Developing a CRM Strategy for a Solo Business
You don't need a complicated CRM strategy, but something is better than nothing.
Most of us don’t have the brain space to keep track of everyone we meet. Between potential clients, networking calls, conferences, and online friends… It’s a lot.
A customer relationship management (CRM) system claims to solve this problem by holding contact information, social profiles, and email threads. The problem? Garbage in, garbage out. You either don’t spend the time maintaining it, so the data is stale, or it’s got so much info that it’s overwhelming.
A CRM works when you decide — up front — what you want to get out of it, aka your CRM strategy. Your strategy impacts everything from what tool you choose to how much time you need to spend maintaining your CRM.
What is a CRM strategy?
A CRM strategy is your actual plan for what data you need about clients and prospects, and people in your network (that’s step one). And what you do with that information once it's there (that’s step 2). Without a strategy, a customer relationship management tool might just be “one more subscription to pay for” that doesn’t actually deliver you any value.
When I worked for a company, several departments were relying on the CRM. Sales, customer service, management. Different people “owned” different parts of the process. When you’re running a solo business, your strategy might be easy to determine… but it’s also easy to abandon. No one else is relying on that data.
A way to keep track of your pipeline and opportunities is one of the core systems a solo business runs on. You could do that in a spreadsheet. A robust CRM goes beyond that and can fuel your business in many ways.
What to consider with your CRM strategy
In your CRM, you’re keeping track of people, companies, interactions, and follow-up dates — in addition to your sales/opportuntiies pipeline.
The right strategy comes down to a few decisions:
- What you track. Do you need phone numbers, or just email addresses? Does location matter? What about DMs that might not sync with your CRM and need to be manually entered?
- When it gets updated. Do you add a few notes at the end of a client call, or do you wait until the end of the week and make all of your updates at one time?
- What you from the CRM. The list you want the CRM to hand you, such as everyone you haven't contacted in 90 days.
Podcaster Chris Hutchins describes the importance of networking, especially when you’re asking your network for a favor:
"I think earning the right to ask is an important thing. You don't want to find some person that you know and be like, ‘Hey, can you do this thing for me?’ Until you've kind of built up enough social currency, if you will."
A CRM helps you nurture your network, so you can build up the “social currency” and goodwill to lean on your network when you need it.
How to choose the right CRM for your solo business
There's no shortage of CRM tools, but most of them are built for teams, not solo operators. A CRM also collects a lot of information over time, which makes switching later a real chore. You need to spend time testing out different tools, making sure they meet your needs, before you commit to one.
Identify your specific requirements
Start with the problems you're having right now, such as what you’re struggling to keep track of. Then find the tool that meets that need.
The best CRMs are flexible. They don't force you into one workflow, and they let you add custom fields. They also make it easy to search by the criteria that are important to you, such as “everyone I met at XYZ conference last year,” whether that’s by tags, by notes you enter, or some other data.
If most of your work comes from networking, you need somewhere to record how you met someone and what you talked about. It also makes sense to keep track of the channel (website, outbound, social media, etc.) so you can spot patterns and double down on what’s working.
Automation and integration capabilities
You don't need a CRM that does everything, especially if it can connect to the tools you’re already using.
Many CRMs integrate with other tools. If your CRM can talk to your email tool and your invoicing tool, you’re not doing as much manual updating. Many updates within the tool should be handled by automation. For example, if your CRM picks up on a new email, it can change the status or follow-up date for a contact. Anything the integrations don't cover can usually be handled with Zapier [affiliate link*].
The less the system depends on you remembering to update it, the more accurate your data will be.
User-friendly
If the CRM is hard to use, you won't use it. You’ll figure that out pretty quickly during a free trial.
Pay attention to how many clicks it takes to find a contact and add a note after a call. Getting information back out should be just as fast, like through dashboards or reports.
Use the trial period for real work rather than a test contact. Take the time to add a bunch of contacts and actually put the system through its paces for a week or two.
