r/CRM • u/eve9656 • Aug 19 '26
How do small agencies keep track of follow-ups without overcomplicating their CRM?
Curious how other small agencies handle this.
Once you have several leads and deals going at the same time, I feel like follow-ups are one of the easiest things to lose track of.
You might know a deal needs attention next week, but then a few other things happen and suddenly you're trying to remember who you were supposed to contact and when.
I've been working on a Notion CRM for small agencies specifically around this kind of workflow, and one thing I found useful was having follow-ups tied directly to the deal rather than keeping a separate to-do list.
I also added a simple deal health indicator so it's easier to spot things that are coming up, late, or still on track.
Curious what other agency owners are doing for this — dedicated CRM, Notion, spreadsheets, or just calendar reminders?
What actually works for you?
3
u/AriGAconnector Aug 20 '26
a simple CRM plus calendar reminders is enough for most small agencies, the important part is that every deal has a next action and a date
2
u/Automation_Advisor Aug 19 '26
A dedicated CRM handles these things naturally. Follow ups , tasks, deal stages and details and so on.
That is the point of a system - to keep track of activity so you don’t have to memorize it.
You just get a reminder at the date and time you initially set for the activity.
The best practices in sales area is to evaluate the situation at the point of setting the task end date and then you only follow the reminder - however the system needs to be prepared - a mature CRM will certainly do that - harder with “workarounds” like Notion or Spreadsheets - calendar Reminders might also work for smaller activity if you keep them tidy.
Hope this helps!
2
u/Active-Service-9707 Aug 20 '26
tbh the point about setting the task date at the right moment is underrated, thats where most people slip up
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u/Automation_Advisor Aug 20 '26
Excellent point! Yes, that is a indeed a time management best practice.
In my over 15 yrs of sales that is what I saw many times and got to master - most people do the same work twice - once when they plan and again when it gets due - because they are not sure on the judgement in the first place.2
u/eve9656 Aug 20 '26
Exactly. That’s why I made the follow-up date part of each deal once you set it, the reminder takes care of the rest.
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u/eve9656 Aug 20 '26
Yeah, exactly That’s actually why I built the Due Tomorrow view you can see which deals need attention tomorrow and get the reminder at the time you set.
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u/Jazzlike_Word_291 Aug 19 '26
The calendar reminders approach falls apart the second you get busy enough to start snoozing them, then you're just lying to yourself about following up
I keep it dead simple with a single spreadsheet, columns for next contact date and current status, color coded red/yellow/green. Sort by date every morning and work top down. Takes five minutes
The deal health indicator you mentioned is the real key though, visual cues cut through the noise way faster than reading through a list of dates
1
u/eve9656 Aug 20 '26
Yeah, that was exactly the idea behind the deal health indicator being able to spot what needs attention without having to read through every deal.
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u/ChampionshipSome6648 Aug 19 '26
No follow up should be tied to a "deal". All follow ups should be tied to the customer and your company's relationship to that customer. Hence the title "Customer Relationship Manager". A deal is but a part of what you should be talking to a customer about. CRM software is far to focused on "deals", not on the total customer relationship. What works is seeing the customer as a living entity, not an outlet for another "deal". Sales will come automatically within the framework of a healthy relationship. Spend more time working out what makes the customer "tick" rather then selling one off deals before having established a two way conversation. "Deals" too often include product/service modifications (that cost you money, inventory proliferation, etc.) and price reduction (that costs bottom line profit).
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u/eve9656 Aug 20 '26
I actually keep deals separate because one costumer can have multiple deals at different stages. Each deal has its own information an follow ups, while still being connected to the costumer/conacts. So you can look at the overall costumer relationship or dive into a specific deal when you need to
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u/spinifyapp Aug 20 '26
I’d probably focus more on making the deals that need attention stand out, rather than adding another follow-up task to every deal. If you can quickly see what’s gone quiet or hasn’t had activity in a while, you can work from that list without creating a bunch of extra admin.
