Phase 01 · Dump
Understand what exists today.
No judgment, no cleanup. We map every pipeline, field, workflow, and report currently running, including the ones nobody remembers turning on.
step 01 / 03How it works
Dump. Sort. Decide. the method.
Three phases. Each one earns the next.
method.sys
three phases · one at a time
- Phase 01 · Dumpmap what exists
- Phase 02 · Sortfind what matters
- Phase 03 · Decidepick the next step
The three phases
Three phases, in order.
Each phase produces something the next one needs. Skipping a phase is the most common reason CRM work fails.
Phase 02 · Sort
Identify what matters.
Separate signal from noise. This is the part that gets skipped, and most of a CRM is residue from a decision that no longer applies.
step 02 / 03Phase 03 · Decide
Define the next best step.
Name it, do it, one at a time, so the team can keep up with the change.
step 03 / 03What this looks like
Real CRM problems have a shape.
Three engagements, three phases. Names changed; patterns kept.
Dump
When we worked with a workplace safety platform, the Dump phase started with a dashboard that said the sales coordinator had made 47 outbound calls in a week. She told us she’d made 12. Someone was wrong, and it mattered which one.
We stopped looking at the dashboard and asked her to walk us through her morning. By the third sentence, we’d found it: the contact form had two phone-number fields, and nobody had told her which one to fill in. Half her calls were logging against the wrong field, and the dashboard was counting both.
The Dump phase ended with a list of every place that kind of mismatch was happening across the system.
Sort
When we worked with a real estate investment firm, the Sort phase came down to a single question: what does “stalled” mean?
Their pipeline had a Stalled deal stage, and roughly forty percent of every deal was sitting in it. The team had stopped trusting the report because the number kept growing whether business was good or bad.
We looked at the deals labeled stalled and saw the actual problem. Some hadn’t been touched in 90 days. Some were in active negotiation. Some were waiting on the client. They weren’t the same kind of deal at all.
Sort ended with a single decision: stalled isn’t a stage, it’s a filter. We collapsed the stage and built the filter, and the pipeline report told the truth again.
Decide
When we worked with a freethought nonprofit, the Decide phase landed at go-live. They’d built their CharityEngine implementation, tested it against real donor data, and trained their team.
The decision wasn’t whether to launch. It was whether the next best step was to walk away cleanly or stay close. We mapped what could go wrong in the first sixty days post-launch. Most of it was small, like a workflow firing twice or a field labeled unclearly to a new user, but small problems compound when nobody on the inside knows the system well enough to spot them.
They signed for two more months of transition support. Decide isn’t always about a big move. Sometimes it’s about staying close enough to catch the next thing.
The engagement
A practical sequence, not a mystery box.
Six weeks from kickoff to fix plan. Optional retainer after.
- Week 1
Kickoff and Dump start.
Portal access, stakeholder context, and the first pass through what exists.
- Weeks 2–3
Dump complete, Sort begins.
We separate real signal from CRM noise and identify the patterns causing friction.
- Weeks 4–5
Sort complete, Decide begins.
We turn findings into priorities and define the first practical moves.
- Week 6
Decide complete, fix plan delivered.
You get the action plan, the rationale, and the working session to align on next steps.
- Ongoing
Retainer or care, if engaged.
If we keep working together, we move from diagnosis into ownership.
- Week 1
Kickoff and Dump start.
Portal access, stakeholder context, and the first pass through what exists.
- Weeks 2–3
Dump complete, Sort begins.
We separate real signal from CRM noise and identify the patterns causing friction.
- Weeks 4–5
Sort complete, Decide begins.
We turn findings into priorities and define the first practical moves.
- Week 6
Decide complete, fix plan delivered.
You get the action plan, the rationale, and the working session to align on next steps.
- Ongoing
Retainer or care, if engaged.
If we keep working together, we move from diagnosis into ownership.
What you leave with
You get more than a list of fixes.
A diagnostic, a plan, and a clear next step. In writing.
output.log
- A documented diagnostic of your current CRM
- A prioritized fix plan with specific next steps
- A recommendation on whether retainer or ongoing care fits your team
- Recordings and notes from every session
- A clear answer to “what should we do next?”
system note
“Most CRM problems aren’t CRM problems. They’re problems somebody saw coming and didn’t have language for yet.”
See if your CRM has the patterns we look for
Begin a RootCheck. Or book a discovery call.
Free diagnostic, read-only connection. Or we can talk it through.