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Phase 0. Before you start
- Name one internal owner. Give them two hours per week for three months.
- Write the reason for the project in one sentence, and share it with the team.
- Set a go live date. A project without a date runs forever.
- Decide who has the final vote when two people disagree.
- List the systems that must connect, and mark the ones that can wait.
Phase 1. Process
- Interview the two people who close most. Write short notes.
- Interview the person who complains most about admin.
- Describe the path from first contact to signed deal in ten sentences.
- Write down why deals are lost. Use the words the team uses.
- Agree one definition of a qualified deal, in writing.
Phase 2. Pipeline
- Five to seven stages. Start with one pipeline.
- Name each stage after an observable event, not a feeling.
- Write an exit criterion per stage.
- Set a rotten deal limit per stage.
- Define what happens to a lost deal, and which reasons you track.
Phase 3. Fields
- List the five reports you need first.
- Derive the fields from those reports, and nothing else.
- Keep eight to twelve deal fields at launch.
- Use single option lists for anything you will filter on.
- Mark as required only what blocks a decision.
- Write the purpose of each field in one line, and keep that list.
Phase 4. Data
- Choose one source of truth. Ignore the others for now.
- Deduplicate people on email, organisations on domain.
- Normalise country, currency and date formats.
- Set a cut off: open deals, plus won deals from two years.
- Delete records with no activity in three years, or park them.
- Test import fifty records. Check five by hand.
- Import order: users, organisations, people, deals, activities, notes.
- Reconcile counts and total open value before anyone logs in.
Phase 5. Automation
- Create a follow up activity when a deal enters a stage.
- Alert the owner when a deal is idle beyond its limit.
- Set defaults for deals created from a web form.
- Do not automate customer email in month one.
- Document every automation in one sentence, in a shared document.
Phase 6. Integrations
- Connect email and calendar for every user on day one.
- Agree what stays private in shared inboxes.
- Add the web form or website integration next.
- Postpone ERP or billing connections until the process is stable.
- Name one person who tests each integration with real data.
Phase 7. Training
- One session for administrators: fields, automations, reporting, permissions.
- One session for users: log a call, move a deal, find yesterday's work.
- Use their real deals, not demo data.
- Write a one page cheat sheet and pin it where the team works.
- Book a second user session two weeks after go live.
Phase 8. The first thirty days
- Track deals with a next activity, weekly.
- Track deals updated in the last seven days, weekly.
- Pull the Monday numbers from the CRM, even when they look incomplete.
- Ask the person before you change the system.
- At day thirty: delete unused fields, rename the confusing stage, add two automations.
Phase 9. Handover
- Written documentation of every automation and field.
- An administrator who can add a field without help.
- A named contact for escalations, with a response time.
- A review date in the calendar, three months out.
How to use this with a partner
Send this list with your request for a proposal. Ask which phases are included, which are yours, and which are excluded. The answers make two quotes comparable in ten minutes.
It also works as a review of a setup you already have. Walk down the list and mark what is missing. Most teams find four or five gaps, and fixing those beats rebuilding.