In this episode of Executive Connect, host Melissa Aarskaug sits down with Adam Honig, founder and CEO of Spiro, to explain why traditional CRM systems are broken and how AI is transforming sales operations in manufacturing and B2B companies.

Adam shares why most sales teams never fully adopt CRM, how manual reporting destroys productivity, and why forcing data entry leads to bad data and wasted investment. He introduces Spiro’s AI-driven approach that captures customer intelligence automatically and delivers real-time insights without administrative burden.

From voice-based interfaces to predictive preparation tools, this conversation reveals how modern companies can eliminate CRM friction, improve customer relationships, and increase revenue without burning out their sales teams.

If you want your sales systems to work for your people instead of against them, this episode is essential listening.

Chapters:

(00:00) Why most companies never adopt CRM
(01:26) The hidden cost of forced data entry
(03:25) The inspiration behind Spiro’s AI model
(04:52) Why salespeople should not be behind desks
(05:16) The data quality problem in CRM
(06:27) How Spiro prepares reps for meetings
(07:49) Reducing administrative burden in sales
(08:26) Why Spiro calls itself an anti-CRM
(09:06) Real-world examples in customer service
(10:38) The future of voice and chat interfaces
(12:58) Security and biometric risks
(14:49) How manufacturers should start using AI
(16:43) The No CRM philosophy
(17:51) Quotes, contracts, and ERP integration
(18:55) Adam’s background in sales and CRM
(20:47) When companies should replace CRM
(23:29) Hidden organizational resistance
(24:44) Final thoughts on CRM
(25:10) Where to connect with Adam

Adam

(0:00) 70% of our customers had no CRM before zero. (0:04) And for people who are not, you know, aware of this, there’s a lot of companies that have just sort of rejected the idea of CRM because they knew it would be terrible. (0:13) But if you have CRM and it’s helping you manage your customers and everything’s good, I say, you’re doing something right.

(0:20) And don’t change it, keep doing it. (0:22) But if it happens to be the case that you’re paying a lot of money for a solution and you’re not getting value out of it because nobody’s actually using it, you know, you could consider something like Spiro.

Melissa

(0:32) Sick of CRMs that slow you down more than they help you? (0:37) Meet Adam Hoenig. (0:38) On today’s Executive Connect podcast, he’s the visionary behind Spiro, where AI cuts through CRM chaos and helps manufacturers boost profits without all the hassle.

(0:52) Tired of endless data entry and useless reports? (0:56) Adam’s here to show you how to ditch the fluff, streamline your ops, and focus on what really matters. (1:04) No nonsense, just results.

(1:06) Welcome, Adam.

Adam

(1:08) Hey, Melissa, really great to be here.

Melissa

(1:11) Now, you’ve been pretty vocal about your dislikes for traditional CRM systems. (1:17) What’s the biggest issue you see with them today on how they’re used? (1:23) And why do you think manufacturers struggle with them?

Adam

(1:26) It’s such a big question, but just to give you some context, you know, somebody described CRM to me as a soul-sucking corporate tool designed to steal money from the paychecks of salespeople. (1:40) And it’s true, you know, when I had, before I started Spiro, I started another company that wound up being a very large CRM consulting firm. (1:48) We were one of the top global partners of Salesforce.

(1:51) And, you know, companies like Charles Schwab or MetLife would hire us to help them get Salesforce going and pay us millions and millions of dollars. (1:59) And then the result was everybody hated it. (2:02) And then they blamed me.

(2:04) And like, why is it my fault, you know? (2:07) And so, yeah, so the problems with CRM are so, you know, it’s such a good idea. (2:14) Like, who wouldn’t want to know everything that’s going on with your customers?

(2:18) Like, sounds great, right? (2:19) But the solution of CRM is, I’ve got an idea. (2:22) Let’s have the sales team type it all up for us.

(2:25) I mean, what is this, the 1970s when people are faxing in call reports to us? (2:30) And that’s how CRM is traditionally designed. (2:33) And it’s just the worst, I have to say.

Melissa

(2:37) Now, it’s funny that you say that. (2:39) First of all, I love that you said that. (2:41) As a person who works in driving revenue for organizations, it is a beast to enter in every cell, every box, every situation in CRMs. And I often think to myself, it takes away the selling power of the salespeople when they should really be selling versus all the entry in these tools. (3:02) So let’s talk about Spiro’s approach to CRM, which is radically different. (3:07) And what inspired you to take this path? (3:10) Ready to lead smarter and invest wiser?

(3:14) On the Executive Connect podcast, we unpack executive strategies for wealth and influence. (3:20) Hit the subscribe button now. (3:23) Don’t just watch, act.

