Before the build: the most useful things to gather
  • Your current lead and customer process
  • The software you want to keep or connect
  • Access to domains, calendars, email, and payment accounts
  • Your current customer list, if it needs to be imported
  • Real examples of messages, forms, estimates, and booking rules

Before a CRM build, prepare the business decisions and access that only you or your team can provide. Enciu Consulting can handle the technical configuration, but the process, existing systems, and required access are things only your business can supply. The goal is not to arrive with a perfect technical plan. It is to avoid losing build time waiting on basic information, approvals, logins, customer data, or decisions that could have been gathered ahead of time.

1. Write down what happens from new lead to past customer

The fastest way to make a CRM confusing is to build it before the customer journey is understood. You do not need formal diagrams, a simple step-by-step description is enough.

Website form→ Owner calls lead→ Estimate scheduled→ Estimate sent→ Customer approves→ Job scheduled→ Work completed→ Invoice paid→ Review requested→ Future follow-up

If there are exceptions, write those down too. For example, “commercial jobs require an on-site visit before an estimate,” or “existing customers call us directly instead of filling out the website form.” That information helps determine the pipeline stages, handoffs, follow-up rules, calendars, and integrations that belong in the final build.

2. List the software your business already uses

Do not cancel working software just because HighLevel is being added. Make a simple list of the tools your business relies on and what each one currently does: your POS or industry software, scheduling platform, payment processor, website/forms, and email or phone provider.

3–11. The rest of the checklist

List every way a new lead can reach you; identify the people who need access and what they actually do; gather your calendar and booking rules; bring real examples of the messages you already send; prepare business and consent information if texting is part of the scope; prepare your existing customer list if it needs to be migrated; gather account access before the build reaches a dependency; prepare the customer-facing business details; and decide who can approve the build.

You do not need a finished technical plan, a list of HighLevel feature names, or a fully designed pipeline before the first conversation. That is what the system review is for.