The six questions
| Question | Why it matters | A worrying answer |
|---|---|---|
| What came in since yesterday, and has anyone replied? | New enquiries and WhatsApp messages are among the most perishable things you own. | Messages unanswered since last night, or new leads with no owner. |
| What is overdue, and with whom? | A follow-up past its date is a lead going cold in plain sight. | One name owns most of the list. |
| Which cases have not moved? | A case sitting in one stage is usually waiting for someone, and often it is us. | Several cases stuck at the same stage. |
| What is waiting on a bank? | Submissions that are out, with the date they were sent, so you know when to ask. | A submission with no follow-up date. |
| What money is due or late? | A fee that is earned but not collected is money you are lending the customer. | Overdue fees with no reminder sent. |
| Where are the calls going? | Calls made and their outcomes, to see who needs help, not to rank people. | Many calls but few outcomes logged. |
Boss, 8.30 am
An example morning screen
New since yesterday
14
3 with no reply
Overdue follow-ups
9
- Agent A4
- Agent B3
- Agent C2
Not moved for 5 days or more
6
4 in Docs collection
2 in Submitted to bank
Waiting on a bank
11
2 with no follow-up date
Late fees
5
RM 7,500 overdue in total
3 more fall due this week
Calls yesterday
86
11 Interested, 7 Callback
21 Not interested, 41 No answer
6 Wrong number
Each question has one box, and every box is a list you can act on, not a chart to admire. A chart tells you how things are. A list tells you what to do first.
What to act on today and what to leave for the week
Mixing the two is how a ten-minute check turns into an hour. Daily is for things that go off quickly: unanswered messages, overdue follow-ups, stalled cases and late fees. Weekly and monthly are for patterns that only show over time.
| Daily, about ten minutes | Weekly, about thirty minutes | Monthly |
|---|---|---|
| New and unanswered | Conversion by lead source | Commission statements and payout |
| Overdue follow-ups, by owner | Where cases drop out between stages | Fees collected against fees owed |
| Stalled cases and bank submissions | Calls and outcomes for each agent | Roles and access: who should still have it |
| Late fees | Parked leads that are due for review | A review of the rules themselves |
Resist adding a seventh daily question. The point of a short list is that you really read it.
How to run the ten minutes
Start with what is overdue
Open the overdue follow-ups, oldest first, and note the owners. If one name appears on most of them, that agent may be overloaded or away, not careless.
Check new and unanswered
Look for enquiries and messages with no reply, and for new leads with no owner. Fix ownership first. A lead with no owner cannot be late, which is exactly the problem.
Scan stalled cases and the banks
Look at cases that have not moved for the number of days you set, and at bank submissions with no follow-up date.
Look at the money
Open the fees that are overdue and the fees due this week. Send the reminders yourself or ask the owner to.
Message the owners, not the whole team
One line each: the item, and what is the new date. Keep the team chat for good news.
Anything that needs more than a line goes into a short conversation after the morning check, not into the check itself.
What to stop doing
- The daily report by WhatsApp. A report that agents write can easily become a report written to look good, and it costs each of them ten minutes. If the record is kept as they work, you do not need it.
- Asking how it is going. You get the agent's memory. A list of overdue items gives you the facts.
- Ranking by calls made. A high call count with no outcomes means dialling, not selling. Look at the outcomes of those calls instead.
- Reading every case. Your job is the exceptions. If you read every case you are doing the team leader's job and the agent's job as well.
The view depends on the records
Every box on that screen is only as good as what agents recorded. If an agent finishes a call and does not log it, the morning view says the lead is untouched. So the habit that matters most is not the boss's check but the agent's last tap after each call. Make logging the easy path and the morning view largely looks after itself.
Decide who sees what, too. A team leader needs their team's cases. An agent needs their own. A sales admin chasing documents needs to see every case but not the commission. Show each person what their job needs and no more. The boss can see everything, which is a good reason to keep the boss's own screen short.
Check the check once a month
A tidy screen can still be wrong. Once a month, pick five leads at random and compare the record with what really happened: the call log, the WhatsApp chat, the documents received. If the record says contacted and the chat shows silence, you have learned something that no dashboard would have told you.
Do it with the team leader, and do it as a check on the system, not on the agent. If the same gap turns up more than once, change the process: remove a field, add a button, shorten a step. Errors in the record are often a design problem before they are a discipline problem.
Getting this view in practice
From a spreadsheet you build it by hand, and the hand-building is exactly what eats the morning.
In the Loan Advisory CRM the pipeline shows every case by stage with the count and the value in each, and it flags cases that have not moved for several days. The fee screen separates fees not yet due, overdue and paid, and a Remind button opens a WhatsApp message with the reminder already written. The assistant lets the boss ask in plain English, for example which follow-ups are overdue, who the top agents are this month, or the pipeline by stage, and it answers with a chart read from your own database.
Questions people ask next
- How long should the morning check take?
- About ten minutes once the records are good. In the first few weeks it will take longer, because you are finding the gaps. That is the check doing its job.
- What if agents do not update the system?
- Find out why before you push. Often the update takes too long, or nobody seems to read what is entered. Cut the fields down to what the morning view needs, make logging a call a single tap or a single line, and use the data in front of the team so that people see it is read.
- Should agents see the same screen as the boss?
- No. Each person should see what their job needs. Agents see their own leads, callbacks and commission. Team leaders see their team. The boss sees everything.
- Which numbers belong in a weekly review instead?
- Conversion by lead source, where cases drop out between stages, outcomes for each agent, and parked leads that are due for review. They change slowly, so looking daily adds noise.
This guide is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Rules and bank policies change, so check the current position with the bank, the regulator or a professional before you act.