Less Annoying CRM is looking for a CRM Coach in St. Louis, MO

The Basics

Who we are

Less Annoying CRM is a small software company based in downtown St. Louis, MO. We make simple customer relationship management software for small businesses.

We live at the intersection of calm and ambitious. Calm means 40-hour work weeks, no deadlines, and a low-pressure work environment. Ambitious means getting a lot done with a small team, building the easiest to use product in the industry, and always trying to be better.

There are only 18 employees at the company, so you'd be joining a tight-knit team where you could have a big impact. We may be small, but we're stable. We're over 12 years old, and we've been profitable throughout our entire history.

What is a CRM Coach?

“CRM Coach” is our primary customer-facing role at LACRM. As a CRM Coach, you'll be an all-around expert on our CRM platform and assist our customers (small businesses of all types) with any and all questions as they evaluate, implement, and ultimately rely on the CRM for their day-to-day work.

The core work of CRM Coaching involves being as helpful as possible to customers (and potential customers) by fielding questions via email and phone, as well as sitting down for longer-form consultations with users to dive deep into account implementation or other more complex inquiries.

Who we're looking for

Successful CRM Coaches are adept problem-solvers who are good-natured, clear, and precise communicators. This is obviously especially essential with customers, but it's also crucial internally—you'll constantly interface with colleagues on both your team and others, and you'll be involved in brainstorming and decision-making regularly.

It's okay if you don't have a lot of experience working with software platforms like ours, but to thrive in this role you'll need to be curious about technology and eager to learn. Eventually, an experienced CRM Coach should be able to communicate not just the correct answers to questions about our software, but also the "why" behind each answer.

Schedule and location

This position is based in St. Louis, alongside the rest of our team, and is therefore only available to applicants currently in or willing to relocate to St. Louis. It's a full-time role—typical hours are roughly 9am-5pm each workday. All LACRM employees have the option of working either four days per week or five days per week—your choice.

The team rotates equally covering weekend support—this means keeping an eye on things every 9th week or so. Weekends are much slower-paced, only require responding to email inquiries, and are always worked remotely. Each CRM Coach earns 1.5 days off for each weekend they cover, typically manifesting in a long weekend the weekend prior.

In “normal” times, everyone on the team works from our downtown office two days per week (Wednesday and Thursday), and may work from the office or from home as preferred all other days. However, due to COVID-19, we have adjusted our policies to ensure a safe work environment for everyone. Currently, our office is open, but anyone who feels uncomfortable with in-person work may work remotely full-time. This policy remains in place indefinitely, but we do plan to return to our standard in-person schedule of Wednesdays and Thursdays when we feel that it’s reasonable to do so.

Note: All employees at Less Annoying CRM are required to be vaccinated against COVID-19, including booster shots.

Salary and benefits

We're very transparent about how we pay people at LACRM. If you choose to work four days per week, your starting salary will be $53,000. If you choose to work five days per week, your starting salary will be $67,000. CRM Coaches receive a $4,000 or $5,000 raise each year (for a four-day workweek or five-day workweek, respectively) indefinitely.

Other benefits include:

  • Paid time off. 30 personal days per year (24 for those working four days per week).
  • Paid sick days. Applies to both physical and mental health.
  • Health insurance. We offer plans through UnitedHealthcare. The company covers 50% of the cost.
  • 401(k) plan. LACRM automatically contributes an additional 3% of your salary (on top of your salary) to your 401(k) regardless of your contributions.
  • Parental leave. 12 weeks paid, up to 12 weeks unpaid, flexibly applied.
  • Sabbaticals. 6 weeks paid, up to 6 weeks unpaid, after three years at LACRM.

...and more. Details about all company benefits require more space than we have here, but you can read our full internal benefits documentation if you want to know the nitty-gritty.

Applying

If you're interested in joining the team as a CRM Coach, you can apply here:

Click here to begin your application

Applicants with disabilities may contact Less Annoying CRM via email or telephone to request and arrange for accommodations. If you need assistance to accommodate a disability during the application process, you may request an accommodation at any time. Please contact emily.schwab@lessannoyingcrm.com or call 314-222-2750.

We strongly believe in a transparent evaluation/interview flow — you can read a complete description of the process here.

You can also learn more about the company and our team. If you want more info before you apply, simply contact us—just email Emily at careers@lessannoyingcrm.com. Emily is a CRM Coach who manages our recruiting process, and will be able to tell you absolutely anything about the company or the position.

Even more details

You'll like this job if...

