CRM service
CRM setup and implementation
A CRM configured around the way your team already sells, then handed over with the people who have to use it actually trained on it.
Why most CRM rollouts stall in month three
The software gets installed, the fields get switched on, and for a few weeks everyone is diligent. Then a rep closes a big deal without touching the system, nothing bad happens, and the habit unravels from there. By month three the CRM holds a partial record of what the company did and a complete record of who was willing to do data entry.
The cause is nearly always the same. The setup was copied from a vendor template or somebody’s previous employer, so it asks for information at the wrong point in the sale, in an order nobody recognises. A rep who has to open four tabs to log a call will stop logging calls. A manager who cannot pull last month’s number in under a minute goes back to the spreadsheet, and once the spreadsheet is authoritative again the CRM is just an expensive address book.
So the configuration starts from how your deals actually move rather than from the feature list. Which stages a deal really passes through. Which fields someone will fill in honestly, and which are wishful thinking. What the two or three reports are that a decision genuinely depends on. Most of the rest can wait, and a fair amount of it never needs switching on at all.
What is included
What a setup engagement covers
Pipeline and stages
Your deal stages named the way your team already names them, with entry and exit criteria written down so two people move a deal at the same point.
Fields and data model
A short list of fields that get filled in, rather than a long list that does not. Custom objects only where your business genuinely needs them.
Users, roles and permissions
Who sees which records, who can edit, who can delete, and what happens to a pipeline when somebody leaves the company.
Automation that earns its keep
Follow-up tasks, stage triggers and handoffs, limited to the ones that save real time and reviewed for the ones that quietly irritate people.
Reporting and dashboards
The forecast, pipeline view and activity report your managers will open weekly, built so the numbers reconcile with each other.
Import and clean-up
Existing contacts and deals brought in, de-duplicated and matched to owners, so day one starts on real data instead of an empty system.
Team training
Sessions run by role, because what a rep needs to know and what a sales manager needs to know are different things.
Documentation
The configuration written down in plain language, so whoever touches it next can follow the decisions rather than reverse engineer them.
How it runs
From kickoff to a system people use
Map the sale
Two or three sessions watching how deals move today, including the parts of the process that live outside any software.
Configure in a sandbox
The build happens in a test environment. You get a walkthrough on your own sample data before anything is final.
Import and go live
Data brought across, users created, permissions set, and a cutover date everyone knows about in advance.
Train and adjust
Role-based training, then thirty days of adjustments while real use exposes what a workshop never does.
CRM implementation questions
How long does a CRM implementation take?
A small team on a mainstream platform is usually live in three to five weeks. Larger teams with territories, approval rules or custom objects run six to twelve. The variable is rarely the software. It is how quickly your side can settle the decisions about stages, ownership and who is allowed to see what.
Do you work with our existing CRM, or do we need a new one?
Either. A good share of my work is fixing an existing instance rather than replacing it, and that is usually the cheaper answer by a wide margin. If the platform genuinely cannot do what you need, I will say so and set out what switching would cost in disruption as well as money.
Will our team actually use it?
Adoption comes from the configuration far more than from the training. If logging a call takes four clicks it will not happen consistently, however good the session was. That is why this starts by watching how your reps work rather than by opening the admin panel.
What do we need ready before we start?
Someone who can make decisions without going to committee, access to a clean export of your current data, and roughly four hours of your sales lead’s time spread across the first fortnight. The rest sits with me.
What happens after go live?
Thirty days of adjustments are included, because the first month of real use always surfaces things a workshop did not. After that you can keep me on monthly, or take the documentation and run it yourself.
Get the setup right the first time
Tell me how your team sells today and what you are running now. You get a written assessment within two business days.