Why

At 200–500 inquiries/month across 2–3 estimators, you're well past spreadsheet territory — that's 10–25 bids per estimator per week, each with a proposal sent, a follow-up cadence, and a win/loss outcome. The CC'd bid email is gold: every proposal already lands in one place, which means the data-entry problem is solvable with email parsing, not manual logging. The real risk at your volume isn't losing inquiries — it's losing the follow-up two weeks after the proposal goes out, when the client is comparing quotes.

What you actually need

1. Pipedrive Essential (~$15/user/mo) — one pipeline: New RFP → Estimating → Proposal Sent → Follow-up → Won/Lost. Built for outbound proposal workflows, has native email sync so every reply threads onto the deal automatically.
2. Pipedrive's "Smart BCC" / email forwarding address — instead of CC'ing the bid email, CC the Pipedrive dropbox address. Every proposal sent auto-creates or updates a deal. That's your "reduce data entry" win.
3. A habit — the Friday follow-up sweep — every Friday, each estimator filters Pipedrive by "Proposal Sent, no activity in 7 days" and sends a chase. This is where the money is at your volume.

Do this today

Sign up for Pipedrive at pipedrive.com (14-day trial, no card), then in Settings → Personal → Email sync, grab your unique Smart BCC address and add it as a permanent CC rule in each estimator's email client in place of the shared bid inbox. Send one test proposal CC'ing that address — within 60 seconds you'll see a deal auto-created with the client, subject, and full email thread attached, and you'll know whether to roll it out to the other estimators tomorrow.

What to ignore

Skip HubSpot Sales Hub Professional ($100/seat/mo) and Salesforce Sales Cloud — both are wildly over-spec'd for a 3-estimator shop and their "AI proposal" upsells solve a problem you don't have. Ignore anyone pitching you ZoomInfo, Apollo, or Outreach; you're inbound RFP-driven, not cold outbound. Don't bother with construction-specific CRMs like BuildingConnected at this stage — overkill until you're 10+ estimators.

What doing nothing costs you

A conservative 10% slippage on 350 bids/month (midpoint) from missed follow-ups = ~35 lost bids/month. Utility contracting tickets vary wildly, but at even a $15,000 average bid value and a 20% close rate, that's roughly $1.25M/year of pipeline going to whoever followed up first.

When to revisit this

When you hire your fourth estimator or start needing win-rate reporting by bid type — then look at Pipedrive Advanced for required fields and reporting.