For boutique consulting, advisory, and IT services firms

The CRM your firm actually wanted Salesforce to be.

We build custom CRMs for professional services firms — purpose-designed around pipeline, engagements, and utilization. Same functionality you use in Salesforce, 40% of the cost, and it actually fits how your firm works.

See the live demo ↓ Book a 20-min audit call
Built for firms running Salesforce Sales Cloud Pro or Enterprise. Typical client cuts CRM spend $60-100K/year.

Why boutique firms quietly hate their Salesforce instance

You bought Salesforce when you were smaller and it was supposed to scale with you. Now you're paying enterprise prices for an app your team logs into twice a week.

💸

You're using 15–20% of what you pay for

Sales Cloud Professional runs $100/user/month minimum. For a 20-person firm, that's $24K/year — before implementation, admin contractors, or the next Dreamforce-induced add-on purchase.

🔧

It was built for a 5,000-seat sales org

Standard objects don't match how you actually work. Engagements. Utilization. Partner staffing. Project budgets. You're duct-taping it with Excel and Notion anyway.

👻

You pay a ghost admin $50K/year

Nobody on your team wants to own it. So you rent a contract admin, or pay a partner firm, or ignore it and watch your data rot. Either way, another line item.

📉

Your partners don't use it

Senior partners track their pipeline in their head or a private spreadsheet. The "single source of truth" has nine versions. You know your real forecast from hallway conversations, not the CRM.

🧩

Custom objects = custom pain

Every change costs $300/hour of contractor time. Your "simple request" becomes a three-week ticket. Meanwhile your firm has evolved and the CRM hasn't.

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You can't leave easily

Data is yours but extracting it is painful. Contracts auto-renew. Salesforce knows this — which is why switching feels impossible even when the math is obvious.

This is what your CRM could look like in 60 days.

A working demo of Boldbeam, built for a hypothetical 18-person M&A advisory firm called Meridian Advisors. Click through the views to see how engagement-based firms actually want their CRM to work.

Fully interactive. Every tab has real data. No login needed.

