Before you choose a CRM, decide what it needs to represent.
A growing service or SaaS business reaches a point where spreadsheets, memory and disconnected tools stop giving management a reliable picture of customers and revenue. That is usually when CRM becomes a serious option. ProperBizFix works one step earlier: mapping the commercial model, the decisions the business needs to make, and the information a CRM would have to hold or connect to before software is chosen.
Thinking about your first serious CRM, replacing a spreadsheet-led setup, or starting to compare HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive or similar systems? This is the stage ProperBizFix is for.
Already have a CRM and it no longer gives useful answers? That is a later-stage problem handled by Unsnag.
Manchester-based independent CRM consultant for B2B service and SaaS businesses across the UK. No vendor tie.
I map the commercial model before the call.
Using your website and other public business information, I build a preliminary view of how the company appears to move from demand to sale, then into delivery or adoption, repeat, renewal, expansion or churn. I also note what a future CRM would probably need to distinguish if that model is broadly right.
- A one-page outside-in map of how the business appears to make money.
- The commercial objects or events I would expect a CRM to need to represent.
- One or two questions that cannot be answered reliably from public information and are worth testing on the call.
It is a hypothesis, not an audit. The point is to arrive prepared and use the call to test the model against reality.
How the free pre-read works →The cheapest time to challenge the model is before it becomes CRM logic.
Once implementation starts, assumptions become fields, stages, workflows, integrations and reports. Changing them later is possible, but it means rebuilding around decisions that have already become part of the system.
There is a second cost: history. A field can be added next year. The year of customer, renewal, delivery or margin data that was never captured may not be recoverable.
The free pre-read exists to test the model before a CRM vendor is asked to build it.