What's really going on

Referrals are warm. They close on trust and timing, not on stage automation. With fewer than ten a month, every inquiry should already have a name, a face, and a story in your head. What you're probably losing isn't leads — it's follow-ups two weeks later, the "let me circle back in Q3" notes, and the referrer you forgot to thank. A CRM won't fix that. A single page you actually open every Monday will.

What to do instead

1. Google Sheets (free) — one tab: name, who referred them, first contact, next touch date, status. That's it. Sort by next touch date.
2. Airtable (free tier) — only if you want a kanban view and a simple intake form you can send referrers. Otherwise skip it.
3. The habit — every Monday, 15 minutes, open the sheet and act on every row whose "next touch" date has passed. Today: open Sheets, make the five columns, paste in your last ten inquiries from your inbox. Done before lunch.

What you're being oversold

Anyone pitching you Pipedrive, HubSpot, or Salesforce at this volume is selling seats, not solving your problem. At under ten warm inquiries a month, a $15-20/user CRM is overhead you'll resent and abandon in three months — then you'll think CRMs "don't work for you," when really this one never fit. Doing nothing costs you the referral you forget to follow up on; with consulting deal sizes, one forgotten thread a quarter is the most expensive line item you have.

When to revisit this

When you're juggling more than thirty active conversations, or you bring on a second person who needs to see what you're working.

The part worth getting right

The real fork is what you're actually selling. If your work is a few big retainers a year, the sheet is forever — your edge is depth of memory per client, not volume. But if you're moving toward productized sprints or a group offer with dozens of smaller buyers, the sheet breaks fast and you'll want a light CRM and an intake form within months, not years. Pick the wrong path now and you either overbuild for work you don't have, or you underbuild and lose a launch in your inbox.