What's really going on

Five channels, one team, no shared view. A parent WhatsApps Priya at 9pm asking about a visa course; Priya replies, forgets, and no one else knows that lead exists. A walk-in gets a paper form that sits on someone's desk. At 500+ a month, even a 10% slip is 50 families you quoted and lost. The problem isn't that you lack a CRM — it's that WhatsApp and walk-ins never enter any system in the first place.

What to do instead

1. Wati — shared WhatsApp inbox (paid monthly, check current pricing in AUD) — one number, every consultant sees every chat, nothing hides on a personal phone.
2. HubSpot Free CRM (free, unlimited users) — one pipeline for email + web form + walk-in + phone, with stages like "inquiry → consult booked → enrolled". Each lead has an owner.
3. Habit: every walk-in gets typed into HubSpot before they leave the room — not later, not "when I get a sec".

First action, today: create one HubSpot web form, paste its link into your website's inquiry button, and forward your info@ inbox to HubSpot's conversations. One person, 30 minutes.

What you're being oversold

Someone has probably pitched Freshsales or Salesforce with "AI lead scoring" and per-user fees. At your stage that's wasted money and three weeks of setup — you don't have a scoring problem, you have a "where did that WhatsApp go" problem. Respond.io is overkill too unless Instagram and Facebook DMs are also live channels for you. Doing nothing means more families slip through the cracks every intake cycle — qualitatively, that's your reputation in a referral-driven business.

When to revisit this

When one consultant handles more than ~150 active leads at once, or when you add a second office — then you'll need paid Sales Hub seats and routing rules.

The part worth getting right

The real fork is whether WhatsApp is your dominant channel or just one of five. If 60%+ of inquiries come through WhatsApp, Wati is the backbone and HubSpot is the record-keeper behind it — get Wati live first. If WhatsApp is more like 20% and email + web form carry the weight, HubSpot goes first and Wati waits a quarter. Pick wrong and you'll either pay for Wati seats you barely use, or spend six months watching leads evaporate in personal chats while your shiny CRM sits half-empty.