  • You're self-directed. We believe in hiring good people and getting out of their way. That means we won't micromanage your day-to-day work, but it also means that we need to trust you to do your part and do high-quality work by default. If you need someone looking over your shoulder to do your best work, you won't succeed at LACRM.
  • You genuinely enjoy helping people solve problems. CRM Coaches are helpers. Our customers will rely on you to be a source of knowledge and expertise, and will appreciate your good work (often quite vocally!). You'll do better work if you like helping people, but to enjoy the work of helping our customers with big problems and small each and every day, you'll need to get genuine fulfillment from being a helper, too.
  • You're willing to ask for help. We don't expect you to know all of the answers, but we do expect you to ask for help when you need it. Whether a customer has stumped you with a novel problem or you're unsure what to do next in your 20% time project, finding the best solution often requires seeking input from your colleagues.
  • You care about your colleagues. Everything at our company is a team effort. Nobody is stepping on anyone else to climb the corporate ladder. We respect each other deeply, give each other the benefit of the doubt, set each other up for success, celebrate each others’ victories, and cover for each other whenever needed.

Working on other projects at LACRM

CRM Coaches who choose to work five days per week have what we call "20% Time." As the name suggests, this means 20% of your time would be spent on projects in some other part(s) of the company. Some areas where CRM Coaches current spend their project time include:

  • Recruiting
  • Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
  • Event planning / team culture
  • Content management
  • Marketing
  • Training
  • Office management

...and more! You'll work directly with our CEO to decide on a project that interests you and that will contribute to the company's goals.

The first 30 days

With so much to learn, we'll jump into training right away! Within just the first few weeks we'll begin teaching you about all of the nuances of the CRM, explain how the team does its work (both with one another and externally with customers), familiarize you with our internal tools and crucial security processes, and more.

It won't all be theory, though—you'll start contributing right away. You'll most likely answer a customer's email question on your very first day, and we'll ease you into more and more responsibility over time. Within the first few weeks, you'll start taking on the role of “Monarch,” the Coach who ensures that the most urgent or important inquiries get priority and oversees the entire team’s efforts to make sure everything runs smoothly.

As you settle in and learn the ropes, you'll have lots of support from a peer mentor and your manager—scheduled check-ins with both will be a regular occurrence over your first few weeks. As you get further into your first month, you'll shadow and collaborate with the rest of the team as well, sitting in on calls and pairing off for dedicated co-working time. The CRM Coaches are a tight-knit and hyper-collaborative group, so you'll become comfortable working with and, importantly, seeking help from everyone else on the team.

In addition to training you on your core responsibilities, we'll also covers the ins and outs of the business and our philosophical approach, plus do deep dives into various other topics, including the history of the industry we're in, why we didn't raise money from investors, how we view long-term success, and more.

The job after that

"Full" training will take a few months, though the regularity of structured trainings will taper off as you get more and more self-sufficient. Your first phase will be mastery of email-based support, since it's easier to slow down, test things, ask questions, and craft careful responses in that format. As you build your knowledge, confidence, and speed, you'll eventually progress to the point where you're ready to provide live, expert consultation to our customers. At that point, you'll be ready to take on the same daily schedule as the rest of the fully-trained members of the team.

Another key part of the daily work of CRM Coaches is troubleshooting. If a customer reports a problem, it's your job to logically dissect the issue and ferret out the root of the problem. On-the-fly problem-solving skills are key. Identifying a cause and implementing a solution will often require working closely with our developers, and acting as liaison between our tech team and our customers.

Every day's schedule is different—you'll have a mix of assigned roles, from focusing on email-based support, to answering call-in questions from customers, to sitting down for long-form onboarding consultations with small businesses of all types. We deliberately make the schedule so no two workdays are exactly the same.

On top of your core work of helping small businesses succeed with our product, here are some other things you'll encounter periodically:

  • The entire company meets weekly for one hour for discussion and brainstorming. CRM Coaches often bring novel customer ideas/requests that they’ve heard, and the entire team discusses and considers anything on the list in an open forum.
  • Once per week, the entire company sits down together for lunch provided by the company. Over the years, company lunch has become a treasured routine—it’s a weekly time for us to hang out around a single table and spend time with each other apart from the daily work of running the company together!
  • Our CEO holds weekly brainstorming sessions with small groups of employees to think about whatever issues are front of mind for the company. Once you've had a bit of training, you'll be a part of those as well, and you'll be expected to lend your voice to help chip away at big ongoing challenges, dream about possible futures for the company, or dive deep on the details of a decision that is currently in progress.

In reality, your training never truly stops—our product evolves over time, and so do our internal systems, tools, and goals. Like everyone at LACRM, you’ll need to always keep growing and learning!