Unsnag
Reality Problems Patterns Diagnostic Design About Book

I don't start by assuming the CRM is the problem.

Most CRM work I've seen starts with a fix already decided. A field gets made mandatory. Another training session gets booked. A cleaner dashboard gets built. None of it holds, because the CRM usually isn't what broke — it's what's reflecting something that broke somewhere else.

I'm Yulia Fomina. I work alone — no handover to a junior after the sales call, no team you haven't met. Whoever does your diagnostic is whoever you spoke to.

Manchester, UK

Patching versus fixing

I've rebuilt a CRM from inside a business that had no defined process behind it — no shared pipeline stages, no agreement on what a deal stage actually meant, no one owning the handover between teams. My first instinct was the same as most people's: fix the data, tighten the fields, retrain the team.

It didn't hold. Not because the training was bad, but because the CRM was never the source of the problem. It was reporting, accurately, a process that different teams were no longer running the same way. Fixing the CRM without fixing that just makes the inconsistency harder to see.

What I won't do

I won't scope a redesign project if the real gap is a five-minute fix
I won't recommend CRM work if the problem sits upstream or downstream of it
I won't run another training session as a substitute for fixing the process underneath
I won't tell you a system is broken because that's the easier thing to sell

I've owned this, not advised on it from outside

I didn't review someone else's CRM from a slide deck. I was responsible for the pipeline, the reporting, and the numbers that went into the P&L — inside a business where none of that infrastructure existed yet. I know which parts break first because I've been the person accountable when they did.

Where the legal background fits

I spent years as a lawyer before I moved into operations — contract lifecycle, regulatory compliance, transactional documentation. That's a deliberate career change, not a sideline. It's also why I don't treat stage definitions, ownership rules or handover points as loose conventions. They're commitments, and a system built on vague ones fails the same way a badly drafted contract does.

If you're not sure whether the problem is your CRM

That's what the diagnostic is for. It's built to tell you that honestly, even when the answer is that CRM isn't where you need to spend money next.