A talent agency: CRM redesign + Ops Cockpit app + booking ops

In one line. For a two-person sports-creator talent agency, we rebuilt the CRM into an accounts→campaigns→deals→events model on three clean Attio objects, began a bespoke "Ops Cockpit" web app, and stood up WhatsApp-first booking ops.

Client & context

The agency is run by its founder and one full-time employee. It manages a commercial sports creator (content deals with a major sports broadcaster, a national retailer and two major sports leagues) and a comedy performer (live shows up to ~1,000 tickets), across Pipedrive, HubSpot, Notion and Google tools plus a whiteboard for priorities.

The problem

Deals are structurally complex: a single retailer-x-league partnership spans multiple events across locations, each with its own deliverables (TikTok, Instagram), posting dates, usage rights and exclusivity windows. The CRM conflated deals with campaigns, so profitability by account was hard to isolate, and content opportunities (access-only, no payment) sat in the same pipeline as paid deals. Data was spread across several inboxes; once a conversation moved to WhatsApp, follow-ups were easy to lose, and contract milestones (e.g. broadcaster exclusivity end dates) had no alerts.

What we built

• An accounts/campaigns/deals/events data model with written definitions, campaign window, objective, deliverables, plus an exclusivity/qualification decision tree
• Three clean Attio objects: Deals, Opportunities and Payments (Opportunities kept separate from Events so the events database stays clean)
• The Ops Cockpit custom web app (in build): channel-per-deal, keyboard-driven, left-sidebar deal navigation, a task feed, and ticket-sales/P&L dashboards
• A Respond.io WhatsApp/Instagram booking workflow to work warm comedy-talent leads
• The agency's marketing website
• An SOW and revised game plan, a demo workspace to test an AI agent, and proposed specialised agents (deliverables for the creator; ticket-sales/performance for the comedy act) with contract-milestone alerts

How we did it

A discovery session mapped the taxonomy: account = a retailer, a league or a sports-marketing agency; campaign = a retailer-x-league set or a seasonal ad set; deal = an individual event within it. The Attio revamp is done. For booking ops, Respond.io was chosen because it supports WhatsApp coexistence, messages don't break when the founder replies from their own phone, which matters given a dedicated business WhatsApp holding 192 chats. DocuSign handles contracting; bookings run on a performance rev-share of 10% commission or £150 per booking, with £12.50/hr for non-booking ops work.

Outcome

The Attio data model is delivered (Deals, Opportunities, Payments); the Ops Cockpit web app is in build and the marketing website is being finished. Booking ops are live on Respond.io to work warm WhatsApp leads. Deal values in scope include a £70k partnership across 7 events and a £24k seasonal campaign, with a Notion↔Attio sync deliberately parked as lower priority.

Takeaway: CRM rebuilt onto three clean Attio objects with an accounts→campaigns→deals→events model; Ops Cockpit app and WhatsApp-first booking ops (10% / £150-per-booking) underway.