Customer Case Study

From WhatsApp groups to a
systematic sales pipeline

La Memoria — a Malaysian events & custom-production business (with sister printing company Red Apple Creation) — gave its 8-person sales team its first real CRM: one pipeline where every Meta-ads lead, pitch, and sign-off is finally visible.

La Memoria Events & POSM Sales + Marketing OS Malaysia 2026
5 stagesSales Pipeline
8Sales Members
~80–100Leads / Month
2 OSSales + Marketing
First CRMReplaced Excel + WhatsApp
HN
Hana Nguyen
CSM · Lead
CN
Calvin Ng
Business Consultant
LN
Laurel Nguyen
Account Executive
La Memoria event production — AHAM Capital Gala Dinner 2023 stage
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Contents

What this case covers

01

Company & Industry

An events & custom-production business scaling beyond its founders.

02

The Turning Point

Founder-led selling, ready to scale into a team.

03

Implementation

Phased go-live, value first, sales pipeline before everything else.

04

Needs & Goals

WhatsApp groups & Excel to one visible pipeline.

05

The Solution

Meta-ads capture, one pipeline, AI & automation, real reporting.

06

Adoption & BD Toolkit

An honest early read — plus selling Rework to service/agency firms.

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Company & Industry

A founder-built events business, scaling its sales engine

La Memoria is a Malaysian events company (event production + POSM), run by owner Carmen Ying alongside sister business Red Apple Creation (custom printing/POSM, ~50 staff). Founder-built over ~18 years; an 8-person sales team was added only in the last 2–3 years. B2B, project- and pitch-based.

① Customization sells human, not automated

3D designs, mood boards, bespoke pitches — chatbots stall these deals. The need is visibility + process, not AI auto-reply.

② The founder-to-team transition is the trigger

Owner-built service firms reach the point where founder-led selling needs a system to scale onto a growing team.

③ Meta-ads leads leak in the WhatsApp gap

Paid leads land in group chats and vanish — the win is syncing ads → pipeline + a 24h first contact.

~18 yrsFounder-Built
8Sales Members
70 / 30Key Acct / New
~10%Pitch Win-Rate

Who uses Rework

  • Carmen Ying — Owner / founder (decision maker)
  • Charles — Co-owner / founder
  • Elton — Key Account lead / champion
  • 8 sales — Sales/Event team + Key Account team
Before Rework: no CRM — Excel/Google Sheets + WhatsApp groups; a dropped AI chatbot (Chat Daddy). Leads ~80–100/mo, mostly Meta Ads.
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The Turning Point · Why Now

Proven sellers, scaling into a team

01

From founder-led to team-led

Carmen + Charles built the business hands-on for ~18 years; now a growing 8-person sales team needs a shared system to scale on.

02

A black box after the click

~80–100 Meta-ads leads/month vanish into WhatsApp; a ~10% pitch win-rate with no idea why.

03

A chatbot that overreached

Chat Daddy tried to auto-reply the whole sale and was dropped — the real need is AI that assists the rep, not replaces them.

04

They liked how Rework sold to them

As a prospect, La Memoria experienced Rework's own AI capture, industry-qualify & auto follow-up — and wanted that same engine for their business.

"We're good at selling what we're good at, but our management skill is not that great. That's why we need to depend on the system moving forward."
— Carmen Ying, Owner / Founder

Decision Journey

DISCOVERY

First call

Laurel + Calvin — Meta-ads leads, Excel + WhatsApp today.

DEMO

Demo + proposal

Sample sales funnel; bought Sales OS + Marketing OS.

KICKOFF

Onboarding

Hana (CSM) + champion Elton — phased plan, pipeline first.

SETUP

Configure + dry-run

Import, customize pipeline + dashboard; ~1 week familiarization.

GO-LIVE

Training & Go-Live 🚀

Sales pipeline first; key accounts Phase-2.

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Implementation Timeline

Phased go-live — value first, pipeline before everything

Rework's "go-live one-by-one" approach: stand up the urgent sales pipeline first, add key accounts and deeper marketing next. (Exact dates not documented in source.)

STEP 1

Discovery

Business context; Meta-ads leads, Excel + WhatsApp.

STEP 2

Demo + Proposal

Sales funnel; Sales OS + Marketing OS purchased.

STEP 3

Onboarding Kickoff

Hana (CSM) + Elton; phased scope agreed.

STEP 4

Setup

Import data, customize pipeline + dashboard, test with champion.

STEP 5

~1-Week Dry-Run

Team familiarization & navigation.

STEP 6

Training

8 sales users (~<1 hr).

STEP 7

Go-Live 🚀

Sales pipeline live first.

PHASE 2

Key Accounts

Then deeper marketing sync.

