Gemma Murphy

Enquiries arrive from a website, Facebook, WhatsApp, phone, email, referrals and a Google Business Profile; without a shared follow-up process, they go cold.

• The fix is procedural, not technological: put every enquiry in one place and track what happens to it.
• Murphy lists the fields — name, contact details, job type, source, date enquired, whether a quote was sent, whether it was followed up, and whether the job was booked or lost — and says the tracker could be a Kanban board, a CRM, or their own BusinessOS.
• The point is that knowing where everything stands, rather than keeping it in your head, gives owners more time and helps them earn more.

The trades post names seven enquiry channels and supplies the tracker fields owners need to see which enquiries were quoted, chased, and won or lost.

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The Business Stress Test turns that into a seven-question self-assessment, scored one point per yes: whether a new lead gets an automated welcome or value email within five minutes; whether every lead sits in one CRM; whether leads not followed up within 48 hours are visible at a glance; whether the website pre-qualifies people; whether a 2 a.m. visitor can get something of value without the owner waking up; whether a yes automatically triggers an invoice and onboarding; and whether the Google Business Profile is current.

• Their conclusion: a score below three means the business has a system problem, not an enquiry problem.
• Sending more enquiries into a broken process wastes time and effort.

The quiz's 5-Minute Rule and 48-hour visibility checks turn vague worries about being busy into two conditions owners can test today.

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Automate repetitive tasks — chasing appointments, sending reminders, following up enquiries, requesting missing information, sending the same message repeatedly, and tracking where each lead is up to.

• Delegate work someone else can do with a clear process — updating the CRM, uploading content, checking forms, basic admin, and client onboarding.
• Eliminate extra steps, duplicated messages and tasks kept only because they have always been done that way.
• Their warning: review the work before hiring, buying more software or squeezing more hours out of the day.
• In Murphy's account, growth usually starts here, not with greater effort.

The post gives concrete task lists under each category, helping owners sort their own week against the same three headings.

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The aim was never the tools themselves, but creating freedom and the life they wanted to live: running a business around a young child, then using autoresponders, a CRM, a calendar and Zapier to hold the business together, and later applying the same streamlining to clients.

• They now describe their work as strategy behind the business: helping owners use their time efficiently so they can switch off at the end of the day, while making every sales conversation useful, efficient and still personal.
• The focus on recovering time sits alongside stopping money from being left on the table, so the advice favours removing work over adding activity.

The post traces a route from an interior design degree and printing work, through website management after redundancy, to running email autoresponders, CRMs, calendars and Zapier, and finally to advising clients on strategy and efficiency.

The account shifts from building websites for interior businesses, described as the online showroom, to working on the strategy and systems behind a business. That mirrors the move from tool use to process review in the other posts.

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The posts do not state whether any of these recommendations involve a paid brand relationship; ask for disclosure before relying on them as neutral tool recommendations.

The trades post offers a setup checklist by direct message and lists BusinessOS alongside a Kanban board or CRM as ways to hold the tracker.

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It helps them judge whether their content gives trades businesses a usable starting point rather than simply recommending more marketing.

Murphy argues that trades businesses can lose enquiries when messages arrive through different channels without a shared follow-up process. They list seven sources, from website and phone to WhatsApp and Google Business Profile, then give a practical tracker: contact details, job type, enquiry source and date, quote status, follow-up status, and whether the job was booked or lost.

For brands planning a campaign

A collaboration with a CRM, field-service platform or lead-management provider could show how to bring enquiries from several channels into one tracker and record what happened next. The example makes follow-up—not simply generating more leads—the central problem.

It helps newcomers judge whether they offer a decision framework, not just automation tips.

The post offers three questions for reviewing work: can it be automated, delegated or eliminated?

• Murphy distinguishes recurring tasks such as reminders and enquiry follow-up from work another person could handle with a process, and from unnecessary or duplicated steps.
• They recommend reviewing the work before hiring or buying more software.

For brands planning a campaign

This is a good fit for a practical content collaboration about operations audits or responsible software selection. A campaign could ask business owners to classify real tasks under the three questions before recommending a tool, avoiding the assumption that every inefficiency needs another product.

It helps newcomers decide whether an interactive checklist would suit a campaign aimed at business owners who need to identify process gaps.

Murphy turns common lead-handling and operations issues into seven yes-or-no checks.

• They cover a prompt response to a new lead, a single CRM record, visibility into overdue follow-up, website pre-qualification, an after-hours value offer, client onboarding and a current Google Business Profile.
• The post invites readers to score themselves, though it does not explain how the stated score threshold was derived.

For brands planning a campaign

A collaboration could adapt the checklist into a diagnostic that leads to practical next steps, with each recommendation tied to a specific gap. A brand should substantiate any scoring or performance claims rather than treating the post’s threshold as independently validated.

