Sales CRM – Smarter Payment Tracking

Streamlining split & token payments and optimizing payment management for sales teams

Team
1 PM and Designer (myself), 3 developers, 4 QAs including me

Timeline
26 months
(strategy → design → launch → iteration)

My Role
Product Strategy, User Research, UX/UI design, QA, Stakeholder Management

📌Overview: Built in-house to power scalable sales operations

At MiM-Essay and MentR-Me, we dealt with thousands of inbound leads flowing in through our websites each month. Initially, the sales and support teams relied heavily on Google Sheets and Google Streak to manage everything — from lead tracking and assignment to follow-ups and payment updates. These disconnected tools created gaps, leading to missed follow-ups, inconsistent tracking, and no visibility into what was working or where bottlenecks existed.

To solve this, I led the ideation, design, and end-to-end execution of a fully custom Sales CRM — an internal platform that became the backbone of our sales operations. Built from scratch, the CRM centralized everything: lead capture, pipeline management, conversion tracking, follow-ups, and payments. It allowed teams to operate from one shared system, improving coordination, visibility, and overall performance.

🚀 End-to-End Sales Flow

  1. Lead Capture & Entry: Leads were auto-captured from website forms across MiM-Essay and MentR-Me. Each entry included fields like Name, Contact Details, Target Year, Preferred Call Time, and UTM tags for attribution.
  2. Lead Qualification & Assignment : All new leads landed in a central ‘Support’ pipeline, where the Support Team qualified them. Based on this assessment, leads were distributed to individual Sales Pipelines assigned to different POCs.
  3. Sales Pipelines & Communication Tracking: Each Sales POC worked within their own structured pipeline. Every stage of the lead’s journey – first call, nurturing, follow-ups, conversion – was logged and updated in real-time. UTM tracking further allowed us to trace which marketing channels brought in high-converting leads.
  4. Full-Funnel Visibility & Cross-Team Sync: Sales, Support, and Ops could all access shared lead records – including notes, call logs, email & whatsapp updates, and payment statuses. This replaced fragmented tools and created a centralized system of record.
  5. Built-In Analytics: A powerful analytics dashboard was layered into the CRM:
    • Track leads by source, POC, and stage
    • Measure conversion rates
    • Evaluate response time, follow-up frequency
    • Monitor pipeline health across teams

🎯 Spotlight: Split & Token Payments Feature

🧩Problem Statement

As our pricing model evolved to include flexible payment plans, sales teams began closing more deals using Token or Split payments instead of one-time payments. However, the CRM lacked a structured way to handle these non-standard payments – resulting in major workflow gaps after the point of conversion. There was no in-system mechanism for:

  • Recording and tracking partial or multi-stage payments
  • Setting up automated follow-ups for due amounts
  • Assigning clear ownership over payment responsibilities
  • Preventing duplicate entries or identifying overdue payments

To fill this gap, Sales and Ops teams relied on Google Sheets, manual follow-ups, and even external tools like Streak – but this introduced new challenges:

  • Missed or delayed payment follow-ups
  • Low visibility and accountability across payment cycles
  • Fragmented communication between Sales and Support
  • Poor experience for leads due to inconsistent handling
  • Direct impact on revenue and operational efficiency

What started as a workaround quickly became a bottleneck.

🔍 Research & Insights

Team Interviews
Discussions helped uncover edge cases like partial payments, dynamic due dates, and overlapping ownership — all missing in the current flow.
Common pain points shared by the Sales and Support teams: 

“We waste too much time manually updating lead and payment progress  – nothing syncs automatically.”

“Split and second payments are hard to track – we lose visibility into due dates, pending amounts, and follow-ups.”

“Ownership is unclear – overdue payments keep slipping through the cracks without accountability.”

Flow Audit
43% of deals had Token or Split payments, yet tracking relied on Google Sheets or Streak — with no structured CRM support.

Behavioral Gaps
Follow-ups dropped by 60% post first payment. No alerts or ownership led to weeks-long delays in overdue tracking.