app.meridianadvisors.com — powered by Boldbeam
Sarah Mitchell · Partner
SM
Pipeline
Q2 2026 · Updated 14 minutes ago
All partners ▾ All industries ▾ + New opportunity
Open Pipeline
$14.2M
▲ 18% vs last quarter
Weighted Pipeline
$6.8M
▲ 22%
Closed YTD
$4.1M
▲ 31% vs YTD 2025
Avg Deal Cycle
97 days
▼ 12 days
Lead
$3.8M · 4 deals
4
Ardent Industries — Sell-side
$1.2M
JR
3d
Northbrook Foods
$850K
SM
5d
Vanguard Logistics
$950K
DK
7d
Orion Materials
$800K
JR
9d
Qualified
$3.1M · 3 deals
3
Pinewood Capital
$1.4M
SM
18d
Harcourt Manufacturing
$900K
DK
34d
Merida Chemicals
$800K
JR
12d
Proposal
$3.7M · 2 deals
2
Stoic & Co. — Buy-side
$2.2M
SM
22d
Cascadia Partners
$1.5M
DK
15d
Verbal
$2.1M · 1 deal
1
Leland Holdings
$2.1M
SM
8d
Signed
$1.5M · 2 deals
2
Beacon Senior Living
$950K
JR
2d
Ridgepoint Energy
$550K
DK
4d
What Salesforce does badly here: Salesforce Sales Cloud shows deals but can't connect them to staffed engagements, partner capacity, or retainer vs. success-fee mix. Your partners work around it in spreadsheets. Boldbeam models your real business from day one.
Clients
47 active · 132 total relationships
Active ▾ By industry ▾ + New client
Active Clients
47
LTV (top 10)
$38.4M
Multi-Engagement
23
At-Risk Relationships
3
Needs attention
Client Status Active Engagements LTV Relationship Owner Last Contact
Pinewood Capital
Private Equity
 Active 3 · $2.4M $8.1M Sarah Mitchell Yesterday
Stoic & Co.
Family Office
 Active 2 · $3.8M $6.2M Sarah Mitchell 3 days ago
Ardent Industries
Industrial Manufacturing
 Prospect 1 · $1.2M $1.2M Jack Reyes This morning
Harcourt Manufacturing
Industrial Manufacturing
 At Risk 1 · $900K $2.8M Dan Kowalski 18 days ago
Leland Holdings
Diversified Holdings
 Active 1 · $2.1M $5.4M Sarah Mitchell Today
Beacon Senior Living
Healthcare Services
 Active 1 · $950K $3.7M Jack Reyes 2 days ago
Cascadia Partners
Real Estate
 Prospect 1 · $1.5M $1.5M Dan Kowalski 5 days ago
Ridgepoint Energy
Oil & Gas Services
 Active 1 · $550K $2.1M Dan Kowalski 1 day ago
Salesforce pain point: Account hierarchy is a dropdown in Salesforce. For a firm like Meridian, a "client" is a web of related entities, past engagements, LP/investor relationships, and partner coverage. Boldbeam models the actual relationship graph — and surfaces at-risk accounts before they churn.
Active Engagements
6 engagements in flight · $9.2M contracted value
All partners ▾ Active ▾ + New engagement
Salesforce has no concept of an engagement. It has opportunities (which close) and cases (which are for support). For a firm that sells projects, Salesforce requires a custom object, a flow, and $15K of Pardot-adjacent config to replicate what Boldbeam gives you day one — with budget burn, scope risk, and staffing baked in.
Team & Utilization
18 people · Average utilization 73% · 4 under-staffed next month
This week ▾ All levels ▾ Staffing plan
Firm-wide Utilization
73%
Target: 68%
Billable Hours (MTD)
2,184
▲ 9%
Avg Bill Rate
$487
▲ $12
Bench Risk (6 wks)
2.5 FTE
Watch: KV, TH
SM
Sarah Mitchell
Managing Partner
94%
Cornerstone
Atlas
Leland
6% open
DK
Dan Kowalski
Partner
81%
Harcourt
Ridgepoint
Bench
19% open
JR
Jack Reyes
Partner
96%
Cornerstone
Atlas
Beacon
4% open
LM
Lena Morris
VP
78%
Cornerstone
Leland
Ridgepoint
Bench
22% open
TH
Tom Harper
Associate
54%
Cornerstone
Harcourt
Bench
46% open
KV
Kira Vance
Associate
47%
Atlas
Beacon
Bench
53% open
AB
Aisha Bright
Analyst
82%
Cornerstone
Atlas
Harcourt
Bench
18% open
Utilization doesn't exist in Salesforce Sales Cloud. You track it in a spreadsheet that one ops person updates weekly. When you want to staff a new engagement, you ping partners on Slack and hope. Boldbeam shows real-time capacity next to pipeline — so when a partner is about to sign, you already know who can staff it.
AI Inbox
7 pending updates · Last scan: 4 minutes ago
All sources ▾ High confidence ▾ Scan now
✨
Boldbeam AI is reading your firm's inbox and calendars
Gmail · Outlook · Google Calendar · Zoom · Accept any suggestion to update the CRM automatically. Nothing is written without your approval.
📧 Update opportunity: Pinewood Capital
22 minutes ago
In an email from Mike Chen (Pinewood Capital), he mentioned they're now open to expanding the mandate to include two additional portfolio companies. Current opp is sized at $1.4M — suggesting you update to $2.1M (range) and change probability from 40% → 60%.
📅 Log meeting: Stoic & Co.
1 hour ago
Sarah's 90-min call with Stoic & Co. (David Park) on Tuesday wasn't logged. AI summary: discussed three shortlisted targets, Park wants to move faster on Target #2 (Ardent Materials), agreed to revise LOI by Monday. Suggest: add as activity on Project Atlas + create follow-up task.
⚠️ Relationship risk: Harcourt Manufacturing
3 hours ago
No contact logged with Harcourt Manufacturing in 18 days. Their engagement is at 78% budget used with scope concerns. Last email from their CFO (Lisa Brennan) included the phrase "starting to wonder about timing". Recommend: Dan to book a call this week.
🎯 New lead detected: Vanguard Logistics
5 hours ago
Inbound referral email from Brian Hofferman (your contact at Cascadia) introducing Greg Yablonski, CEO of Vanguard Logistics. Company is exploring sell-side M&A, $90M–$110M revenue, PE-owned. Suggest: create opportunity, assign to Dan (industry match), value $950K–$1.2M.
💡 Pattern detected: Industrial manufacturing
Yesterday
Three of your last four sell-side engagements came from industrial manufacturing referrers. 63% of your closed YTD revenue is in this vertical. Your active pipeline in industrial manufacturing is only $1.7M. Recommend: intentional BD push in this vertical this quarter.
This is the feature that sells the whole product. Salesforce Einstein costs $50/user/month extra, needs 6 months of data, and still can't do this. Boldbeam AI works day one because it reads your actual inbox — not a reduced CRM dataset.
Reports
Custom dashboards built for Meridian's partner meeting
Partner meeting (Mondays) ▾ + New report
Q2 Forecast (high)
$8.4M
Q2 Forecast (commit)
$5.2M
Fee Realization
91%
▲ 3pts
Win Rate (12mo)
38%
▲ 6pts
Report Type Audience Last Run Status
Weekly Pipeline Review Live Dashboard All partners Today, 8:00 AM Auto
Partner Origination Scorecard Monthly Managing partner April 1, 2026 Auto
Engagement Profitability Per-engagement CFO, PMs This morning Auto
Client LTV & At-Risk Monthly Partners April 1, 2026 Scheduled
BD Pipeline by Vertical Weekly BD committee Yesterday Auto
Fee Realization Trend Quarterly Board April 2, 2026 Quarterly
Salesforce reports are the #1 reason firms hire consultants. Drag-and-drop report builder, 2 hours to build one report, breaks when objects change. Boldbeam reports are built into the product by us — tuned to your firm's partner meeting cadence — and we modify them as your firm evolves. Included in retainer.
Settings
Firm configuration · users · integrations
⚙️

