Every managed account, opportunity and next step visible in a shared CRM cadence.
OKOIOS · Client growth & automation
Turn client relationships into a system.
- Role
- Client Relationship Manager
- Period
- Dec 2024 – Feb 2025
- Business context
- Enterprise business, IT and AI consulting
- Remit
- Make account follow-up visible and reliable
- Decisions
- Account map, CRM cadence and signal-to-action workflow
- What changed
- Needs and referrals easier to surface and track
- Evidence status
- Sanitized reconstruction + internal role records
OKOIOS is a consulting firm working across business, IT, and AI for enterprise clients. I owned the relationships with a portfolio of those accounts — the trusted point of contact who has to keep dozens of high-value clients feeling looked after at once. My move was simple: stop running it from memory and build a system, so every account had a clear next step and nothing slipped.
The operating change
What the system made possible.
Proactive business development and referrals turned steady follow-up into new conversations.
Client follow-up moved out of inboxes and into a CRM with clear ownership and timing.
High-value enterprise accounts across financial services, healthcare, and technology.
The situation
Relationships that lived in people's heads.
Consulting revenue depends on relationships, and relationships depend on follow-up. But across a portfolio of enterprise accounts, the follow-up lived in inboxes and memory: who was owed a proposal, which account was quietly cooling, where the next opportunity actually was. Things slipped not because people didn't care, but because there was no system holding it all.
At the same time, the firm was expanding into AI-driven consulting — so I had both a relationship problem to fix and a chance to show what a well-built operating system looks like.
What I did
Build the engine, then grow inside it.
01 · Map the portfolio
See the whole book of accounts at once.
Before automating anything, I mapped the portfolio: every account segmented by value, stage, and opportunity, so priorities were obvious rather than reactive. You can't systematise what you can't see, and most "we forgot to follow up" problems are really "we never had one view" problems.
02 · Build the follow-up engine
Give every account a next step, on time.
This is how I think about relationship work: as a pipeline, not a to-do list. A signal comes in, it gets enriched and scored, it lands in the CRM as the single source of truth, and it triggers a timed, personal follow-up — then the outcome feeds back into the next decision. Built once, it runs every day, and follow-up stops depending on whoever remembers.
- 01
Signal
A new lead, a renewal date, or account activity worth acting on.
- 02
Enrich & score
Add context, rank by value and urgency, so the right accounts rise first.
- 03
CRM
One record per account — owner, stage, and next step visible to everyone.
- 04
Timed follow-up
A personal, well-timed touch instead of a message remembered too late.
- 05
Meeting & readout
The conversation happens; the outcome is logged and feeds the next move.
03 · Grow inside the accounts
Turn steady contact into expansion.
The shared cadence made new needs and referrals easier to surface and track; no revenue or conversion uplift is claimed.
04 · Support the move into AI consulting
Help the firm sell what it was becoming.
As OKOIOS pushed into AI-driven consulting, I helped translate that shift into something clients could understand and buy — connecting the firm's new capability to the real problems in each account. It's the same instinct I now put to work with a modern automation stack.
The outreach architecture I built at OKOIOS
Turn a live hiring signal into coordinated business development.
This was not a list of disconnected tools. Make.com coordinated a workflow in which JobUp revealed relevant hiring demand, Apollo found the right people around each company, Instantly ran the outreach, and HubSpot remained the central CRM that the system updated.
- 01 · SignalJobUp
Surface relevant job offers and the companies behind them.
- 02 · OrchestrateMake.com
Move each signal through the workflow and coordinate the handoffs.
- 03 · Find peopleApollo
Identify relevant decision-makers inside each hiring company.
- 04 · Reach outInstantly
Launch targeted campaigns to create qualified conversations.
Central system of record
HubSpot
Company, contact, campaign stage and response data stayed in one CRM, with Make.com updating the record as the workflow moved.
The same instinct, better tools
How I'd wire that pipeline today.
The thinking hasn't changed; the tooling has. Since then I've spent months building exactly this kind of system with current tools — lead sourcing into a CRM, AI scoring and personalisation, timed outreach, and reporting that closes the loop. It's the engine behind my work at Beats As One, and I shipped dougmanuel.com on top of it.
- 01 · SignalApollo + relevant sources
Start with an observable account or market signal.
- 02 · Orchestraten8n / Make
Route, enrich and time each next action.
- 03 · UnderstandClaude / Gemini
Research context and support useful personalisation.
- 04 · RecordHubSpot
Keep ownership, history and stage in one source of truth.
- 05 · SequenceInstantly
Run controlled outreach with clear campaign logic.
- 06 · LearnCalendar + reporting
Feed replies, meetings and outcomes into the next decision.
Feedback loopEvery outcome updates the CRM, scoring and next action instead of disappearing into an inbox.
What it changed
Relationships that stopped depending on memory.
- Consistent follow-up surfaced expansion opportunities and referrals across the portfolio.
- Every account gained a clear owner and timing, reducing avoidable follow-up delays.
- The team gained one view of the whole book instead of scattered inboxes and mental notes.
- The systems habit built here became the AI and automation stack I build with now.
Proof you can check
Where to verify this.
This role was internal CRM and consulting work, so there's no public campaign to point to — the honest proof is the thinking laid out above and a verifiable employment record.
Where this transfers
What this chapter proves.
- CRM & account management
- Client growth & retention
- Systems & automation thinking
- Follow-up discipline
- AI-enabled operations
- Enterprise stakeholder trust
Hiring next step
See how this work fits your brief.
The hiring brief shows where this experience creates the most value, with the boundaries and evidence useful to your decision.