What we deliver for sales and business development leaders
Pipeline design
Stage definitions with entry and exit criteria, required fields that match each stage, and page layouts reps can fill in quickly.
Lead and referral routing
Assignment by territory, product, license or relationship, with response deadlines and escalation when leads sit untouched.
Forecasting leadership can trust
Forecast categories, manager adjustments and snapshot reporting that show how each team's call compares with what closed.
Relationship and householding views
For wealth and banking teams, Financial Services Cloud households, relationships and referral sources so an advisor sees the whole client before a meeting.
AI for sellers
Agentforce, Claude or ChatGPT inside the CRM to summarize meetings, draft follow-ups and research accounts from CRM data, with RecordIQ when you want several AI models on any Salesforce record.
Quoting and proposals
Quotes, approvals and e-signature with DocuSign, with pricing rules in the system instead of in a spreadsheet.
What we see in sales and business development teams
Producers keep their real pipeline somewhere else
If the CRM asks for more than it gives back, advisors and bankers keep a private spreadsheet and leadership sees a stale picture.
Nobody trusts the forecast
Stages mean different things to different people, so the number on Monday changes by Friday.
Leads and referrals wait too long
Routing rules don't reflect licensing, territory or product, so a hot lead sits until someone notices.
A failed implementation already happened
Many teams we meet are on their second or third CRM attempt and the field has stopped believing it will help.
Producers spend hours on admin
Meeting notes, follow-up emails and activity logging take time away from clients.
What compliance needs from sales
- Licensing and registration checks in routing, so leads only go to people allowed to work them.
- Communications captured and archived where your rules require it, including texts and recorded calls.
- Suitability and disclosure steps recorded at the right stage.
- Field history on key records such as amounts, products and owners.
- Supervision of AI-drafted messages before they reach a client.
Recent work for sales teams
- National mortgage lender, 33 branches: 5x ROI on a rescued implementation, 23% more loan production and a loan cycle 3 days shorter.
- Multi-acquisition RIA, $1B to $14B+: 340% ROI and $2.27M in advisor productivity.
- Regional insurance brokerage: 100% login at go-live after three failed CRMs.
Salesforce or HubSpot for sales?
HubSpot Sales Hub suits firms that want a fast rollout, a clean interface producers will use, and marketing and sales in one system. It works well for professional services, fintechs and smaller advisory and lending teams.
Salesforce suits firms with complex relationships, many products or teams, deep integrations to core, custodial or loan systems, or industry data models. Financial Services Cloud adds households, financial accounts and referral tracking for wealth, banking and insurance.
If marketing runs on HubSpot and producers run on Salesforce, we connect the two so leads, activity and attribution move cleanly between them.
Sales workflows that run in the CRM
Monday pipeline review
Each producer opens a list of open opportunities with no recent activity or a close date already past. They update stages and dates, and the manager reviews the same list in the one-on-one.
Working a new lead or referral
The lead arrives already assigned by territory and license, with its source attached. The producer works it from a cadence, records qualification answers and converts it into a client, household or opportunity in one step.
Meeting prep and follow-up
Before a meeting, AI summarizes the relationship from CRM records. Afterward it drafts the follow-up email and next steps for the producer to edit, and the activity logs itself.
Forecast submission
Producers move deals between commit, best case and pipeline, managers adjust, and leadership sees both calls side by side.
What sales and business development leaders should track
- Pipeline coverage: open pipeline against target by team, territory or branch.
- Stage conversion: where deals stall, from opportunity history.
- Speed to lead: time from lead creation to first contact, by source.
- Forecast accuracy: forecast snapshots compared with closed results each period.
- Adoption: logins, records updated and activities logged per producer.
Your first four steps
- Agree on stage definitions before any configuration. Write what must be true for a deal to enter and leave each stage, with sales leadership in the room.
- Watch producers use the system. Sit with two or three advisors or bankers for an hour. Most adoption problems show up within the first hour.
- Build one manager dashboard. One view that managers use in every one-on-one gives producers a reason to keep records current.
- Pilot AI on note-taking and follow-ups. Start with a small group, measure whether records get more complete, and keep a person reviewing anything a client will see.
Sales and business development in your industry
- Wealth management: households, referral tracking and portfolio data from Orion, Addepar, Tamarac or Black Diamond next to the pipeline.
- Mortgage and lending: lead routing by license and state, with Encompass or Blend status in the CRM.
- Banking: treasury and commercial pipeline, referrals from branches and relationship views across products.
- Insurance: agency and producer pipelines, with policy data from Applied Epic where it applies.
"Whenever we talk about this stuff, it's always your guys' name that comes up." Aaron Voss, TrueNorth Companies
Sales & business development: questions
Why do our advisors still keep deals in spreadsheets?
Usually because the CRM asks for more than it gives back. Shorter layouts, mobile updates, automatic activity capture and views that help producers plan their own week fix most of it. We start adoption work by watching people use the system.
We've failed with a CRM before. What's different this time?
Failed rollouts usually come from unclear stage definitions, too many required fields and training that ends at go-live. Senior consultants run every engagement from design through hypercare. A regional insurance brokerage we worked with reached 100% login at go-live after three failed CRMs.
Do we need Financial Services Cloud?
If you manage households, financial accounts or referral relationships, usually yes. If you sell a simpler product with a straightforward pipeline, Sales Cloud or HubSpot Sales Hub is often enough.
How does AI change a producer's day?
It takes on the writing and record-keeping around client meetings: summaries, follow-up drafts, account research and next-step suggestions. It works best on clean records, and producers stay in charge of the relationship.
How long does it take?
Sales Cloud packages start at $10,000 and Financial Services Cloud at $22,000. Most Salesforce implementations take 8 to 16 weeks and HubSpot Sales Hub rollouts 4 to 10 weeks.