Yes.
You need a simple CRM — but not for leads. For deals in flight.
What's really going on
Trello was fine when a deal was one card moving one way. Now each deal lives in four systems, and the "next action" is buried in whichever tab you closed last. Losing track isn't a memory problem. It's that no board tells you which deal is waiting on the client, which is waiting on the lender, and which has gone quiet for six days. That silence is where deals die.
What to do instead
- Pipedrive (~$14-15/user/mo, check current AUD pricing) — one pipeline with stages that match YOUR reality: Enquiry → Docs In → Submitted → Conditional → Formal → Settlement. Every deal has one "next action + due date". Nothing else.
- WhatsApp Business app (free) — labels for "Awaiting docs", "Sent to lender", "Post-settlement". Handles the six channel chaos on the WhatsApp side without a bot.
- Habit: 15 min every morning — open Pipedrive, sort by "activity overdue", act on the top three. That is the whole system.
First action today: in Pipedrive, build the six-stage pipeline above and drag your live deals in from Trello. One hour, one person, done.
What you're being oversold
Anyone pitching you HubSpot Sales Hub or a mortgage-specific CRM with lender integrations is selling to a broker doing 40 deals a month, not you. At under 10 enquiries a month you do not need sequences, forecasting, or another portal to log into. You need a chase list. Doing nothing costs you the deals that go silent between "submitted" and "conditional" — the ones where the client thinks you're on it and you think they are.
When to revisit this
When you hire a second broker or a processor — the moment "who's on this deal" becomes a real question.
The part worth getting right
The one call is whether your pipeline stages track the lender's workflow or your work. If you build it around lender stages (Submitted, Conditional, Formal), you'll always be waiting on someone else and the CRM becomes a status mirror. If you build it around YOUR next action (Chase client, Chase BDM, Prep submission), it becomes a to-do list that actually moves deals. Wrong choice and in three months you're back on Trello, because the CRM told you nothing you didn't already know.