#The challenge
The company ran its whole go-to-market inside a lightweight CRM with a structure that had been improvised as it went: overlapping and ambiguous stages, a separate custom leads object sitting beside the standard records, duplicate companies and contacts, and lead intake routed manually through whoever noticed it first. The team needed a shared lifecycle a new seller could learn in a week, data they could trust, and automations that would not quietly break the first time someone skipped a field.
#The approach
Stage architecture defined in their own language
Ran a stage-architecture workshop and defined a single nine-stage lifecycle running from lead through MQL, SAL, SQL and opportunity to closed-won, onboarding, adopted and renewal — with entry and exit criteria written in the team's own words rather than imported from a template they would not recognise.
Three pipelines over one lifecycle
Implemented new-business, renewal/expansion and proof-of-value pipelines as kanban views over the same lifecycle, so different motions share stage definitions instead of each inventing its own vocabulary.
Stage gates the CRM does not offer natively
Built stage-gate validation workflows that return a deal to its previous stage and post a chat alert when required fields are missing — enforcement layered on top of a CRM with no native gating, so the process is felt rather than documented.
Instrumentation for velocity reporting
Added automated stage timestamps, without which cycle-time and stage-velocity reporting are not possible at all.
Renewal automation rebuilt after the re-architecture broke it
Rebuilt the closed-won to renewal automation that the pipeline re-architecture had broken, with renewal notifications firing at 120, 90, 60 and 30 days.
Rules of engagement and onboarding material
Documented a rules-of-engagement guide in quick-reference and full versions, an account-disposition matrix for terminal stages, and lifecycle training material aimed at onboarding new sellers.
Deduplication and data standards
Ran duplicate analysis across contacts and companies, merged records while preserving history, configured duplicate-prevention rules so the problem does not regrow, standardised key field formats, and documented data-governance standards.
#Outcomes
One nine-stage lifecycle live
A single lifecycle was defined and implemented live across people, companies and deals in the CRM, replacing the improvised stage set.
Three pipelines with enforced gates
New-business, renewal/expansion and proof-of-value pipelines went live as kanban views with chat-notified stage-gate validation that reverts non-compliant deals.
Renewal notifications live at 120/90/60/30 days
The closed-won to renewal automation was rebuilt after the re-architecture broke it, and the notification cadence went live.
A deduplicated, governed CRM
Duplicate records merged, duplicate-prevention rules configured, field formats standardised and data-governance standards documented.