Industries
CRM and automation, set up for how your industry sells
A CRM has no idea whether you fix boilers, run a yoga studio or take on clients for a law firm. We set it up so it does: the right follow-up at the right speed, and a person stepping in where one is needed.
8 industry groups15 platforms, or customFixed price, agreed up front
A new enquiry, in three businessesExample
- Plumber, 7:40amUrgent
Reply within minutes and offer a slot today. A day later, they've booked someone else.
- Law firm, 9:15pmConsidered
Acknowledge tonight, collect the facts once, book the consultation. No hard sell.
- Yoga studio, intro offerRecurring
Check in after the second class, and flag them if they stop coming.
Common starting situations
Signs your CRM was set up for a different business.
- A spreadsheet next to the CRM
Someone keeps their own list because they don't trust what the system tells them.
- Follow-up on the wrong clock
Emergency jobs wait until tomorrow, while wedding enquiries get chased after two days.
- Stages from a template
The pipeline came from a generic sales setup and looks nothing like how your customers buy.
- Everyone treated as a new lead
Members, repeat clients and past donors get the same messages as people who've never bought.
- Renewals noticed too late
Memberships, service plans and regular gifts lapse before anyone sees the drift.
- Paperwork chased by hand
Intake forms, proposals, contracts and invoices move only when someone remembers.
The software can usually handle your industry. It just has to be set up for it, rather than left on the platform's defaults.
Where we start
Before the platform, we look at how your customers decide.
Customer decisions tend to take one of three shapes. The shape decides what your automation is for, so we work it out before anything is built.
“Who can sort this out today?”
Urgent
The customer has a problem now. The first clear reply often wins the job.
- Automate: instant acknowledgement, routing, easy booking
- Keep human: working out the job and pricing it
- Usual failure: the reply arrives after they've booked someone else
Home services, real estate enquiries
“Is this the right person for something that matters?”
Considered
The customer compares options over days or weeks before committing.
- Automate: questionnaires, proposals, contracts, deposits, reminders
- Keep human: the consultation and the judgement on fit
- Usual failure: a fast first reply, then a week of silence
Law firms, coaches, client-based services
“Is this still worth it?”
Recurring
The value is in the relationship continuing, month after month.
- Automate: renewals, check-ins, thank-yous, lapse alerts
- Keep human: the conversation that keeps them
- Usual failure: nobody notices the drift until they cancel
Memberships, service plans, donors
Most businesses have a main shape and a second one inside it. Real estate is the awkward case: the enquiry is urgent, but the decision can take months. Systems built only for speed tend to go quiet just before the buyer gets serious.
Industries we work with
Where each industry tends to lose customers.
What usually goes wrong, what we build, and what a better system won't fix. Exact scope is set in your proposal.
Home services
Plumbing, HVAC, electrical, cleaning and other trade businesses.
Home services in detailCalls get answered on a roof or under a sink, and the estimate goes out when someone is back at the office. The quote nobody follows up is often the easiest job to win back: the customer already said they were interested. Service plans tend to slip first when the diary is full.
What we build- Missed-call and web enquiry capture
- Estimate follow-up that stops once the job is booked
- Service plan reminders and renewals
- Review requests after the job is actually finished
What it won't fixIf pricing lives in one person's head, quotes stay slow. A proper pricebook helps more than automation.
Real estate
Agents, teams and brokerages handling buyer and seller leads.
Real estate in detailLeads come from portals, the website, open houses and referrals, and not evenly. A routing rule that worked with three agents gets murky with eight, and nobody is sure who owns Saturday night's lead. Then there's the buyer who won't be ready for six months, which is where follow-up usually thins out.
What we build- Routing rules that match how the team works today
- Long-term follow-up plans for the months before a decision
- Accountability reporting the team lead will actually check
- Past-client and referral touchpoints
What it won't fixRouting decides who gets the lead. It doesn't make that agent pick up the phone.
Law firms
Firms that take on new clients through enquiries and consultations.
Law firms in detailThe gap is usually between the enquiry and the consultation. Someone fills in a form at 9pm, often at a stressful moment, and hears nothing until a conflict check is done and a slot is found. By then they may have contacted two other firms.
What we build- Intake forms that collect what the lawyer needs, once
- Consultation booking and reminders
- Follow-up when a consultation doesn't become an instruction
- A clean handover into Clio Manage when a matter opens
What it won't fixAutomation never gives advice or decides whether to take a case. Client messages are built to your conduct rules and signed off by your firm.
Coaches & course businesses
Coaches, educators and creators selling programmes, courses and memberships.
Coaches & course businesses in detailThe content is usually fine. What breaks is everything around it: a free guide that triggers a sequence from two launches ago, onboarding that assumes someone bought a different programme, and so many tags and funnels that nobody knows which automations are still live.
What we build- A tag and segment clean-up before anything new is added
- Enquiry-to-call journeys for higher-priced programmes
- Onboarding that matches what someone actually bought
- Re-engagement for students who stop logging in
What it won't fixA cleaner funnel won't rescue an offer people don't want. If conversion is low at every step, look at the offer first.
Client-based service businesses
Photographers, planners, designers, consultants and studios working project by project.
Enquiry, questionnaire, proposal, contract, deposit, scheduling, reminders, final payment, handover. Each step is simple. Fifteen of them across thirty clients at different stages is where things slip, usually between the signed contract and the final invoice.
