Avery Brooks

Mapping how work really happens shouldn’t take months. Exploring AI, process intelligence, and digital transformation.

[Avery Brooks @Clearwork1]

Discovery is the part of consulting that doesn't scale.

Three weeks of interviews. Scattered notes.

Requirements you're not sure are complete. And when the client changes scope — you start over.

We built ClearWork to fix that.

AI-guided interviews. Auto-generated deliverables. Scope changes, zero conflicts.

This is what transformation intelligence looks like.

Check out ClearWork

[Avery Brooks @Clearwork1]

Consulting discovery shouldn’t live across scattered notes, forms, transcripts, and workshop boards.

The real value comes when client input becomes source-backed deliverables: process maps, requirements, SOPs, risks, user stories, and handoff docs.

[Avery Brooks @Clearwork1]

70% of lost B2B deals are lost to follow-up, not product or price.

And yet "sales follow up software" on Google returns nothing but enterprise CRMs built for 50-person sales teams.

Spent some time writing the guide that's actually missing — 7 tools compared (HubSpot, Pipedrive, Salesflare, Close, monday, Keap, and one built specifically for founders who don't want a CRM), with honest takes on where each one wins.

[Avery Brooks @Clearwork1]

Every founder I know has quit at least one CRM.

Usually the reason isn't that the CRM was bad. It's that the actual problem wasn't "I need a database of my contacts." It was "I keep forgetting what I promised on the call last Tuesday."

Different problem. Different tool.

Put together a comparison of 7 sales follow up tools for founder-led sales, ordered from lightest to heaviest — and honest about which one wins in which situation.

[Avery Brooks @Clearwork1]

Every founder I know has quit at least one CRM.

Usually the reason isn't that the CRM was bad. It's that the actual problem wasn't "I need a database of my contacts."

It was "I keep forgetting what I promised on the call last Tuesday."

Different problem. Different tool.

Put together a comparison of 7 sales follow up tools for founder-led sales, ordered from lightest to heaviest — and honest about which one wins in which situation.

[Avery Brooks @Clearwork1]

We're live on Product Hunt today 🚀

Nudge — for founders who win the call but lose the deal in the silence after it.

Drop in your call notes → get a dated follow-up list for every customer → it even drafts the email.

Not a CRM. I've quit three of those.

Just the part that actually closes deals.

If this is a problem you've felt too, a comment or upvote today means the world 🙏Link below 👇

[Avery Brooks @Clearwork1]

Most business owners don't lose deals because their product is worse.

They lose them because they forgot to follow up.

Here's the uncomfortable math: → 80% of deals need 5+ follow-ups to close → 48% of people never follow up even once after the first call → 70% of lost sales are lost to no follow-up at all

The deal was never the problem. The silence after the call was.

I learned this the hard way running my own sales. Great conversation, good notes, "I'll circle back Thursday"… and three weeks later: "we went with someone else."

It wasn't a discipline problem. It was a system problem. My follow-ups lived in my head and my notes sat in a doc doing nothing.

What finally fixed it wasn't trying harder — it was making the follow-up automatic. Notes in, dated action list out, the next step always in front of me instead of in my memory.

If you're winning conversations but losing deals, don't buy a bigger CRM. Build (or find) the smallest system that makes the next step impossible to forget.

That one change closes more deals than any pitch improvement ever did.

https://t.co/jFh8syA0ul

[Avery Brooks @Clearwork1]

3 months ago I lost a deal because I forgot to follow up.

Not the first time. As a solo founder I kept winning the call and losing the deal in the silence after it.

So I started building the fix instead of buying another CRM I'd quit in a week.

Here's where Nudge is at

Notes go in (Granola, Meet, Gmail) → it builds a page per customer → pulls out every commitment with a date → drafts the follow-up email & creates a centralized to-do list across all customers.

This week I shipped the part I'm proudest of: it reconciles new notes against old ones. Close a deal item, it disappears. Change a commitment, it updates. No manual cleanup.

Still figuring out: how much the AI should act vs just suggest. Right now it proposes, I confirm. Leaning toward keeping it that way.

What would you want it to do automatically — if anything?

Check out what we've built so far: https://t.co/jFh8syA0ul

[Avery Brooks @Clearwork1]

I almost killed my startup with bad follow-up.

Not a bad product. Not a bad market. I was just losing deals I'd already won — in the silence after the call.

The pattern was always the same. I'd have a great conversation with a prospect. Take solid notes. Tell myself I'd follow up Thursday. Then the week would swallow me — building, support, the next call — and Thursday became next week became a "we went with someone else" email.

