North Bay
Business Journal
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Knowme Web-based service mines
contacts for sales leads
Novato startup’s program aids small businesses
BY LORALEE STEVENS, STAFF REPORTER
NOVATO – E-mail, Web sites and auto-
mated phone messaging aside, nothing beats
the power of a live human voice when it
comes to sales and service.
But add the Web’s sophisticated data
gathering and reporting
ability and e-commerce
tools to an incentivized
sales force, and you get
a sum that’s greater
than its parts.
Or so is the conten-
tion of Knowme Inc., a
Novato startup dedi-
cated to almost never
Knowme CEO missing or muffing a
Boris Medak business call.
“A small business cannot afford to miss
a lead, and most come over the phone,” said
Knowme CEO Boris Medak, an IT entrepre-
neur with knowledge of the automotive and
technology-led financial services industries.
“Our Web-based services turn relatively
inexperienced phone staff into profession-
als and allow professional phone staff to
become even more efficient.”
Several North Bay companies have become
converts to the Knowme service, which pays
for itself in increased sales and lowered costs.
“It’s easy to use and it has features no small
business should be without,” said Debi Ste-
vens, general manager of Marin Acura in Corte
Madera. “And the support is far superior to
what’s offered by large software companies.”
When the founders of privately funded
Knowme brought their IT and telecommu-
nications expertise to bear on the small busi-
ness sector, they first built a platform to serve
the financial segment of the automotive mar-
ket. By late 2005, the service had expanded
to serve any business requiring phones.
The Knowme platform includes training
and positive reinforcement elements to im-
prove phone staff performance, data capture
to deepen knowledge about callers and calls
and reportage that offers several tiers of in-
formation about the efficacy of a company’s
marketing campaigns, its phone practices and
© 2007 North Bay Business Journal. Reproduction in any form prohibited without permission.
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sales techniques.
Subscribers to the service pay anywhere
from $199 to $2,500 a month, depending on
the number of employees using the system
and the modules chosen.
“Our goal is to provide our customers
with five times their ROI a month, and we’re
doing it,” said Mr. Medak.
General sales manager for Hansel Toyota
Don Butler said the Knowme service re-
turns 10 times its cost each month.
Without a sales team as yet and little
fanfare, Knowme has picked up 120 clients
and about 1,000 users, said Mr. Medak.
Customers can use an array of different
800 numbers in print and Internet market-
ing. A click-to-call button expedites responses
from Web ads and e-mail, grabbing poten-
tial customers at the peak of their interest.
If the call is made from a residence, Know-
me gathers the name, address and – if the
caller has phoned before – a history of previ-
ous call content and transactions and puts
the pertinent data on the screen before the
call is picked up.
If the call is missed or aborted, contact
information appears anyway while an in-
stant e-mail notification of the missed call,
with caller information, is sent to designated
recipients, enabling a swift call back.
Any user can evaluate the call and add
sales stages, actions, priority and notes to
indicate the nature of the call and to whom
the call should be assigned for proper sales
or service follow-up.
Management is able to see at a glance those
employees who are doing well, missing calls
or not following up on leads, allowing for
focused training. Phone staff
can also review their own
messages for self-guided
learning.
Because the system cal-
culates which ads are gen-
erating calls and compares
the number to the cost of
the campaign, marketing Knowme reportage
staff and business owners includes bar graphs
charting call volume
can easily judge the effec-
and ad efficiency.
tiveness of each advertising source.
Mr. Butler said that’s a feature Hansel
Toyota appreciates.
“We have print ads, electronic ads, pur-
chased leads. We like to be able to see how
they’re paying off,” he said.
He likes the call monitoring aspect too.
“Lots of times, employees don’t want to
admit that they can’t answer a question from
a caller. Knowing that, we can streamline
training to fit the problem,” said Mr. Butler.
Maurine Grisso is broker and owner of
the set-fee Help-U-Sell Real Estate franchise
in Santa Rosa and central California regional
director for the operation, which has 800 fran-
chises in the U.S. She and her 10 agents have
been using Knowme for about nine months.
“Even in a down real estate market, I’m
a lot better off than I would have been with-
out this system,” she said.
By studying the time and volume of calls,
she restructured both Help-U-Sell’s office
hours and staff schedules.
Convinced of its value, Ms. Grisso brought
Knowme to the attention of Help-U-Sell na-
tional headquarters. Executives evaluated her
results and now recommend its use to all of
their franchisees.
Knowme is in talks with other potential
strategic partners. The company could have
about 20 employees in 18 months.
“We plan to leverage our technology
through partnerships and internal efforts,
making it accessible to any small business
that wants to be as competitive and efficient
as possible. We’re just now positioning our-
selves to do that,” said Mr. Medak.
For more information, call 866-695-6696.