What we build- Workflows mapped to your real client journey, not the template
- Proposals, contracts and invoices that fill in the right details
- Payment schedules and polite reminders
- Forms that ask for information once, not three times
Fitness & wellness
Studios, gyms and wellness centres with classes, memberships and intro offers.
Fitness & wellness in detailIntro offers are easy to sell and hard to convert: someone comes twice, and the next thing they hear is a general newsletter. Members rarely cancel the day they stop coming. They drift first, and the drift usually shows in attendance well before the cancellation email.
What we build- Intro offer journeys that end in a real conversation
- Alerts when a regular's attendance drops
- Renewal and failed-payment follow-up
- Win-back for lapsed members
What it won't fixFull at 6pm and empty at 11am is a timetable decision, not a CRM one.
Nonprofits
Fundraising teams managing donors, gifts and supporter relationships.
Nonprofits in detailMost fundraisers will tell you the second gift matters more than the first. Yet the thank-you often depends on someone remembering, and gift entry happens in batches when someone has a spare afternoon. By the time the database is current, the moment to say thank you properly has passed.
What we build- A gift entry process that keeps the database trustworthy
- Prompt thank-yous that still read like a person wrote them
- A dedicated journey for first-time donors
- Lapsed donor reports the team can act on
What it won't fixMajor donors need relationships, not sequences. Automation can remind you to call. It shouldn't do the calling.
Everyone else
Clinics, agencies, B2B firms and businesses that don't fit an industry platform.
Not every business fits a vertical platform, and plenty shouldn't try. A multi-location clinic, a B2B consultancy or a growing agency often needs a general CRM shaped around its own process instead.
What we build- Pipelines built from your actual sales stages
- Lead capture and follow-up across every channel you use
- Reporting tied to decisions someone will make
- Migration from the tool you've outgrown
What it won't fixMore freedom also means more ways to build something nobody can maintain. That's why we document what we build.
The same in every industry
What looks like a software problem usually isn't.
The industry changes where we look. These causes come up in almost all of them.
- 01“The automation sent the wrong message.”
The data was entered inconsistently, so the system can't tell who's who. We fix the records and the entry process before rebuilding the automation.
- 02“Nobody uses the CRM.”
It was built around the reports management wanted, not the team's daily work. We build around what each role actually does, then train them on it.
- 03“Leads fall through the cracks.”
Nobody owns the exceptions: the lead with no email, the double booking, the reply to an automated message. We give every exception an owner and a next step.
- 04“We need a better platform.”
Sometimes true. Often the process would break on any platform, and the old problems move house with you. We'll tell you which it is before you migrate.
How it works
How an industry project runs.
- 01
Discovery
How your customers decide, where you lose them, and the tools and data you have today.
- 02
Platform fit
Keep, fix or switch. An industry platform or a general CRM, with the reasons written down.
- 03
Build and test
Pipeline, automation and integrations, then every path run end to end with test records.
- 04
Handover
Training by role, documentation, and optional support once you're live.
Choosing a platform
An industry platform, or a general CRM?
Neither is better in general. It depends on how standard your process is, and who will look after the system.
An industry platform fits when
Jobber, Clio Grow, Mindbody, Bloomerang and others
- Your process looks broadly like others in your industry
- You want jobs, matters, classes or gifts already built in
- Scheduling, quoting or billing matter as much as follow-up
- Nobody on the team wants to maintain a custom setup
A general CRM fits when
GoHighLevel, HubSpot, Keap, ActiveCampaign
- Your process is unusual, or spans more than one kind of customer
- Marketing and sales follow-up are the main job
- You already run a separate tool for jobs, bookings or billing
- Someone will own the system after handover
Not sure? Most of the time, fixing what you already have is cheaper than switching. Compare the platforms we implement.
Related services
The work behind an industry setup.
The industry decides how the system should behave. These services do the building and keep it running.
Questions
Industry CRM FAQs
Choosing
Do we need an industry-specific platform?
Not always. Industry platforms come with the right building blocks already in place: jobs and estimates in Jobber, matters in Clio, gifts in Bloomerang. That saves a lot of configuration. A general CRM is more flexible, which helps if your process is unusual and hurts if nobody is around to maintain it. We'll tell you which way we'd lean, and why.
My industry isn't listed. Can you still help?
Probably. The list reflects the platforms we implement, not a boundary. A dental practice has a lot in common with a fitness studio: appointments, recalls and keeping patients coming back. An accounting firm looks like a law firm at intake and like a membership at renewal. We start with the same question either way: how do your customers decide, and where do you lose them?
Can you work with the platform we already have?
Usually, yes. Often the right move is to fix what you have rather than replace it. We look at your current setup, and how your team really uses it, before suggesting any change.
Projects
How long does a project take?
It depends more on how clear your process is than on the platform. A business that can describe its client journey step by step is usually live much sooner than one working it out during the build. Your proposal sets out the milestones before work starts.
Will automation make our follow-up feel impersonal?
It can, if it's set up to replace people rather than support them. We use automation for reminders, routing and paperwork, so your team has more time for the conversations that need a person.
How is it priced?
Every project starts with a discovery call. The proposal then sets out the deliverables, exclusions, milestones and a fixed project price. Platform subscriptions are paid directly to the platform and are separate from our fee.
Platform names are trademarks of their owners. Sage Kite is an independent consultant and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or certified by the platforms listed. GoHighLevel work is delivered with GHL Scale Up.
Tell us how your customers decide.
A discovery call looks at your industry, the system you use today, and where customers slip away. We'll tell you plainly whether we can help, and where we'd start.