Adam Stone, CEO of D-Tools, is a self-admitted automation super geek. “Anything you have to do more than twice has to be automated,” said Stone. “I would rather have [my employees] honestly going skiing than do any automated repetitive task.”

At D-Tools, Stone’s entire sales process is automated. I want my sales people to focus on customers. I don’t want them to worry about who to call next or what their pipeline is. That should all be automatic. And that’s the situation D-Tools has now.

“We always know what to sell to who and when,” said Stone.

“When people tell me they don’t use CRM or don’t understand CRM. I almost can’t go on with the conversation anymore because you’re not even at that same level where you think there’s value in that,” Stone said. “The amount of money we spend on Zoho CRM versus what we get out of it is 100 times investment return.”

As for Stone’s advice on what to automate first, he said, “The first thing you should automate is sales and the second thing you should automate is sales.”

“The most important thing is get your sales in order,” said Stone.…