What's really going on

Thirty referrals a week is ~120 a month. With a 10-min preview, fact-find, and close, you have at least three touchpoints per person before commission — plus a 6-month follow-up loop. No human tracks that cleanly on paper. The slip isn't your pitch; it's the referral that never got called, the fact-find that never got booked, the birthday that passed quiet.

What to do instead

1. Google Calendar + Tasks (free) — one recurring task per referral: "call within 24h". If it's not on the calendar, it doesn't exist.
2. A simple CRM with pipeline stages (check current pricing for the Singapore options you shortlist) — set your four stages as columns: Referral → Preview → Fact-find → Closed. Each card holds the client, the next date, and the commission. Add a 6-month and birthday reminder on close.
3. Habit: a 15-min end-of-day sweep — move cards, log commissions, check tomorrow's calls.

Today, open a sheet and list every referral from the last 7 days with name, source, stage, and next action. That sheet becomes your CRM's first import.

What you're being oversold

If anyone's pointing you at Salesforce, HubSpot Sales Hub, or Zoho One, walk away — those are built for teams with sales ops, not a solo advisor doing 120 referrals a month. You'll pay for seats and modules you'll never open. Doing nothing costs you the referrals that fall between preview and fact-find, and the renewal conversations a birthday call would have opened — the exact revenue your referral engine was built to produce.

When to revisit this

When you hire a second advisor or an assistant who needs to see your pipeline — that's when a shared CRM stops being a nice-to-have.

The part worth getting right

The one call: do you pick a CRM built around a pipeline (stages, drag cards left to right) or around a contact timeline (every client's history, notes, next touch)? If your pain is referrals dying between appointments, pipeline wins — you'll see the stuck ones at a glance. If your pain is the 6-month and birthday touches going cold, contact-first wins — the client record pings you, not the deal. Pick wrong and in six months you'll be migrating data and rebuilding stages. The answer depends on which leak hurts you more right now — new money or repeat money.