Adam

(3:25) Yeah, it’s crazy, right? (3:26) Because from a data entry standpoint, what tends to happen is either companies force the sales team to enter the data so they have less selling time, or they don’t do it, and then CRM is just a waste. (3:39) So no matter what you do, it’s a losing proposition.

(3:43) So what happened for me is I was running this 700-person consulting firm. (3:48) We were doing all this crazy CRM work. (3:50) Everybody hated it.

(3:51) Everybody was blaming me. (3:52) I sold the business. (3:53) Great, thank you, Accenture, for getting me out of the CRM consulting business.

(3:57) And I saw the movie Her. (4:00) And I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the movie Her, Melissa. (4:03) Joaquin Phoenix in the not-too-distant future downloads an app on his phone which is played by the voice of Scarlett Johansson.

(4:10) Now, she’s not in the movie. (4:12) Just her voice is on his phone, but she can look through the camera and she can read his emails and she can learn everything about him. (4:19) And so naturally, she gives him advice on what to do and she helps him out and he falls in love.

(4:24) And that’s where the movie gets weird. (4:26) But for me, I’m watching this movie and I’m like, this is, wait a second, this is what salespeople need. (4:33) They don’t need Salesforce.

(4:34) They need Scarlett Johansson telling them what to do all day. (4:37) And that was sort of the idea behind Spiro. (4:39) It was like, what if there was some AI thing that could just know what you’re doing and just update everything and actually help you instead of being like a weight around your neck that’s drowning you in the ocean.

(4:52) So that was really the impetus for Spiro to get started.

Melissa

(4:56) I love it, because empowering your salespeople, you don’t want them behind the desk. (5:01) You want them out seeing your customers. (5:03) And the more they’re behind the desk, data entering, processing paperwork, the less they’re selling.

(5:11) And they tend to be pretty expensive resources if they’re good at sales.

Adam

(5:16) And check this out. (5:17) So we did this project for Abbott Labs, a big medical equipment company. (5:21) And their solution was like, hey, we’re just gonna require you to fill in fields in Salesforce before you can put out a quote and stuff like that.

(5:29) So all of the data, so they had a dropdown menu kind of thing. (5:33) We’ll make it easy, people can just pick things. (5:35) 90% of the time, people pick the first option on the list.

(5:39) And it just shows you how ridiculous this is. (5:42) Even if you get people to enter the data, are they gonna enter it correctly? (5:46) So it’s just a terrible situation.

Melissa

(5:49) And I have been part of many, many migrations and late night data entry that I hope I never have to do another day of my life. (6:00) Bless the AI tools. (6:02) So let’s talk about those AI tools and how they’re changing the game.

(6:09) It’s everywhere now. (6:11) But it’s not necessarily really delivering value fully just yet. (6:16) So let’s talk about Spiro’s AI, how it solves the CRM problem and helps manufacturers boost their sales.

(6:25) Like what is the process?

Adam

(6:27) So the theory that we have is that the better prepared you are when you meet with your customers, the better job you’re gonna do helping them with whatever’s going on for them, which is gonna result in more orders for your business. (6:38) That’s the theory. (6:40) And so if there was one place that you could go to that you could see everything that was going on, nicely summarized in a neat little package so when you’re in your truck, as you’re getting out of it to go meet with the customer and it’s all just right there, boy, is that gonna be a win for you.

(6:55) And so that’s essentially the end result of what Spiro does because we connect to people’s emails and so the product sees all the email traffic, it reads and understands the communication, it can join video meetings, it can join phone calls and it integrates because we’re focused on manufacturers, it integrates with about 25 different ERP platforms from SAP to Acumatica and so on. (7:22) And so it understands the order history of the customer, (7:26) it knows what products they’ve bought, (7:28) it knows which product categories they haven’t bought (7:31) and so it essentially prepares you a briefing (7:34) when you’re getting ready to talk to people (7:35) so you’re just able to be in the moment and be with them, (7:38) not always having to be improvising, (7:42) which is of course what salespeople do (7:43) but that’s really helping you (7:45) be on top of everything at the time.

Melissa

(7:49) It sounds really interesting. (7:51) I know one of the things I’ve prided myself on (7:54) is always preparing for meetings before I get to the client (7:57) exactly what you said, where they are with billing, (8:01) where they are with satisfaction, (8:03) where they are in the journey with our customer (8:06) and selling them more of what we do (8:08) but oftentimes it takes a lot of time (8:11) to put all of that strategy together, (8:14) then do the meeting, then go back to Salesforce. (8:17) So it’s all, it sounds like it’s all reducing the administrative burden of using CRM tools.

