DECISION£300 fixed
What should CRM actually do?
For a business choosing CRM and trying to define what the system should improve before vendors define the requirement for you.
See CRM Decision ReviewAbout · Revenue Operations
I don't start with the function that looks broken.
More selling, more customers, more people or a better product can all fail to produce the result management expected. The visible problem may sit in Sales, Delivery, Product, staffing or the CRM. That does not mean it started there.
Yulia Fomina · Founder, Unsnag · Manchester, UK
Where this came from
I learned this by trying to fix the wrong thing.
I once rebuilt a CRM inside a business where the process behind it had never really been defined. My first response was predictable: clean the data, tighten the fields, make the stages clearer and get people using the system consistently.
It did not solve the underlying problem. Different parts of the business were working from different meanings and different information. The CRM was not creating that inconsistency. It was exposing it.
That is why I now start with what changed in the business, not with the system or function where the symptom appeared.
From inside the business
I have owned this work, not only advised on it from outside.
I have been responsible for pipeline, reporting and the numbers management used inside a business where much of that infrastructure still had to be built.
I have seen what happens when the data is technically present but the operating logic behind it is not: stages mean different things, handovers rely on memory, reporting has to be reconstructed, and a problem that looks local turns out to sit between functions.
That experience is why I am interested in the joins: what the market signals, what Sales promises, what Delivery has to absorb, what the customer actually does next, and what management can or cannot see.
How I work
You work with me.
No handover to a junior team after the first call.
Before we speak
I research the company, offer, customers and likely commercial route so the first conversation starts with context.
During the work
I run the interviews, review the available evidence and compare the plausible explanations myself.
At the end
I write the diagnostic. The reasoning does not disappear into a meeting or get delegated after the sale.
What I won't do
Some answers are smaller than the problem first appears.
A diagnostic is useful only if it can conclude that less work is needed, not more.
01
I won't recommend CRM work just because the problem appeared in CRM.
02
I won't assume more sales activity is the answer because revenue slowed.
03
I won't turn missing evidence into a confident explanation.
04
I won't make a large project out of something that needs a small fix.
Background
Definitions, ownership and commitments matter.
My background crosses commercial analysis, operations, HR and legal work. The legal part still affects how I think: if two teams mean different things by the same stage, promise or handover, a system built on top of that ambiguity will eventually show the difference.
In category terms, this sits within Revenue Operations. In practice, I use RevOps to look across the commercial system rather than treating Sales, CRM or reporting as separate problems.
Where to start
Three different questions.
The right starting point depends on what is still unclear.
VISIBILITY£595 fixed
Can we reliably follow what happened?
For a business where the information exists, but management still has to reconstruct the customer or revenue story manually.
See Revenue Visibility ReviewEXPLANATION£1,950 fixed
Why did the result not improve?
For a business where several explanations sound plausible and the real work is finding which one the evidence actually supports.
See Commercial DiagnosticStart with the mismatch
Tell me what changed and what failed to improve.
If the first useful conclusion is that you do not need a CRM project, more sales activity or a larger intervention, I will say so.
Book a discovery call