Simple CRM Setups
Free or cheap CRMs an owner can actually keep up to date.
Notes from Randall Harper. Thirty years working alongside owner-operators, executives and boards — companies of all types and sizes — across entertainment & media, hospitality, service based business, lifestyle businesses, financial services, retail and not-for-profit, in Australia, Asia, the United Kingdom and the United States. What follows is the thinking I keep returning to.
The CRM is only useful if you actually use it
Most owner-operators have, at some point, set up an elaborate CRM, used it for two weeks, and then abandoned it. The lesson is not that CRMs are bad; it is that complexity kills adoption. The right CRM for an owner-operator is the simplest one that captures the small number of things you actually need to remember about each customer.
What a useful small-business CRM holds
- Contact details — name, phone, email, address.
- Customer history — every job done, the price, the outcome.
- Communication log — what has been said, when, by whom.
- Open opportunities — quotes outstanding, follow-ups due.
- Notes — the things you'd want a new team member to know on day one.
Free options worth using
HubSpot Free is overkill for most small businesses but free to start. Pipedrive is simple, sales-focused, and reasonably priced. Trello, for very small teams, can be configured as a perfectly serviceable CRM with a few well-thought-out columns. Most field-service tools (ServiceM8, Tradify) include enough CRM functionality that you may not need a separate tool at all.
The Monday discipline
A CRM that is not maintained is worse than no CRM, because it gives you false confidence. Block ten minutes every Monday to update it — log last week's conversations, schedule this week's follow-ups, close out anything that has been decided. Without this rhythm, even the best CRM quietly becomes wallpaper.
Don't migrate too early
Switching CRMs is painful and rarely as productive as it feels. Unless your current tool is genuinely the bottleneck, get more out of what you already have before moving. Most owner-operators use less than 20% of the features of whatever CRM they have already; the missing capability is usually elsewhere.
Want this as a PDF?
Tell us where to send it and we'll email you a copy to keep.
The contents of this paper are the opinion of Clear Point Advisory only. Readers should rely on their own judgement and obtain professional advice appropriate to their circumstances.