The Truth About Infusionsoft and Successful Implementations

Never buy software in a seminar or trust a friend or "trusted adviser" who tells you how awesome this software is. Hire an objective business, sales, and marketing adviser who you pay to give you advise on what is best for you, much like anything else that costs a lot of money, time and is essential
to the success of your business. Their sales people have one objective which is to sell you their software. It is a sales focused culture. Good sales and marketing strategy is CRITICAL BEFORE you invest in any solution like this. Do your homework. The single biggest mistake we see is lack of clarity on strategy, or really lousy strategy going into this and other systems like it.

We are a certified partner and we keep that status in good standing. But we don't use it as our core platform any longer. It's important to disclose that we work with many other technology and other solution partners/companies and remain agnostic in delivering these solutions to clients.

It was frustrating as hell. You can't teach a kid to ride a bike in a seminar, you can't do it over the phone with tech support, unless you have some talent and the patience of Job. Being is business is hard enough. Adding new software is a pain in the butt. The path of least resistance is to find a professional who lives in this stuff and pay up for the talent. It's less expensive in the long run and you'll likely not need to self medicate. As much.

This training is taught often to the lowest common denominator so as to help as many customers of theirs as possible. We do the training and coaching and implementations for our clients. But clients who I know who have been to their training get trained well. The gap that can exist lies in you doing your part and really investing in using and building out the application.

The training and education is only as good as your willingness to apply it.

If you're willing to click and learn as you go, there are great resources for training including on page help and video.

If you want lose your mind and you're not a software person, or you don't have one on your team, plan on paying a professional! Plan on investing thousands. Don't let some kid in a cubicle do your Kick Start. The partners they pay for Kick Starts see it as a loss leader, work for peanuts on the rev share they get of your money and who knows what you'll get.

You can configure the CRM, campaigns, templates, pages, etc. on your own, but why the hell would you want to do this if you enjoy and are good at what you already do? Keep it simple, like Einstein. You can configure the campaigns really well using the Campaign Builder, by far the best feature of this software. But why when you can more easily white board or use a mind mapping tool or whatever it is you like best. That's where these guys got the idea for the Campaign Builder. Their best and most successful business people and certified partners were doing this in the first place.
Everything Should Be Made as Simple as Possible, But Not Simpler

It may be easy to get someone on chat or phone for which I give these guys credit. But this does not mean you will get the answers you want or like. It's a buggy system. Why? Because it's all in one. The CRM is decent. The cart a joke. The email editor laughable. Affiliate partner function serves a huge business risk unless programmed by a NASA level consultant for which you can and must pay dearly. There are just too many bugs overall.

Buyer beware. Be prepared to invest many hours if you plan to manage this application yourself. This is true of any automation solution. Can you take classes and go to University again and become a great marketing automation expert yourself? Yes, probably. But should you be investing your highest and most productive use of time building out Infusionsoft. Not likely.

Which means you need to plan on finding someone you can trust and that is the plain truth. There are many qualified consultants who have sufficient sales, marketing, business, content, life and Infusionsoft experience to help you get results. But far too many people decry this as an all in one solution that is easy to use. This will never be the case even though the product development team is constantly working to make it a better product and easier to use.

We don't make our own paper clips for a reason. We outsource all the time. We have to make really informed decisions on the solutions we use and then commit to learning best practices for marketing regardless of the platform.

Do not expect to pay someone less than $150-$250 per hour to really make this application sing. Or pay them for training or internal services and then kick yourself.

Pricing is user and email and function based. Way too many pay walls and not native function for scaling. It's scaleable with NASA level marketing automation talent you must pay to engage. Otherwise, it gets expensive quickly for scaling to a true small business, which is what they target. Over 25 users and you're screwed. Look at the competition first, evaluate what you really need for your business and start there. Keep it simple, build your cash flow and confidence in the people you hired to make this work and then scale. Don't get sucked into the dream that this thing will help you sell your book to millions and you get famous while hanging on your boat or whatever. Building a small business is hard enough. Adding software often adds complexity in order to successfully scale.

Haven't experienced any real issues with availability. Reliability is another deal.

OMG, it's all in one and that compromises everything, fundamentally. If you want a race car, invest in a race car. If you want a dune buggy, get that. If you want a boat that floats, go for it.

Because you need to pay a professional and the sales gurus at Infusionsoft won't always tell you what this really means to you, your small team and your budget. Not to mention your sanity.

They are well trained sales people. They will tell you easy it is. They pay commissions to trusted advisers to sell you into this. They pay partners to sell you into this. They pay pretty much anyone a referral fee to sell you this unless they changed that policy. Which means you better ask the person what's in it for them if you buy this sucker. You should plan to pay a qualified consultant to help you evaluate all solutions so you can be more certain you get what is most SUITABLE FOR YOU. NOT THEM. As a soon to be former certified partner, they are a nightmare to work with. But they put that all on me or others like me who dare to stand up to them and tell them they should drink less Koolaid. Holy cow, Batman.

The vendors are known as partners and developers. (Except a few dishonest ones who overstate their ability and integrity and steal my or your money.) Many I know personally are phenomenal people who are well qualified and have the best of intentions. Use these people. Avoid the internal kick starts and select someone who knows strategy, sales, marketing and the tech or else you are non likely to be very happy. Hence, their reputation being what it is.