The post explains how Murphy’s own experience connects to the systems and time-management themes in their instructional work.

Murphy connects the systems work to a personal business story: after studying interior design, they moved into website work, then built processes around their business while caring for a young child. They describe using autoresponders, a CRM, a calendar and Zapier, and say that streamlining their own work later informed how they helped clients improve efficiency and switch off at day’s end.

For brands planning a campaign

This post can support a collaboration that needs a personal rationale for operations advice, especially a story-led piece about building manageable systems in a small business. It also gives a brand a reason to explore operations tools in context, rather than presenting automation as an end in itself.

Murphy recommends bringing every enquiry into one place, whether it comes from a website, Facebook, WhatsApp, phone, email, referral or Google Business Profile.

• They suggest a basic tracker with name, contact details, job type, source, date enquired, quote sent, followed up, and booked or lost.
• The same text appears in two posts.

A visible enquiry tracker with named fields and a single place for leads. Murphy says it could be a Kanban board, a CRM or BusinessOS.

For brands planning a campaign

A collaboration could focus on practical lead-management content: a checklist, tracker template or walkthrough showing how to consolidate enquiries and follow up consistently. It suits a CRM, operations or lead-response tool that can be demonstrated in that workflow.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

It covers five-minute lead response, one CRM as the single source of truth, spotting leads not followed up within 48 hours, website pre-qualification, a 2 a.m. lead magnet, automatic invoicing and onboarding after a yes, and an optimised Google Business Profile. Murphy says a score below three means the business has a system problem, not an enquiry problem.

A scored quiz with one point per yes, framed around questions Murphy asks in almost every meeting with a new enquiry.

For brands planning a campaign

A strong fit for a lead-generation or CRM brand that can sponsor a quiz, scored assessment or diagnostic content. The angle is pre-growth readiness: helping owners fix response, storage and hand-off before spending more on acquisition.

Examples: Source 1

Automate repeated tasks such as chasing appointments, sending reminders, following up enquiries, asking for missing information and sending the same message repeatedly.

• Delegate tasks with a clear process, such as CRM updates, content uploads, form checks, basic admin and client onboarding.
• Eliminate duplicated messages, extra steps and tasks kept because 'we've always done it that way.' Murphy frames this as a way to recover time and start growing rather than working harder, hiring or buying more software first.

Three sorting questions applied to current work: Can I automate this?

• Can I delegate this?
• Can I eliminate this?

For brands planning a campaign

Useful for an automation, virtual assistant or operations consultancy campaign built around a workflow audit. The content could offer a worksheet, teardown or before-and-after process map that turns the three questions into a practical exercise.

Examples: Source 1

They describe adding email autoresponders, CRMs, calendars and Zapier to run the business, then helping clients optimise online during lockdown. They now work on business strategy, efficiency and sales conversations, aiming to help business owners stop leaving money on the table and switch off at the end of the day.

First-person narrative connecting interior design, website management, automation tools and current systems strategy work.

For brands planning a campaign

A brand can evaluate Murphy for first-person content about building systems while running a small business, especially where the story connects tool choices to owner time and revenue. The post also mentions Tenerife, yoga, dark rum and coffee, making a lifestyle-adjacent or founder-story angle a possible fit if it stays tied to operations.

Examples: Source 1

The lead follow-up post offers a checklist by DM; the stress-test post positions systems as necessary rather than nice to have.

Direct-message checklist offer and a named BusinessOS product.

The posts name Murphy's own offer or product; they do not identify any paid brand relationship.

For brands planning a campaign

BusinessOS is Murphy's existing commercial interest, so a partner should not assume they will recommend a competing tool or offer neutral advice. A collaboration could still work if the partner's product fits the enquiry-management and automation workflow or the content focuses on a non-competing part of the stack.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2 · Source 3

Ask them for pricing, contract terms and current availability.

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They describe it as part of how website work and business admin were connected. Ask whether any commercial relationship exists.

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Sarkar says a marketing problem is usually a bottleneck elsewhere in the journey, and that more tools or traffic will not fix blocked follow-up or an unclear offer.

• Murphy makes the same point about enquiries: owners chase more leads when the system handling them is broken.
• Both write short instructional posts that diagnose a problem and set out ordered steps to address it.

Sarkar works outwards from the customer journey and marketing stack — website, LinkedIn content, forms, ads, CRM and AI automation treated as one funnel — and writes as a web designer and digital marketer focused on fixing acquisition.

• Murphy works inwards on business operations: bringing enquiries into one place, making follow-up status visible, and sorting existing work into automate, delegate or eliminate.
• Sarkar's examples concern campaigns and qualification; Murphy's concern internal processes and admin.