This view is configured per-firm during Boldbeam implementation.

Every tenant gets: user management, role-based access, integrations (Gmail, Outlook, Zoom, QuickBooks, DocuSign), and data export.

👆 Try clicking through the left nav. Every tab is a real, custom-tuned view for a professional services firm.

How we work together

Three engagement tiers. Start small with an audit to see if it's worth replacing at all. Scale from there.

Salesforce Audit
Two-week diagnostic. Do you actually need to replace it?
$3,500 flat
Delivered in 10 business days
  • Line-by-line Salesforce cost breakdown (incl. hidden costs)
  • Usage analysis: what's actually used vs. paid for
  • Replacement architecture + cost model
  • ROI projection (year 1 and year 3)
  • 60-min partner readout call
Start an audit
Full Build & Cutover
We build your custom CRM and migrate you off Salesforce.
$45,000 + retainer
60-day build · Fixed price · No overruns
  • Custom CRM tuned to your firm's process
  • Pipeline, clients, engagements, utilization, AI inbox
  • Full data migration from Salesforce
  • Team training + admin documentation
  • Parallel run for 30 days before cutover
  • Includes first 3 months of retainer
Book discovery call
Managed Retainer
We run and evolve your CRM. You never touch it.
$2,500 / month
Starts month 4 after build
  • Hosting + all platform subscriptions included
  • Enhancements & new reports on request
  • User support for your team
  • Quarterly strategy review
  • Cancel anytime — your data is always yours
Talk to us
YOUR MATH
Current Salesforce all-in cost: $80-120K/year
Boldbeam all-in (year 2+): $30K/year
Payback on build: 8-14 months. Ten-year savings: $500K+.

Questions firms always ask

The honest answers, not sales-pitch answers.

That's the point of custom-built. Your retainer includes a change-order queue. New reports, new objects, new workflows — we add them as your firm evolves. Most requests ship in 1–2 weeks.
We build on open platforms (Supabase/Postgres, Retool, Make.com) on purpose. You own your data and your tenant. If we vanish, any CRM developer can pick it up — no proprietary lock-in. We also include a documented runbook so your team can hire a maintainer in any emergency.
We run a 30-day parallel period where your team uses Boldbeam while Salesforce stays live. No one switches over until the data reconciles and partners sign off. Your Salesforce instance stays intact as a read-only archive for 12 months.
Lead architect (ex-Salesforce enterprise) + a senior engineer per engagement. For complex migrations we bring in a specialized data-migration partner. You'll meet the whole team before signing.
Great. The $3,500 audit still pays for itself — most firms save $15–40K/year just by right-sizing their Salesforce licenses and cancelling unused products. We'll hand you a Salesforce optimization plan and wish you well.
Yes. Native integrations with Gmail, Outlook, Google Calendar, Zoom, DocuSign, QuickBooks, Xero, Slack, and most data warehouses. Custom integrations (e.g., PitchBook, Dealogic, proprietary tools) are scoped during discovery.
Week 1–2: Discovery & process mapping. Week 3–6: Build. Week 7–10: Data migration + parallel run. Week 11: Cutover. Week 12: Training + handoff. Total: 60–75 days from kickoff to Salesforce cancellation.
Standard terms: 50% on kickoff, 50% on go-live. We can split into thirds (kickoff / midpoint / go-live) for an additional 5%. Retainer is monthly, cancel anytime.

Want to see what your firm's CRM could look like?

The audit is $3,500 and takes two weeks. If we can't show you $40K+ of annual savings at the end of it, we refund the full fee.

Book a 20-min intro call Email us a question

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