CRM Management
Your CRM should help you win more business
A CRM only works if it is built around how your team actually sells. I set up, clean up and manage all the major platforms so your pipeline reflects reality, your reporting can be trusted, and nothing falls through the gaps.
Most of the CRMs I am asked to fix have the same three problems: duplicate records nobody has reconciled, pipeline stages that do not match how deals really progress, and fields half the team ignores. All three are fixable.
The usual state
A CRM nobody trusts is worse than no CRM
Once a team stops believing the data, they keep their real pipeline in a spreadsheet and the CRM becomes an expensive filing cabinet.
How it degrades
Nobody agrees what a stage means, so deals sit in Qualified for months. Contacts get entered twice with different spellings. Custom fields are added over time and never removed. Reports contradict each other, so leadership stops using them and starts asking people directly. That is the point where the CRM has failed.
What good looks like
Stages have clear exit criteria, so everyone agrees what Qualified actually means. One record per person, enforced by deduplication rules. Only fields that are actually used. Reporting that matches what the sales team would tell you if you asked them. Forecasting becomes possible rather than theatre.
Where I usually start: not with new features, but with deleting things. Most CRMs I inherit have too many fields, too many stages and too many automations that fire for reasons nobody remembers.
What I do
From messy to running properly
Whether that means a first-time setup, a rescue job on an existing instance, or ongoing management.
Setup and architecture
Stages, fields, users, permissions and pipelines designed around your actual sales process rather than the platform default template. Built so it still makes sense when the team doubles.
Data cleanup and deduplication
Duplicates merged with a clear rule about which record wins, dead records archived rather than deleted, formatting normalised across phone numbers, names and addresses. Reporting starts being believable again.
Pipeline design
Deal stages that match how you really sell, each with an exit criterion so nobody has to guess whether something should move. This is what makes forecasting mean anything.
Team training and adoption
Your team shown exactly how to use it, with written documentation they can refer back to. Adoption is usually a design problem, not a discipline problem, so if people are avoiding a field I would rather remove it.
Integrations
Your CRM connected to email, calendar, phone, billing, website forms and support desk, so data arrives without anyone typing it twice.
Ongoing management
Retainer support for changes, new pipelines, new users, reporting requests and the platform updates that periodically break things.
Platform fit
Which CRM suits which business
Honest generalisations. The right answer depends on your process, but this is roughly how I advise.
| Platform | Suits | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| HubSpot | Teams wanting sales and marketing in one place with genuinely good reporting | Costs climb steeply as you add seats and unlock tiers |
| GoHighLevel | Agencies and local service businesses wanting CRM, funnels and SMS bundled | Sprawling interface, easy to build a mess if unplanned |
| Salesforce | Complex processes, large teams, heavy customisation and compliance needs | Overkill and expensive for small teams; needs ongoing admin |
| Zoho CRM | Cost-conscious teams wanting broad functionality | Interface friction; needs configuring to feel coherent |
| Pipedrive | Small sales teams wanting a clean, simple pipeline | Lighter on marketing and reporting depth |
| KV Core / BoldTrail / Follow Up Boss | Real estate teams needing speed-to-lead and IDX integration | Industry-specific; limited outside property |
How it works
How I set up or rescue your CRM
Audit
I go through your current setup and document what is broken, duplicated or unused. You get that document whether or not you hire me.
Design
Pipeline, fields and automation mapped around your real process, agreed with you before anything is built.
Build
Configured and tested against a copy of your data, so nothing is trialled on live records.
Migrate
Clean data moved across with a rollback plan. Nothing is deleted until you have confirmed the new state is right.
Train and hand over
Your team walked through it with written docs, plus 30 days of support for the questions that only surface in real use.
Engagement
What this costs and how we work
Audit
The initial audit conversation is free and you keep the findings. If the fix is simple enough for your own team to do, I will say so.
Build or rescue
Fixed price after the audit. A focused cleanup and pipeline rebuild is typically one to two weeks. A full migration between platforms is longer and quoted separately.
Ongoing management
Optional monthly retainer for teams without an internal CRM admin. Covers changes, new users, reporting and keeping things tidy as you grow.
CRM platforms I set up and manage
Common questions
CRM management, answered honestly
Related
Often built alongside this
CRM automation
Once the data is clean, automate the routing, follow-up and stage triggers on top of it.
Learn more →AI automation
Enrich, deduplicate and classify records automatically using a model rather than manual review.
Learn more →Automation platforms
Connect the CRM to everything else in your stack with n8n, Zapier or Make.
Learn more →Ready when you are
Let me look at your CRM
A free 30-minute call. Screen share your CRM and I will tell you exactly what is costing you deals. You keep the findings either way.
Book a free 30-min call →