Interview with Richard Miles – Founder, CLOSEM [2023]

Like many entrepreneurs and small business owners, my partner Laura Betterly and I were busy doing all of our day-to-day activities servicing clients and managing the business. We found ourselves running out of time to follow up with our leads. We saw many of our clients and colleagues in the same boat.

We knew we were losing sales that we could be making, and given the cost of lead generation, we looked to find a tool we could use to automate the process. What we found was a mess of complicated tools that took too much time to learn to use, were difficult to use at best, and were for the most part way too expensive to invest in.

We knew that if it wasn’t simple and easy to use we’d stop using it anyway. Since we couldn’t find what we were looking for, we decided to build our own. That’s how CLOSEM came to be.

I was a very successful salesman because when someone asked me to call them back, I did. I diligently followed up with every single lead I ever got and I’ve tried to instill that dedication in every salesperson I’ve worked with. Regardless of whether I was working in huge multinational corporations or small startups, the quality of follow-up was what made the difference in whether or not the entity succeeded.

Anyone running a business – or like a lot of folks in these pandemic times, trying to turn their side-hustle into full-time income can use CLOSEM. Even if you don’t have a big list, upload your personal contacts into CLOSEM, and use some of the professionally-written message templates to ask for referrals.

Use the ones where you can ask your first customers to give you reviews. Start getting names and use the ones marked “prospecting for new business.”

The part both Laura and I like the most is hearing success stories from our users. I think the leadership skills that we use the most are listening to each other and listening to our customers. We are both dedicated to learning every day. It isn’t about having one year of experience repeated 20 times, it’s about having 20 years of experience.

Well, launching a new business in the midst of a global pandemic and business shutdown was a challenge. Like all entrepreneurs, we rolled with the punches and kept going.

We are planning to verticalize CLOSEM – right now it works for everyone from a lady who sells healing crystals online to a gentleman who makes statues out of recycled sandals, but we know we can add more specific features to suit specific verticals niche markets.

We also have a lot of Real Estate, Mortgage, Insurance, Legal professionals using CLOSEM and we know we can add additional features for those niches.

I try to make time. This isn’t my first startup, and I’ve learned from experience that recharging is as important as any other task on my to-do list.

Just do it.

Yes. I think the pandemic has actually been an opportunity. We just closed a very big CLOSE customer with hundreds of users, and we did it all virtually. In the past, we would have been invited to fly to their office and the whole thing would have taken weeks. As it was, we closed in 4 days.

We intend to keep growing. We have some incredible ideas and partnerships and we intend to expand globally. We already have so much interest outside of North America and we intend to service customers all over the planet.