The build-your-own route
I’ve tried several CRMs over the years and struggled to find one that’s suited for my business. Many are all-in-one tools that include contracts, calendar scheduling, and project management. I don’t need those features because I have other tools that I already like.
The alternative is building your own. Tools like Airtable [affiliate link] and Notion [affiliate link*] both work for this, and you get exactly the fields you want without paying for features you’ll never use.
The tradeoff is maintenance. No vendor is adding cool features for you, and anything new has to be built by you. For some solopreneurs, that's a fair trade to get something truly custom.
Anna Burgess Yang
The value you should expect from your CRM
Without a strategy, a CRM turns into a giant pile of records and can’t tell you anything useful. You might have a few hundred contacts. Some are active prospects, and the rest are people you met once at a conference or clients who wrapped a project last year.
The real value of a CRM is the insights it can give you. Its job is to tell you which of your contacts you should follow up with. I used a CRM that used logic to surface contacts for me. I didn’t have to enter follow-up dates — it used built-in intelligence to make suggestions. (Unfortunately, the tool fell short in other ways.)
As you evaluate tools, consider your system going forward:
- If you add people from your network, how often should they hear from you? On a regular basis, or when some type of trigger event happens?
- How will you keep track of sales opportunities that “go cold” but might be worth a follow-up later this year?
- What business value do you get from a healthy network?
Janna Carlson, founder of The Co-Promotion Club, points out:
Networking without a strategy or a follow-up plan creates a shallow, limited experience. And meeting the right people doesn’t equal quality follow-up.
If you don’t have a way to keep track of interactions and follow-up, odds are, it won’t happen. And it certainly won’t be the quality follow-up Janna describes.
Track the impact of your CRM strategy
Pick a couple of numbers you can actually check to see if your CRM strategy is working. For a solo business, those might be something like:
- The increase in proposals you send after following up with leads
- How many deals you close after a lead goes cold
- Whether following up with people in your network leads to more opportunities
Quarterly is often enough. If the numbers aren't moving, look at the data before you overhaul your strategy. Are you actually keeping track in your CRM? If not, why? Is it a lack of time, effort, or something else?
Notice where you avoid your CRM. If there's a step you skip every time, figure out how to make that step easier. Your process for using a CRM should match how you actually work.
Tips for getting more out of your CRM
- Set a recurring block for CRM updates. Fifteen minutes on a Friday might be easier than constant updates during the week.
- Give your contacts a follow-up date. CRMs will give you a to-do list of actions you need to take.
- Track why you lost opportunities. If a potential client said no, what was the reason? Price? Timing? Bad fit?
- Log where every new contact came from. It's the fastest way to find out which of your marketing efforts are paying off.
- Read the contact history before every call. This is one of the easiest ways for a CRM to make your life easier. Review your history with a contact so you’re not walking in cold.
FAQs
What is a CRM strategy?
A CRM strategy is your plan for keeping of clients, prospects, and opportunities. It focuses on what you do with that information. It covers which fields you fill in within a CRM tool and what you expect to get from the tool. Without it, a CRM fills up with data you can't use.
Do solopreneurs need a CRM?
While solopreneurs should keep track of sales opportunities from day one, a full-blown CRM can come later. Start with a simple spreadsheet. Once you have more prospects and a larger network, you need an actual tool for keeping track.
What should a solopreneur track in a CRM?
At a minimum, a name and email address, plus a note about the contact and the date you plan to follow up. Adding how you met the person and why you won or lost an opportunity gives you something useful to look at later.
How is a CRM strategy different from a sales process?
A sales process is the set of steps you take to turn a prospect into a client. The CRM strategy covers how those steps get recorded, so you can see the progress within a pipeline. You need the process in order for a CRM strategy to work.
How often should I update my CRM?
There are two different approaches. The first is updating right after an event, like a call. Or you can set aside a weekly block of time and do all of your updates at once.