Adam

(8:26) Yeah, yeah, it’s almost like if there was something that was like CRM but you didn’t have to do any of the work for it. (8:32) We actually kind of call it an anti-CRM for that perspective. (8:36) It’s like, wouldn’t you want something that just gives you the information you need when you need it and doesn’t require you to have to type anything in?

(8:45) And if you think about it, a lot of our customers, manufacturing companies, have thousands and thousands of customers and so how are you supposed to stay on top of all of that? (8:54) And so that’s the beauty of AI. (8:56) AI is amazing at going through large amounts of data and be able to pull it together into something and find the needle in a haystack.

(9:04) That’s something it’s really good at.

Melissa

(9:06) Yeah, and it’s funny that you say that. (9:09) I work in the casino gaming industry and a lot of times I’ve been at properties where the elevators are down and so they can’t get their guests up and down the stairs and the sales guy shows up to help the casino figure out what’s going on. (9:27) They have no idea where they’re starting.

(9:28) They’re just there to get the information, to relay it back to somebody else and then they gotta relay it back to someone else. (9:34) Meanwhile, the casino’s elevators or escalators aren’t working the way that they need to work. (9:40) So what I envision in that situation, if a salesperson could be driving to the emergency and have all the data at their fingertips and it would make the customer appreciation and customer success journey so much easier.

(9:58) They wouldn’t have to start from scratch to explain what’s going on and you have to reeducate a new salesperson because there’s so much turnover in sales. (10:09) So it seems really, really easy to use this tool. (10:13) So let’s talk about the future of corporate business.

(10:16) I know in my space in tech, there are so many tools and so many systems and so many processes and I know you’ve always had a knack for seeing where industries are heading and going. (10:30) Where do you think corporate business systems are going as it relates to CRM in the next five to 10 years?

Adam

(10:38) Well, from my point of view, any sort of existing interface, the way that people interact with business software is gonna go away. (10:49) And it’s all gonna be voice, it’s all gonna be chat. (10:53) And so like the Spiro mobile app is very much on the edge of that.

(10:57) All you do is press one button and you speak your notes into it and it goes through those notes, it figures out who you’re talking about, it figures out what the company is, it automatically updates whatever needs to be updated in the background for it. (11:10) And you did nothing, you just talked into your phone and all of that stuff just kind of happened. (11:16) And I think that’s the way all software is gonna be in the future.

(11:19) The days of like logging in, finding a thing, clicking on something else, typing in a bunch of stuff, hitting save, like that’s, we’re just done with that. (11:29) And I think a lot of people see the potential of a tool like ChatGBT, just to kind of become a wrapper around all of this corporate information so that you don’t even need to do it like in like somebody’s special software like Spiro, you just do it like as part of your computer or something like that.

Melissa

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(12:58) So how do you like, and I know, again, I work in cybersecurity. (13:03) So how do you, how are you guys preparing for, you know, the intimidation or not intimidation, impersonation of people’s biometrics, their face, their voices with these kinds of tools? (13:18) Any insights there?

Adam

(13:20) Yeah, so I did read something about the Schwab, my voice is my password thing. (13:26) And actually I think that that’s quite, could be quite problematic, you know, with there’s a lot of technology out there to do voice cloning today. (13:34) And I don’t think it’s quite good enough for me to use, you know, I’ve tried some of those different things, but I don’t think we’re quite at the point of it yet, but the speed that it evolves at, which is super fast, right?

(13:47) So cybersecurity is definitely not my, you know, area of focus, but I definitely agree with you that if there’s gonna be essentially one thing that you go to like ChatTPG to get all of your information, it makes the cybersecurity risk that much higher, right? (14:03) Because it’s sort of a critical opening to anything in your world, kind of like the way email is. (14:09) So I don’t have the answer, but I definitely agree with you that I think that there’s a big looming problem in that area.

Melissa

(14:17) So let’s go talk a little bit about companies that are considering, they’re kind of their toes in the water with AI. (14:25) I know I deal with a hodgepodge of different opinions about AI that it’s gonna, you know, we’re gonna all be taken over by bots and, you know, others that say, well, let’s use it and embrace it for easier ways to do things. (14:40) So what is your best advice for manufacturers who are considering adopting AI, but aren’t sure where to start?

Adam

(14:49) Well, I think in manufacturing and like in a lot of industries, I think there’s some low hanging fruit that AI can be very effective in. (14:57) I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but most people are not English majors in the world. (15:03) And a lot of people can use to have just their professional communication sharpened up quite a bit.

