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1 Discovery Call Replaced Months of Guesswork About Systems and Costs

How we turned a tangled mess of SalesMate, Xero, paper notebooks, and a Google taskboard into a phased implementation plan, before writing a single line of automation.

2–3 minutes
1 Discovery Call Replaced Months of Guesswork About Systems and Costs

The Situation

A field services company with a 7-person team was running their entire operation across seven disconnected tools: a CRM nobody trusted, an invoicing platform, a separate e-signature tool, a payment processor, a phone system, a marketing platform managed by an outside agency, and a “task board” that had become one giant cluttered list. Estimates were written on paper notebooks during site visits, then retyped into the invoicing software back at the office. Reminders went out manually as text messages. Orders got forgotten between back-to-back calls. Leadership had no visibility into close rates, reschedule rates, or where money was leaking, because none of the data lived in one place.

They knew they needed a system. They didn’t know which one, what it should cover first, or how much it would cost.

Our Approach

We ran a structured discovery, not a sales pitch. In a single working session, we mapped every tool, every handoff, every manual step from the moment a lead called in to the moment the final invoice went out. We asked the questions the team had stopped asking themselves: which tools actually earn their keep, which ones are duct tape, and which workflows are quietly costing money?

By the end of the call, we had: a clear picture of which tools to keep, which to retire, a four-phase implementation roadmap matched to their real priorities, and a budget framework that fit what the business could absorb. No guessing. No “we’ll figure it out later.”

Before

  • Seven disconnected tools, no single source of truth
  • Estimates handwritten on paper, retyped manually into invoicing software
  • Orders forgotten between phone calls; revenue lost without anyone knowing how much
  • Zero visibility into booking rates, close rates, or reschedule frequency
  • “We need a system,” but no idea where to start or what it should cost

After

  • Tool stack reduced from seven to three (kept what worked, retired the rest)
  • Four-phase implementation plan: Task Automation, then CRM, then SOPs, then Document Organization & Reporting
  • Each phase priced independently, so the client could pause, evaluate, and decide before continuing
  • Every “we want this someday” feature documented and parked for future phases. Nothing lost, nothing forced.

The Outcome

The assessment didn’t just produce a proposal. It produced clarity. The client walked away knowing exactly what was being built, in what order, why, and what it would cost, before any system was touched. That clarity is what made the full implementation possible.

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Laura Plantak, founder of Proprium

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