Automation & CRM · Routing, lifecycle, integration, data hygiene
Automation is usually sold as saving time. The more valuable outcome is that it makes the customer journey recordable — which is what lets you say, with evidence, which campaign produced which closed deal.
The engagement covers routing, lifecycle design, integration and the unglamorous data hygiene that everything else depends on.
Experience includes
Automating a broken process produces a faster broken process, so the sequence matters.
Stages with definitions and entry criteria that marketing and sales both agree to and can actually maintain.
Automatic assignment by territory, segment or score, with an SLA on response time and escalation when it is missed.
Forms, ads, website and CRM connected so the record follows the person rather than being retyped.
Onboarding, nurture, reactivation and post-purchase sequences built around real stalling points.
Deduplication, normalisation and validation rules.
Why it matters: every report above this layer inherits its errors.
Campaign to closed revenue, with the attribution caveats stated.
Response time stops depending on whether someone checked the inbox.
Marketing can follow a lead past the handoff and learn from what happens next.
Monthly reporting stops being a manual assembly job.
Directional. Automation removes delay and error; it does not create demand.
01
Action: document what actually happens, including the informal steps.
Output: the real process, not the documented one.
02
Action: agree lifecycle stages and their criteria.
Output: a model both teams accept.
03
Action: deduplicate and normalise before automating.
Output: a base worth building on.
04
Action: routing, integrations and sequences, documented as they are built.
Output: automation the next person can maintain.
05
Action: outcome data back into reporting and the ad platforms.
Output: campaign-to-revenue visibility.
The most common automation problem I find is not a broken workflow. It is a working workflow nobody understands, built by someone who has left, which the team routes around rather than risks changing.
So everything is documented as it is built: what it does, what triggers it, and what depends on it. That is what makes it an asset a year later rather than a liability.
The one you have. The lifecycle model and the data discipline transfer between platforms; the configuration is the easy part.
Usually not. Most CRM complaints are configuration and process problems that follow you to the next platform.
Yes, including the copy where that is useful, built around the reasons buyers actually stall.
Useful where a native integration does not exist. I use them where they reduce complexity, not as a default.
If nobody can say which campaign produced last quarter’s best customer, the record simply was not kept.