(15:08) And so we see with our clients, a lot of people using AI tools to help them with that. (15:13) I mean, Spiro has a built-in, but you could use chat GPT, you could use Claude for things like that. (15:19) A lot of the entry-level marketing work that our customers have been doing can be done in terms of generating images, in terms of generating blog posts, in terms of generating copy.

(15:32) I mean, it should all be reviewed and edited because the AI has a tendency to be a little bit verbose in my view, but it definitely can help get people into using AI in their daily lives as well. (15:47) So some of the challenges that we’ve seen though, just to be clear, is I don’t feel like the AI is great for financial analysis at this point. (15:57) So a lot of our customers would really like like a overall AI service to look at massive amounts of order data and do predictive analysis based upon that to say, hey, based upon these patterns, here’s what we think our customers should be ordering.

(16:12) I don’t think the state of play is quite there yet. (16:15) So I always encourage people to start in some very, very simple use cases and kind of expand out from there and not to jump into the Star Trek stuff, if you know what I mean, right away.

Melissa

(16:26) Yeah, no, I think it’s true. (16:29) I think there is a lot that we need to work on before we move it into the financial sector. (16:35) And I just noticed there’s no CRM flag.

(16:38) That’s fantastic. (16:39) Now, did you create that or where did that come from? (16:42) Is that part of…

Adam

(16:43) So I hate CRM and it’s just kind of my thing and I’ve been talking about how much I hate CRM for a long time. (16:51) As a matter of fact, just to tell you another quick story, I hate CRM because somebody threw a shoe at me when I was doing a CRM training. (16:58) They were so upset by what we were requiring them to do.

(17:00) So it’s like been a long running thing for me and a colleague of mine made this no CRM sign for me. (17:06) It’s a parking sign. (17:08) So like no parking, no CRM.

(17:10) And we’ve adopted it as our kind of semi logo, if you will. (17:15) So yeah, so when we’re at a trade show, we’re the guys with the big no CRM sign. (17:20) You can always find us easily that way.

Melissa

(17:23) I love it. (17:23) I think it’s very noticeable. (17:26) Now, I’m curious, going back to the product, how does it, does it integrate at all with like contracts as well?

(17:36) Like let’s say, somebody’s gonna need to write a contract on site with a client or something quick like an NDA. (17:43) Does it integrate with other things like contracts are already pre developed templates for different things?

Adam

(17:51) So in the manufacturing space, what’s very common is for you to generate a quote. (17:55) So you visit a customer, they want X widgets, Y gaskets and stuff like that. (18:01) And so traditionally what you would then do is you’d have to go home, go to the office, open up your ERP and do this whole manual process of generating a quote.

(18:10) And one of the things that Spiro offers is a way to do that all right within the platform. (18:16) So when you’re even right with the customer, you can just say, hey, you need these five things. (18:20) Let me get you a eSign document, just send it right out to you and get that all put together.

(18:26) So that’s definitely something that we’re focused on for people. (18:29) And of course, we send all the data back to ERP because somebody actually needs to make something in manufacturing. (18:35) It’s not like the business that I’m in where you just provision another license for somebody or something like that.

Melissa

(18:41) Now, I wanna talk a little bit about your background on kind of the reverse end. (18:45) Tell me a little bit about, have you always been doing CRM or is this something that’s a new passion? (18:52) Let’s talk a little bit how you got into the CRM business.

Adam

(18:55) Well, I have a degree in philosophy, which was very important to me at the time, but did not serve well for getting a job. (19:03) So I, like many people, wound up in sales because I was just somebody who could talk well and kind of built my career in tech sales. (19:13) And I just figured that CRM must be a way to help salespeople.

(19:19) That was my initial thought, which is why I got into the business. (19:22) And I think maybe it’s why I’m so disappointed because I really wanted it. (19:25) I really want the organization.

(19:27) I really want the help, but it was just more of a burden than anything else. (19:31) So no, I’ve only been working in CRM since 98. (19:34) So it hasn’t been that long.

Melissa

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(20:22) So let’s say a company is using a CRM system now. (20:28) What should a company know or when should a company know it’s time to implement a tool like yours? (20:34) Is it, you know, what’s that triggering point for them to switch from a CRM tool to something like Spiro’s product?

(20:43) Is there like a specific metric that we can tie it back to?

Adam

(20:47) Sure, well, let me just tell you a fascinating stat about that, which is that 70% of our customers had no CRM before Spiro. (20:54) And for people who are not, you know, aware of this, there’s a lot of companies that have just sort of rejected the idea of CRM because they knew it would be terrible. (21:04) But if you have CRM and people are using it and it’s helping you manage your customers and everything’s good, I say you’re doing something right and don’t change it.