The brutal part is it wasn't that I didn't care. I cared a lot. There just wasn't anything doing the follow-up thinking for me. The notes sat in a doc. The next steps lived in my head. And running sales solo, my head was full.

So I did the thing every founder reaches for: I got a CRM. Then I quit it. Then I tried another one. Quit that too. They all wanted me to maintain a system — pipelines, stages, fields — on top of an already overloaded day, for a one-person sales motion that didn't need any of it. I didn't need to forecast a quarter. I needed to remember to email Sarah at Acme by Friday and know what I'd promised her.

Eventually I stopped looking for the right tool and just built the one I actually needed. Something dead simple: drop in my call notes or connect to existing note takers, and it turns them into a consolidated action list per customer — every commitment pulled out, dated, and ready to act on. No pipeline. No admin. Just "here's who you owe and by when."

It worked. The deals stopped slipping. And the weird realization was that the problem was never discipline — it was that I'd been asking myself to be the system instead of having one.

Sharing this because I doubt I'm the only founder who's great in the room and terrible in the silence afterward. If that's you, you're not lazy. You just never had something doing the follow-up thinking for you.

[Avery Brooks @Clearwork1]

I'm a founder running sales for my startup and I lost 3 deals this year not because my product was worse.

But because I forgot to follow up.

Great call → good notes → "I'll email Thursday" → silence → "we went with someone else."

So I built the thing that does the follow-up thinking for me.

Drop in the call notes or automatically pull from Granola, Fireflies or Gemini Note Taker. Walk out with a dated task list per customer - centralized into a unified to-do list. It even drafts and the follow-up email.

Not a CRM. I've quit three of those. Just the part that actually closes deals.

It's called Nudge. Free to try 👇
https://t.co/mRICka3CxM

[Avery Brooks @Clearwork1]

Choosing a process mapping tool in 2026?

Quick shortcut:

→ Workshop alignment? Miro
→ Collaborative diagramming? Lucidchart
→ BPMN for execution? Camunda
→ Enterprise repository? Signavio or ARIS
→ Maps that stay true to reality? Different category entirely - Try ClearWork

No single tool wins. Match the tool to the outcome.

Full buyers guide: https://t.co/HzZPSvRLB2

[Avery Brooks @Clearwork1]

Most consulting firms lose 10-20% of margin before a single contract is signed.

Not on delivery.

Not on overhead.

On pre-sales discovery they never bill for.

If a prospect won't pay for discovery, that's not a problem.

That's a signal.

https://t.co/k6y45EiYzO

[Avery Brooks @Clearwork1]

Adding "AI strategy" to your service catalog isn't the same as transforming how your firm delivers.

One is a commercial move. The other is rebuilding the connective tissue between discovery and execution.

Most firms are doing the first and calling it the second.

See how the leading firms are adopting AI to better deliver for their customers: https://t.co/Dk8h7nqXsi

[Avery Brooks @Clearwork1]

Most project delays don't happen in build. They happen in discovery—when requirements are scattered across notes, recordings, and someone's email.

What if your process documentation was generated from your discovery, not after it?

Less rework. More clarity. Faster delivery.

https://t.co/TqagcLU68u

#BusinessProcess #ProjectManagement #OperationalExcellence

[Avery Brooks @Clearwork1]

Hot take: Workshops aren't discovery—they're theater.

You gather 8 people, make 2 decisions, spend the rest of the time waiting for the one SME who actually knows the exception handling.

Real discovery is async, happens in voice/screen recordings, and captures the actual work.

What's the worst workshop experience you've had? (I'm betting someone wasn't there anyway.)

#ProcessManagement #Consulting #WorkflowAutomation

[Avery Brooks @Clearwork1]

Your team spent 4 weeks scheduling SME interviews.

You got 40% of the context you needed. Now you're rewriting requirements mid-build.

What if discovery actually moved at the speed of your project?

Cut discovery time in half. Keep the rigor. Skip the chaos.

https://t.co/q9f2G6JZ6F

#Consulting #ProcessDiscovery #ChangeManagement

[Avery Brooks @Clearwork1]

Hot take: Most project failures aren't discovered during build.

They're built in during discovery—when someone makes an assumption, skips a workflow, or misses a stakeholder's reality.

By the time it breaks in production, it's too late to fix.
How are you validating discovery insights? 👇

#ProjectManagement #Requirements #DigitalTransformation

[Avery Brooks @Clearwork1]

Problem: boutique firms can't compete on breadth. Solution: they compete on speed + depth.

Fast discovery. Precision insights. Execution that sticks.

That's the edge → https://t.co/XYpYwqO0fw

#SpecialistFirms #ClearWork