Why

At 10–50 inquiries/month as a solo MSP, you're doing maybe one or two real conversations a day. The problem isn't pipeline visibility; it's that a WhatsApp ping, a LinkedIn DM, a web form, and a referral phone call all live in four different apps and you're the only context-holder. A CRM won't fix that — it'll just become a fifth tab. What fixes it is forcing every channel into one row-per-inquiry log, and a renewal date for every M365 client (because that's where your recurring money actually is).

What you actually need

1. Google Sheets (free) — one tab "Inquiries 2026" with columns: Date / Name / Company / Channel / Seats / Next Action / Follow-up Date / Status. Second tab "M365 Renewals" with client / seat count / renewal date / monthly £.
2. HubSpot Free CRM (free) — only if you want contact + email tracking without paying. Skip the upsells. Use it as a contact database, not a pipeline tool, until you're past 50/month.
3. A habit — the 8am channel sweep — every weekday before client work, open WhatsApp, Outlook, LinkedIn, and your web form inbox in that order. Anything new gets a row in the sheet. Anything older than 48h without a reply gets actioned now.

Do this today

Open Google Sheets, create "Inquiries 2026" with the eight columns above, then paste in every inquiry from the last 14 days across WhatsApp, email, LinkedIn, phone, web form, and referrals — one row each. Bookmark it as the first tab in your browser. By tomorrow morning you'll see, on one screen, which channel actually feeds your MSP and which ones you've been ignoring.

What to ignore

Skip HubSpot Sales Hub Starter (£15/seat/mo), Pipedrive (£14/seat/mo), and anything Microsoft is bundling as "Dynamics 365 Sales" through your partner portal — all three are built for multi-rep teams with month-long sales cycles, not a solo MSP closing M365 reseller deals. Anyone pitching you ConnectWise or HaloPSM at this stage is selling you the toolkit of a 10-engineer MSP.

What doing nothing costs you

A conservative 15% slippage on 30 inquiries/month = ~4-5 lost leads. At even a 10-seat M365 Business Standard deal (~£1,500/year recurring per client), that's roughly £75,000/year of recurring revenue you're leaking — and MSP revenue compounds, so next year it's worse.

When to revisit this

When you hire your first engineer or sales help, or when your renewals sheet passes 30 clients and you start forgetting auto-renew dates.