Hey — founder here.

We run FotoOwl (photo delivery for studios). Over the last year the same complaint kept coming up from wedding/event photographers:

Their “CRM” is basically WhatsApp + Instagram DMs + phone calls. They try a normal CRM, hate typing everything in after every chat, skip updates during peak season, then the CRM is empty and useless.

So we built FotoOwl CRM around that reality instead of fighting it.

What it does differently:

• Agents pull context from WhatsApp / Instagram / calls and update the lead record (name, date, budget, venue, etc.)
• Optional follow-ups so a quote that gets “seen” and then ghosts doesn’t just die in chat
• Still studio-controlled — not a bot spam machine

We’re opening early access for photography studios (esp. wedding/event) who want to try it before a wider launch.

No link in this post on purpose. If you’re a studio owner / ops person and this sounds useful, DM me and I’ll share details.

Happy to answer questions in the comments too — including “how is this different from X” without trash-talking anyone.

Hi crm users! I'm a recent grad, full-stack developer and I am building a saas crm as my first project, though this started as a portfolio project, I wanted to make it better as industry level. I just want to ask what are the expectations you have in using crm? I want to specifically ask users because I have no experience using such. If you want to take a look at my work search unithreadcrm with "Connects witb people" and click Test Demo to try. This is far from finish so dont expect highly optimize crm and try to open it in desktop mode for better experience. Thank you so much!

Mods have okayed this post, and I have kept links out as they asked.

Over years we’ve tried various CRMs and always had the same result. Data entry became a chore, records were getting old and hard to use. We don’t have traditional database with thousands of leads pulled from Apollo or whatever.

Most of our sales activity focuses around networking and nurturing connections. What we need to remember wasn’t a deal stage but context, thoughts, notes and a lot of unstructured information.

Annoyed with available tools we built something for ourselves. A system that lives inside AI chat as MCP server. Not an application with chat slapped to it but one designed only for text/voice interaction.

For example, after a meeting I can dictate or type a couple of sentences about what happened. Something like “had a call with Daniel this morning, he is keen on the bigger package, wants a decision by the end of the quarter, I said I would send the proposal Thursday. It works out who I mean, updates the contact, writes the note, and creates the follow up.”

The system picks it all, tells me what it recorded so I can correct it if it picked the wrong Daniel.

Going the other way, I ask in plain language “what do I know about this person, who do I know at this company, when did I last speak to them, what is overdue”.

All data entry and retrieval is through AI. And because it sits inside AI I can do cool stuff with it. I can ask to draft emails, have scheduled agent that gets list of tasks every day and acts on it. It also gives AI view into records to find synergies. Things like “who is the best lead to focus on” and more.

So after a few months of using it ourselves we decided to turn it into a product and names it Know How CRM. It has three tiers
- free - full features but limited number of entries
- pro - all limits removed
- team - shared data across multiple users

Now I’m looking for about ten people who track relationships rather than deals to be first pilot group. If you see a value and want to stay you will have Pro account free forever.

You will need an AI tool that supports MCP servers.

DM me and I will send you the details.

Hi there. Does anyone have advice re best CRM platform to build and host a private consultancy (up to 100 members) with group calls (+ replays), manage subscriptions, posting-storing resource, creating virtual rooms (adding people to different rooms), chat function pls?

This is a weekly post for you to let out about something which happened this week for you in CRM that mattered: features, client requests that were either great or awful this week, and just generally chat CRM / CRM consulting chatter.

No self promo, just a place to share tales from the front-line of CRM!

We're reviewing the CRM because the platform has become more than a place to gather leads and deals. The sales team utilizes the platform for pipeline management purposes, while the operations team seeks information about onboarding as well as the implementation of renewals and any additional requests after the deal is done.

Handoffs between sales and operations are currently conducted through e-mails and spreadsheets. As soon as the deal has been completed, a salesperson can mark the deal as closed and then operations will be informed of this fact by means of the creation of some tasks.

In the case there is any change during the implementation phase, such information rarely gets back to the CRM system. For teams that have moved beyond a sales-only CRM, what are you using? Did you extend your CRM into operations or keep those workflows in separate systems?

I'm planning Q4 and have room for one cleanup project before the new year. Picking just one forced me to decide what actually has to come first, so here's where I landed.

Most teams start with duplicates because the count is easy to watch go down. But deciding which record wins a merge depends on your owner and stage rules. If you dedup first, you end up with tidier bad data.

The order I'd use, based on how much each one breaks downstream:

1. Stage definitions. If "qualified" means something different to marketing, sales and your CEO, then the forecast, the routing and every report are reading the same broken field. Next year's targets get set off that forecast, and you're the one defending the number in January.
2. Ownership. Records owned by reps who left, or by nobody. This is common after a merger. Those leads sit there and nobody gets alerted.
3. One source of truth per field. If two systems both write to lifecycle stage, they'll keep overwriting each other no matter how often you clean.
4. Duplicates. By now you have rules for which record wins.

A quick way to find your starting point: if your VP of Sales keeps a spreadsheet next to the CRM, look for the column that doesn't exist in the CRM. That's usually #1 or #3.

The team I take on will probably be one that merged or migrated in the last year or two, since all four break at once there. If that's you, comment what happened and what the side spreadsheet tracks, and I'll tell you which one I'd fix first. Same offer for anyone else reading.

Quick question for the GTM folks. For context I do outbound for mid market SaaS, spend half my day trying to guess who the real technical buyer is at each account and the rest cleaning up crm notes.

We just got access to a revenue intelligence tool that scores accounts and flags buyer intent signals inside the crm. Supposed to tell us which accounts to hit first and which contacts are worth a deep dive eg github, product docs, community etc. If you have used AI driven sales intelligence for prospect research, did it shift who you target day to day or does it kinda fade into the background after the first month? Would love any tips