the process.
CRM Implementation
CRM implementation that starts with how you actually sell
Most CRM projects begin with a platform demo. That’s the wrong end. The expensive failures aren’t caused by the software. They’re caused by rolling out a system nobody agreed the process for.
30 minutes. We’ll ask how you sell before we mention any platform.
Our bias
First, our bias, stated up front
We’re a HubSpot Gold Partner. You should know that before you read the rest of this page. Here’s why we think we’re still worth a conversation if you haven’t chosen a platform. The first half of a CRM implementation has nothing to do with software. It’s working out who’s involved in a deal, what has to be true to move a stage, where handovers happen, and what your forecast needs to answer. That work is identical whether you end up on HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho or Dynamics, and it’s the half that determines whether the thing gets used. The second half is configuration, and yes, we’re faster and better on HubSpot than on anything else.
Symptoms
You’ll recognise this if…
If two or more of these are true, the constraint is process, not tooling.
Sales runs on a spreadsheet that one person maintains and everyone else distrusts
The forecast is assembled by asking reps and averaging optimism
Deals get lost in handovers because nobody agreed where marketing stops and sales starts
You’ve grown from three reps to twelve and the informal system has stopped scaling
A CRM was bought, half-configured, and quietly abandoned, and nobody wants to raise it
You’re being asked for pipeline reporting you can’t produce without a week of work
Selection
Choosing a platform
If you haven’t decided yet, this is roughly how we’d think about it with you. Not a comparison table, because those are marketing documents. Four questions that actually decide it.
How complex is your sales process, really?
Most teams describe it as more complex than it is. Genuine complexity, meaning multi-entity, heavy quoting logic or deep ERP dependency, points one way. A straightforward B2B pipeline with clean stages points another, and it’s a cheaper answer.
Where does the rest of your business already live?
A team deep in Microsoft has a real reason to look at Dynamics. A team already running marketing automation somewhere has a migration cost to weigh.
Who has to use it every day, and will they?
The single biggest predictor of failure. A powerful platform your reps resent is worth less than a simpler one they open.
What has to be reported, to whom, how often?
Work backwards from the board pack. It eliminates more options faster than any feature comparison.
The work
What we actually do
Five phases. The first one happens before any platform is named.
01
Define how you sell
Sessions with sales in the room. Stages, entry and exit criteria, ownership, handover points, what the forecast has to answer. Written down and agreed. This is the deliverable that survives even if you change platform in three years.
02
Select, if you haven’t
Against the four questions above, plus your reporting requirements and your data. A recommendation with the reasoning shown, not a preference asserted.
03
Design the structure
Data model, lifecycle stages, pipelines, properties, permissions, ownership rules. Agreed on paper before anything is built, so the arguments happen on a document rather than inside a live system with your reps watching.
04
Build
Configuration, automation, integrations, reporting. Data brought across and cleaned where there’s existing data. Built in an order that lets you use the early parts while later parts go in.
05
Get it adopted
Role-based training: reps get the rep version, managers get the manager version. Documentation of what was built and why. Check-ins at 30 and 60 days, because adoption problems surface in week six, not week one.
Deliverables
What you get
A documented sales process your sales team helped write
Agreed lifecycle stages and qualification criteria
A platform recommendation with the reasoning shown, if you need one
A configured CRM with pipelines, properties, automation and permissions
Clean data rather than data merely moved
Reporting that answers your forecast questions without a spreadsheet in between
Training by role, plus documentation
30- and 60-day reviews
Proof
A HubSpot Gold Partner
We’ve built and run marketing, sales and data systems for Vox Telecoms, NetFlorist, BIBO and FoodServ, including environments where reporting has to resolve by business unit rather than by company.
Honestly
Where this isn’t the right fit
You need someone senior on the sales side who owns this. Not a sponsor in name, but someone who’ll sit in the definition sessions, arbitrate when two reps disagree about what a stage means, and tell the team this is how it works now. CRM implementations fail at adoption, not configuration. If your sales process genuinely doesn’t exist yet, with no stages, no owner and no forecast, a CRM won’t create it. And if you want software configured to a spec you’ve already written, with no discussion of process, that’s a faster and cheaper job than ours.
Looking ahead
Looking at 2027
The AI tools arriving in your sales stack next year, meaning lead scoring, call summaries, drafted follow-ups and forecast prediction, all read the CRM. They inherit whatever structure is underneath. If “qualified” means three different things across your team today, AI won’t resolve that ambiguity. It will industrialise it, at speed, with a confident tone.
Contact
Bring us what you’re seeing. We’ll show you what to do next.
Share a bit of context and what you’re trying to achieve. We’ll come back with the most useful next step and help you decide on the smallest set of moves that improves clarity, delivery, and measurement.
