Why

At 10–50 inquiries/month as a solo operator, no CRM will earn back the time you spend configuring it. But you have a quirk most solo consultants don't: every lead has a fork — work it yourself or hand it off for a commission. Five channels (Email, WhatsApp, Web form, Referrals, LinkedIn) feeding into a two-path decision is exactly the situation where commissions quietly evaporate because nobody's tracking what got referred to whom, when, and for how much.

What you actually need

1. Airtable free tier — one base, one table called "Leads 2026". Columns: Date, Name, Channel (single-select: Email/WhatsApp/Web form/Referral/LinkedIn), Decision (Me/Referred), Partner, Referred Date, Commission Expected, Commission Status, Next Action Date. The Decision field is the whole point.
2. A web form that writes to it — point your existing web form at the same Airtable base (native form, or Tally free → Airtable) so inbound never gets retyped.
3. A habit — the Friday referral sweep — every Friday, filter the table to Decision = Referred AND Commission Status ≠ Paid. Message each partner for a status update. Ten minutes, pays for itself the first time you catch a closed deal nobody told you about.

Do this today

Go to airtable.com, create a free workspace, add a base called "Consulting Pipeline" with the nine columns above. Then open the last 30 days of your Email, WhatsApp, and LinkedIn inboxes and paste in every inquiry — mark each as Me or Referred, and for the Referred ones fill in the partner's name and a guess at commission. By tonight you'll see how many open referrals you've never chased.

What to ignore

Skip HubSpot Free, Pipedrive, and Zoho Bigin — they're pipeline tools for people closing their own deals through stages, not for tracking a referral ledger. Anyone pitching you Folk, Attio, or a "personal CRM" at $20+/mo for 10–50 inquiries is selling you a hobby, not a fix. You especially don't need LinkedIn Sales Navigator at this volume.

What doing nothing costs you

On 10–50 inquiries/month with maybe a third referred out, even two forgotten commission follow-ups a quarter on mid-four-figure deals is real money you've already earned and aren't collecting. The lost-lead risk is smaller than the lost-commission risk.

When to revisit this

When you bring on a second person, or when your referral partners exceed five — at that point you'll want a real pipeline with partner-level views.