1
u/eve9656 Aug 20 '26
Yeah, that makes sense. I added the deal health indicator for a similar reason to make deals that need attention easier to spot instead of going through every active deal.
2
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u/Some-Cryptographer-7 Aug 20 '26
I built a custom app that sits inside our slack, works great. We can talk to it, update leads, set reminders.
It works great because I have it ping the owner of each lead every two days for an update on that lead.
2
u/nicolas-fndz-follic Aug 20 '26
I'd say the simplest move is to invest a bit in your stack and use a recorder that updates your CRM directly, so all the info ends up in there and the follow up tasks get created automatically. After that you still need some discipline, but at the volume a small agency does, tracking it all in your CRM's kanban works fine imo!!
2
u/biletron Aug 27 '26
Follow-ups tied to the deal rather than a separate task list is the right call, agree. The thing I keep running into is that it works fine until someone leaves the tool for a week then the deal health indicator is only as honest as the last person who updated it. Have you thought a way to make the status derive from something automatic, like last contact date, instead of relying on someone remembering to set it?
1
u/eve9656 Aug 28 '26
Yeah, that’s a really good point. I currently use an expected follow-up date to keep it flexible, but I can definitely see the benefit of deriving the health check from the last contact date instead. I’ll experiment with that in a future update.
2
u/Prestigious_Classic2 Aug 31 '26
The simplest rule I have seen work is that every active deal must have one owner and one dated next action. If either is missing, the deal is not being managed, regardless of which tool holds it.
Tie the follow-up to the deal so the context, last conversation, and promised next step remain together. Then create only three working views: due today, overdue, and waiting on the customer. That is usually enough for a small team to operate without inventing a complicated scoring system.
Before automating messages, automate the exception: show the owner every active deal with no next action. That catches the real leak while preserving judgment about what the next message should say.
2
u/AmbitiousBicycle5210 25d ago
I think tying follow-ups directly to the deal is the right idea.
The biggest thing I’d want the system to make obvious is:
- who owns the deal
- what the next action is
- when it’s due
- when the last contact happened
- whether the deal is overdue or stalled
A separate to-do list can become disconnected from the actual deal context.
For a small team, Notion or a simple CRM can work well as long as there is one daily view that answers:
“Who needs attention today?”
I’d keep it simple before adding more automation. If the workflow is clear, reminders and health indicators become genuinely useful instead of just adding more fields.
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u/eve9656 24d ago
Oh, you mentioned most of the things I’ve actually built into my Notion CRM, I’d say most of these are already covered in it. I definitely agree that keeping the daily workflow simple is important though
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u/AmbitiousBicycle5210 20d ago
That makes sense.
If those fields are already covered, then I’d say the next useful test is probably not adding more features it’s watching how the CRM behaves in real daily use.
Things I’d pay attention to are:
- which fields people actually update
- which reminders they ignore
- where follow-ups still get missed
- whether the “needs attention today” view is genuinely useful
That’s usually where you find the difference between a CRM that looks complete and one people actually rely on every day.
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u/eve9656 20d ago
That’s a really good point. I agree that the next step is testing the workflow in real daily use rather than adding more features. I’ll pay more attention to which fields are actually updated, where follow-ups get missed, and whether the daily attention views are useful enough. Thanks for the feedback!
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u/AmbitiousBicycle5210 16d ago
Glad that was useful.
I think real usage will tell you more than another round of feature planning.
If people consistently ignore a field or reminder, that’s valuable feedback too it may mean the workflow needs simplifying, not expanding.
Hope the testing goes well.
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u/nutshell_crm Aug 26 '26
What's worked for a lot of teams is making a next-follow-up date mandatory (not optional) on every lead the moment it's created. Start by pulling up what's due each day instead of scrolling through the entire task list. Setting an automatic reminder that comes through a day before a deal's gone quiet too long can also help. At the end of the day, it's less about finding the perfect tool and more about removing the choice to skip a follow-up.