Paid $2,150 for a CRM that has seen 11 leads

Last spring I decided I was going to stop analyzing and start building, and the thing I built was the system instead of the pipeline. Found a consultant who does investor setups, paid $2,150 for the build, plus $97 a month for the platform.

What I got was real work, to be fair. Lead capture form on my site, four stages in the pipeline, a five step text and email sequence, a task that nudged me at day 3 and day 10, call recording. It looked like a business.

Then I had to put leads in it. I sent 600 letters over two mailings. Got 11 callbacks. Three were tire kickers, two were listed with agents, one wanted retail plus 20 percent. I could have tracked all 11 on the back of an envelope, and honestly I did, because the CRM was on my laptop and the calls came while I was driving.

I cancelled in month four. Total out of pocket $2,538 and I closed nothing, so the whole spend has no deal to sit against.

What I would do differently: I would get to 40 or 50 real conversations a month with a spreadsheet first, feel exactly which part of the follow-up I keep dropping, then pay somebody to fix that one part. The system was fine. There was nothing flowing through it.

4 replies

1wendy_park48CapitalPRO7

Check what you actually signed on the platform side. A lot of these setups put you on an annual commitment billed monthly, and the consultant's build fee is separate from that term. If you cancelled in month four and they let you walk with no early termination charge, you got off light. Also check who the account holder of record is, because if the consultant opened it under an agency plan, the cancellation confirmation should be in writing from the platform, not a text from him saying he handled it. I've seen someone keep getting billed for five months after being told it was closed.

1hannah_west29 Get yours

The number I'd stare at is $2,538 across 11 conversations, so $231 per conversation of pure system cost before you count a single stamp. Your mail was 600 pieces for 11 callbacks, which is under 2 percent, and that's the part that decides whether any of this works. At 11 leads a month the CRM saves you maybe an hour. At 150 it saves you a hire. The build wasn't mispriced for what it was, it was priced for a business ten times your volume.

3gregpowell66AG4BPRO8

I'll push back slightly on your own conclusion. On a job you do rough in the wiring before the drywall goes up, because opening the wall later costs more than the wire did. Some of that applies here. What doesn't apply is paying a specialist to rough in a house you haven't framed. You could have built those four stages and one reminder task yourself in a weekend in the free tier of almost anything, learned what you needed, and kept the $2,150 for a third mailing. That third mailing is where the deal was.

1megan_doyle15 Get yours

So what are you using now, just a sheet? I'm two weeks in and I've been assuming a CRM was step one.

Paid $2,150 for a CRM that has seen 11 leads

4 replies