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Needs & Goals

Before vs after Rework

Before Rework
🙈

Leads vanish in WhatsApp

Paid Meta-ads leads land in group chats — no idea which are qualified.

🗂️

Excel + group chats

Only the "loud" deals were visible; the rest invisible.

⏱️

No follow-up rule

"I can't keep track" — no enforced call-within-24h or proposal cadence.

✉️

Untracked email

Proposals sent, no idea if opened.

🤖

A failed chatbot

Chat Daddy stalled — customization can't be auto-replied.

After Rework
🎯

Meta-ads sync into one pipeline

Every paid lead becomes a centralized, trackable deal.

🛤️

5-stage centralized pipeline

Enquiry → Proposal → Quotation → Sign Off → Payment/Deposit.

⚡

24h-first-contact + activity feed

Enforced follow-up; followers/collaborators per deal.

📬

Email open/click tracking

Send proposals from the deal; know when they're read.

📊

Real reporting

Won deals, open value, inquiry breakdown, per-member KPI.

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The Solution · Part 1

Capture — stop paying for leads that vanish

Marketing OS turns the Meta-ads spend into trackable pipeline, not lost WhatsApp messages.

What was configured

  • Meta Ads sync — Facebook → WhatsApp leads flow straight into the pipeline
  • Channel connect — WhatsApp / Messenger / Instagram for full visibility
  • Two ways to capture — a structured webform (UTM-tagged per source) and free-form chat; either way the details land as a deal
  • AI conversation summary — auto-summarizes each chat into topic, key points (budget, pax, date, company) & next steps for the rep
  • AI optional — enrichment / summary / initial filtering only; sales stays human
  • Centralized deals — every lead becomes a deal at the Enquiry stage
"This is very helpful — this is something that I'm looking for."
— Carmen Ying (on seeing the sales funnel)
Hana Online chat — inbound lead captured into Rework

INBOUND CHAT → WEBFORM CAPTURE (HANA ONLINE)

La Memoria public event-enquiry webform

PUBLIC EVENT-ENQUIRY WEBFORM

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The Solution · Part 2

One pipeline, two motions

Enquiry
Proposal
Quotation
Sign Off
Payment / Deposit

Ground-truth 5-stage pipeline (deals marked Won / Lost), from WhatsApp message to signed-off event and collected deposit. The Enquiry rule: contact within 24 hours to book a presentation meeting.

New Business · Sales/Event team

Inbound from Meta Ads

  • ~80–100 leads/month from Facebook → WhatsApp
  • Qualify → pitch → proposal/quotation → sign off
  • The ~30% of revenue the team wants to grow
Key Accounts · via Elton

Direct repeat clients

  • Inquiries come direct (not via ads)
  • Same stages — quotation + proposal
  • ~70% of revenue; Phase-2 of the rollout
Same pipeline, two lead sources. Phase-1 = new business; key accounts added in Phase-2 so the team gets value fast.
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The Solution · Part 3

Work the deal — and finally, report on it

The visibility layer that lets the founders scale beyond hands-on selling: every deal and every member, in one view.

🗂️ Deal workspace

Custom fields, deal overview, followers/collaborators, and an activity feed per deal.

✉️ Email tracking

Each member links email; send proposals/follow-ups from the deal; track opens & clicks.

⚡ Enforced cadence

24h-first-contact at Enquiry; logged calls & meetings — no more "I was busy / they didn't reply."

📊 Reports

Revenue, won deals, open value, inquiry breakdown, per-member performance/KPI.

🔁 Duplicate detection

Flags potential duplicate deals on the record — no double-handling the same lead across ~80–100/month.

🏷️ AI field enrichment

Auto-classifies fields like industry from the captured details, so deals are sortable from day one.

Role-split design: a System Owner flow (Carmen / management) and a Sales Team flow (the 8 reps).
Rework Sales deal record — pipeline stages, custom fields, activity stream

DEAL WORKSPACE — PIPELINE, CUSTOM FIELDS, ACTIVITY

Rework Sales Dashboard — revenue, won deals, inquiry breakdown

SALES DASHBOARD — REVENUE & INQUIRY REPORTING

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AI & Automation · What they bought into

The AI & automation they saw Rework run — on themselves

A big part of the decision: La Memoria experienced Rework's own sales motion as a prospect — AI-driven capture, qualification and follow-up — and wanted that exact engine for their events business.

