Entrepreneurs of reddit, how are you keeping track of important relationships (investors, advisors, mentors, clients, partners)? most CRMs are built for the sales stuff and not relationship mgt.
I am looking for something that helps me stay on top of who to follow up with and when. Most tools are either too manual like notion or just too much like hubspot. I had a horrible incident where I promised an intro to someone into my connections and they had to follow up for only me to realise I never did so i need something right in the middle or anything that could help.
Do you use something or is it all in your head?
How do you manage professional relationships without a full CRM
byu/Informal_Art8809 inEntrepreneur
Posted by Informal_Art8809
11 Comments
Check AtroCore software, it is free and fully configurable.
Most small businesses that don’t have a dedicated CRM are using spreadsheets. It’s not glamorous, but if you’re managing fewer than 100 contacts, it’s pretty doable.
I’ve been playing around with self-hosting TwentyCRM. It’s pretty clean, simple and configurable.
Have a look at their site to try it out, and if you’re interested in self hosting feel free to reach out.
I run a marketing agency and have been creating an instance for each client as well as our own internal CRM. Can host them all on one server, and on our own domain which is cool.
Thanks a ton! I will definitely check it out. Just a quick question since you’re running an agency.
Does TwentyCRM help you remember to follow up with mentors/advisors/partners and not just clients? Like ‘you promised an intro 3 weeks ago’ or ‘this person just changed jobs’?
Or do you tract that stuff separately/ manually?
Most CRMs are built for sales pipelines, not genuine relationship tracking. Fyrestone CRM actually has a simple contact management and task reminder setup that works great for keeping on top of mentors, investors, or partners without the sales clutter. You can set follow-ups. attach notes and see the full history on each contact.
If you need that lightweight contact focus, the Forever Free plan covers it nicely. Check out the contact management demo here to see if it fits your workflow:
[https://fyrestone.io/contact-management-dashboard/](https://fyrestone.io/contact-management-dashboard/)
Hope this helps.
I think Cloze is good at this. And do you have a good system for capturing to do’s on the go? Did you capture the intro promise anywhere that didn’t get processed, or did you just mean to remember and didn’t?
Notes on the person go in their contact card (digital address book). To-dos go in my to-do system or calendar.
I’ve been there with the dropped intro – it’s brutal! I actually built a simple automation that scrapes my calendar and email to flag when I haven’t touched base with key contacts in X days, then drops reminders into my task manager. the trick is making it smart enough to ignore transactional relationships but catch the strategic ones – took some tweaking but now I never miss those important follow-ups that keep relationships warm
I use manual calendars
Spreadsheets, Airtable, or Supabase – depending on your level of technical ability.
I built a basic CRM using Google Sheets and Appsheet. Appsheet gives a nice UI for you to manage the data. I also automated email reminders using Google scripts. Gets the job done until my needs grow to require something more sophisticated. I enter every opportunity or partnerships that I need to track, not just sales leads.