CRM or spreadsheet for a solo consultant?
Start with one question: can you reliably tell who needs a response, what you promised and when you should act?
A CRM is useful when it makes that answer easier to maintain. It is not a prerequisite for running a consulting business. A well-kept spreadsheet can be a reasonable starting point if one person owns the process and the volume is manageable.
Free follow-up tracker
Give each enquiry an owner, a next action and a due date. This Excel workbook has 100 prepared rows, a stage dropdown and status formulas that flag overdue actions and missing fields.
Download the free Excel tracker (.xlsx)No email or account required. The file contains six clearly labelled fictional examples. Replace or clear them before adding your own leads.
- Open the file in Excel and set the yellow Review date cell to the date you are reviewing. Update it each day.
- Edit the yellow cells in columns A–F. Keep the formulas in column G. A lead ID is required for a row to show a status.
- Filter Status for Overdue, Due today or a missing-field warning. Correct missing fields first; a row displays one status at a time.
- After following up, record the next action and date, or mark the stage Won or Lost to close the row.
In the included example, the review date is 28 September 2026: one action is overdue, one is due today and two rows need missing fields completed. These are sample records, not customer results.
The workbook contains no macros or external data connections. It does not send reminders or emails. Formula checks covered date changes, missing fields and the last prepared row; opening and editing in desktop Excel has not yet been verified. Other spreadsheet apps may handle formatting differently.
First, define a workable spreadsheet
Give every enquiry one row with these fields: contact identifier, organisation, source, current stage, next action, next-action date and owner. Keep sensitive notes to the minimum you actually need and restrict access appropriately.
Use a short list of stages: new enquiry, discovery booked, proposal sent, won and closed. The most important column is the next action. A record without an action or an explicit closed status is easy to forget.
Look for workflow failures
| If this is happening | What to investigate |
|---|---|
| One person updates every record and nothing is missed | Improve the existing sheet before adding a subscription. |
| Two people contact the same prospect | Shared ownership, activity history and permissions. |
| Follow-ups are regularly late | Reminders and a daily task view. |
| Reporting means rebuilding the same table each week | Pipeline reporting and export quality. |
| Client context is scattered across inboxes | Email integration, access controls and data retention. |
Run a small trial before migrating
- Create ten fictional contacts and three representative opportunities. Do not upload a real client database just to explore a product.
- Import the records and check how duplicates, dates and required fields behave.
- Assign a follow-up, move a deal through its stages and find its activity history.
- Export the records. Check whether the information you would need to leave the product is included.
- Confirm that the features you used belong to the plan you would actually buy.
Write down the time spent and any awkward steps. A trial that works only with premium features does not validate the cheaper plan.
Decide using a real month of work
Estimate the monthly subscription, setup effort and time saved. If the subscription is $30 and setup takes four hours, the first month costs more than $30. Use your own value for an hour of work; do not treat every minute saved as cash earned.
Stay with a spreadsheet if your workflow is reliable and the trial adds more maintenance than value. Consider a CRM when ownership, reminders or reporting solve a problem you can describe and measure.
Choose the next step for your workflow
- Your spreadsheet is reliable: keep using the free tracker above. A new subscription is not the goal.
- You need a simple enquiry pipeline alongside pages and email: see our limited hands-on test of the Systeme.io free contact board. We added one fictional enquiry, moved it from New inquiry to Contacted and checked that the change survived a reload. That does not establish team permissions, reminders, reporting or a complete CRM migration. The review contains a disclosed affiliate link.
- You need several people to manage sales together: compare Pipedrive and HubSpot team costs, then test the ownership, history and permissions you need before paying.
Before choosing a paid plan, include setup, seats and extras in your budget. Pay only when a tested feature solves a specific problem in your workflow.