Why

Under 10 inquiries/month across web form, referrals, and LinkedIn is roughly two conversations a week. As "just me", you can hold that in your head — what you can't hold is which referral you owe a reply to, or which LinkedIn thread went cold three weeks ago. That's a memory problem, not a pipeline problem, and corporate cloud consulting deals are slow enough (months, not days) that a sheet with a "next touch" date beats any CRM you'd half-configure.

What you actually need

1. Google Sheets (free) — one tab "Pipeline 2026" with columns: Date In, Name, Company, Source (Web/Referral/LinkedIn), What They Want, Next Touch Date, Status. One row per inquiry, no exceptions.
2. Calendly or Cal.com (free tier) — paste your booking link into the web form auto-reply and your LinkedIn DMs. Half your "follow-up" problem disappears when prospects self-book a 20-minute intro.
3. A habit — the Friday 30-minute walk-the-list — every Friday, sort the sheet by Next Touch Date, send every overdue follow-up before you close the laptop. At <10/mo this is never more than 5 messages.

Do this today

Open Google Sheets, create a sheet named "Pipeline 2026" with the seven columns above, then go to your web form, your LinkedIn inbox, and your email and paste in every inquiry from the last 60 days — one row each, fill "Next Touch Date" for anyone you haven't replied to. By tonight you'll see exactly which referrals and LinkedIn threads you've ghosted.

What to ignore

Skip HubSpot Free, Pipedrive ($14/user/mo), and Zoho Bigin — all three will try to upsell you to Sales Hub Starter or Pipedrive Advanced within 90 days, and at <10 inquiries/month you'll abandon the tool before the upsell hits. Ignore anyone pitching Apollo, ZoomInfo, or Salesloft for "outbound at scale" — you're a referral-and-LinkedIn business, not an SDR factory.

What doing nothing costs you

At <10 inquiries/month, even one dropped referral a quarter in corporate cloud consulting is a five- or six-figure engagement you'll never see — the cost isn't volume, it's that the deals you do get are large and slow, so each forgotten follow-up is disproportionately expensive.

When to revisit this

When you cross 25 inquiries/month or bring on a second consultant who needs to see the same pipeline.