(21:13) Like, that’s great. (21:14) Good for you. (21:14) You’ve figured it out.

(21:15) You’ve got a corporate culture that supports the use of this terrible technology. (21:19) Keep doing it. (21:20) Like, don’t change for me.

(21:21) It’s good. (21:22) Thank you. (21:23) But if it happens to be the case that, I don’t know, let’s say in manufacturing, you have an older sales team that is gonna be retiring over the next couple of years, which is very common in manufacturing, and you might not know who all of the contacts are at your customers, it might be a good idea to look at something that would just automatically do that for you.

(21:45) Or if you’re spending money on a CRM solution, and like we did a project for, you know, one of the largest cable companies in the United States, and they were averaging one and a half activities logged per week per salesperson. (21:59) And if you’re paying a lot of money for a solution and you’re not getting value out of it because nobody’s actually using it, you could consider something like Spiro. (22:09) You could consider just unplugging it because probably nothing bad is gonna happen anyway, right?

(22:14) So those are the kind of things that I would look for. (22:17) Or sometimes people, I was on the phone with a potential customer earlier today, and they are trying to change their sales model. (22:26) So a lot of manufacturers sell through to them.

(22:29) And then distribution sells through to the end customer. (22:33) And they want, they feel like they’re gonna grow sales faster if they know more about the end customer, not just the distributor. (22:38) So they want their sales teams out in the field with the end customers and pulling the distributors through.

(22:44) So that’s a business strategy that they have, which makes a lot of sense to me. (22:47) But how can they do that if they don’t have the data to make it work? (22:51) So they need something like CRM to enable that.

(22:54) So I’d say, you know, there’s a couple of different ways that people might wanna investigate. (22:58) Something like this.

Melissa

(23:00) I think it’s smart. (23:01) And I know like a lot of companies now have actual staff that’s all they do all day long is work in CRM, clean up CRM, you know, checks and balances. (23:13) So those resources have to be very costly, I imagine these days.

(23:17) And, you know, if you could completely get rid of that data entry and administration support, I imagine one could save a whole lot of money in the cost of the software.

Adam

(23:29) Yeah, it’s certainly true. (23:30) I’ll tell you something though, that’s also paradoxical is when we encounter a company that has, let’s say Salesforce, and they have like a Salesforce team that’s responsible for maintaining it. (23:41) And they don’t really need that with Spiro.

(23:43) And so that team becomes the most anti Spiro people possible because, you know, right? (23:49) I mean, it’s just human nature. (23:51) So paradoxically, I would say that the companies that have that cost already embedded in them are the slowest movers in the process, even though you would think that they’d be, you know, very interested and want to do more productive tasks, like, hey, how do we come up with more products?

(24:06) How do we, you know, attract more customers? (24:08) Not, hey, how do we make sure that the reports that we’re running actually work? (24:13) You know?

Melissa

(24:14) Yeah, I love that you said that. (24:16) I think that’s so true because, you know, businesses are trying to find ways to save and it’s not just on people, but it’s on software and cost of running a building or cost of anything these days. (24:31) So I think that’s a really good point I wanted to talk a little bit about.

(24:35) I wanted to get any kind of final thoughts or anything that you’d like to share that we haven’t touched on as it relates to CRM and Spiro.

Adam

(24:44) Sure. (24:44) Well, you know, I definitely want to say that if anybody is considering CRM, they should definitely not use it. (24:50) I just, you know, want to say that it’s the worst and nobody needs to use it and we should just retire it like the Rolodex.

(24:56) That’s my point of view on that in case I wasn’t clear already.

Melissa

(25:01) I love it. (25:02) Now, where can our listeners connect with you, Adam? (25:05) If they’re interested in learning more about Spiro, what’s the best way?

Adam

(25:10) So they can certainly connect with me on LinkedIn. (25:12) You can find me just Adam Honig on LinkedIn. (25:16) There’s only three Adam Honigs on LinkedIn.

(25:18) One is a professional basketball player. (25:20) That’s not me. (25:21) I’m the one who hates CRM, so it should be pretty easy to find me there.

(25:25) You can also always check out the spiro.ai website, which is conveniently found at spiro.ai. And for those of you, you know, who are wondering, the word Spiro comes from the Latin word spirare, which means to breathe. (25:42) So we’re trying to breathe new life into probably the worst technology space that’s out there today.

Melissa

(25:49) I love it. (25:50) Thank you so much for joining us here today, Adam. (25:53) Your insights on CRM are cutting edge, and I definitely get the point.

(25:58) No more CRMs. And that’s the Executive Connect podcast.