Mid-December hit and my calendar went from back-to-back meetings to tumbleweeds.

This happens every year:

Most business owners panic or check out.

Here's what I learned in the military: In the downtime, you prepare for the battle.

Your CRM is probably a mess right now. Dead leads, outdated contact info, deals that closed six months ago still marked as "in progress."

In January, when leads start flowing again, you'll be wading through garbage trying to find real opportunities.

Spend one afternoon this December cleaning it:

• Delete dead leads

• Update contact information

• Tag people properly so you can actually find them

• Archive completed deals

• Document your sales process

• Build that proposal template you keep recreating

One client did this during Q4. Came back in January with a clean system. Closed $240k in Q1 more than half their previous year.

Not luck, preparation.

You got time to lean? You got time to clean.

The call started like many others. "We've tried Zoho - didn't work. Salesforce was too expensive and didn't work either. Now we're looking at HubSpot."

Three different CRM platforms. Three failures. They were convinced the next software would solve everything.

The problem wasn't the software, it was their approach.

Each time they bought a new system, they tried to make the software fit their existing chaos instead of fixing their processes first. Zoho failed because nobody wanted to change how they worked. Salesforce failed for the same reason, just at a higher price point.

Now they wanted HubSpot to magically fix what two other platforms couldn't.

Here's what actually happens when CRM implementations fail: Your team resists the new system because it doesn't match how they currently operate. Data gets entered inconsistently. Reports become meaningless. Within six months, you're back to spreadsheets and looking for the next solution.

The software isn't broken. Your processes are.

Before you buy another CRM, map out how work actually flows through your business. Interview your team about their current workflows. Identify where information gets lost or duplicated. Understand what success looks like before you start shopping for tools.

Most companies skip this step because it's harder than buying software. But fixing your processes first means whatever platform you choose will actually work.

The alternative is becoming that company on their fourth CRM implementation, still wondering why technology keeps letting them down.

Want to know if your team is ready for digital transformation? Download my free checklist: "Why Your Team is Holding Back Your Digital Transformation", it covers the exact process issues that make CRM implementations fail.

I'm going to tell you how to get lucky on purpose.

Sounds impossible, right? It's not.

Last week I was at a networking event in Austin. I didn't force anything. Just showed up, had real conversations. I ended up mentioning that I run a YouTube channel when it came up naturally.

The speaker pointed at me. "You have to talk to this guy. He's got 300,000 subscribers. You should do a podcast with him."

I didn't pitch, someone else did it for me.

This week I'm recording a podcast I didn't ask for. That's manufactured serendipity.

Here's how it works:

Hang out where opportunities happen. Networking events beat your home office every time.

Go deep, not wide. I spent over six figures with people in my community over the past 12 months. Not because I had to, because I'd observed them long enough to trust they'd deliver.

Do random nice things. Send someone a cake. Make an introduction that benefits them, not you. 

It may feel like zero ROI when you do it, but that small gesture created opportunities for them. Their success created opportunities for me. One introduction led to another, which led to another.

You can't get lucky building alone in your back room hoping someone stumbles onto your website.

Our community is protective about who joins. We're selective about culture. We focus on giving first. That creates opportunities out of thin air.

Because when you consistently show up and add value without asking for anything back, people remember. Then when opportunities arise, they think "this person deserves this."

Stop waiting to get discovered. Start creating the conditions where people can't help but think of you when opportunities appear.

Avon

But your customers aren't the only relationships that matter.

I think there are multiple systems you need:

Partner Relationship Management (PRM). You've got channel partners, resellers, affiliates. Each one is a pipeline that needs nurturing, tracking, and optimization.

Supplier Relationship Management (SRM). Your vendors determine your costs, delivery times, and product quality. Treat them like leads and you'll get better terms.

Employee Relationship Management (ERM). Your staff pipeline from recruitment through onboarding to retention. Losing people costs more than most failed sales.

The X in XRM is the unknown variable. Whatever relationship drives your business value deserves the same systematic approach you give customers.

Most businesses only track customer pipelines. They wing everything else. Then they wonder why partnerships fall apart, suppliers drop them, employees quit, and investors lose confidence.

Every relationship is a pipeline. Every pipeline has stages. Every stage has drop-off points you can measure and improve.

Apply CRM thinking everywhere. Track your partner conversations like you track sales calls. Manage employee engagement like you manage customer satisfaction.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, everything is a pipeline. Treat it accordingly.

If you want to see how I set up my own pipelines to keep track of relationships like the one that landed me a $40k deal because it told me to connect two people, comment or send me a message.

Initially consulting was dependent on the consultant, building a relationship, doing good work and providing good outputs. In recent times consulting companies like Deloitte have gotten in trouble with the Australian Government by providing almost completely AI generated consulting documents with false information and references. The Australian government paid half a million dollars for a study and it seems they cheated and used AI. 

Now for where consulting is getting harder. 

I have noticed clients now using more AI and are using it to hold us to account. Now while I do believe that we should responsibly deliver a good service, sometimes we also need to balance doing detailed documentation over delivering the outcome. For many of my clients we are trying to make it work with in their budget and make them successful. We do not charge an arm and a leg and sometime the reports are a bit more to the point and less beautified because we want to give them the meat in the sandwich that moves them forward rather than add 20% more time to beautification and fluffyness. 

We are conservative on our use of AI as I am sure that Deloitte have put some government secrets into the LLM and we are aware of AI dreams telling lies. So our use of AI is purely internal and nothing that the customer has to interact with. The clients are now checking our work with AI which now means they are asking for more detailed time reports and lengthy explanations of things and using lengthy documents that they have generated with AI to communicate with us. 

So their lengthy AI content plus their requirement for us to use more lengthy content means that we either need to increase our use of AI and risk the AI dreams or charge more for a human to do it. Essentially this drives up the cost of consulting and means that our AI is talking to their AI and they don’t really absorb the true meaning and value of the depth and the complexity of the information we are providing. 

An example of this is asking a medical consultant how to lose weight and they will go into detail about diet and exercise and how you should eat certain foods and the do a certain amount of exercise. They can also go into more detail about that persons particular body type or modified exercises to compensate for injury as an example. There is a depth of information that is critical to understand because one good mean or one work out isn’t going to fix the issue. Asking AI will give a much shorter explanation and summarize it into two dot points being diet and exercise. The critical difference being that the consultant gave something very specific and the AI gave something generic. Although you can add additional prompts, it is often the why and the empathetic conversation that the provisional is going to have with the client, for example, “don’t you want to get fit so you can spend more time playing with your kids?”.

Sometimes the full story is important to convey the importance of doing something. If a client AI summarizes your advice statement they are only going to read the dot points and miss the point of what you are trying to convey. There might be 5 possible fixes but one is more valuable to the client, is easier or is some cases is harder but significantly more impactful. Some courses of action need to be decided upon in relation to other external factors such as currency rates, the government of the day or the competition. So if boutique consultancies are expected to give Deloitte style 500+ page and half million dollar consulting outputs that this prices out the small companies that need the help, even if AI is being used.