AI · works the front of the funnel

Capture & qualify, automatically

  • AI sends the form and handles Q&A with the lead in chat — no rep needed for first touch
  • AI qualifies industry and surfaces the 3 priority verticals — FMCG, Skincare & Beauty — straight to Sales from step 1
  • Form replaces the old Google Form, but the data flows into the pipeline automatically — no manual re-entry
Automation · routes & follows up

Route & nurture, hands-off

  • Auto-route by budget category — leads assigned to the right salesperson by deal size
  • 5-day WhatsApp follow-up sequence — if the lead goes quiet, the next message fires on its own
  • Keeps every paid lead warm without a rep remembering to chase
The clincher: data collection via form (Google-Form replacement) with the data auto-landing in the pipeline — capture and automation in one flow.
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AI & Automation · How the data flows

One WhatsApp lead, end to end

Ads and organic traffic both land in WhatsApp — the one channel Rework automates today — and a single AI-driven flow turns each message into a tracked, routed, nurtured deal.

Meta Ads ~80–100 leads / month Organic / RedNote inbound DMs WhatsApp the automated channel AI Capture & Qualify · in WhatsApp ▸ AI sends the form structured intake, in chat — replaces Google Form ▸ AI Q&A answers the lead's questions, no rep needed ▸ AI summary & industry qualify budget · pax · date · company; priority verticals: FMCG · Skincare · Beauty → to Sales from step 1 ▸ Dedupe flags duplicate deals automatically Pipeline · one source of truth Enquiry › Proposal › Quote › Sign data auto-lands Automation · in WhatsApp ▸ Auto-route by budget category ▸ 5-day WhatsApp follow-up sequence Reporting ▸ Won / open value ▸ Inquiry by event type & budget ▸ Per-member KPI
If a lead goes quiet, the 5-day sequence fires the next WhatsApp message on its own — no rep has to remember to chase.
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End-User Adoption · An honest read

Owner-led, phased — measured later

Rollout

Sales users
8 trained
Phase-1: pipeline
Live first
Phase-2: key accts
Next
Captured around onboarding/early go-live — no Active Usage export yet. Adoption to be measured at the first post-go-live review. VERIFY

What's driving it

🟢 Green flags

Owner Carmen sponsors it and named the urgent scope herself. Champion Elton engaged. Already has SOPs/templates. Bought two products before kickoff.

🔴 Watch items

Behavior change from WhatsApp groups. Chat Daddy memory → prove value, not automation. Founders are hands-on & time-stretched — keep it low-lift. ~10% win-rate to diagnose.

🟡 Next up

Key-account Phase-2 · deeper marketing/lead-sync · post-go-live review to measure adoption & conversion.

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Before & After · Summary

The shift, at a glance

CategoryBefore ReworkAfter Rework
Sales systemNone — Excel/Sheets + WhatsApp groupsRework Sales OS
PipelineOnly "loud" deals visible5-stage centralized pipeline
Lead captureMeta-ads → WhatsApp, untrackedMarketing OS sync into pipeline
Follow-upNo rule — "can't keep track"24h-contact + activity feed
EmailUntrackedOpen/click tracking
ReportingExcel KPIsWon / open value / inquiry breakdown
AIChat Daddy (dropped)Visibility-first; AI optional
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BD Toolkit

Selling Rework to events, agency & custom-production firms

Key terms

POSM
Point-of-Sale Materials — the printed/produced deliverables. Custom, project-based, pitched per event.
Event production
Bespoke event build/management — long, consultative, design-heavy sales that can't be automated.
MQL / SQL / SAL
Marketing- / Sales-Qualified / Sales-Accepted Lead — the qualification ladder for routing and follow-up.
Key account vs new business
~70% repeat key accounts (direct) vs ~30% new (Meta ads) — same stages, different sources.
Sign Off / Deposit
Awarding the event + collecting the booking deposit — the pipeline's closing stages.
Pipeline health
Whether the funnel forecasts enough for this period and the next — the owner's core question.

Win more deals like this

Sell visibility, not automation

For SMEs burned by a chatbot, the early value is "see every deal's stage + who followed up."

Target the founder-to-team transition

Owner-built firms scaling a young sales team are the ideal buyer.

Sync Meta ads → pipeline + 24h rule

Plug the WhatsApp leak where paid leads die — that's the immediate, demonstrable win.

One pipeline, two motions

Key-account vs new-business share stages — phase the rollout, new business first.

Go live one-by-one

Stand up the urgent pipeline first; prove value before adding key accounts & marketing.

Price for the whole team

Full-team affordability beats per-seat tools for an 8-person SME sales team.

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Conclusion

La Memoria didn't just get a CRM.
They got the system to scale founder-led selling into a team.

Every Meta-ads lead, every pitch, every sign-off — finally visible to an 8-person team, in one pipeline that replaced Excel and the WhatsApp group.

5Pipeline Stages
8Sales Members
~80–100Leads / Month
2 OSSales + Marketing
Excel + WAReplaced

Captured around go-live · Rework Sales + Marketing OS · Malaysia · 2026

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