What We Found

1. Jobs leave the building before the client pays

What we see: Equipment and crew go out on jobs with no deposit collected and no check that payment is in hand. Payment terms have also been given to customers without your approval.

Why it matters: DSP carries all the risk. If the client doesn't pay, the work is already done.

How we'd fix it: Payment gate: no job is released to Flex until QuickBooks shows the 50% deposit received. No exceptions without your approval: nobody can extend terms or release a job unpaid unless you sign off, and every exception is recorded in HubSpot with your name and date.

2. $60,000 went unpaid with nobody noticing

What we see: One client has owed about $60,000 since August. There were no reminders, no follow-up, and no alert to you.

Why it matters: Without someone watching receivables, unpaid invoices just sit there, and the older they get the harder they are to collect.

How we'd fix it: A weekly receivables report sent to you, plus automatic QuickBooks reminders starting 14 days before the event, with the balance due the day before the event.

3. You can't see the numbers without asking someone

What we see: Pipeline, deposits, balances and overdue accounts all live in different systems. To get them, someone has to pull them for you.

Why it matters: You only find out about problems after the fact.

How we'd fix it: HubSpot dashboards showing pipeline, quoted vs. booked revenue, deposits outstanding, balances due and overdue accounts, with QuickBooks payment status on every deal.

4. Gear has no rental prices

What we see: We exported DSP's full Flex inventory: 3,128 items in 401 categories. None of them has a rental rate in Flex. Only about 41% have any cost recorded, and truss, staging and cable are almost all blank.

Why it matters: Quotes end up as one lump-sum price. Nobody can confirm whether a job hit the 48% margin target or whether a piece of gear has paid for itself.

How we'd fix it: A rate card for packages and the most-quoted items, built from cost, market rates and your margin target, and loaded into HubSpot so every quote shows its margin before it goes out.

5. Quotes aren't standardized

What we see: Quotes are built by hand, outside the CRM, with no consistent line items or terms.

Why it matters: Pricing varies by rep, terms are not consistently attached, and nothing is tracked once the quote is sent.

How we'd fix it: Line-item quotes from HubSpot, with DSP terms and e-signature attached, that move the deal forward when the client signs. (A working test quote is already built.)

6. Salespeople aren't capturing customer data

What we see: Across the sales team, the most important data DSP has, its customer information, isn't being captured. Relationships live in individual inboxes and phones, and when a salesperson leaves, those contacts leave with them. Of 1,420 contacts in Flex, only 394 have an email address.

Why it matters: DSP can't market to, follow up with, or even identify a big part of its own customer base.

How we'd fix it: Recover customer contacts from past reps' mailboxes (screened so spam and vendors are filtered out), clean up the Flex records, and require every customer conversation to be logged in HubSpot going forward.

7. The Terms & Conditions are out of date

What we see: The current terms have wrong section references and typos (one clause even has the customer disclaiming warranties instead of DSP). They're built for equipment pickup, not delivered and crewed shows. They have no crew/overtime, site-safety, install or sub-rental terms, and they don't match the new 50% deposit rule.

Why it matters: Terms that are unclear or don't fit how DSP actually works are hard to enforce when a client disputes a bill.

How we'd fix it: A marked-up revision (attached separately) for your attorney to review, then attached to every quote for the client's signature.

⬇ Download the marked-up Terms & Conditions (Word)

Anything we missed?

What else costs you time or money behind the scenes that isn't on this list?

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