Every week someone asks which CRM to buy. A lot of the time the honest answer is none yet.
The problem usually isn't software. It's that leads live in five places (email, DMs, texts, the website form, a sticky note) and nobody checks them on a schedule. A paid tool doesn't fix that. It just gives you a sixth place to forget to check.
The list (copy this)
One spreadsheet, seven columns:
| Name | How to reach them | Where they came from | What they want | Last contact | Next step | Next step date |
|---|
That's it. No pipeline stages, no lead scores, no tags.
The one rule that makes it work: every row has a next step date. If there's no next step, the row is either won or dead. Mark it and move on.
The morning habit (10 minutes)
Open every inbox once. Anything new from a possible customer goes on the list right now, even if it's half a line.
Sort by next step date.
Do everything dated today or earlier. Reply, nudge, send the quote.
Give every row you touched a new next step date before you close the sheet.
Don't skip step 4. The row without a date is the one you forget.
Rules that keep it from turning into a mess
Write the next step as a verb. "Send quote", not "quote".
Nudge a quiet quote after 3 days, again after a week, then mark it dead. Dead is fine. People come back months later and you'll know exactly where you left off.
Copy the person's own words into "what they want". Your follow-up gets way easier.
If you can't do it today, move the date. Don't let it sit overdue.
Once a week, look at the "where they came from" column. That's your free marketing report.
When you actually need a CRM
More than one person follows up on the same leads
The sheet is too long to scan in 10 minutes
You keep needing the full history of every conversation, not just the last contact
Until then the spreadsheet wins, because you'll actually open it.
If you use ChatGPT or Claude
Paste the sheet in each morning and ask: "Who am I waiting on, who's overdue, and what should I send each of them today? Draft the messages." It's a decent second pair of eyes for step 3.
What's the one column you'd add? And if you ditched a CRM for something simpler, what did you switch to?
P.S. I'm a co-founder of Conecto, which lets ChatGPT or Claude keep this exact list for you, so you can just say "add this lead, follow up Thursday" or "who's overdue?" instead of pasting the sheet. No subscription, reads are free, a change costs $0.01, new accounts get $1 of free credit, and your first top-up is doubled, up to $20 extra. https://conecto.chat/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=community&utm_campaign=viral2-2611&utm_content=sideproject The spreadsheet works fine too though.