Buying a CRM is easy. Turning it into the single place where sales, marketing, and customer success work together is harder.

We treat CRM projects less like tool setups and more like designing a revenue operating system.

Model your revenue process before creating fields

Instead of starting with “What objects does the CRM support?”, map:

• How leads enter the system.
• How they move from marketing-qualified to sales-qualified.
• What a “committed” deal looks like.
• How handoff to onboarding and success happens.

Then design:

• A small set of lifecycle stages.
• Clear ownership rules.
• Required fields at each transition.

Your CRM schema should reflect this journey—not the other way round.

Automate the boring, never the thinking

Good CRM automation:

• Assigns owners based on territory or product line.
• Creates tasks for follow-up at specific triggers.
• Syncs activity from email, calls, and product usage.

Bad automation tries to close deals without humans and floods reps with noisy notifications.

Design automation so that when a salesperson opens a record, they instantly know:

• What happened last.
• What should happen next.
• What’s blocking progress.

Integrate CRM with the tools that matter most

To become the operating system, the CRM must connect to:

• Marketing automation (campaigns, scoring, content).
• Product telemetry (trials, usage, expansion signals).
• Billing and invoices (for real revenue, not just opportunity values).

We often use a thin integration layer or event bus so changes in one system update the others without fragile point-to-point wiring.

Make reporting a byproduct of good hygiene

If reporting requires manual spreadsheets every month, the CRM is not doing its job.

Design fields and processes so that, when used correctly, you can answer:

• Where do we actually win and lose?
• Which channels produce reliable pipeline?
• Which segments expand or churn?

When your CRM reflects reality, leadership dashboards are just a few filters away—no heroics required.