in 5 months with MBS

Interview with Hersh Glueck, founder of Hero Time

Hersh Glueck had all the right ingredients for launching his own business. He had a successful career spanning the globe and even held a post as a lecturer in international business at Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics.

Before leaving his job to become an entrepreneur, Hersh thought about which direction was lucrative and the right fit for him. In the end, he decided to join the board game industry.

He founded Hero Time, a board game company in Hong Kong that offers creators and publishers manufacturing liaison services for their games. It’s the first foreign-owned enterprise in China to deal with the manufacturing of board games. The company offers many wholesale board games for buyers, retailers, and Amazon sellers.

Hersh’s primary mission has always been providing customers with the best service through excellent communication. This is why communicating with leads and customers on all platforms, especially messengers, became a huge priority. “I wanted to communicate with my customers on all platforms,” he says.

Hersh explains that he doesn’t like to use emails with customers because they’re too formal. Instead, he wanted customers to feel they could chat with him casually on whatever topics they needed. However, finding a solution with all messengers was challenging because no CRM software solved his problem.

Another challenge Hersh faced was controlling the chaos of growing a new business and working with customers. “It was my biggest challenge because I'm not the most organized person in the world. I'm actually quite all over the place,” he explains, “I would be talking to one lead on Facebook and another lead on Instagram and with someone else via email or WhatsApp. It was just too much.”

That’s why he started looking for a tool to help: “I needed a CRM for wholesale to help me track my customers and everything that I do. All my interactions with them. So that's why I started looking for a CRM.”

But deciding you need a sales platform is only the first step. Hersh realized that finding a CRM for wholesale that fit his needs wasn’t easy. He tried Bitrix24, HubSpot, Odoo CRM, Agile CRM and Zoho, but they all had their pros and cons. They either lacked messaging services, were too expensive, or were difficult to work with.

Hersh also says that with some CRMs, there was a lot of copy-and-pasting, making the workflow monotonous. “It was a waste of time,” he says.

Today, Hersh interacts with his customers via various messaging apps, including Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram. He’s also planning to add Viber and more chat apps.

Hersh explains that he attracts new customers by posting tips and articles on social media and encouraging people to reach out and text him via messengers. His approach of being available and ready to help is a smart strategy in the often long and confusing process of manufacturing overseas.

“Hey, how are you? I finished making my game. Can you please help me? Can you consult and tell me what aspects I need to consider for manufacturing?”

Unlike other CRMs, Hersh explains that Kommo has been very user-friendly: “You have the tags on the left, and you only have a few of them. You have a dashboard. You have some leads. You have lists. You have email. You have the settings — and that's it.”

Hersh further highlights Kommo’s simplicity: “I can click on any lead and see all the information about it, view the history of communication and tasks that were assigned.”

According to Hersh, the 3 most essential things in Kommo are that:

• It’s simple.
• It has messengers.
• It has excellent support.

Although Hersh is still working on accomplishing his goals with Kommo, it has already proven to be highly useful. He notes, “Before I found a proper CRM for wholesale and before I started using Kommo, I used to forget my leads. I used to lose them. I did a terrible job.”

What has delivered the biggest impact, Hersh explains, is that he can now contact his customers directly. With Kommo, Hero Time increased the number of incoming leads, which all came through marketing that Hersh has done on Facebook, Instagram and other places. The game wholesaler has also won four sales in the past two months, which is a big deal when his average sales cycle is 6 months. “It's a very long manufacturing process,” he explains.

Set up isn’t hard, but if you’re feeling intimidated, reach out to one of our amazing Kommo's partners — they’re ready and willing to get your team using CRM for wholesale today.

✅Kommo is 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 achieve better results and increase profits.