What's really going on

You're a one-person broker fielding leads across WhatsApp, Email, Instagram, phone, web form, LinkedIn, and referrals. That's seven inboxes for fewer than 10 conversations a month. Nothing is falling through because your pipeline is broken — it's falling through because you don't have one place to look. Insurance also has a slow tail: term policies close over weeks, health renewals come back a year later. Without one list you trust, you'll forget to follow up on the deal that was 80% there.

What to do instead

1. Google Sheets or Airtable (free) — one row per inquiry: name, channel, product, next-follow-up date, status. That's your CRM for the next year.
2. WhatsApp Business app (free) — labels for "New", "Quoted", "Follow-up", "Closed". Save quick replies for the three questions every buyer asks.
3. Habit: 15 minutes every morning — open the sheet, sort by next-follow-up date, message anyone due today. That's it.

First action, next 30 minutes: open a new Google Sheet. Add columns Name, Phone, Channel, Product (Term/Health), Quoted Amount, Next Follow-Up, Notes. Copy in every live lead you can remember from the last month. Pin the tab.

What you're being oversold

Someone will pitch you AiSensy or Wati for WhatsApp automation, and Freshsales because it's Indian and looks affordable. At 10 leads a month, a ₹2,000-5,000/month WhatsApp API tool is money lit on fire — the free WhatsApp Business app does everything you need. A paid CRM at this volume adds admin work, not sales. What doing nothing costs you is not revenue you can count today — it's the one health renewal or term follow-up you'll forget six months from now because it lived in a DM you scrolled past.

When to revisit this

When you're consistently getting 30+ inquiries a month, or you bring on a second person who also needs to see the pipeline.

The part worth getting right

The one call is whether the seven channels are actually seven, or really just two that matter. If 80% of your closes come from WhatsApp and referrals, kill your presence on the rest and stop watching those inboxes — a sheet plus WhatsApp labels is the whole system. If leads are genuinely spread across Instagram DMs, LinkedIn, and web form too, you need a lightweight way to funnel them all into WhatsApp or email before they touch your sheet, or you'll keep missing them. Same business, different fix. Get this wrong and in six months you're paying for software to solve a problem that was really about closing tabs.