Why

Fewer than 10 inquiries/month means roughly two a week, all warm referrals arriving by phone. You don't have a lead-tracking problem; you have a "remember who referred whom and follow up the referrer" problem. A pipeline tool for a solo Tübingen freelancer with this volume will get opened twice and abandoned by month two.

What you actually need

1. Google Sheets or Apple Numbers (free) — one sheet, "Anfragen 2026", columns: Datum / Name / Referrer / Projekt / Angebot € / Status / Nächster Schritt. One row per call, fill it during or right after the call.
2. Apple Notes or Google Contacts (free) — add every referrer as a contact with a note: who they sent, when, outcome. So you remember to thank them and send work back.
3. A habit — the Freitag follow-up — every Friday 30 minutes, open the sheet, ping anyone in "Angebot raus" who hasn't replied in a week, and send one thank-you to whoever referred you that week.

Do this today

Open Google Sheets, create a file called "Anfragen 2026" with the seven columns above, and bookmark it in your browser toolbar. Then fill in every inquiry from the last 60 days from memory and phone logs — should take 20 minutes and you'll immediately see which two or three proposals you forgot to chase.

What to ignore

Skip HubSpot Free, Pipedrive (€14/user/mo), and especially anything monday CRM or Zoho is pitching — they're all built for teams managing dozens of cold leads through multi-stage funnels. You have one stage: "Referral kam rein → Angebot → Auftrag". A sheet does that better than any €15/Monat tool, and you won't resent opening it.

What doing nothing costs you

The compounding loss isn't dropped leads at this volume — it's forgetting which Steuerberater or Agentur sent you the last good client, so you never send work back, and the referral tap quietly dries up over 18 months.

When to revisit this

When you hire a second designer or cross 20 inquiries/month from non-referral channels.