From the desk:CRM Setup / Systems Consulting

My own automations worked. Now a 40 door client wants them and I can't scope it.

I built my own dispatch and follow-up flow over about two years because I was losing quotes I never followed up on. Nothing fancy. Every quote over $2,000 gets a text at day 2, day 9, day 30, and anything unsold at 60 days drops into a quarterly list. Close rate on quoted work went from a guess to something I can see, and roughly a fifth of my sold jobs last year came from the day 30 or later touches.

A landlord I do work for, 40ish doors, watched me pull up the board on my phone and asked what I'd charge to build him the same thing for his tenant turns and his acquisition leads. He's serious, he's got budget, and he thinks it's a two week job.

Where I'm stuck. My flow works because I designed it around my own process and I fixed it live for two years. He doesn't have a written process. His turn coordination lives in his head and in texts with two of his guys. If I build what he describes I'm going to build a pretty machine that nobody uses, and I'll own the blame.

Second problem is the stack. I'm using a cheap tool plus a spreadsheet plus my invoicing software glued together. That is fine for a one truck operation. I don't know if it holds at 40 doors with three people in it, and I don't want to find out on someone else's money.

I was going to quote $4,500 for the build. Now I'm wondering if the first thing I should sell him is something else entirely.

Answer

0nataliehsuSO1BPRO7

Sell him the process mapping first, priced and separate. Two weeks, fixed fee, and the deliverable is a written document of how turns and leads actually move today, with the decision points and who touches what. I'd put it somewhere between $900 and $1,500 for 40 doors. Two things happen. You find out whether he'll do homework, which tells you if the build will get used, and you stop guessing at the build scope, because after mapping you know how many stages and how many notification paths you're actually building. Your $4,500 becomes a number instead of a hope.

The stack question answers itself in the map. If three people need to see the same board and update it from the field, the spreadsheet leg breaks, because two people editing rows is where data goes wrong. That pushes you to a real CRM with permissions, and that's a licensing cost he pays directly, in his own account, on his own card. Do not put his subscription on your card. Whoever holds the account holds the client.

Also write down now what happens in month three when a tenant complains the automated text was rude. Your name is on it. Decide whether you're on retainer for changes or whether he owns it after a 30 day handoff, and put that in the proposal, because the client you built it for is the client who calls you at 8pm forever if you leave it blank.

My own automations worked. Now a 40 door client wants them and I can't scope it.

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