💡Solution: Built-in Split & Token Payment Management

To address the inefficiencies around non-one-time payments, I conceptualized and led the development of a dedicated Split & Token Payments module within our internal Sales CRM. The goal was to bring structure, visibility, and automation into what had become a manual, error-prone workflow. This new module integrated directly into our existing CRM and was built from the ground up to support every stage of the payment journey – from first entry to final recovery. This included:

  1. Lead Won Popups tailored for token/split plans
  2. Dedicated Payment Views for better tracking and ownership
  3. Visual Overdue Highlighting for actionable follow-ups
  4. CRM-integrated Notes and Filters for complete context

👩‍💻 My Role & Responsibilities

🧠 Product Ideation: Identified friction points in the payment tracking process across Sales and Support teams.

🏗️ Solution Architecture: Designed the entire Split & Token Payment system from scratch, defining flows, rules, and data handling logic.

🎨 UX/UI Design & Wireframes: Designed the payment entry popup, CRM views, and the dashboard.

🛠️ Cross-Team Collaboration: Worked with developers, designers, QA, support, sales, and ops teams to gather inputs and iterate post-launch.

🔁 Release & QA Management: Launched the feature within tight 4-week sprints, ensuring zero post-release escalations through rigorous QA.

📈 Feedback Loop Integration: Continuously improved the feature through feedback loops with Sales, Support, and Ops.

🔧 Execution: Payment Tracking Workflow

🎓1. Conversion Stage Trigger

When a lead is moved to the “Lead Won” stage:

  1. A popup is triggered titled “Lead Won: Payment Details”
  2. The Sales POC is prompted to enter the following details:
    1. Degree Chosen
    2. Pack Sold
    3. Total Amount Closed
    4. Indicate payment plan :
      • Is it a Token Payment? (Yes/No)
      • Is it a Split Payment? (Yes/No)

🧾2. Payment Entry

  1. Depending on the inputs:
    1. Token Payment: A one-time payment with a 15-day due date before the final amount.
    2. Split Payment: Allows multiple entries with staggered due dates (usually a month apart).
  2. Each payment entry also includes a status, chosen from:
    1. Paid
    2. Pending
    3. Not Responding
    4. Plan Deferred
    5. Lost
    6. Refunded

📊 3. Separate Views for Payments

  1. To streamline tracking and accountability:
    1. Token Payments View:
      • No duplicate leads allowed
      • Tracked per POC and across the organization
      • Overdue payments highlighted in red
    2. Split Payments View:
      • Allows duplicate entries per lead (based on due dates)
      • Sorted by next due payment
      • Overdue payments also highlighted in red
  2. Both views offer a tabular layout showing:
    1. Client Details
    2. Payment Status
    3. POCs: Sales & Operations
    4. Due Dates
    5. Notes Section

📈 4. Analytics Integration

We added a backend analytics layer to:

  1. Track number of clients at each payment stage
  2. Highlight overdue payments
  3. Filter payments by date range
  4. Provide sales and ops team-level breakdowns

✅ Results & Impact

30% drop in overdue payments

Achieved within the first month through automated alerts and clear ownership assignment.

40% reduction in manual follow-ups

Structured views and defined responsibilities eliminated the need for constant manual check-ins.

35% boost in overall team efficiency

Improved visibility, filters, and shared notes streamlined workflows across teams.

  • Eliminated dependency on Google Sheets and external tools like Streak, streamlining all payment tracking within the CRM.

  • Improved client experience, with timely communication, reduced delays, and smoother handoffs between Sales and Support.

  • Enabled data-driven decisions with added filters, payment dashboards, and overdue insights directly inside the CRM.

💬 Feedback from Sales & Support Teams

“We don’t miss monthly & token payments anymore – everything’s tracked and flagged in one place.”

“Follow-ups are way smoother now – filters, overdue alerts, and clear ownership keep us on track.”

“It’s finally easy to see what’s paid, what’s pending, and who’s on it – no more digging through Sheets.”

📌 Key Takeaways

  • Small gaps, big impact: Fixing overlooked workflows like split/token payments led to major gains in efficiency and revenue.
  • Built for the team = instant adoption: Intuitive, role-specific design ensured the feature fit right into daily workflows.
  • Automation > manual work: Replacing spreadsheets with real-time tracking and alerts drastically reduced follow-up errors.
  • Custom tools scale better: In-house CRM features gave us the flexibility to adapt with evolving sales models.