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Chan's story of an agency celebrating a lower cost per lead while the sales team wastes hours makes the same point as Murphy's claim that owners would sink under more enquiries because nothing is set up to handle them. Both use a short customer story, a numbered sequence of changes and a closing warning about optimising the wrong thing.

Chan is a performance marketer focused on paid acquisition, creative testing and feeding conversion signals back into ad platforms, with results reported as specific campaign numbers for client businesses.

• Murphy advises owners directly on internal systems and follow-up processes, and offers self-assessments rather than agency case studies.
• Chan's answer to a leak is better-targeted demand; Murphy's is better handling of the demand already there.

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That aligns with Murphy's view that systems are a necessity, not a nice-to-have, and that adoption is harder than choosing software. Both also mention their own products and tools alongside the advice.

Wilkinson works almost entirely in golf and sports clubs, building websites and CRM tools for them.

• Much of the writing is product or project updates, with AI-assisted builds and club-facing offers.
• Murphy's audience is trades and general service businesses; the posts offer diagnostic advice rather than project announcements, with the product presented as one option among several.

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The two posts make Murphy's point from the opposite direction: adding a tool — AI, automation, CRM, ads, SEO or another platform — before locating the bottleneck does not work.

• An AI funnel can book thirty sales calls while twenty are poor-fit, six never show and four do not understand the offer.
• Saikat Sarkar also specifies what to measure instead: qualified conversations, show-up rate, customer fit and actual enquiries, rather than clicks, followers or booked calls.
• For a vendor judged on lead quality rather than volume, or one selling to businesses that already own a CRM but are not using it, that framing sits closer to the sale than a tracker template.

The tradeoff is immediate usability.

• Both posts end on the diagnostic question — where exactly are potential customers dropping out? — but neither supplies a checklist, tracker or column set.
• A reader who wants to act this afternoon gets an argument rather than a resource.
• Gemma Murphy's material provides an eight-column enquiry tracker and a seven-question score sheet, which are easier to co-brand and gate.
• Saikat Sarkar's posts also lack trade or home-services examples: the illustrations are a general customer journey and a solopreneur funnel, unlike Murphy's owner-operator, job-based framing, which a CRM or job-management vendor can reuse with little rewriting.
• Ask for audience size, sector mix and examples of previously delivered partnership formats.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

Both posts are campaign case studies with results: a commercial printing business that had grown on referrals for twenty years, where a paid media build from first principles, a lead-gen video shoot and systematic creative testing produced over 300 qualified leads in the first 30 days at a cost per lead below $10; and a Singapore loan marketplace where creative rebuilt around borrower concerns, funnel-wide A/B tests and qualified-lead signals fed back into Meta and Google cut cost per qualified lead by 45% and raised new clients by 114%. A vendor looking to show measurable pipeline movement for an SME has a closer match here than with a self-assessment quiz.

The tradeoff is subject and stance.

• Alex Chan's posts focus on creating demand through paid media and video; Gemma Murphy's focus on not losing enquiries already received.
• A vendor selling enquiry handling, follow-up and job records would need to reframe results that measure acquisition rather than response, so the connection to handling enquiries and job records is less direct.
• Both posts close with a registration link for a free live webinar, making an event—not a downloadable workflow—the default call to action.
• The cases are also larger and agency-led: a printing company with decades of offline clients, and a marketplace working with over 50 lenders.
• Murphy's examples feature single owner-operators and small teams, closer to a 5–50 staff buyer.
• Ask for Alex Chan's audience size and agreed partnership formats.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

James Wilkinson writes as the operator who builds the software and sits with the team using it.

• One post explains stopping in-house website development for clubs because the margins never worked, then building bespoke club sites with AI tooling that connect to Capture CRM and an AI concierge, with a CMS a club can update by prompt instead of waiting on a developer.
• The other is about why a CRM switch stalls — the fear of trying something new and the learning curve — and names the client team and the training material built to soften the change.
• A vendor whose real obstacle is implementation and staff adoption, or one selling into clubs, has a sharper fit with someone who discusses that openly.

The tradeoff is vertical focus.

• Both posts are about golf clubs and golf businesses, and the examples — a club website project and a CRM rollout with a named group — do not transfer to plumbers, electricians or general trades without rewriting.
• James Wilkinson's writing is also closer to product and client promotion, with a direct call to action about a bespoke website, so a vendor would be buying advocacy more than neutral explanation.
• Gemma Murphy addresses owner-operators across trades and offers a reusable checklist that is easy to slot into a partner's existing campaign.
• Ask for James Wilkinson's follower figures, audience composition and sponsor terms; two posts are too little to judge tone across formats.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2