Why

A 4–10 person BD team with 10–50 inbound inquiries/month from referrals and a web form is past spreadsheet stage — too many hands for a shared sheet, but nowhere near the volume that justifies enterprise tooling. Your "lack of visibility" and "alignment" problems aren't software problems; they're a missing single pipeline that every BD person looks at. Your "outbound automation" need is really templated follow-ups on warm referrals, not cold sequence-at-scale.

What you actually need

1. Pipedrive (≈$14–15/user/month entry tier — a 5-person team on Pipedrive Essential runs about $720/year, verify current US price) — one shared visual pipeline so every BD rep sees the same deal stages, owner, and next step. Built-in email templates handle the "automate outbound" piece without buying a separate sequencer.
2. HubSpot Free CRM (free) — the cheaper alternative IF budget is tight, but read the trap first: in 2026 free accounts are capped at 1,000 contacts, 2 users, 1 deal pipeline, 10 custom properties, and 2,000 marketing emails per month. With 4–10 BD people who need sequences, you'll hit the wall fast and end up on Sales Hub Starter at $20/seat/mo.
3. A 15-minute Monday pipeline review (habit) — BD lead walks every deal in the "negotiation" and "proposal" stages live with the team. No tool replaces this.

Do this today

Pipe your web form straight into the CRM so every inquiry auto-creates a deal with an assigned owner and a 24-hour follow-up task. In Pipedrive: Settings → Tools and apps → Webforms → embed on your site → map "form submitted" to deal creation in your "New Inquiry" stage. Stop logging inquiries in email threads — that's the source of the "alignment" pain.

What to ignore

Salesforce Sales Cloud — built for orgs with dedicated admins; massively over-built for a 4–10 person agency. HubSpot Marketing Hub Professional at $890/mo (3 seats included) — you don't have the contact volume to need it. Outreach, Salesloft, or Apollo — these are for teams that need sequences or are scaling past 10 seats doing real cold outbound, which you aren't.

What doing nothing costs you

Referrals slip because two BD reps assume the other is following up, and warm web-form leads go cold past 48 hours. The cost shows up as a fuzzy quarter-end attribution argument, not a line item.

Where this leaves you

You'll have one pipeline every BD person opens at 9am, automated reminders so no warm lead sits past a day, and a Monday review that surfaces stuck deals. You don't need a "single source of truth platform" — you need one tab everyone agrees to keep updated.

When to revisit this

When monthly inquiries cross ~100 or you hire a dedicated SDR doing cold outbound — then sequences and reporting earn their cost.