The four pages that follow walk you through your first ten minutes, first hour, and first week with Unavoidable CRM. Follow them in order and you will be selling, quoting and getting paid before the end of the day.
By the end of this guide your CRM will be doing three things you were paying five tools to do yesterday. If not, email me directly at info@unavoidablecrm.com and I will fix it personally.
Do these three things right now. They take two minutes each and prove the CRM works before you commit any more time.
Sidebar - Contacts - New. Name, email, phone. That is a real record in your CRM now. Tag them "prospect" or "customer" to filter later. All future SMS, emails and quotes to that person live under this record automatically.
From the contact record you just made, click "SMS" or "Email". Send yourself something. Confirm it arrives on your phone or in your inbox. That confirms your Twilio and Postmark credentials are wired correctly (see page 3 if not).
Sidebar - Booking Settings - Public URL. That link takes anyone straight to your public calendar where they can pick a time and book themselves in. Copy the URL into your email signature. Prospects can now book you without ever needing to email back-and-forth.
Now the CRM works, spend the next hour connecting the platforms that power its outbound. Do these once and never think about them again.
Settings - Integrations - Twilio. Paste your Account SID, Auth Token and phone number. We take zero cut on SMS - you pay Twilio direct at their published rate. Costs typically 3p per UK SMS, 4-6c per US SMS.
Settings - Integrations - Postmark. Paste your Server Token. Postmark charges you 15 USD/mo for 10,000 emails, direct. Add your domain in Postmark's dashboard for DKIM and DMARC alignment.
Create a Retell account and a Single Prompt agent, and get a UK number into Retell (buy one, import your Twilio number, or forward your existing line). Then open AI Receptionist - Connection details, paste your key, agent ID and number, fill in your knowledge base and click Update and publish agent. About 13p a minute. Full guide: unavoidablecrm.com/ai-receptionist-setup.
Contacts - Import - upload a CSV, or connect Mailchimp/HubSpot/Pipedrive under Settings - Imports. The import is idempotent - existing contacts (matched by email) are skipped, so re-runs are safe.
Sidebar - Pipeline - Edit stages. The default trades pipeline is enquiry - quoted - won - complete. Change the labels and add stages to match how you actually sell. Every deal you create from here forwards will use your custom stages.
Settings - Integrations - Stripe - Connect. Once linked, every quote and invoice you send has a live "Pay now" button. Cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, direct debit for UK customers. Payments hit your Stripe balance the next working day.
These are the moves that turn a working CRM into a genuine growth engine. Do them across your first seven days.
Sidebar - Quotes - New. Pick a template or start blank. Line items, prices, notes. Send. The recipient gets a branded quote page with a one-click accept-and-pay button. Autochase kicks in after 3, 7 and 14 days if they do not respond.
Sidebar - Sequences - New. Pick a trigger (contact added, tag applied, quote sent, etc.), design a 3 to 5 step drip campaign across SMS and email. Sequences pause automatically on reply. Track opens, clicks and conversions in real time.
Settings - Users - Invite. Enter their email, pick a role (Owner, Admin, Sales, Support). They get an email invite, set their own password, and are in. Role permissions apply automatically so nobody can see or do what they should not.
Sidebar - Reports - MRR. If you sell subscriptions (retainers, memberships, service plans) this is where you track them. Monthly recurring revenue, churn, expansion, forecast, all live. If you sell one-off jobs, use the Revenue dashboard instead.
Sidebar - Analytics. Every SMS, email, call, booking, quote, invoice and payment logged in the last seven days. Filter by contact, tag or campaign. Use the "conversion funnel" widget to see where prospects drop off, and fix that.