CRM audit · Ten working days

You Have A CRM. Is Anybody Actually Using It?

Most companies buy one, fill it properly for two months, then go back to the phone and the diary. The software is usually fine. Nobody ever checked whether it is being used.

We check. You get a score out of 100, and the list of what is broken.

See if this fits your company Read a real case

100
your CRM scored: 20
evidence-backed findings: 10
working days, fixed: 1
straight verdict

In my own words · Under two minutes

No slides. Why reading a CRM properly changes what a founder decides to do next — in Maran’s own words.

Where this usually starts

Nobody Calls Me About Their CRM.

They call about something else. It is almost always one of these three.

We bought the software. Nobody is entering anything.
The licence is paid every month. The team runs the business on WhatsApp and a diary, and enters the CRM only before a review.
My team says all the leads are junk.
Maybe they are. Or maybe nobody followed up and the CRM has no record either way. Right now you have no way to tell which.
We tried CRM twice. Both times it stopped.
Two failures usually means the same reason twice. It is worth finding out what that reason is before you buy a third one.

A real call · Equipment rental company · Tamil Nadu

160 Leads. Four Quotations. No Orders.

They ran ads and got 160 leads. Four quotations went out. Not one order. The sales team’s report to the founder was simple: the leads are junk.

I asked them to open the CRM on the screen.

Maran: How is the note section for each lead?
Team: No sir, it is not updated properly.
Maran: Give me ten numbers of customers who did not pick up.
Team: Sir, no phone numbers updated for the month of August.
Maran: Can’t we get ten numbers?
Team: Let me check another column.

Then I picked one lead at random. Status in the CRM: general enquiry. I called him from the meeting, with everybody listening.

He was a contractor working inside a refinery. He knew what a boom lift was. He knew what a scissor lift was. He wanted a machine for fifteen to thirty days during a plant shutdown. He asked me for a costing and a meeting the next week.

The CRM was working perfectly. It was faithfully recording that nobody was writing anything down. So the report came out as “junk leads”, the founder believed it, and a live buyer sat in that list for months.

Nobody had opened it and read it. That is the whole job.

What I said in that room

“This is not a golden nugget. This is a platinum nugget hidden in the pebbles. But we are rejecting 160 of them is what surprises me.”

Lead record

#1147

Company: Durai & Co
Status: General enquiry
Owner: — not set —
Phone: — blank —
Last activity: — none —
Notes: — blank —
Next step: — blank —

The record itself. Behind those blanks: a contractor inside a refinery with a live requirement, marked general enquiry for months.

What we check

Five Things. Nothing About Opinions.

We do not ask your team how well they think it is going. We read what the system already recorded.

Is what’s inside it true?
Blank fields, duplicate companies, deal values left at zero, closing dates that passed months ago.
If this is weak, every report you have seen so far was wrong.
Does it match how you actually sell?
Whether the stages describe real events — quotation sent, site visit done — or feelings like “hot” and “interested”.
We check how much of your pipeline is stuck in the first stage.
Is your team using it?
Who logged in this fortnight, who did not, and whether one person is entering everything while the rest enter nothing.
Logins and entries, not what anybody says in the review.
Can you see anything without asking somebody?
Whether a dashboard exists, when it was last opened, and whether your weekly review runs on the CRM or on memory.
If you have to call and ask, you do not have visibility.
Is it doing any work for you?
Enquiries entered by hand, no owner assigned automatically, no response time rule, automations built once and never fired since.
Most companies are paying for a filing cabinet.

What you get at the end

A Number, And The Reason For It.

Not a forty-slide deck. A score, the evidence behind every mark, and one straight answer on whether the tool you bought is the right one.

Fixed scope and a fixed date. It finishes, and you keep the document whether or not you ever work with us again.

100
Your CRM scored out of 100, across the five areas.: 20
Findings, each one backed by what your own system shows.: 10
Working days, from access to the findings meeting.: 1
Straight verdict on whether your CRM fits the business.

Before you fill the form

This Does Not Suit Everybody.

Better you find out here than after paying. We need two things and about an hour of one person’s time.

What we need from you

Read access to your CRM. View-only is enough. You switch it off the day the audit finishes.
One standard export. Enquiries, orders won and lost, user logins, activity log. Every CRM in the market can produce it.

Your team keeps working normally through the ten days. We enter nothing into your system.

It fits if

Your CRM has been running six months or more
Five or more people have logins
There are at least a couple of hundred records in it
Somebody on your side can produce an export within a week
You want to know what is wrong before spending more on marketing

It does not fit if

You do not have a CRM yet — that is a different conversation, and we will say so
You bought it last month and there is nothing in it to read
You want somebody to come and enter the data for you
You want us to run your ads and chase your follow-ups
You already know what is wrong and only want it fixed

Mani Maran RamalingamFounder, TheDIco Coimbatore

Who is behind this

Twenty-odd years inside manufacturing, trading and services companies across Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Bengaluru. Mostly founder-run. Mostly with a sales engine everybody agrees could do better and nobody can quite say how.

I have sat in enough review meetings to know how this goes. The report says leads are junk. The founder half believes it. Nobody opens the system and checks, because opening it takes a day and the day is always full.

So we built this as a fixed, small job. Ten days, a score, and a document you keep. My team runs it and I do not sit in the middle of it, which is the only way it can stay this size and this price. If the answer is that your CRM is fine, we will tell you that too, and the number will say so.

Plain answers

What Founders Ask Before Signing.

All of them. The five things we check are the same everywhere — how much is blank, who logged in, what the stages are, what fired and what did not. We take read access where we can and a standard export in every case. The export works on any CRM in the market.

That is the normal starting position. A messy CRM is not a reason to skip the audit — it is most of the finding. What we do need is enough history to read: roughly six months of use and a couple of hundred records. Below that there is nothing to measure and we will tell you so instead of taking the work.

Only if we can name the exact thing your business needs that the software cannot do. Most of the time the tool is fine and the usage is the problem, and that is what the report will say. We do not sell CRM software and we do not take commission from anyone who does.

Not inside these ten days. The audit is a diagnosis with a fixed scope and a fixed end date. If you want the fixes done afterwards, that is a separate piece of work and a separate conversation. Plenty of companies take the document and fix it themselves, which is fine.

Read-only access, and you switch it off the day we finish. We sign an NDA before anything is shared. Nothing from your CRM appears in any report or example we publish without your written permission.

One person who administers your CRM, for the access and the export. That is roughly an hour of their time. At the end, whoever runs sales should be in the findings meeting, because most of what we find will be theirs to act on.

A meeting where we take you through the score and the findings, and you keep the document. If it points to a bigger problem than the CRM, we will say that plainly rather than stretch the audit into something else.

Find out in two minutes

Does This Fit Your Company?

Five questions. The same ones we would ask on a first call. Answer honestly — a no here saves us both a wasted conversation.

You Have A CRM. Is Anybody Actually Using It?

Nobody Calls Me About Their CRM.

160 Leads. Four Quotations. No Orders.

Five Things. Nothing About Opinions.

Is what’s inside it true?

Does it match how you actually sell?

Is your team using it?

Can you see anything without asking somebody?

Is it doing any work for you?